Henry is really big into cars and trucks at the moment. He saw a commercial for a monster truck show at the Dow Event Center and got super excited. I decided I had to take him to the show.

I bought the tickets and a pair of earmuff style protectors. When they came in I had him put them on and it looked like he would wear them (phew… wasn’t sure how that was going to go).

The show was last weekend and we both had a lot of fun. The trucks came out and we got to see a wheelie contest, some racing, and freestyle. They also had a smart car equipped with a jet engine. I think Henry’s favorite part was just after intermission when Megasaurus came out.

He was a fire-breathing, car-shredding vehicle. Henry kept pointing and telling me “eat car, yuck!” It was a lot of fun, I’m sure we will be going next year and bringing Ollie along with us!

Well it was an exicting day today… Going into work this morning, the roads were horrible and visibility wasn’t much better. On the way to drop the kids off at daycare, I took note that side roads were not great and decided I better stick to the highways.

On my way down 475, just before my exit I noticed there were headlights on my side of the road. I thought okay, someone got turned around, but I did not see what was coming next…

They decided to pull out in traffic and cross all three lanes of the interstate. I was in the lane furthest to the right and the car was just in front of me… I was about to t-bone them, I hit the brakes and the anti-lock kicked in, I was not stopping! They managed to get corrected and I wasn’t able to slow down much. I reacted quickly and drove on the shoulder to get around them. I noticed they started to fishtail and I punched the gas and was able to get around them without incident.

I got to work and couldn’t believe what just happened… I was shaking for at least an hour afterward. Luckily, there was no damage to either vehicle (I did check the side panel because I didn’t know how close I came to the guard rail).

Conditions didn’t improve much for the day, at least the roads were plowed and salted. About ten minutes out from the house, I get a call from Susan that she was in the ditch. I made sure she and the kids were okay and said I would be there soon (she overshot the driveway).

When I got there, the neighbor had gotten a hold of his friend with a tow strap and four-wheel drive truck. We swapped the kids over to the Explorer and Susan brought them into the house. I was able to latch the tow strap to the Focus and we were out of the ditch in a few minutes (guess I should have put the orange markers out before the snow fell…)

Our first Thanksgiving as a family of four turned out pretty good. At work, we got to leave early the day before the holiday and I decided we needed some Christmas lights hung in our yard. I headed over to Menards, picked up a few boxes of LED lights that were on sale and went over to the tall pine tree in our front yard.

It was a little sketchy having the ladder leaned up on the tree twenty feet in the air. With the wind blowing and the ladder moving, I did my best to get as much of the tree in lights as I could. I have some plans for next year to make this better, but I’ll have to wait then.

Susan also got out of work early and we headed up to Culver’s for a frozen treat. It was nice to be out just the two of us, if only for a quick stop. We picked up the kids and headed home. Henry was super excited about the lights in the tree.

Last year we brined the turkey for the first time and it was sure tasty, this year was not a letdown, brining is definitely the way to go! After the kids went to bed, Susan and I got to enjoy delicious pumpkin icebox pie.

Yesterday, I pulled out the Christmas tree and it seems we may be looking to get rid of it. There were quite a few bulbs burned out and after I replaced one near the top, the rest of the tree dimmed and that one bulb got super bright. I ended up cutting and re-splicing the wire, it seems to be okay now… maybe we will get a real tree next year!

We hung a few ornaments on the tree and Henry was excited about the Thomas the Train ornament and having the tree up in general. Can’t wait to see what he’s going to be like when we visit Santa (hopefully soon!)

With the last triathlon I did, I am once again a nationally ranked triathlete! This race happened last weekend, The Experience @ Frankenmuth. This is my third time doing this race and second time I’ve done the sprint. Only gripe I have about this race is the switch to a time trial start, with sprint athlete’s being the last ones in the water…

Friday night I had the car loaded and my transition bag packed. The weather forecast was showing a beautiful sunny day and I figured sunblock would be a good idea. After having my numbers smeared off by my wetsuit from putting sunblock on after body marking at Caseville, I did a little investigating to see how to overcome this. One recommendation was to take a shower the night before, dry off and apply sunblock. The idea is that by morning the sunblock will have absorbed sufficiently into the skin. I can say this absolutely works (numbers are still visible after several showers and no sunburn!). If I had planned to be in the sun longer, I would have also applied a second coat of sunblock before leaving the house.

Saturday morning I was up around 6:00 AM. I grabbed my bottles out of the fridge, tossed my bag in the explorer and headed off to Frankenmuth around 6:30 AM. On the way I had a Clif bar for breakfast and sipped on a bottle of water. There was plenty of parking when I got there (it was a little crazy getting out). After getting body marked, I went over to set up transition.

The transition mat I got for father’s day is pretty awesome, it makes finding my spot that much easier. Once transition was set, I went back to the car to finish off the rest of my water and have a couple fig newton’s. I heard transition was closing, so I locked up the car and checked to make sure no one had disrupted my setup. Everything checked out and I proceeded down to the water around 7:30 AM.

Everyone got to watch the pro/elite wave start, followed by the challenged athletes and eventually the Olympic and sprint athletes. I don’t think I was in the water until at least 8:30 AM. I know I needed to drink the water beforehand, but with the seemingly endless porta potty lines, I was starting to doubt that decision. When I finally got in the water, I knew I was either going to have to pee or have a very VERY long and painful race.

Trying to pee while swimming is not an easy feat, I had never had to pee so bad and not be able to go as I was on this swim. Just before the turn around point I was finally able to let my legs sort of drag behind me and every time I put my head down, I was able to squirt a little out. It seemed to take forever, but eventually I was able to drain my bladder.

Once around the turn buoy, it was game on. I gave it all I had to turn in a decent swim time, once I got closer to the covered bridge, I started to slow down to get my heart rate under control. I quickly climbed the ladder and started to jog up the ramp and over to transition; I must have passed at least four or five people during this lengthy T1 run!

No problem with the wetsuit during this race (didn’t have it on ;))… I was in my bike gear quickly and ready to roll. My plan for the bike was to push pretty hard seeing as how the course was pancake flat. Once on the main road out of town, I dropped the hammer and was surprised to see my Garmin reading 21-22+ mph! I kept the pace up as best I could until I reached the turn around point.

I figured I was getting a nice tailwind on the way out and confirmed this when I turned around and could barely push 16 mph. Even though it wasn’t my fastest bike split, I still turned in a decent time. Not sure what my official T2 time was, the results didn’t include it, but my Garmin put me somewhere around 52 seconds.

The plan for the run was to start off with an eleven minute mile and see if I could push the pace for the last two. Well, I was trying to slow down, but was sitting around a ten minute mile and felt pretty good. Although my watch had me at better than a ten minute per mile pace, my official pace was 10:11 (I think the course was slightly long). Either way I had a good run for me! The best part was coming around a corner to see Susan with the boys. 🙂 Henry had even made a sign!

I crossed the finish line almost two minutes under my goal and slightly faster than when I did the sprint two years ago. It was a great race and one I look forward to every year!

I think this past weekend was our first really nice weekend of the summer. I’m lucky to have a wife who green-lighted my trip to Caseville. Saturday I packed up the explorer with camping gear and my race gear. I headed out on side roads in the afternoon and was setting up my campsite in the early evening.

I stayed one night at the Sleeper State Park and it was awesome! Although there were a lot of people, the campground didn’t seem too crowded… the camp sites are a very generous size. After struggling to set my tent up and working up quite a sweat, I changed my shirt and headed to The Thumb Brewery for packet pick up. As I was getting my bib, I found out racers received free chips and salsa at the brewery.

I couldn’t pass up free chips and salsa and also had a delicious Italian hoagie. I headed over to a gas station to pick up a quick snack for after the race and made my way back to camp. Back at the campsite I read the first couple chapters of “Training with Power”. It was getting close to sunset and I decided I would take a tour of the campground. I also wanted to get a shake-down ride in, my road bike was giving me shifting problems and I hadn’t had a chance to ride it after I made some adjustments the night before.

I took a slow ride and noticed there were a couple hiking trails. After I was satisfied with the shifting performance, I headed out on a short trail that went through the woods from one end of the campground to the other. I saw a lot of squirrels, toads, and even a whitetail deer! Oh and there were mosquitoes… lots of mosquitoes. Across the road from the campground was a beach campers could access via sky-walk.

I made it to the beach just as the sun was coming down through the clouds. I stuck around for a little while, snapped a photo, then made my way back over the sky-walk. When I got back to camp, I realized a flashlight might have been a good idea… I downloaded an app for my phone that used the flash from the camera as a pseudo flashlight and that worked well enough.

The bathrooms at the campground could use some updating, but they weren’t horrible. I got back to the tent, organized my gear for the race and climbed into my sleeping bag pretty exhausted. I was just about to fall asleep, when I could hear big booms off in the distance… someone was setting off large fireworks.

I slept pretty well, although I was awoken around 3:00 am by some lady talking on the phone. All I managed to make out was hot dog buns and raccoons getting into them (sounded pretty serious!)

I was awake just before my alarm went off (6:00 am) thinking about what I should do next… it was chilly and hard to get out of the sleeping bag. I eventually rolled out of bed around 6:30ish. I had a clif bar for breakfast and before I knew it, it was 7:00 am and I was in my tri-suit, heading towards the race start. Being this close to the race was pretty much awesome, I think it was about a 5 minute drive.

I got to transition, set my gear up and headed over to body marking and chip pick-up. After getting numbers written on my arm, I put sunscreen on and that pretty much allowed my wetsuit to smear off the numbers… oh well!

After checking on my gear, I made my way back to the car for a few fig newton’s and the rest of my water. The athlete’s meeting was hard to hear for some reason, but I did manage to catch the important parts for the sprint race.

The water was calm and clear and the temp was 68 degrees F, perfect swimming conditions! The swim passed by some sand bars and made it interesting. A lot of folks were walking these parts, but I figured this is a swim, not a walk and managed to front-crawl the whole way.

Without any wind to contend with I was impressed with how straight I swam. I was able to sight off other swimmers while breathing instead of slowing down to look ahead. For not having much swim training this year, I think I did a pretty good job on the swim.

I walked the sandy beach from the swim exit and was able to get my cap, goggles and watch (which I did not lose in the lake :)) off and my wetsuit down around my waist. I got to the sidewalk and started to jog into transition.

Having issues with the timing chip and wetsuit at the last race, I quickly took the chip off and my wetsuit slipped off without any trouble. I put my bike gear on and ran towards bike out and past the mount line.

I kept it in an easy gear until we were out of the park and on the road. I shifted to a harder gear and started to hammer. I wanted to make up for my poor bike leg during my last race… with this in mind, I was able to set a PR on the bike course!

I finished my Tailwind Nutrition (lemon flavored) as I was heading back into the park. I quickly dropped my bike off, slipped on my running shoes and headed out for the run. The plan was to do 11:00 min / mile and my starting pace was in the 8:00 min / mile range. I started to ease up a little and talked with a fellow racer for a bit. He went up ahead and my pace started to hover around 10:30 min / mile.

I had a good run for me (my weakest discipline) and ended up finishing with an average of 10:34 min / mile. Looking back at the HR data, I might have been able to push a little harder, but was happy to finish with a sprint at the end!

While waiting for transition to open, I sat in the sun to dry out. I was in the right place at the right time and was one of the first few people they let into transition (one or two people at a time). I loaded up my race gear and made my way to the campground.

Not wanting to get all sweaty after taking a shower, I decided to tear down camp in my tri-suit. I did get a comment from a camper passing by asking, “is this a new event in the Ironman, are they timing you?” I managed to reply with a Yeah, he laughed and sped off. After showering, I started the hour and forty minute trek back home. I got caught up with the family and unpacked the car.

Susan’s folks are in town for the week, so we got to go out for dinner last night. We went to Michigan on Main and it was pretty neat, we sat outside in downtown Frankenmuth; where we could watch the busy bustling of visitors and could hear live music being played on a stage near by. It was definitely a great weekend!

I completed my first triathlon of the year yesterday. Conditions were not ideal, but I still had a good time and managed to place third in my age group. Saturday night, I packed everything up in the car except my bike. It was lightly raining and I didn’t feel like getting wet loading the bike onto the car.

Sunday morning, I got up, showered, put my tri suit on and was out the door by 6:30. It had rained the whole night and continued to rain through out the race. It wasn’t a heavy rain, but it was definitely cold!

The venue wasn’t too far away and I arrived a little after 7. I grabbed my race numbers and headed down to the registration tent. After getting my chip and body marked, I grabbed my stuff and headed to transition. At this point the volunteer watching the transition area indicated there was 15 minutes left until transition closes. There was maybe 30 bikes racked in.

After setting up my area, I headed back to the car to finish off my water bottle and grab my wetsuit. A few folks were huddling under one of the park buildings and we struck up a conversation. Everyone was cold, but I suggested the water will feel nice once we get in it. I started getting my wetsuit on and immediately felt better that my skin wasn’t exposed.

After transition closed, we had a quick athlete’s meeting followed by the national anthem. Everyone proceeded down to the water and it felt really good compared to the air temp. No one wanted to get out and stand on the beach!

Olympic athlete’s started off at 8:00 followed by my group, the sprint athlete’s, a few minutes later. Although my bike and run training had been going decently well, I had not swam since my last race (the 70.3 at Cedar Point), I wasn’t sure what to expect. This was the first time I considered pulling out of the race at the swim, and I hadn’t even gotten to the first sight buoy yet! I kept calm and started to feel a lot better when I got to the first turn. I finally got into a groove and all of a sudden the swim was over.

T1 was not my best transition. I walked to my spot, slowly got my wetsuit down and struggled to get it off over my timing chip. I put my helmet and soggy bike shoes on and headed over to the mount line.

Even though I didn’t have a great swim, I was not looking forward to getting out of the water and onto the bike. The faster you went, the harder the rain hit and the colder you got. The bike course was hilly, twisty, and technical on a dry day… wet was even worse! At one low point in the road, water was collecting and the only route not through a deep puddle was a foot and a half wide (yes, bike traffic was going in both directions through this area)!

At one point, some one passed me and made the comment, “this is brutal!” I smirked and said, “nah, this is fun!” By the time I got off the bike, my toes were numb and my feet were soaked. I got into T2 and was happy to put my run shoes on. I had flipped them over when I set up my area and the insides were still dry!

The run was my saving grace. Typically my race falls apart at the run, but this race I was able to keep under my target pace (12:00 min / mile). I know its not that fast, but this was a good run for me with an average of 11:00 min / mile. I even had enough energy for a great sprint at the end.

I grabbed a banana and my finisher’s metal and went over to see when transition would open (my car keys were in my saddle bag). The volunteer indicated there were still about ten bikes left on the course. Usually the bike course needs to be cleared before they open transition to the athlete’s.

I huddled under the registration tent for awhile, but every gust of wind made me a bit more chilly. I headed over to the park building were I could count the number of athlete’s starting their run. It was an open-air building and was still pretty cold and by the time I counted five athlete’s I was down right freezing.

I talked to a few folks and one of them mentioned they were letting athlete’s grab stuff from their transition spot. I jumped up headed over and grabbed the keys to the car. I sat in the car with the heat on full blast and wasn’t looking forward to grabbing the rest of my gear.

I saw people were leaving and figured that every one was off the bike course and it was time to get my stuff. I threw everything into a trash bag and rolled my bike over to the car. I almost went back to see where I finished in my age group, but the wind and rain picked up and I wanted to get something warm to drink.

I stopped at a gas station where there were a few other triathletes doing the same thing as me, getting a nice, hot beverage! Later that night, I found out I placed third in my age group (out of four), now I wish I had gone back and got my age group medal…

I have another race in August at this same venue, here’s to hoping the weather is nicer and I’m able to set a PR!

Although the weather wasn’t perfect and we did get some rain, we managed to have fun this weekend. Saturday morning we headed up to Frankenmuth to check out the Dog Bowl. We watched dogs catching frisbees, amateur agility runs, and of course dogs leaping into water!

Later that evening, we came back to see the hot air balloons. It took some time and some of the pilots didn’t want to take off in the windy conditions, but eventually we got to see some hot air balloons take to the skies! Henry was super excited to see them, Ollie pretty much slept the whole time. Then, they started getting ready for the hot air balloon glow and neither one of the kids enjoyed the burner ignition. With two screaming children, we headed back to the car.

On Sunday, Henry and I discovered a new park. He was so excited, he didn’t want to leave. He had a great time climbing up to the top of the twisty tube slide and coming down all on his own!

Well, it seems like winter is not releasing it’s icy grip anytime soon. Last night I pulled the snow blower out and cleared the driveway of the snow/frozen rain/sleet/whatever. Blowing heavy snow is not my idea of fun! Afterwards, I hit the treadmill for 35 minutes of “running”. Race season is coming up quick and hopefully I’ll be able to ramp my training up over the next couple of weeks.

Although the wind and snow and cold (especially the cold) are not very much fun, Henry enjoys going out and being pulled around in his sled (when the sun is out and the temperature is reasonable). Last time we went out, the sled was able to glide down the small hill in our backyard on its own, Henry had a ton of fun!

It’s been a busy year so far. Having two kids under two can definitely be a bit of a challenge, but we are getting through it, including last week.

I’ve been watching a leak in the main furnace of our house (yes we have two furnaces) and noticed on Sunday night a good portion of the floor was wet. Susan called Holland Heating and Cooling and they determined the secondary heat exchanger was leaking. They couldn’t reconnect the system due to health hazards (potential for carbon monoxide leaking).

Thankfully they were able to come out the next day and install the furnace. I was able to work from home and had several layers on while they were doing the work (and still froze, inside temperature hung around 50 degrees). It took them around nine hours to install, but the new furnace is working great!

The next day Susan got a call from daycare that Henry wasn’t feeling well. She wasn’t doing well either so I left work to take him to the doctor’s. After getting checked out, he didn’t have anything other than what was going around… no ear infections!

Last week, at work, I also participated in an Ethical Hacking webinar (“Engineered by Hackers, Taught by Professionals”). It was definitely eye-opening and I’m thinking of putting a dedicated firewall at our house.

To finish off the week, Susan’s parents came down for the weekend and we went to our niece’s baptism. It was nice to see family and we even managed to go out for a dinner date on Friday.

Figured it was about time to get a race report on here. We headed down to Sandusky on Friday after Henry’s bed time. We decided to put his pj’s on him and hoped he would sleep most/all of the way. Starting off the weather wasn’t bad, but once we got into Ohio the rain really started coming down. Progress was slow, but we managed to find our way to Hotel Breakers at Cedar Point a little after midnight.

Hallow-weekends were starting up soon and they had already put up decorations in the hotel. We pulled up to the entrance (we weren’t sure and had to go by twice before stopping). It was super eerie, there was no one around, the doors were wide open and the green lighting and Halloween decorations were more than a little spooky.

After getting checked in, we got Henry and his stuff into the room so he could at least attempt to sleep (apparently he doesn’t like sleeping in new places). We stayed in the Snoopy Suites and although they were a little outdated, it was pretty nice.

Saturday we hopped on the shuttle bus (with my bike) and headed over to registration. I got my stuff only to find out they didn’t include a swim cap. We had to wait around for awhile so they could find a yellow one (only color I didn’t have with me in my transition bag). I got my bike set up, watched a little of the new coaster and headed back to the hotel.

Susan tried to get Henry to take a nap while I headed back to transition for an athlete’s meeting. It was pretty neat, since Rev3 is merging with Challenge Family, they gave out a TON of free stuff. I managed to get a Knoxville visor, which is cool because the one I had was stretched out and didn’t fit me anymore. I was suppose to get a Knoxville shirt as well, but they weren’t able to find one that fit me. It was a pretty fun meeting though.

Sunday morning was kind of crazy. Henry didn’t sleep much so that meant we didn’t sleep much. The weather wasn’t too bad, partially cloudy and quite a bit of wind. My race started an hour after the full, so I thought I had plenty of time to get ready. I went down to transition to drop off my gear and forgot to grab my bike nutrition. The transition area was a little over a half mile from the hotel. I got a good warm-up going back and forth over the beach sand!

I had some Gatorade, grabbed my wetsuit and headed to the start area. I had a little bit of time, so I decided to squeeze into my wetsuit and try to swim a little before the start. I was not prepared for the waves on Lake Eerie. They were probably in the range of 5-8 foot big. I knew sighting would be an issue, but it was too late to pull out now.

They called out my wave and we headed into the water. It wasn’t long before the gun was off and we were heading out for the first buoy. I felt like I was swimming up and going air-born on the way down the wave. Up and down, up and down, I got pretty nauseous and thought I was going to puke for sure. Once we got to the turn buoy, things weren’t as bad. Then I rounded the last turn buoy and going with the waves was a little more fun. I could also sight off the coasters and that made it a lot easier.

Getting out of the water, I had my wetsuit down to my waist quickly and I headed over towards the wetsuit strippers. They had my suit off in no time and I started making my way to my bike.

My plan was to carry all my nutrition and hydration and not worrying about picking up either on the course. I had three bottles of Gatorade and two packs of powerbar gel chews. I ended up grabbing a bottle of water near the end of the bike.

The bike course wasn’t too bad, there were a couple of hills, but for the most part it was pretty flat. The wind was a bit of an issue going out, but I managed to hit my goal time. I had a few miles left when I ran out of chews and was looking forward to the banana I had left in transition.

It was the best squishy banana I had ever eaten! I racked my bike, slipped on my running shoes, and jogged out for my “run”.

I can’t really call it a run as I was only able to run the first mile or so. Every time I tried to run, my legs started cramping out horribly (I wasn’t sure if I was going to finish the half-marathon). Every mile I had to keep motivating myself to just put one foot in front of the other and not to worry about how long it would take me to finish my first half-ironman distance race.

When I got to the parking lot, near the finish line, Susan and Henry were waiting for me and started to cheer me on. A wave of emotion hit me and it was pretty awesome to carry Henry across the finish line.

I’m not sure if I would do another one, but I’m glad I was able to finish this race! If I had to sum it in one sentence, it would go something like this, “I was happy to get out of the water, excited to get off the bike, and almost cried when I crossed the finish line!”