5 things Friday

1. I did get signed up for the Lowcountry Splash 5 mile open water swim! Price increase day is tomorrow. We're going to Charleston to stay with my brother Michael for a great 3 day weekend visit, and I can't wait. They have a 2.4 mile option, and it's with the outgoing tide pushing us along. Come swim with me! It's going to be a blast.

2 Bigun got Spike caught up in her hair the other day. Hilarity ensued.

3. Thanks to all of the snow I've been working from home since Monday. Going back into the office today isn't going to be easy. I forgot how nice it was to work from home all the time.  But what happens when this hits:

In the office the other day

4. Evil Genius lost her first tooth last night! The bottom teeth have been coming in behind her existing teeth so the first one fell out while she was asleep. I haven't even gotten a picture yet, but she doesn't really look all that snaggletoothed.

5. SNOW PICS

ok EG cleaned off my car and that's about the only one I have pulled off of the camera.

ok this one too. EG making snowballs in the front yard

Progress

Through the winter I've been glad to get back onto the yoga mat regularly. 6 days a week of practice at home seems like a lot to most people, but for an Ashtanga practice it's pretty normal. You go through the same sequence of poses through three different sequences with the same warmup and cooldown poses. On The Mat has the best explanation of the sequences.  They say it takes about 5 years to master each series and I'm 3 years into the Primary Series now. But through Ironman training last year I had really stalled out, not having the time to learn the next poses in the sequence.

It takes time to really master the poses and stretch yourself out to get that foot behind your head or ease your way into a handstand. Over the last month plus I have actually been able to make some progress! Not foot-behind-the-head progress. But I have added the next 18 poses in Primary Series with some regularity. But the coolest thing is actually from the Standing Poses.

Photo Credit So I'm not exactly head-on-the-floor there yet. But I have been able to deepen this pose considerably. And having my hips opened up by this sequence is really going to help my swimming over the summer.  Getting about 6" lower is serious progress. I'm also working on the movements to "jump through" and "jump back", which takes a crap-ton of core strength, a small belly, and serious flexibility.  Progress is a really cool thing.

Plus the daily practice keeps me grounded, sane, and de-stressed. Ashtanga is designed to keep the core strong and flexible. That's going to pay dividends in triathlon season.  Seriously, if I didn't have an upcoming triathlon season, I could totally see myself embracing the whole yogi thing.

Triathlon season is right around the corner. I am so ready for it. The hard workouts, 2 a days, bring it on. I'm ready to start shaving my legs again. Officially Ironman training starts in early April, I got my spreadsheet loaded up with the plan I want to use, more on that later. Actually I haven't made the final decision to do an Ironman this year yet. My weight is right on target, let the triathlon season begin! All of this great core work is setting me up for success.

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Bigun and I before church on Sunday

The happy urban farmer

Today's "How Does Your Garden Grow" segment is brought to you by bib overalls. In the winter, garden tasks include pruning, bed prep, and soil prep. We finished assembling the second raised bed on Sunday and I got the soil turned over once. Up next, we'll add some manure and compost, turn it over a few more times, and let the rotten stuff rot more. In about 6 more weeks the beds will be primed for planting, even if it won't be quite warm enough yet.

The first picture, I thought Bigun and I both looked pretty spiffy before church on Sunday so I snagged a quick pic.

Raleigh got about 3" of snow overnight, so schools are closed for the second day and I'm working from home again. Gratuitous snow pics to come soon!

Coffee Time

Interwebs, we need to get together soon. Find a coffee shop, get a warm mug of happiness, find a comfy chair and settle in for a while.  If we were getting together for coffee today, here's what we would talk about.

Raleigh is balls cold. One the one hand, this is supposed to be a temperate climate, normal highs are in the 50's this time of year. And it's supposed to start snowing Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday mid-day and dump 3-7" of the white stuff on us. I'm down with this, just wish that our house had insulation in the exterior walls so we wouldn't be so frozen inside.

People say this winter is proof that global warming was a hoax, but this is really how every winter was before 2000. So I'd say that environmental conservation efforts have actually worked and we're back to where we should be. No doubt that would start some debate.

This was a good movie weekend. Saturday morning Bigun had a birthday party to go to. So I grabbed the Evil Genius and we hit the $2 theater near the house for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and a giant bucket of popcorn. She did actually show some good behavior, which is a rare treat indeed! Then I came home, ran 12 miles to get my long run done. Kelley's dad wanted to play with the kids for a bit, so as I was pulling into the driveway after my run, Kelley pulled in at the same time from dropping them off. We then went back to the $2 theater to see 2 Guns and have another giant bucket of recovery popcorn.  Needless to say, my sodium intake was through the roof this weekend. 2 Guns was much better than I expected, Marky Mark and Denzel in a great shoot-em-up thriller. Then we grabbed dinner a local japanese place and picked up the kids. They were pretty worn out by then, so after they went to bed we watched Mud, a pretty bad Matthew McConaughey flick that we had in on Netflix. It was a little dissapointing. There wasn't enough shirtless McConaughey for Kelley, and not enough plot twisting for me.

Sunday we went to church, and the kids almost behaved well. We had to baptize 18 people! Each one had to read a witness testimony. And it was mosaic Sunday, so the Chinese Church Praise Team had to sing a song (and they baptized 9 of the 18 people), and the Farsi Fellowship had to sing a praise song. It took an hour and 45 minutes. Normally the service is right around an hour, so I expected the kids to get more restless the longer it got. They kept asking why people were getting dunked in the water.

In the afternoon the kids and I got some time in the garden. Got the second raised bed finished off and turned the soil in there one time. The girls only fought twice while we were out there, so I'll consider that a win. After dinner and showers, they went to bed while Kelley and I watched Elysium, also in from Netflix. It was pretty bad. Matt Damon action flicks are usually better than that. They took the 1% vs 99% concept of wealth division that most of the USA is protesting about right now and stretched it out to unreasonable levels where only the rich get to use the cure for cancer, and OSHA suddenly doesn't exist anymore. The 1% only want money, they don't want the rest of us to die. horrible execution on the plot.

Bigun's spring outing date is changed! The plan was to have Morgan's wedding, then EG's spring outing, then Bigun's spring outing on consecutive weekends. But too many of the other dads in Bigun's tribe had date conflicts, so we got it changed to the only other available weekend, which happens to be the same date as Morgan's wedding. So we end up being the only pair that got screwed.

To make it up to Bigun, we're going to take the same weekend for an overnight trip just me and her. I have no idea where we want to go or what we want to do, and if we were having coffee today we'd certainly have to brainstorm on that one. She's big enough now to go on some epic adventures and do some non-child-like stuff now! I'm not suggesting a weekend in Vegas or anything. If you were a 9 year old girl, what would you want to do with your dad for an overnight trip? She loves biking and paddlesports, anything outside really. We could go camping, or whitewater rafting, or go hiking in the mountains. Maybe kayaking down a gentle river or mountain biking somewhere. We could go to the beach or do some standup paddleboarding, or maybe to an amusement park. If I wanted to move it up a few weekends, I could take her skiing in the NC mountains, she's love the snow. HELP! I need ideas here people.

Cedar Point might actually happen. The only two triathlons I have on the race schedule this year are the new Lake Logan 70.3 (I love the oly's that I've done there in the past) and Rev3 Cedar Point 140.6. While I shouldn't throw in too many sprints, it feels odd to only do 2 triathlons this year. Haven't done that few since 2008 when I only did my first one. But it looks like I've got the cash together for the entry fee for both of those ($425 for CP and $125 for LL in case you think triathlon is a cheap sport), and that was the biggest question mark on those two races. Now it's just a matter of getting the guts to pull the trigger! March 2nd is the price increase for both races, so I want to beat that. Should I wait until after the marathon to see how my body is feeling? I know it's a commitment to that much training, and Ironman training will have to start immediately after I finish these spring marathons. Should I sign up now or wait until after Myrtle Beach?

Might have found a 5k open water swim for this year! The Lowcountry Splash is a 5 mile OWS race in Charleston, where you start in Patriot's Point, swim under the Cooper River Bridge, then finish at the USS Yorktown. Swimmers go with the tide the entire way so there's plenty of current assistance. Yea, it's 5 miles instead of 5k. But get this: my two Ironman swim times (2.4 miles) are 1:14 and 1:05. In 2013, the finish times for this 5 mile swim ranged from 1:18 to 2 hours, they only had one person that took longer than 2 hours. My typical pool mile is 25 to 30 minutes, so I would expect that to take me about 2.5 hours, and I'm a really strong swimmer. So that must be one helluva current assistance. Do you think the field is only really strong swimmers, or is the current that strong? I wanted the 5k swim to be a real challenge, do you think that's challenging enough? It's on Memorial Day weekend and we can stay with my brother Michael, so that would be a great time to take the entire family down to visit him. I can't decide if that's the right race or if I should keep looking.

See what I mean? Coffee. We needs it. Help!

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Couple of updates for now:

Check out that garden! Week 2 is coming together. The muscadine vines are all pruned back there, ready for another great season of growth. This will be year 4 for the vines, so they should all produce a good solid crop. The first raised bed closest to the vines the kids and I put together on Sunday. We pulled the 2x8 frame from the bed in front of the front door and cut it up to make the far side of the new frames. Then we added some new 2x6 lumber to finish the rest of the raised part. Since the yard slopes away from the house I wanted the taller boards at the far side of the bed to try and level it out, and that's exactly what we were able to do for the first one. I even got to turn the soil over once, so that was really cool. Digging in the dirt in January, it's a good thing. Next weekend we'll get the second bed finished and maybe start adding some compost to the beds.

This time of year there are some good tasks to do in the garden. Soil prep tops the list in my book. If you can give the garden anywhere from 6 weeks to 4 months for the soil supplements to get worked and settled into the soil then it will be ready to start growing plants come planting time. Planting time for us in NC is around April 20 this year. Adding compost and manure now will reap the rewards then. Same thing goes with lime over the grass in your yard. It takes about 6 weeks for lime to affect the soil PH. Lime the yard now means it will be ready for overseeding in late March.

I don't like to throw the term big-ass salad around lightly. But there's a pint glass in there for reference. That thing was huge! Mash up a whole avocado with some lemon juice and soy sauce, and we used that as a salad dressing (Kelley's salad was just as big as mine). There's spinach and romaine in there, and plenty of toppings. It's totally Paradigm and vegan, no cheese or anything unhealthy. It was huge and I ate it all and felt amazing afterwards. This was lunch on Monday.

Monday's Dumps

Brain dump, that is. Here's how last week went down: busy. it was jam packed. The workouts were regular and steady, the nutrition was constant and mostly vegan, and I had no time to blog. I actually did have some good content to write about, but then promptly forgot it all so you get this instead.

Horse derp selfie - not as easy as it looks

Evil Genius trying on the unicorn mask for the first time

At the hockey game last week!

Only my kids would rake a zen garden pathway into the leaves when we're supposed to be raking them up

Bigun says we carved a 70 into the yard trying to outline the beds

Those pics were supposed to be a 5 things Friday post.

That's week 1 of the garden. We're adding a second raised bed this year which I am incredibly excited about. I got a seed order placed from High Mowing Seed Company, they sponsor the NorthWest Edible Life blog, I read her, and I like to support companies that like to support bloggers. Hopefully we'll have a good time gardening this year! The kids sure are looking forward to it.

Workouts were really good too, all week long. Tuesday I had a good swim with the RAM team. Ran 38 miles on the week. 7 monday, 5 wednesday, 6 thursday and 20 on Saturday. Did yoga 6 days, and hit the strength training 3 days. Solid week all around. This 20 miler kicked off the cycle. 20, then a recovery week. Another 20, then a taper week. Then Myrtle Beach Marathon, then taper week, then Umstead Trail marathon. Game on people! Here we go!

My weight is spot on right now too. We're still doing mostly paradigm meals, and it still rocks. I started the week at 178 and got down to 175 pretty quick. That's racing weight, so it's where I want to be. Everything feels good and looks pretty good too. Now if I could just get these dang kids to clean up their room every now and then.....

Have a great MLK day!

Into The

Blues. I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, I know. Immediately the reason for this was that I was a bit blue, not really depressed, just not in the mood to write a great "happy to be training hard and chasing those goals" post.  Training was a bit sporadic, vacation was over, and I was back in the office for the first time in a few weeks. Everything was irritating me a bit faster than it was before the vacation and I had to get settled back into a routine and prepare myself mentally for the challenges that I wanted to undertake.

I still haven't really found the routine that I want to use yet to rise up to these challenges (hint: that's part of the challenge), but the last 7 days have been so incredible it just had to lift me out of the blues.

1/6: Monday's suck, but we had a tribe meeting with Evil Genius's Indian Princess group. The house we met at was practically across the street from our house so we weren't late! And there has yet to exist a time were we all met up and I didn't have a smile on my face from beginning to end. This is such a fun group of kids and dads. It's hard to remain blue when you smile that much.
1/7: Tristan's first basketball game. EG's bff is playing in a 1st grade city league this year and had his first game. My friend Shawn is coaching the team, we totally surprised him when I showed up with Bigun and EG. I'm glad I got to hang out with Kayte some. Again, starting to feel better.

1/8: Had the first wednesday night choir practice at church for 2014. Again I smile from the moment I walk in the church door until the moment I get back in the car. Since I lost my voice for about 2 weeks over the Christmas break, this was the first time I got to sing since the Cantata. It felt wonderful to worship and sing again.

1/9: Thursday night I got to take the kids to a Carolina Hurricanes hockey game. One of the other dad's in EG's tribe works for the YMCA, and got us some free tickets, so I actually got to take both kids. The kids had a blast, the dads all had fun, and the Canes destroyed the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-1. Good times all around.

1/10: Can you really be sad on a friday? I was in Hero mode at work finding and fixing problems with lightning efficiency. I had to drop off the kids at school that day, Kelley had to meet with a teacher, then EG won an award for Kindness, then she had a field trip that Kelley go to chaperone. So she was at the school all day, everyone had fun.

1/11: Saturday started with my return to swimming in 2014. The practice was really crowded, with 6 people in my lane. I was in the slowest lane and still swam at the back. The main set was all kick (fins) and pull (paddles), and since I'm more of a naturalist than that I got passed a lot. Lots of time waiting on the lane rope for a break in the action where I can jump back in for a slow kick. I still ended up with 3500 m in the 90 minute practice. Mentally it was kind of tough to get passed that much, it makes you feel insufficient. But I am still a strong swimmer, and that's the bottom line. Felt good to swim. I had planned on a bike ride that didn't happen. The rest of the day was playoff football, pruning the muscadine vines, and playing with the kids. Saturday night the kids ended up staying over with Kelley's dad, so we all went to Golden Corral for a too-huge dinner then a night of peace where we watched Identity Thief. Good movie!

While I was pruning, it would spurt up with a short bit of rain, then go away 10 minutes later. Just long enough to chase me inside. But this one time was different. All of a sudden the sky got as dark as night, then small raindrops started falling. Then the sky opened up and huge drops came down and I had to scoot inside fast. Turns out, this storm was moving through at 65 mph, producing wind gusts up to 85 mph recorded at the airport. There was a tornado that touched down on Tryon Rd in Cary, about 10 miles from our house. in. sane.

1/12: Sunday started by sleeping in late (9:30) and then singing in church. The service was incredible, the preacher actually made me cry from the choir loft. The kids were still out when I got home, so Kelley and I hit up an Indian Buffet then went to pick them up. After the huge mega-storm Saturday, sunday was 65* and perfectly sunny the entire day! The ground was soft, so me and the kids got out to plan this year's garden. They raked the leaves into a zen-garden path, then we started laying out the raised beds while Kelley and I started designing the landscape around the beds. I've got some great ideas for this year's garden, so it should be a ton of fun! After a few hours of working outside, naturally I was ready to go run. This weekend's long run got cut to only 8 miles, but it's a recovery week so that's ok. We ended up watching some new HBO stuff and relaxing sunday night. It was a perfect end to an amazing week.

I'm so happy and blessed to be surrounded by such a supportive family and friends. Yes I did still get plenty of mid-week workouts done too, biking, running, yoga, strength training. I got a lot done, got lots of fun times in with the kids, and had a pretty incredible week all the way around. And yes now I'm feeling much better, thanks.