Let's get it started again

My writing has become a little rusty so I am going to attempt to write more. I have been reading a book called Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and I have been following his blog. He emphasizes that people in my line of work need to blog often for a variety of reasons, one of them is to become better writers. I used to be able to hammer out a research paper a week while going to school without any problems, but with how busy I have been at work I haven’t found the time to do much writing lately. I start with this post and hopefully it will build.

Halloween at the office

Aw Hail...

What a day. I competed in the Utah Half, a half Ironman distance triathlon and it was quite the adventure.It is supposed to be 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and a half marathon, 13.2 miles, for a total of 70.3 miles.

I woke up around 2:00 and then 3:00 and then 4:00. They say the day before a big race like this you are supposed to hydrate. I excelled at it because I was going to the bathroom all day long and into the night. Finally at 4:00 when I had to go again, I decided I might as well get up. Things went smoothly until we lined up for the swim. All the weather reports said it was going to be a calm morning but right at 6:45 a wind Storm blew in. The race directors couldn't get one of their buoys to stay in place as the wind kept blowing it across the lake. We waited, and waited and waited. Finally after about 45 minutes they decided to start the swim but we were only going to do one lap which would cut the swim short by .5-.6 miles. We took off in a mass start instead of waves because they wanted to get us out of the water sooner than later, due to an impending storm. It made for a crowded swim. The swim went well except for the large waves. When I would turn my head to breathe a wave would hit just right and I would swallow a ton of Utah Lake water (which is some pretty nasty stuff.) It was hard to spot the exit from the water due to the sun shinning right in our eyes, but I finally made it, problem was I couldn't get out of the water. The boat ramp is covered in lake scum so as I stood up to start running out, I slid 8 feet backwards. Everyone was acting like seals trying to slide up the ramp on their belly's. The race director was pulling people out. It had to be a hilarious sight.

Transition one went well except I forgot my race number so I had to turn around and head back and get it.

The bike started off great. I was averaging 22.9 miles per hour. At one point we were supposed to turn and go through a trailer park, but someone had closed the gate. We were clueless as what to do so we kept going straight. A cop came tearing up and got us all heade back on the right course but it probably added an additional half mile so I guess I did do the whole 70.3. The turn mistake created quite the peleton as about 20 bikes all met up at the same place. It was awesome for about a mile until it spread out enough so that people wouldn't have to draft. We then headed west and realized that there was some brutal wind. We had to ride at a 45 degree angle sometimes just to stay on the bike and when we headed North it was like going into a brick wall. I saw my bike pace continually drop by the minute. I have never ridden a bike in that kind of wind, it wasn't very fun. On the way back you could look off to the north and see massive black clouds heading our way. I would watch the faces of other bikers and you could see the look of concern, we were going to get hammered. The last 10 miles we were back in town so buildings would shelter us from the wind a little, but that is when the storm hit us. It started with hail. Riding 20 mph in a tri jersey doens't give much protection. It hurt. I could feel chuncks of hail go into my helmet and slowly melt. We got pelted pretty good and then the rain came. This made it difficult to brake around corners as my hands would slip. My shoes were also filling up with water. Then I had to dodge two people as they decided to make wrong turns in front of me, and another biker who broke out into a litany of cuss words as something on his bike broke. I rode the last 5 miles at a great pace but still ended up with a 19.3 mph pace. Without the wind I am sure I would have been over 20.

Transition two was OK except everything was covered in mud from the rain storm.

As I started the run I met up with my neighbor who was going to do the run to train for a future marathon. It helped to have him there. He was talking and asking me questions but I didn't answer. It's not because I didn't want to, it's because I couldn't. I was spent and had to conserve talking energy to try and finish the dang thing. It was great to have him there because at one point I noticed some nipple chafeing. He had some Body Glide and gave my a chunck. I strategically placed it where I needed it and the hurting sensation went away. This assuredly prevented some massive bleeding and a raw nipple for me. Now, a few hours later, there is only some uncomfortable pain. The run was hard and it kept raining off and on. I was pretty consistent until around mile 9.5. Then at every aid station I would walk and catch my breath for about a minute. It helped but it also pushed me past the 2-hour goal for the run portion.

Overall it was brutally awesome.

So now the question is...can I do a full Ironman? I don't know. I would defianately have to train better and do the race smarter. Ask me in a couple of weeks and I may have an answer.

BTW - you may notice in the picture my freshly shaven legs. Emily seems to be really bothered by it. It may be because she is jealous that they are so sexy and smooth.

Ready for Discovery

Tomorrow will be a day of discovery form me as I venture out on a half ironman triathlon. I am hoping to be under 6 hours but we'll see. the weather should be nice and cool.

It's been awhile...I know, but...

I will organize my thoughts better in a week and a half...but I have caught the Ironman bug. I will be competing in the Utah Half, which is 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run. I don't think I really respect the distance and could fail miserably, but this could be my launching point to Ironman Arizona in November of 2010.

I have spent hours watching Youtube videos and reading entries about people's Ironman experiences. Whenever someone says (in a video or writes it) "you are an Ironman," I get chills. Wow, Incredible, I want that.

I recently did an olympic distance tri (.9 swim, 26 bike and 6 run). It felt great except I suffered a panic attack in the first couple hundred yards of the swim. It was bizzare. I could suffer the same fate for the Utah Half, especially because I havn't swam for almost 4 weeks. Luckily a reservoir opened up near my house which is perfect for open water swim practice. I'll be their Saturday.

This journey isn't official yet, I still need the discovery of the Half experience and there is also no gaurantee of making the Arizona Ironman either dueto a mad dash to register in the minutes after it officially opens...BUT, as I have told Emily, "you will be able to say you are married to an Ironman and if I do this I will change my name to Kris "Ironman" Romeril. Stay tuned...

Here we go again

It has been 4 weeks since the Salt Lake Marathon and i run the Ogden one tomorrow. I feel like I am healed from Salt lake but I know that I have lost some fitness...so it could get really interesting during the 2nd half of the race. I am not trying to better my time but Emily has put the pressure on because I have to finish quick enough so that we can make it home, get cleaned up, and then be to the Dave Ramsey show/concert thingy by 12:30. That means I need to be done in 4 hours, assuming it starts on time.

Under 4 Hours

Today I ran the Salt Lake City Marathon. I ran it last year and did pretty well until mile 24. I hit the wall and it took me more than 1 hour to finish the last 3 miles. Mentally and physically I was spent and at one point there was a bus stop bench. I went and sat down for 10 minutes. It was horrible.
Today when I passed that exact same bench...I gave it the finger, cursed it and pressed on. With 1.5 miles left I still had strength but I was pretty exhausted so I adopted a run/walk strategy. I made it to the finish line with the official time of 3:47:47. I thought I could get close to 4 hours and I crushed it. I beat last years time by almost 54 minutes and beat my personal best by over 22 minutes.
I am pretty sore but I need to heal soon because I have another marathon in 4 weeks from today.
I am estatic with my performance today and what a rush to reach that finish line regardless of the time..but with a great time it makes it that much better. (I know great is relative because the winner ran it in 2:15.)
The following are the stats:
Age group: 36th of 109
Overall: 235 of 1067
Overall Male 188 of 685

Mile / Split
1 /0:07:55
2/ 0:08:09
3/ 0:07:51
4/ 0:07:53
5/ 0:08:17
6/ 0:08:25
7/ 0:08:34
8/ 0:08:31
9/ 0:08:35
10/ 0:08:14
11/ 0:08:17
12/ 0:08:28
13/ 0:08:32
14/ 0:08:12
15/ 0:08:17
16/ 0:08:24
17/ 0:08:33
18/ 0:08:33
19/ 0:08:41
20/ 0:08:48
21/ 0:09:00
22/ 0:09:04
23/ 0:09:27
24/ 0:09:38
25/ 0:10:37
26/ 0:10:44
last .2/ 0:02:08
Total / 3:47:47

13.1

I ran the Riverton 1/2 Marathon this morning. It was cold and windy but I felt really good. I thought if I did well I would be able to come in around 1:52 but in the end I ended with a time of 1:45:23...which is a 8:02 Min/Mi.
Here are my splits:

Mile Time

1. 7:31
2. 7:48
3. 8:10
4. 7:52
5. 8:15
6. 8:18
7. 8:14
8. 8:27
9. 7:55
10. 8:19
11. 8:09
12. 8:03
13. 7:44
14. :38 (this was the last .10 of the course to give the 13.1)

I ended up:
7th of 22 in the age group - Men 35-39
39th of 103rd in all the men
50th of 190 of total men and women

Daylight Savings Brings Out the Freaks

I like daylight savings. It is great during the summer when the sun is out until 9:00 at night, but the one drawback is when I go running first thing on Saturday mornings. I like to get out on the trails at breaking dawn...oh sorry, that is a silly book...at the dawn's early light. It is awesome that a few miles from my house I can run on a river trail as the geese, ducks and other birds are waking up. I even saw a group of about seven deer the other morning. With the recent time change it means that when I head out on the trails it is still dark for about 20-30 minutes. I don't stress too much about a mountain lion mauling me for breakfast...really my only concern is about stepping in goose poop or dog feces that idiot people don't clean up after.
Now, there is a new threat out on the trails. As I headed out on Saturday I was no more than a half mile into my run when I see another person running towards me. No big deal, there are lots of runners out here, just not that many when it is still dark outside. As I approach him he immediately turns around and starts running with me. We exchange pleasant good mornings and I slow up a little bit to let him go ahead, but then he slows up, so I speed up, and then he speeds up. He then asks if it is OK if he runs with me because he is scared to run in the river bottoms by himself in the dark. I think "Should I sucker punch this freak now?" I agree and we keep going down the trail. He asks me if by chance my name is Kris. I think "who in the hell is this guy." He said he met a Chris out here last fall. I emphasized that it wasn't me because I wasn't running last fall. We continue talking and he brings up his wife and how 14 months ago she couldn't even walk, but now with this product Reliv, she is starting to run again. I don't think anything about it other than he is excited that his wife can walk again. My biggest concern is that he is slowing me way down keeping me above a 10:00 mile pace. He is gasping for air during the conversation, which is somewhat entertaining to me, so I pick up the pace to see just how fast we will need to go to get him to quit talking. The faster pace, a steep hill and the sun appearing on the horizon did the trick. He finally gasped a thank you and then offered me his card and told me again how great Reliv is for rebuilding muscles after a workout.
Seriously??? At 6:30 in the morning this guy is out peddling product. I can't blame the guy for trying, especially in these economic times, but I had to run 18 miles on Saturday and he made the first 3 miserable. Maybe I will have to throw in a sucker punch next time.

Update on the Idiocy

So I would like to thank all those concerned about the incident concerning the post:
The Idiocy of Long Distance Running.
I have received a number of condolences and questions about the current condition.
I am happy to report that all is well...mostly because I have chosen to run topless. To be clear, I only go without a shirt while in my basement on the treadmill. I don't quite have the adonic physique needed to stroll around on the running trails in just my shorts. I have lost 20+ pounds but I will probably need to go through a whole series of P90X before I attempt that.

Total Insanity

It was officially announced today that the IronMan series will begin hosting an annual event in St. George, Utah. It begins in May of 2010. There is no way I would do it that soon...but should I consider 2011? That gives me just over 2 years. I plan on running (jogging) 3 marathons this year. Then I could start doing the swimming which shouldn't be too hard since I grew up a swimmer, but I haven't really swam in 10 years. I would also need to start the biking, which I have never done.

It's only:
2.4 mile swim
112 mile bike ride
26.2 mile run........How hard could it be?

It would be a huge commitment and the time it would take to train may be too much...but what an accomplishment.

It's a Conspiracy

So they just added another area code in Utah, but this one is in addition to the current area code. So now when I need to call my neighbor across the street to send my daughter home, I have to use an area code. That's right...I have to use ten digits to call across the street. I had to reconfigure my Tivo to use 10 digits and I had to go into all my contacts on my cell phone and change them as well. What a pain. I remember a Seinfeld episode where this occurred,but Salt Lake doesn't have anywhere near the population of New York.

So in rebellion against those who made these decisions, I no longer use my phone to get my daughter to come home for dinner...Now, I put down the Doritos, get off of the couch, and actually walk across the street to get her.

I'll show them.

The Idiocy of Long Distance Running

This past weekend was an easy weekend for running...I only had to run 10 miles. I know some of you will think that is crazy, but I am proud to say that I am at the point where 10 miles isn't too big a deal.

But long distance running is pretty stupid at times. While running the 10 miles I guess I was focused on other pains or something else because I failed to notice something quite disturbing and disgusting. About 10 minutes after I was done I had already removed all the sweaty clothes and was in my nice clean sweats. I entered our kitchen to go make a protein shake and finally noticed that I had an uncomfortable stinging pain. It still slightly hurts today (3 days later).

It makes sense now that I think about it. I was running for an hour and a half in temperatures that ranged from 26 - 34 degrees, so it was quite cold, but this hasn't happened to me before. Some people put bandages over to prevent the rubbing and inevitable pain later...but again, I have been running for 4 years now and this has never happened.

Well, now a scab has formed right on the tip, it hurts just thinking about it. Anyways, the picture of my shirt, post-run, should explain...


Thank goodness blood rinses out in the washing machine.

"Undress the Mannequin"

Friday night (Feb 13th) Em's sister dropped off their kids to spend the night at our house, in exchange for them taking our kids to spend the night at their house on the 14th. It was a great trade because that meant we didn't have to find babysitters for Valentines. After they left with the kids we decided to go to Tepanyaki, the Japanese Steak House. There was already an hour and a half wait at 4:00, so we went clothes shopping. We finally got in to eat and it was delicious. We then decided to go see a movie. The movie we chose didn't start for 45 minutes so Em said, "we should go pick up a special outfit for tonight." I tried to play it cool and prevent myself from shouting "that would be awesome."
So we went across the street to a store and headed to that certain area of the store. I always feel somewhat uncomfortable just standing around...but we have to make sacrifices to get action.
Anyways, Em found an outfit that she liked and we headed to the front to pay but Em saw a Valentine display which had a mannequin in a special outfit. She really liked this outfit (So did I, it looked nice on the plaster woman, but I knew it would look better on my wife). Em asked a sales clerk and they said they didn't have anymore of those outfits...except for the one on the mannequin that happened to be the right size for Em. Well, when Em wants something, she gets it. The next thing I know the store employee is starting to remove the outfit from the mannequin. It was more difficult for her than she would have thought so we are standing there with arms of the mannequin lying on the floor, the lady hugging the mannequin trying to hold it up as she is trying to get the bottom part of the outfit (which is very minimal) off. She then yells across the store, shouting she needs help to undress the mannequin. Finally, Emily gave me that look that eloquently says..."you need to help her if you want any tonight." So I had to take the legs off the stand and help pull the bottom part of the outfit (which again, is very minimal) off the mannequin. Who would have thought it would be so hard to take some strings off a mannequin. It was quite the sight to see arms, legs, and pieces of bedtime outfits strewn across the front entrance of the store.
When all was said and done, the struggle with the mannequin was all for naught...because I wouldn't run to a restaurant at 11:00 at night and get Em a molten chocolate cake.

Emily's editorial: I don't think that it is appropriate for Kris to discuss our private life on his blog page but since he has I feel like I need to set the record straight. It wasn't at 11:00 at night, it was at 9:30 and the restaurant who makes the delicious molten cake is in the same shopping center as the movie theater and the store where we bought the "outfit". I had been promised the molten cake, I had been saving myself for that molten cake all day, I even denied myself desert at Tepanyaki. So I all have to say is... if I didn't get my dessert why should Kris?

Xanadu

Last night my kid's elementary school had their skate night. My kids just rode their scooters but Em and I got the roller blades, or inline skates...I don't know what to call them anymore., it has been years since I skated.
Well, although it has been years since I skated, I'll be honest, I am still really good. There were tons of little kids so I had to hold back some, but I was awesome. We skated on the same rink that I used to go play hockey when I was in college. A bunch of us would rent out the rink at 10:00 at night and play hockey all night long. It was a blast. I think I could still do it if I wanted.

How good does this look?

It would be nice to eat a doughnut, but when you are trying to:
1) save money
2) lose weight
3) train for a marathon
...it makes it a little easier to say no. Every Friday morning at work we get an email saying that there are doughnuts in the break room for 60 cents. It drives me nuts because first, I hate mass emails and second, I hate being reminded that there is frosted fried goodness on the other side of the building.

We love you Grandma

My heart is saddened to learn that my grandmother from Canada has passed away. Seeing as I grew up in California I didn’t get to see my grandparents very often but when we did they were extremely memorable trips.
My first memory of a trip to Canada was when I was probably 7 years old. It was a complete disaster getting there. Our family would pack up in our yellow van, putting the ice chest between the two front seats, which would serve as an additional seat for one of the 11 kids. We would pile in for the brutal drive. I don’t know how my mother did it; my dad was smart and would fly up later so that he didn’t have to make the road trip. Seatbelts weren’t a high priority back then so we would constantly move all around the van. Mike and I would be in the back and he would punch the seat and then I would pretend to start crying. I would have to do it loud enough for mom to hear so that she would then start yelling at Mike. How completely stupid were we? We were trying to get mom mad at us which was almost suicidal. But what else were we to do on those long boring trips. We didn’t have iPods, cell phones, dvd players in the vehicle…the only thing we had was countless merciless hours of The Carpenters on 8-track.
On our way to Canada our van caught on fire, broke down in the middle of Montana, and Gary and Jim went hitchhiking (Thanks to the family who went out of their way to help us out), but we finally made it…and then the real fun began. I rode a horse for the first time. I vaguely remember having a night terror episode, screaming at the top of my lungs as Grandma came running in trying to figure out what was going on…and then the whole family had “rear” terror as the milk from Grandma and Grandpa’s cows wasn’t quite the same as we were used to drinking. It messed up our digestive systems and 11 kids were sick and all had diarrhea. I don't remember our van breaking down on the way back home but imagine all that time with 11 sick kids. I’m not sure which was worse, the trip there or the trip back home. I know I crapped my pants at least once and I am sure I wasn’t the only one. The smell stuck around in that vehicle for another two months.
Other trips to Canada were much better. When I was a teenager I remember sleeping in a camper just outside Grandma’s house. We were able to ride their ATV’s but the most memorable was taking the canoe and going fishing in one of the nearby lakes. My brother’s and I would spend hours out there casting the lines and catching the fish. I caught the biggest one, a 14 inch Pike. We brought it back and I helped (actually watched) as Grandma cleaned it and then we cooked it up. I don’t like fish so I naturally thought it was disgusting but I will always remember Grandma talking me through each step of the whole process.
The last time I saw grandma was when Lexi was born. We headed up there when she was a week old (Lexi...not my Grandma).
I truly wish I could be there as the family honors her life. I love being around them and all my dad’s brothers and sisters. My grandparents have quite the posterity with nine children of their own. We hope we will always make you proud. I love you Grandma and will be excited to see you again some day.
.................Edit to Post.................
Well...I am packed and ready to go to the funeral. I am hitching a ride with some cousins. It will be a long drive to Canada but it should be fun with all the ice and snow covered roads. I hear Montana is nice this time of year.