Planning Day

We spent a lot of time today planning our trip to Wyoming, and I think we have it almost figured out.

We also made it out to Greenhaven golf course to do 9 holes. It's only my 2nd time out this year and I golfed a 63. I have 3 years worth of old score cards to pull out to make a comparison, but I didn't take the time. I'd have to say that's about average for me on this course.

We had some jerk tee off almost right into us... we had teed off but then couldn't take an approach shot as the people ahead of us were still on the green. For some reason the guys behind us didn't pay any attention and almost conked us.

Beautiful day, and we finished before the light sprinkles came through.

I bought a new incline treadmill and I'd LOVE to have it set up right now. It's a 2 person project that will probably take a couple hours (or I can have RR do it by himself in 1 hour). I'm debating going out to take a look at it.

This treadmill does not have roots and rocks on the belt, but as it goes up to a 40% incline, I am debating trying to train for a mountainous 100 miler only using the treadmill. Hmmmm...

Memorial Day Weekend

Well, for about the last 3 years we've had big plans to go mountain biking in Chequamegon National Forest. Every year like clockwork we make plans to go for Memorial Day weekend, change our minds a few days before, re-plan the trip for Labor Day, and then decide to put the trip off until the next year. 2009 was no exception.

The Friday of Memorial Day weekend we decided, at about 10pm, that we'd go check out the mountain biking at Camden State Park instead of Chequamegon (and we'd do that trip Labor Day...). We loaded up the truck and hit the road at about 3:30p on Saturday afternoon (nope, no holiday traffic worries for us...). Set up camp at about 8:30p and heard a train coming through. Yes, there are train tracks that run THROUGH the campground, rumbling and blowing their whistles. After hearing the train every hour, we finally decided at about 1am to grab our overnight bags and go find a hotel in Marshall.

Sunday we did about 8 miles of hiking through Camden before packing up and moving on to Blue Mounds State Park.

The Enforcer (my tent-mate, or more accurately, my ex-tent-mate) decided to stay up by the fire until 3:30am. He went wild with the zippers of the tent and completely woke me up, just as the birds were starting to sing and the sky was lighting up. I never did fall back asleep, so I was up at 6:30a doing a 7 mile hike wearing a 20lb weight vest. Wow, did I feel that in my legs even later that night! The group of us did about 7 miles of mountain biking through the park that afternoon, arriving back home about 11pm (again, no holiday traffic).

I brought my new Amazon Kindle (an e-book), which I love. I read "The Daughters of Juarez" which was recommended to me by my realtor about 2 years ago. Also read "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. I highly recommend any of his books. I listened to and loved "Blink" when I listed to it on audiobook last winter.

Very quick running analysis

This is going to be a very short perfunctory analysis of where my running is at this point. I'd go more in depth, but I must start packing the truck to go camping because if I'm not packing the truck, it doesn't get done, or worse, it gets done, poorly and unsuccessfully meaning I must then unpack and repack. I kid you not... I had to do that once in Wyoming last summer when I got all uppity and decided, "why should I have to be the one who packs the trunk all the time." Well, V and E tried but ended up not being able to fit everything in, which obviously wouldn't work as we were leaving a hotel. I unpacked and repacked with extra room to spare.

So...

I used to have at least a little bit of running speed. I qualified for Boston in May 2006 (3h38m) and I could run a 5k in about 21 minutes. Then I started focusing more on ultras and running very slowly for long periods of time. Then over the last year I was so busy with house stuff and other stuff that I hardly ran at all... not fast, not slow, just sporadic distances in little fits and starts.

That leaves me now today with no speed and really no endurance, meaning I pretty much need to start training from scratch. A little disappointing, but such is life. The sun is out and the weather is beautiful. The appraisal of Party Central (my Anoka house) came in well and the Enforcer is buying it, closing next week. I work 5 miles from home, a max of 40h/wk. I'll only own 1 house. All is good.

I'm committed to doing the Ragnar Relay with a pile of co-workers this August. For this run I'll have to run 3 legs of something like 3-7 miles over two days. For training I decided to follow a 10k training plan that has low mileage but I can start building some speed back up. I also plan on increasing the "long run" of 6-9 miles to something more like 6-16 miles.

Have a great holiday weekend!

Tada! Front Exterior Pictures!

I'll post more pictures from my realtor tomorrow, but will quick get these up tonight. I'll probably re-post, as my "after" shot was done without the best lighting.

Oops, I left ya'll hangin'...

I seem to remember posting a cryptic message about some "house stuff" being in the works, but I never did follow up on that.

I'm selling my house in Coon Rapids to the Enforcer (assuming all goes well with the appraisal on Thursday) and I'm moving into my house in Anoka (the one where he was renting from me). The exterior paint and roof project is ALMOST finished; in fact I can probably take the "after" photos tomorrow.

Actually, that last paragraph isn't totally complete, because the master plan is NOT for me to live for long in Anoka. I now plan to try to sell my Anoka house and make a little money on it to buy a different foreclosed house to fix up. In 2 months I could conceivably be without a house at all.

Anyone know anyone looking for a very cute looking house in Anoka, close to freeways, shopping, and downtown Anoka? I'll post some pictures tomorrow.