Competition in the Marriage

So we picked up a new game a few weeks ago and it has become quite a competition between the two of us. I won the first 3 games and Lisa thought about nothing except playing again. Now she has absolutely demoralized me twice in a row. Did anyone out there have a clue that Lisa has such a competitive steak? She doesn’t just win... she takes your shirt off and throws it out the door!

Lisa, I challenge you to a rematch to tie the score (3-3)!

BTW, our favorite game with the kids right now is Pictionary Junior. Who knew Brendan could draw like a little Picasso! He definitely has his mother’s competitive streak.

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Bookworms? Ya think??

It's a picture perfect summer evening, and this is how our kids are making the most of the gorgeous weather:

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At the Races

Ezra wasn't the only one to race last Saturday. The kids and I (Lisa) signed up for a 1K Hike 'n Bike. The idea was that we could cover the short course together with me pushing Amanda in the stroller. Yes, I am eight months pregnant, but one kilometer is practically NOTHING!
Here we are just after checking in. We still have fifteen minutes before our race starts.
Natalie and Brendan were bored, so they started running up and down the steps. Good warm up for their race muscles. Plus, it was chilly outside.


Here we are lined up at the starting line. When the kids heard "GO," they took off (Natalie running and Brendan on his bike) faster than I have ever seen either of them move. So much for staying together. Running is not option for someone in my condition. I didn't see the kids again until the finish line, where they had already finished their snacks and drink and had gotten tired of waiting for me.
And by the way, that race was at least two kilometers, probably more like 2.5. Even in my current state, I can walk a mile in twenty minutes. I was walking my very fastest and it took me thirty-five minutes to finish. That's a mean trick for Parks & Rec to play on a pregnant lady. All in all, a great first "race" experience for the kids. As for me, I should have just waited for them at the finish line and saved my energy.

After our race, we went to go meet Ezra at the half marathon.

My champion runners:

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Running!!!

On Saturday I, Ezra, ran the Helvetia Half Marathon for one of my New Years resolutions. You probably remember the post on my training log.

Let me just say that I had a blast and I’m already looking for another. Lisa thinks I’m crazy but I’d like to find a marathon sometime in September or October. Unfortunately, almost everything lands on a Sunday, unless I want to go race above the oxygen zone in Utah. If you know of a good one, let me know.

So how did I do?

I finished in 1:52:46. A 8.5 minute per mile pace throughout the 13.1 miles. I had done a very long training run (11 miles) the week before and then did a 4 mile sprint a few days later so unfortunately I was a bit sore during most of the run. Oh well. The race felt great and it was an awesome environment to be in. Even better, the race was very well organized and was actually quite peaceful—even with the scores of racers puffing up the hills.

Now if you really like math…stick around…

A short time after the race, I noticed that the times of all finishers and all kids of other data was posted to the website. So of course, the math geek in me was curious to know how well I really did. So I tabulated the frequency and created a distribution showing the finishing times of all runners.



What does this mean?

It shows the number of people that finished at any given time. My overall finishing place was 503rd out of 2607 runners. Or rather, my time fell in the column identified with the red arrow. The good news was that I was slightly better than average for the runners (assuming most of the finishers after 2:50:00 were walkers).

But wait!

Then I was looking at the data, I noticed a 66 year old guy and over 160 women beat me (no joke!). So as I was feeling washed up I noticed that the age groups were listed as well!



A few short clicks and I came up with the distribution above showing how well I did against the males in my age group. I still finished better than half of all runners in my age group who ran the race, but not by much. Again, the tail trailing to the right was most likely made up of walkers. Shaving just 15 seconds off each mile would easily take me into top 25% of runners.

What have I learned?

Buy new shoes and training makes all the difference. Also, next time I run a race I plan to have a goal to shoot for—not just a plan to finish the race.

If anyone is out there and wants to go for a run…just give me a call!

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