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.