Weekend Gathering

I had the chance to go to a Martial Arts seminar in Campbell California this past weekend. I went with Professor Barber who has been my instructor since I was a kid. The seminar was very well organized and I learned a lot attending the individual sessions. We taught one on the sessions and had quite a crowd. We stayed with the guy who was hosting the event and got to help with setup and teardown. This was a very small price to pay for getting to meet some very wonderful people. The thing that struck me about this community was how everyone was willing to share. I went to a few sessions and was struggling because what we were practicing was totally different then what we practice. People were willing to help if you ask for and accept help. I learned lots of fine details by just asking and watching what others were doing. I tried to work out with as many different people as possible, and as such I meet and was able to share a bit of what we practice and also learn a bit from others. Sharing like this is a truly special thing. 

While in Campbell I got a chance to go for a run. I got to run along a portion of the Los Gatos Trail This was a wonderful trail. It was a few minutes from Hans' house. They dropped me off while they went to run some errands. I told them I wanted to run for an hour. I got about 5 mins into the run and it started to rain. I didn't care it was a light rain and it helped cool me off. I got in a 6 mile run. I ran past 3 spillways and the scenery was nice. There were mountains in the background the rain didn't bother me too much. I was surprised to see the number of people using the trail durning the week and on a rainy/misty day. I wore my garmin so I could track my run. I was wishing we had a system of trails like this in Jacksonville. This was right in the heart of town and I was told lots of these trails link up so you can get places or get in plenty of miles if your training. While I am happy to be home with the kids It was a nice trip.

Planet Smoothie Ride

Yesterday turned out to be such a nice day. Samantha and I decided to go out for a short bike ride. This is us riding along a park not to far form the house. We actually ride past 2 parks on the way to planet smoothie. Part of the ride takes us out on San Jose Blvd. There is a car parking lane most of the way. Of course this is used as a bike lane except towards the end  by the church that almost always has cars parked. 

For a day in mid November it was really nice weather. The sun was shining, the temps were in the mid 70's and there was just a touch of breeze. We had a group of 4 cyclists pass us during the ride. They weren't going that much faster then us and I asked Samantha if she wanted to try and draft off them, she declined. We sat outside and drank our smoothies before returning home along almost the same route. We rode past the other park and looked for Joleen who was out kayaking. We rode through the neighborhood to avoid some of the traffic, plus it makes for a quieter ride. The ride was about 4 miles a nice little distance and I got to spend some time with Samantha enjoying a short break in our day.

Weekend training

Got lots of training in on this long weekend. Started Friday evening teaching Kodenkan Jiu-Jitsu. I taught the kids class and I had 12 kids which was a handful. It is fun being with the kids and some of the questions they ask. Usually they ask how old I am, if  I'm married. One of the kids wanted to know what my religion was. I have never been asked that. Apparently I gave him the right answer because he was satisfied. The adult class was smaller with only 3 people there. So that meant I got to work out with them. We grappled the last 20 minutes of class. This is always very physical, all out for 5 minutes each round.

Saturday morning was the Galloway group run. We just started a new session and this was the "Magic Mile". Everyone runs a mile fast as they can. These times are then used to sort people into their pace groups for the rest of the training. We started with a 1.5 mile warmup then the magic mile and finally a 1.5 mile cool down. After running I went to the gym with Loanna and we lifted some weights.

Sunday morning was the 26.2 mile bike ride with Donna to benefit Breast cancer research. I did the ride with a group of friends(Scott, Deb, Carolyn & Wally). It started out kind of cool and then warmed up nicely. We averaged about 17 mph on the ride. We weren't pushing it too hard. After we finished I rode back out on the course to look for Wally who was a bit late. I found her a few miles from the finish and rode in with her. There was a cookout after the ride and it was nice hanging out and talking to people.

Monday was Veterans Day. I actually ended up going for a solo run. It is rare that I train alone. I was thinking about how many people I am lucky enough to train with. Between Jiu-Jitsu, Running and Biking I probably trained with 50 people. This is truly a gift to have all these people in my life. I feel enriched in some way by each person I am able to share some of my life with.

motivated training partners

Laura is one of my favorite people to run with. I have known her for decades and we get along great. She also runs the exact same pace as me. So last week we met for lunch and we had both decided we wanted to change up our running routines a bit. We would like to be faster, just like everyone else. Funning thing is we had both looked online and found plans. We decided to mostly go with her plan. Last night was the second week of our training and it was speedwork. We found a place on the river walk the was pretty flat that was long enough. The plan was a 1 mile warm up followed by 6x800's(1/2 miles) We were supposed to run these 1/2 miles in 4:52. The first one was 4:17 and the last one was 4:45 We did 3 of them at 4:30's I was pretty happy with our consistency. We were trying to run a bit slower but we decided it was hard trying to hit a pace we weren't used to running. Who knew running too fast would be a problem. We walked for a few minutes in between each interval to rest before starting the next one. We tried to keep the walks about the same as we went. The workout was tough but doable. I love running downtown along the river with friends. Especially as the sun is setting, through the clouds and turning the sky orange.

I own 6.5 pairs of Gloves

This morning I was getting ready to go pressure wash my Mom's house so I can paint it. I decided since it was cold I needed to wear a pair of gloves. I have a pair of neoprene gloves that I use for canoeing when it is cold. As I was getting out my gloves I was thinking I have several different pairs. So I got them all out and realized I have 6 and a half pairs of gloves. The half pair is a single glove that has velcro and is used for holding sand paper while I am doing woodturning. I also have gloves for biking warm and cold weather. I have a pair of gloves I wear running. A pair for working in the yard, and a pair of mittens. Who knew someone could own so many pairs of gloves. Oh, I just remembered I also wear disposable gloves when working with wood finishes out in my shop. I buy these in a box of 100 at a time. So I officially own more gloves then shoes.

More photoshop

This is another photoshop project. I am trying to learn how to really use this program. It can do a ton of things. This was meant to be a poster or magazine cover. I wasn't really sure about what text to add but wanted to have some room on the right side for the text. The picture on the bottom was the original. I removed myself from the original and even managed to lose a few pounds thanks to the liquify tool. The rest was just adding text and drop shadows and such. I am trying to do these small projects to learn the tools but also get quicker using photoshop.

Let me know what you think of the final picture. And if you want to come out and go for a run, swim or bike ride let me know.

stickers

I finally broke down and got a sticker for my car. I did the Ironman 70.3 Miami race back in October. They had stickers at the expo but I didn't want to jinx myself and buy it before the race. So I returned home and checked at the running stores with no luck. I was doing some shopping on Amazon the other day and found the stickers. When I put the sticker on my car I noticed my reflection. I decided this would make a good picture. I have already signed up for Ironman Florida 70.3 The race is May 15th down at Disney. So I know what I am doing for winter training. I know Marilyn and Hillary have signed up already. Let me know if anyone else has signed up. We will have to plan some group training.

photoshop tree

So last night I was playing around with photoshop and got into the brushes. I didn't know that all these brushes were available. I made this whole picture using different brushes. It didn't take too long to make and was a lot of fun. It is a simple drawing made up of several layers. I think I used about 12 different colors of leaves. I also adjusted the opacity to add to the layering effect.

Training group

This was a class project I just turned in. It had to be a surreal image. This was a fun project. I started with the idea of having a group of runners and putting animal skin on them. I wanted to bring out their inner animals. It took a few tries to get the effect I was looking for. The first try I made us all different animals, I learned a lot but didn't like the way some of us cam out. I really liked the way the Chetah spots looked so I re-did all of us. with spots. I also played with a few backgrounds and had fun putting us in different places. When I cut the people out I found that we needed shadows to help make us look right. The shadows are pretty subtle but are needed to make the photo look right. I got some good comments in class last night about the skin and I'm hoping I get an "A" on my project.

Small Businesses rock

I have been complaining about my Garmin 310xt that I wear when I exercise. It is a watch that tracks my heart rate, maps my activities and times said events. It has started acting up lately and I was loosing faith in the numbers it was providing post workout. Yesterday I went to First Place Sports to sign up for the Outback Half Marathon on Thanksgiving day. I was asking if they knew what I should do about my garmin. I was told to bring it back in and they would exchange it for a new one. You just gotta love when a business stands behind a product like that. Replacement of my garmin was not what I was looking for when explaining the problem. But I have to say it made me feel really good about First Place Sports. And the new unit seems to have taken care of the problem.

Thanks Guys,

Riding the bus

Lost Friends,

Not really lost just kind of misplaced. I have had lots of friends come and go in my lifetime. When I was young my Dad was in the Navy so we moved around a bit. This was hard on a young kid having to move away from a best friend. The upside of this learning to make new friends. This is a good life skill to have. It seems these days I have a lot of friends that I don't get to see very often. So when I run into old friends I am happy to see them. We have a few minutes to catch up on how we are each doing, ask about some other people and then we each go our separate ways.

Usually I make friends based on the activity I am doing. These shared experiences bring people together. That and the time spent in that activity. If there is some risk involved the experience is even stronger. I raced sailboats for many years. I met many people and counted many of them as friends. I have tons of stories about people, weather conditions and locations we visited. Even when sailing my boat singlehanded I would talk to other people out on the water, in the bar afterwards or while helping each other with our boats. All my favorite memories on the water involve people. I met my wife in one of my sailing classes. I have done Jiu-Jitsu, woodturning, running and now triathlon.

This morning I was thinking about someone I haven't seen in a while. We are both busy with our families and our training. I finished swimming and ran into another old friend from my sailing days, we talked for a few minutes and then went on our separate ways. I have always said life is a like a bus ride. Sometimes people get on and ride for a while and become friends, sometimes your friends get off only to get back on later. So if any of my friends are reading this the bus is only a short ways from the next stop.

Running, Squirrels and Hawks

This morning started with a pre-dawn run downtown, along the river and over the bridges. I ran with Marilyn and Darcy. As we were on our way back along the river the sun was just coming up over the river and the Main Street Bridge. It was a very nice morning, the temperature was just right. The river was flat and we were out with other runners and walkers getting in their morning miles. I got out of the car when I got home and spotted an Osprey on the power wire. I stood there checking him out and then noticed a squirrel in the tree about 10 feet below the Osprey. I thought; "This squirrel is on the menu". The squirrel proceeds to climb up the telephone pole chittering away at the Osprey, then he gets on the wire and is still chattering away at the Osprey. I turn to try and make it in the house to get my camera and the Osprey flies away. I was thinking the squirrel has a good story to tell all his buddies on how single handedly, he scared an Osprey away and saved all the other squirrels. I wonder if they will believe the stories of if in a week it will end up being a whole flock of hungry Eagles. Sometimes these stories take on a life of their own. For my part I have a terrible picture I took with my iphone but was too far away. I learned my lesson with the Momma bear about trying to get closer.

Long Shadows

This morning Marilyn and I went and rode with the Velobrew crew. We ended up getting in 50 miles. We rode at a good pace, about 35 miles into the ride they sprinted away and we couldn't hang with them. We started the ride pretty early as the sun was rising. When it first came up over the trees we were riding directly into the sun. We were about 50 of us in the group riding into the blinding sun was tough, but the group slowed slightly and we spread out a bit. The picture above was taken on the way back. We were still casting pretty long shadows. It started out pretty cool this morning and warmed up as we went. I had a few layers on and was able to take off a few and stay comfortable. The best part was I finished up around 10 am.

Bikes and photoshop

I recently started going back to school. I am working on a Digital Media degree. One of my homework assignments was to take a photo and turn it into an abstract image. I was really unhappy with my first few tries and while they could have been turned in I just didn't care for them too much. Today I was doing homework and thinking about bike riding tonight and decided to look through my photos for some bike riders. This started as a picture of Beth and ended up as the picture above. It was posterized, inverted, blurred, colored and had the colors saturated. I was really happy with the end results and will probably be making more of these.

Territory

Yesterday I spotted these 2 lizards fighting for territory. The fight lasted for a few minutes with the darker lizard eventually winning. It looked like they were fighting over who got to hang out on the trellis. I went out later and saw a green lizard sitting in the sun. So I am not sure who really won the battle. It was interesting while it lasted and it is something that I am sure goes on all the time. I really try to notice things like this.

New tattoo 303

No, I didn't really get a tattoo. I did the Jax Tri series#2 sprint triathlon this morning up in Fernandina. They write your race numbers on your arms and legs. They also write your age on the back of your right calf muscle. After the race I was sitting in the car talking to Darcy and she looked over and said,"It looks like they wrote Mom on your arm". I looked at it and said," Well they wrote WOW on the other arm".

After coming home and washing my bike and both pairs of shoes and my helmet. I got cleaned up and Tami and I went to lunch at Zaxby's. Our order number ended up being 303 which was also my race number today.

The Race went well today. The ocean was choppy. The surf wasn't big but the chop made the swim difficult. I thought I did well on the bike leg of the race and I did my normal slow run. I want to get better running. I saw quite a few people I knew today so that is always fun. Looking forward to the next in the series on August 7th.

Burnt Eggs

Who knew you could burn boiled eggs.....

Yesterday, I asked Samantha to boil some eggs. She went in the kitchen and I went about my business. A while later the dog jumps up and runs in the kitchen and barks. He came out a minute later. I thought he had heard something outside so I didn't think anything of it. A few minutes later I start to smell eggs burning. Then I hear another popping noise. Samantha had gotten distracted and was in her room and completely forgotten she was cooking. I called her into the kitchen and we put cool water over the eggs and then bagged them up so we could throw them away. Then I had Samantha clean the burnt egg out of the pot and I sprayed air freshner and we ran the exhaust fan in the kitchen. I cleaned the stove top after it cooled down. Luckily we caught it soon enough so the burnt egg smell wasn't too bad. We wasted a few eggs but Samantha learned a valuable cooking lesson. She then announced that she didn't want to cook anything else for the rest of the day.

Radishes part 2

My container garden is coming along. With the heat we are having I need to water the plants like twice a day. Yesterday I was outside and spotted our first radish. We washed it off and Ethan took a bite of it, a very small bite. He then announced that radishes were terrible. I said, "I bought these for you". I wasn't surprised he didn't like them. When he asked me to buy them I was surprised. Oh well, That is just more for me.

Swimming with company

My shoulder is slowly getting better and last Thursday my PT cleared me to start swimming again. I was very happy. So this morning was the Bfast #2 triathlon down at Mickler's Landing. I went down to cheer on some friends and just check things out. I took my goggles so I could go for a short swim after the tri finished. I was swimming back down along the shoreline, and when I would breathe to the left side I could see people on the beach pointing out towards where we were swimming. I thought that can't be a good sign. So we finished swimming and went ashore and some people came up and asked if we saw the shark. No I didn't see any sharks out in the water. I would have come in a lot faster otherwise. They pointed out some bait fish and there was a shark feeding on the fish. I was much happier to be standing on the beach at that point. It was great to be back swimming. I am going to get in the pool this week and swim some laps and I am going to do the Jax tri series #1 next weekend up in Fernandina. I can't wait to be out there again.

Back on the exercise bike

So about a month ago I was at home and had some time before a woodturning lesson. I decided that I need some footage of my bike to put into my videos. I thought some video of the chain going around the sprocket, the tires, breaks, pedals that kind of stock footage would be good. I mounted the video camera on a stick and went for a ride around the neighborhood. I was on the other street and either hit a rock or just lost my balance. (I am going with the rock) and down I went. I got some road rash on my knee, elbow and hand. My bike and the video camera were fine. I rushed home to get cleaned up and proceeded to teach my lesson about halfway through the lesson I reached for a tool and my shoulder hurt. When I finished up the lesson I went in and made a doctors appt. He recommended physical therapy. The tendon in my knee has been bothering me as well. So we are working on the knee and shoulder. I have been doing the pt for a few weeks now. Last weekend I did the Tour de Cure. We rode 129 miles over 2 days. So Monday morning I go in and the first thing they do is put me on the exercise bike. I was like "Really you want me to ride? I just spent all weekend on a bike. My butt is still sore." Anyway I did 2 miles on the bike and could fell it in my legs. The good news is my knee is feeling much better, now if I can just improve my shoulder I will be very happy.