Lots of New Stuff Going On

Let me start by saying that Christmas was awesome. It is so much fun to have Connor realize what is going on as opposed to just being a little baby. It is classic to walk aroung the house and here Connor say, "Santa Claus, ho ho ho!" all day. Anyways my mom bought Connor a Thomas the Train set and the thing is like built in day care. He will play with his trains for hour after hour, in fact the kid almost went on a hunger strike, I am having trouble pulling him away to eat.
We had a wonderful Christmas, both of our families are fantastic and it is great to have them within a few miles of our house.
Vacation- the day after Christmas we headed off to the Monterey Penisula. Wow!! That is place is as beautiful as any place I have ever been. We spent some time in Carmel, went to the aquarium, which of course Connor loved and ate entirely too much food. I will post pictures in the next day or two. I was able to run everyday will Courtney and Connor took their naps. I put in about 6 miles a day while I was there. I generally would leave our hotel and there was a boardwalk that ran right along the coast and "Cannery Row". I think about how lucky we are to live in San Clemente and the beauty that we are surrounded by, however our coastline does not touch Monterey's.
New Years- so we have a little party we are going to tonight. It should be a ton of fun. Lots of friends and fun. The nice thing is that it is on our street. We are also lucky enough to have CM's parents watching Connor. I have made a couple of New Year's resolutions. First of all is too eliminate all fried food. Don't get me wrong, I am not eating fried food all the time but I should not eat it at all. My father died of a heart attack when he was 56, leaving two grown children and his wife. That is not the way I want to go out. I do take much better care of myself than he did, and hopefully have a lot less stress.(he owned a company with over 100 employees). My second resolution is to get abs, which really means changing my diet. This is not a vain resolution. I feel that it just means that I promise to get in the best shape of my life. I would guess that when I did the Vineman on a percentage scale of fitness I was only about 65% and still put up a respectable time. But if I eat healthier and stick to a more strict regime I should be a lot better off.
Racing- 2009 will not be the year of racing that I anticipated. Because we will be welcoming our daughter into the world in late April or early May my triathlon schedule has taken a serious hit. I was planning on doing California half, which blundered because I didn't know that the race would sell out so far in advance. I was also planning on doing Wildflower, but that is the week before our daughter is do. I and was considering doing the Vineman again, but that is out as well. So CM and I were talking about what race or races that I could do that would best fit or schedule and it looks like the Longhorn 70.3 in Austin, Texas is the ticket in October or A-train said there is the Soma 70.3 in Tempe about the same time. I will also try and do the Orange County Triathlon which is an olympic distance race and possibly Malibu as well.
Progression- This leads me to my last topic. It will be really fun to have a goal that is pretty far in the distance. My goal for my next half will be to go sub 5 hours, hopefully sub 4:50. Considering I only went 5:12 at the Vineman that is some serious time that needs to be shaved off, but I think I can do it. Over the next 10 months I plan on cosisently tracking my workouts on this blog to see the improvement. I will put end of the week totals. It will be fun to watch the times get better and better. FYI- I started the doing the walk of shame on the hills yesterday. I did a 5.78 mile run averaging 10:25 per mile and 147hr with 700 ft of climbing. I had to walk several hills which I hate. But if I am going to do it I am going to do it right. In order for me to go sub 5 hours I will need run a sub 1:40 half marathon. Piece of cake. I hope you all make 2009 the best year of your life.

Connor Pics

I never put enough pictures of the family up. Here is our Christmas card this year. Mom and dad didn't feel very photogenic so we let the handsome little guy steal the show.

And the little man blowing out the candle at his 2nd birthday.

New Clothes and Store

Ran about 5.5 miles this morning. Was tired of running slow so I did wear my hr monitor but paid no attention to it. I felt pretty good especially since it was the third day in a row that I ran.
At lunch I went to a store in Irvine and got some new 2XU compression gear. I love all my 2XU clothing so i decided to stick with them. The stuff feels great. Hopefully it will make me faster.
The store is Tribuys.com. They are mainly an online retailer but you can go in and buy gear. The people there were extremely friendly and helpful. They are only about 1 year in the business but seem to be doing well. They have pretty cool ads that I see in Triathlete mag monthly.
They also sponsor a guy named Crowie. I heard he is pretty fast. The one thing that has struck me about Crowie is that everything you hear or read about him says that he is just a class act. I actually met his wife Neri at the finish line of the Vineman 70.3. She and a couple of her friends were at the finish chute cheering all the age groupers on well after he husband had finished. He came in 2nd in the Vineman, obviously he was saving himself for Kona. I asked her if she knew who won and she told me the top five guys. She said Bezzone won and her husband had came in 2nd. She then asked me how I did. I told her 5:12 and she said wow that is awesome for your first half. Pretty cool of a lady whose husband had just beat me by an 1 hour and 20mins. I guess my point is they just seem like very real and nice people. I like to see good guys win.
I don't know how much it is played up in the media but the rivalry between Macca and Stadler bugged me a little. It seemed like all they wanted to do was beat the shit out of each other. While back in the day Mark Allen and Dave Scott wanted to use each other to get better, but respected each others abilities and acted with a ton more class. I have the ultimate respect for Macca's competitive side. He obviously wants to win more than anyone. But again it seems like he could take some life lessons from a Crowie or Beke. I would bet money that either one of those guys would have waited for their bike to get fixed this year and finished the race knowing that they couldn't win. And Chrissie Wellington would have as well, oh wait she still won.
So if you have a chance check out Tribuys.com

Slow Going

So the last two day I have run 5 miles each day. And I am having some serious consistency issues with my heart rate. One day I am running 9:30 miles with my hr under 149 the next day i am running 11:00/ miles. It is boring as hell. Not only that I feel like I am not even working out. I would say more but it is pissing me off.

Tough Weekend

Not much to report for this weekend. I got in a grand total of 4 miles. My son was super sick and we spent most of our time taking care of him. We got almost no sleep on Saturday night. He is doing much better this morning. I plan on getting in some miles today at lunch or after work.

Pictureless Blog

I have been somewhat busy at work the last week or so which is great. I ran on Tuesday about five miles at lunch around Newport Beach. I read JK's and heard that it is 19 degrees in Colorado it was close to that in Cali, about 65 degrees. I think thats why SoCal guys are a bit softer we very rarely are dealing with nature. We do get some heat but no cold, very little rain, and I am not sure if I would recognize snow if I saw it.
I have been a little flusterd lately with my heart rate, I am not able to keep it down the way that I would like. But considering I am not training with a specfic goal in mind right now, it is probably not that big of a deal. Today I plan on running about 6 miles or so, possibly doing some speed work. Tomorrow I anticipate being able to ride for a couple of hours and maybe getting a swim in as well. And of course putting up Christmas lights. My son who is only 2 keeps telling me that we need lights when he looks at our neighbors houses all lit up.
Sunday I am planning to do hill work.

Another Baby

No workout for Monday. My bro-in-law had a health baby boy. I ended up being at the hospital for about 5 hours and was too tired to motivate when I got home.
This morning I ran 5 miles at the gym it has been cold, well cold for California and wet the last few days. I was planning on running outside but wimped out. A-train and I talked yesterday and we might consider doing a marathon together in the next few months. I have never run over 15 miles but since I do plan on being an Ironman one day I should get a marathon under my belt.