My Triathlon At Last

Well my long in coming post about my triathlon has finally arrived. Basically my wife (Veronica) and I trained for this for several months and then she became pregnant so I was forced to do this on my own. Some people. Anyway, I trained as much as I could biking around the neighborhood, swimming in the gym pool and at our neighborhood lake, and running wherever. The triathlon was at Bear Lake which straddles the border between Utah and Idaho and is really nice up there. We went up there the previous year with Aikman and Twix and had a blast so we wanted to go again with Jackson and Twix this year.

So the big day comes, September 12th, 2009. The triathlon is called the Bear Lake Brawl and I was signed up for the Sprint. Which is a 750 meter swim, 20 km bike (~12 mile), and a 5K run. This is me all set wearing my speedo swim trunks and a t-shirt before getting ready.

My numbers on the back of my legs (Age and race "S" for sprint)

Veronica was not able to come down to the starting line because she had to watch over the dogs so she took this from a far.

I am still technically swimming now. This is me running up the beach to the transition zone. The water was a lot rougher than I had anticipated it to be. I was literally swallowing water with every stroke and at times I had to "doggy paddle" just to keep going. It doesn't help that the water was cold enough to actually take my breath away. Since it was so cold you have to wear a wetsuit so that is what I wore, but running up they get partially stripped down.
Being as I almost drowned swimming the run up the beach was exhausting as you can tell. Veronica made it away from the dogs to take this wonderful shot dying. I thought she was still over by them as you can tell in the last picture. This is also her favorite picture.
And off on the bike. The biking was the next thing that killed me. My rear wheel was a little bent so it rubbed against the brake a little which didn't help the fact I was riding a little uphill and into the wind. Not to mention I was not very good at biking to begin with so this went downhill real fast. I did not pass 1 person swimming and everyone that didn't pass me then passed me on the bike.

Finishing up biking at last with my worst time ever.

Veronica missed my take off for the run but once I started running I actually felt pretty good since that was the focus of most of my training. By the end I actually passed a whole lot of people and was feeling pretty good.

Until I stopped and then I just died for most of the rest of the day.

All in all, not horrible but I definitely could have been better prepared. But you live and learn. I need to practice swimming more in colder water with larger waves. That is my biggest problem.

My results are as follows:

I finished 21st in my age group out of 25.

Overall Time - 1:59:31 (under 2 hours)

Swimming - 27:01.4

Transition - 2:14.0 (the third fastest)

Biking - 58:33.0 (the slowest)

Transition - 0:36.3 (the second fastest)

Running - 31:07.0

So here's looking to next year. You can check out the results Here

Healthy = (not) Salt Lake City (in January)

And that's not fog folks, that's pollution, or "inversion" as they like to call it. Yesterday we had the worst air in the nation. Today?

That's right worst again, by far. It's ungodly unhealthy out there. --> http://www.airnow.gov/
I am sooo happy I had to run to the bus stop this morning. Probably took 20 years off of my life.

Personal Goals 2010 - First Post

So over the last few weeks I have been thinking about some goals that I wanted to do for 2010. The first few are going to be to finish off the goals from last year since they did not get finished, but I also have some more in mind. So here they are along with my current status:

1. Finish first draft of my novel - First 1/3rd first draft done
2. Drop weight to 167 - Current at 175
3. Balance our budget
a. Pay credit card - Only one card left
4. Read a total of 100 of the greatest books on my lists - Current count 86
5. Finish 2 more movies on my Geological Movie Review
a. Also update the last two I did - One done to the level I want

So all in all, not too hard I think. Problems might come up when Gummy Bear comes in April though.

Personal Updates 2009 - Final Post

1 year past - Overall results

1. Finish the first draft of my fiction novel.
Start of 2009 - I have the first 1/3rd of the book written
February 1st - Nothing more written
March 1st - Nothing more written
April 1st - Nothing more written
May 1st - Nothing
June 1st - Nothing
July 1st - Still Nothing
August 1st - Notta
September 1st - Still nothing, I hope to start once my new laptop arrives and I am a little more organized with school.
October 1st - Still nothing. Have laptop, just need time now.
November 1st - Notta
December 1st - Nothing
January 1st - Nothing

2. Drop my weight to 167lbs.
Start of 2009 - I started the year at ~185
February 1st - ~180
March 1st - 175.2
April 1st - 172.2
May 1st - 172.2 (somehow again)
June 1st - 171.0 (Finally something)
July 1st - 172.2 (I bet the scale likes me at this)
August 1st - 171.2 (Yea, back down a little)
September 1st - 172.8 (and back up, apparently doing only aerobics does not help you lose weight. Unfortunately I am doing a triathlon in 2 weeks so that is the main focus of my training.
October 1st - 172.2
November 1st - 171.8
December 1st - 173.6
January 1st - 175.00 (gaining the baby weight but apparently not enough of my share)

3. Pay off all my credit cards.
Start of 2009 - I started the year with 5 credit cards with balances and one relative we owed money to.
February 1st - Payed back the relative. Still 5 cards with balances.
March 1st - Payed off 1 card. 4 cards with balances.
April 1st - Payed off another card. Currently 3 cards with balances.
May 1st - Payed off one more. Down to 2 cards with balances. 1 with 0% APR until 2011 though so that one may be waiting a while.
June 1st - Still 2 cards to pay off
July 1st - Still 2 cards to pay off
August 1st - Still 2 cards to pay off
September 1st - Still 2
October 1st - Actually down to 1 now. Payed off the one card, and now the last card has a 0% APR until 2011, so this will probably not be payed off this year. But otherwise I mostly achieved this goal.
November 1st - Still the 1
December 1st - Still 1
January 1st - 1 left still

Other achievements of note.
School is over for the semester with an overall GPA of 3.975. Not bad. Back to work at URS for a few weeks of winter break so it's nice to not have to do school work non-stop. We finally own a washer and dryer now so I don't have to go back to that laundromat ever again :-D. The gummy bear's room is starting to be decorator and I finally got the guest bed integrated into my office. Christmas was good to me as well with a whole heaping of books, DVDs, and Star Wars stuff. Overall, a good year I think. Now on to 2010.