August 2008 Archives

A group of us at work take a "coke break" every afternoon around 2:00. We walk down past the vending machines and do a lap around the duck ponds before heading back inside to finish the day. It's our version of the smoke breaks that everyone else takes, since we don't smoke. We figure we deserve a break too, right?

Last week on coke break, I heard a pretty bird call coming from the tree above us as we were passing. I stopped and looked up, wondering what could have produced the nice sound. It certainly couldn't have been one of the ugly, annoying grackles that are always loitering around hoping to get some of the scraps people throw to the ducks.

I was surprised to find that the source of the sound was a bright green bird. It looked like something out of the tropics! As we stood under the tree talking about it and wondering what it was, a woman nearby who was also taking a break told us it was a parakeet. (Upon further Google searching, I think it was a monk parakeet.) She said they escaped from a ship in Galveston years ago and now live in the area. There were at least four or five of them flitting between trees, and while I don't know if the "escaped from a boat" story is true, it sounds cool.

It turns out that the parakeets were not to be my only unique bird sighting of the month. Last night while I was running at the end of the road next to Jose's apartment, I passed a vacant lot between two million dollar homes and stopped dead in my tracks because there was -- and I am so not kidding about this -- a PEACOCK standing in the grass.

I couldn't believe it. A peacock!? Were my eyes deceiving me? I continued running and passed by the same lot again a few minutes later after turning around. Yeah, that still looks like a peacock, I thought. But I had no camera. Not even a cameraphone. Running is the only time I can think of that I don't usually have a camera with me, and of course that's when I happened to see a freaking peacock just chilling out in the neighborhood.

So I did what any normal person would do -- I ran the 0.75 miles back to Jose's apartment at a brisk pace and burst breathlessly through the door. "I have to go back out! There's a peacock at the end of the road and if I don't get a photo of it, no one will believe me!"

See, my friends? I am always thinking of you.

So I grabbed my purse and jumped into my car. (I was done with the run anyway.) I sped down the street and slowed as I got to the end. I pulled into the cul-de-sac where I'd seen the bird and eased slowly past the empty lot. Nothing. Nada. No peacock. "I'd better check the next cul-de-sac," I thought, "just in case he's on the move. I know I didn't hallucinate a peacock." And so I turned the corner and there she was! It must have been a girl, because she didn't have the huge, long tail feathers that the guys do.

She was walking across the road as if nothing was out of the ordinary. As I edged closer, she suddenly jumped and flew a few feet to settle on top of a concrete fence post.

She sat there for a while, so I took a video of her.

And then, as I started to drive away, the movement of my car must have startled her again because she jumped and flew up into a tree! A tree! A peacock in a tree! I didn't even know they really flew. (I know it's a bird, but I guess I thought they were more like ostrichs or turkeys and stayed on the ground.)

She's hard to see, but if you look closely (or look at the larger size on Flickr) you can see her head sticking above the branch in the middle of the photo.

On my run tomorrow, I'm crossing my fingers for a giraffe.

Let me know if this sounds familiar: There's a hurricane forming somewhere down in the Caribbean. It's hitting Haiti at the moment and will probably proceed into the Gulf, where it will almost certain intensify and could potentially threaten Houston.

Gotta love hurricane season. Also gotta love the crazy amounts of hype and the even crazier amounts of dumb people.

One of the best local resources for hurricane knowledge, in my opinion, is Eric Berger's SciGuy blog over at the Houston Chronicle. Berger is normally a science reporter, not a weatherman, but due to public interest and demand, he always ends up following hurricane season quite closely. Today he posted a good article about historical trends of storms forming in the general region of this storm at this time of year, his main point being that it's far too early to really predict where Hurricane Gustav will go.

It's a good article, rational, reasonable, avoiding the alarmist behavior that most of the local media engages in with abandon during hurricane season. Too bad the public isn't rational or reasonable. Check out some of the comments:

"We live in Sugar Land. Would we need to evacuate? We have two small children and don't want to take any chances."

Dude, I understand that you are concerned about the safety of your family. But come on. Sugar Land? Sugar Land, which is miles and miles from the coast? You will get rain, you will get wind, your street might flood like it probably already does during a heavy rain. But come on. You will not be underwater. You might lose power, so stock up on some bottled water and canned food. Be prepared to go a few days without air conditioning. Bring the patio furniture inside and hunker down away from the windows, but there is no need to leave town and clog the roads!

"How safe should I feel in Katy if Cat 3 or 4 heads our way??"

I can't even answer this one, because it has already been answered quite appropriately by another commenter who said: "Let me be the voice of reason....If you live in Katy, it could be a CAT 5 and I wouldn't evacuate. You're 40 [actually, they're more like 55-60]miles from the coast. Do people in Orlando evacuate when a hurricane hits the east coast of Florida? Calm down."

There is a map right here that can help you figure out if you need to leave your home. Notice that Katy is not located in any of the four evacuation zones. Nor is Sugar Land. Heck, I live right on freaking Clear Lake and Galveston Bay is only a few miles from my apartment and I'm only in evacuation zone B, the third of four, which means I don't leave until it's at least Category 2!

People never learn. When Hurricane Rita threatened us three years ago, we evacuated to Conroe, a suburb on the north side of town. While we hung out at Gavin's parents' house, we watched their neighbor drive away in their Hummer with 3 gas cans strapped to the roof. They were evacuating...from Conroe.

Sigh.

Where to start?

How about the location. Here! In Clear Lake! A five minute drive from my apartment! I can't tell you how excited I am that a good local race director (Greg Pennington, who also does the Tejas Tri in Sugar Land and Ironstar in Conroe) has finally brought a great triathlon to this area. I usually have to leave home by 5:30 a.m. or earlier to make it to a given race; today I didn't even have to wake up until then! And it was great fun to bike and run on streets and through neighborhoods that I know so well. I didn't even have to think about watching out for signs or turns, because I knew exactly where the course went. The bike route is one I ride on a regular basis. The run route went back into the Nassau Bay neighborhoods I've always liked to run.

Jose came along to spectate so it was fun to have him around during the leadup to the start. We even found someone for him to talk flying with -- another guy in my triathlon club is a pilot. ;) I laid out my transition area and had plenty of time to chill out before the start of the race.

I was in the 5th wave so 15 minutes after the start, I found myself in the water waiting. Let me just say that I never, ever thought anything would get me to swim in Clear Lake. That lake is just nasty! I couldn't see anything beyond about 6 inches below the surface, and the bottom is covered in about a billion feet of nastiness. Making things even lovlier were the huge clumps of nasty hydrilla that apparently washed in overnight. UGH. (Did I mention things were nasty?) I did my best to forget about the fact that I was in Not-So-Clear Lake and concentrate on having a good swim. The start waves were fairly small, so it was easy to get away from the crowd and into a swimming groove. I took it pretty easy, not pushing hard at all, because I just wanted to have a nice solid swim instead of the gasping, churning swim I often have. The plan worked perfectly, and I came out of the water in 23:08. That's slightly on the slow side for me, but not by much, and is pretty consistent with what I expected for consciously trying to stay easy in the water.

I transitioned to the bike quickly. Today I did take the time to pull on some socks, after getting two pretty ugly blisters on my toes last week at Ironbabe. I was in and out in 1:42 and off for the bike. I loved the bike. We made one big 16.5-mile loop around Clear Lake -- Nasa Parkway to 146, over the Kemah bridge to 96, east to 270, north to Nasa Parkway, and back to transition in Clear Lake Park.

Last night I stopped by Webster Bike and picked up a water bottle for between my aerobars, which let me drink more than I usually do. After I got home, I gave my bike chain a good cleaning and today it felt like butter. Awesome. The miles flew by in a flash. A couple people passed me in the first few miles, but I passed them on the bridge climb and never saw them again. I'm also happy to announce that for the first time ever, I rode down the bridge without touching my brakes. I hit 35 mph! That was fun. I got back to transition in 51:25 for the 16.5 miles, or about 19.5 mph. I didn't expect to be able to hit the elusive 20 mph average today, but I'm glad I came close. I felt good on the ride. I didn't push quite as hard as I did at Ironbabe last weekend, but I felt strong and solid.

I got in and out of T2 in 59 seconds and headed out for the run. I was nervous before the race because I was dreading the run. Yeah -- it's not a good sign if you're dreading the run before the race even begins! The first 3 miles went ok, but I fell apart for the second half. It took me -- avert your eyes -- 1:18:03 to cover the 10K distance. I'm embarassed to even post that here. It is my worst 10K time ever. After the turnaround, I was ready to be done. By mile 4.5, I was just so over the whole thing that I didn't even care anymore. It was half physical, but half mental. I totally psyched myself out in the days leading up to this race.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the run-that-shall-not-be-named. Run? What run?

I crossed the finish line in 2:35:18. My goal going in (when I thought the bike was 18 miles) was sub-2:30. With the slightly shorter bike, a good goal should have been sub-2:26. Obviously I missed that. I will be more prepared next year.

All that said, I did have a great swim and bike, along with good transitions, and I managed to hang onto 3rd place Athena. First place did 2:19, which is close to unattainable for me at the moment. Second place did just under 2:28, which I should have been able to beat on a better day. C'est la vie.

I'm already planning my redemption on the run for the Hi-Fi Tri in two months. :)

Last night as we were watching Olympics (I have given up on trying to avoid finding out who wins the track and field events; it's still fun to watch even if I know who wins), Jose noticed that there was a dragonfly party going on outside my window. I wasn't sure if it would turn out on video, but my little point and shoot did a pretty good job capturing the hundred dragonflies flitting back and forth. I have no idea why they do this, but it's not the first time I've seen them off my balcony. Five minutes after I took this video, I went back outside to watch them some more and they had disappeared. Every single one of them was gone. Weird.

I'm on week 2 of the 100 Pushup Challenge and while I have not had too much trouble with the workouts thus far, I am doubtful that I will ever be able to do 100 pushups in one go, much less do it after only 6 weeks. Still, I can already do more than my initial 11 (I'll find out just how many at the end of this week when we do the first test), and I can tell my arms are already stronger. So that's cool. And maybe I can do 1 real pushup now, instead of the girly kind. I'll have to try that this weekend. In any case, I have decided that I now need a similar exercise that targets the hips. That's where I store my fat, and it refuses to budge even as I drop a few pounds. Stupid hips.

A couple of my running buddies are suffering from knee issues at the moment, so I was not excited when my knee started hurting this week. It's the same knee, and the same kind of pain, that I had three years ago after I did the Houston Marathon. At the time, I went to the doctor who xrayed it and got an MRI and the whole sheband, only to tell me that he didn't see anything wrong. He offered me a cortisone shot and did say there was some fluid on my knee, and that he could drain it via minor surgery. I turned down both offers, not wanting to start the cortisone shot process unless absolutely necessary (since in the long run it does more damage than good) and definitely not wanting any surgery, no matter how minor. I wore a simple knee brace for a while and got new shoes, and the pain went away.

Now it's back, though not as bad as three years ago. On Tuesday night I rode on my trainer for half an hour and it was pretty sore afterwards. When I ran last night, it still was sore -- and that's the first time I've felt the pain while running in probably two years. It has actually ached on and off (mostly off) for the past few months, always while on the bike or just after riding. I've been meaning to take my bike over to Webster Bike to have them take another look at my setup for a while, but feeling the knee while running was the motivation I needed! It's been almost 5 months since I got my tri bike, and I won't be surprised at all to hear that things have gotten a little out of alignment since I was first fitted. I definitely want to get things back in line before the tri on Saturday.

I went to the pool for the first time in two months on Monday night and it was more crowded than I've ever seen it! The Michael Phelps affect was in full force. Most notable were the four twenty-somethings taking up the two lanes next to the one I was sharing with a coworker who also does triathlons. First of all, they stood at the end of the lanes for extended periods of time. Not swimming, mind you, but talking. Then, every so often, they would SWIM SWIM SWIM as hard as they could to the other end of the pool and back. This involved massive amounts of splash and waves, which carried over into my lane and made breathing interesting, to say the least. Then they would stand again. One of them appeared to be the "coach," and he would say things like "let's do 75s, freestyle down, then underwater back, then kicking." Which hey, is a perfectly fine plan, I guess.

I can't blame them -- I want to be Michael Phelps too. But it was funny.

Not funny was my pathetic self dragging my body up and down the pool for 1500 yards, which is 1200 yards farther than I swam on Sunday at the race. And I already mentioned I hadn't been in the pool for two months before that. I always think I can let my swimming slide since it's the one of the three tri sports that comes somewhat naturally to me. And I am always reminded that thinking that way is stupid. I cannot let swimming slide, unless I want to find myself feeling really wussy in the water.

And I do not want that.

Anyway, the workout took 33 minutes, with 31 minutes of actual swimming time since I took a 1-minute breather between each set of 500 yards. That time is not too shabby, even compared to what I normally do. But it usually feels a lot easier than it did yesterday.

In other news, the Olympics are ruining my life, primarily because it is impossible to go to bed before at least 11:00. And then I get to puttering around before going to bed when the local news come on, but by the time I'm ready to lie down, the late night Olympics programming has started up again and I just have to watch for 5 more minutes. Or 15. Or a half hour.

I do love the Olympics.

I love this race. That's all there is to it. The bike and the run course are pretty and scenic, and that just makes me happy with the entire thing. Even better is that the race draws a lot of my favorite running and tri buddies! In addition to all my BAM teammates, Cassie was out racing, Jessica was in from Austin, Debbie came along with me to do her FIRST tri, and Jon was out cheering and taking photos.

I hadn't thought about my goals for this race until yesterday as Debbie and I drove through a ferocious thunderstorm on our way home from packet pickup. This race has no Athena category, so I knew I wouldn't be in the running for an age group award, but I still wanted to do my best. My training in July was pretty solid and included greater concentration on running than a few months ago, but I hadn't been in the pool since the Y Tri at the end of June. (I know! Bad Sarah!) Then of course I went on vacation where I didn't train at all, and spent the last two weeks getting back into the groove.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect out of myself, but I set an aggressive goal of a 6:00 swim, 33:00 (20 mph) bike, and 33:00 run. Add a couple minutes for transition, and I decided that 1:15 would be a good goal. It was just over 4 minutes faster than my finish last year, and while doable, I'd have to push myself to get there.

Debbie and I got to the park with plenty of time, but after having to wait in a long line for the bathroom I felt rushed making my way over to the start line. I got there only about 7 minutes before the start of my wave, and those minutes passed quickly. Before I knew it, I was diving into the water to start the triangular course. The swim was rough! Girls everywhere, kicking and pulling and all running into each other. The fact that the swim course was marked by noodles that were not staying in straight lines didn't help. At one point I sighted the large buoy marking a turn and headed straight for it, only to run into a line of noodles that were zig-zagging their way from buoy to buoy.

By the time I finally got into some clear water after about 200 meters, I started to catch people from the first wave that had started 4 minutes earlier, so it got crowded again. I never had clear water the whole time, but I still turned in a pretty good time of 6:09, 9th in my age group and only a few seconds off my goal. If only I could've found a clear spot or some feet to draft...or, just wait till I get my Speedo LZR Racer which will obviously turn me into the female version of Michael Phelps! ;-)

I grabbed the hand of a volunteer to make sure I didn't fall on the slippery boat ramp and ran into transition. Shoes, helmet, bike, GO! T1 time was 1:13 -- 3rd fastest transition time in my age group.

Time for the bike. Despite my lack of biking in the past few weeks due to vacation, I still wanted to go for the elusive 20 mph. While I've averaged that number on my Garmin in races, I've yet to see it appear in the official results since the time it takes to mount and dismount while standing still is also included in the bike time. It's a fun course, with mostly smooth roads, one sizable uphill, and one sizable downhill. In between there are sections of very gradual inclines and similarly gradual declines. I absolutely hammered the thing in my attempt at the 20 mph average. I got passed only 4 times, while I passed dozens and dozens of people. Things got crowded on the second loop in Eisenhower Park, and I found myself calling "on your left" over and over.

I saw everything from 17 to 27 mph flash on my Garmin, with large portions spent right above 20 mph so I knew it would be close. In the end I didn't quite make it, clocking 33:35 for an average of 19.7. Given a flat course and fewer turns (there were more than a dozen 90 degree turns, and I haven't figured out how to take those at 20 mph without crashing hard!), I might have gotten there, but it wasn't meant to be today. I'll get there. I was 13th in my age group on the bike today -- there were a lot of fast cyclists in my age group.

I sped through transition, taking only a moment for a deep breath before leaning down to change shoes. I was on the run course 53 seconds later.

I flew through the first couple hundred feet, pumped up by transition and the cheers of the crowd. Then I realized I would fall over if my heart rate didn't come down soon! I'd pushed so hard on the bike that I felt absolutely awful once the excitement of transition wore off. But when I was only about two tenths of a mile in, I saw my friend Cathy coming in on the bike. I knew she'd started 4 minutes after me and I really wanted to beat her (she's usually my main Athena competition), but it didn't seem like she was 4 minutes behind me. Moments later, I saw Cassie roll by on her way into transition as well.

Jon got the above photo of me right before I realized that I needed to slow down, and right after I almost fell tripping on the curb! Thankfully I caught myself. I felt really bad for the first mile. I wasn't wearing my watch, but the split had to have been pretty awful. But after a swig of Gatorate at the mile marker, I was able to pick up the pace. After the turnaround, I started looking for Cathy, Cassie, and Jessica. Jessica came first, maybe 2.5 minutes behind me. Cassie was next, maybe 3 minutes behind. Cathy came just after that, right on the edge of being 4 minutes behind me.

Knowing they were all within striking distance really motivated me to run as well as I could through the finish. Jessica caught me with just under a half mile to go, but I knew she would -- she runs miles in the low 8 minute range. I kept waiting to see Cassie, but I managed to hold her off and she finished about a minute behind me. As Cathy crossed the line, I really thought she had beaten me and it turns out that she did -- by 7 seconds! She's been training well lately and it's showing.

My run time was 32:51, which I'm totally happy about. I knew it would be hard for me to finish the run under 33 minutes, but I did it. My first mile had to have been in the 11-12 minute range, so I was able to speed up and finish strong. My overall finish time was 1:14:41, so I squeaked in just under my 1:15 goal as well. Yay! I ended up 25th in my age group out of 69.

Cassie's husband Manny took this photo of the 3 running bloggers! I guess now we are actually triathlon bloggers.

All in all it was a great morning and a great race. Debbie finished in 1:26, an outstanding time for her first tri and for her heavy mountain bike. She said it was both fun and exhausting, so hopefully she'll want to do another one.

Next weekend is the Clear Lake International Tri. I am not fully trained for the distance, but I have enough training under my belt to get it done -- and I just couldn't resist doing a tri in my own backyard. After that, I have two months to the Hi-Fi Olympic Tri in Galveston which will be my final tri of the year. Two months will allow some serious training for a good showing there. I hope to take the Athena category, and will likely have more competition there than I usually do.

My sister is thinking about doing her first triathlon out in the Seattle area (where she lives) at the end of September, and called me yesterday for advice. I offered to put together a training schedule for her to get ready over the next five weeks and thought I'd share it here for those out there who are considering a tri themselves. Important note: I am in NO way an expert on how you should train, so take this with a grain of salt. I simply drew up a schedule that would work for someone like me.

The triathlon she is looking at involves a 1/2 mile swim, a 12 mile bike, and a 3 mile run. Katie recently ran a half marathon so I'm not worried about her running. She said that she and my brother-in-law rode their bikes 12 miles last week, so she's already covered that distance. And while she hasn't swum laps in years, she (like me) spent a lot of time at the pool growing up so she knows how to swim and is comfortable in the water. Basically, she's got a good level of base fitness already and just needs to get ready for the distances of each event and stringing them together.

Big kudos to the Houston Marathon & Half Marathon, which announced yesterday that they will allow full refunds on entries through the end of this month.

I blogged earlier about the change in transfer policy that was announced immediately after the race sold out in July. The story was that bib transfers would be allowed (for instance, if you bought your bib but got injured and could not run, or your plans changed, or you just didn't train enough), but that those who turned in their bib would only get a partial refund. I found it sketchy that the race waited until they had sold out to announce the change of policy.

The second issue arose a few weeks ago, and I never actually blogged about it. This was a decision by the race to begin strictly enforcing the 6-hour time limit for the marathon (and the 4-hour limit for the half marathon as well, I think). While the time limit has always been in place, in previous years the organization had looked the other way and tacitly allowed walkers to start the race as early at 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. (the official start is at 7:00) in order to make it to the finish line by 1:00 p.m. This year's decision to strictly enforce the time limit didn't bother me much -- time limits are a part of nearly every major event, and allowing large groups of walkers to begin the race early clogs the course for the elite runners and associated race traffic that must then try to get past them once the race is officially underway. But again, it was sketchy for the marathon to have waited until after the event sold out to announce their renewed interest in adhering to the 6-hour time limit. Many people certainly bought bibs intending to start the race early, as they've done in years past.

So there was a lot of hubbub about these two announcements about policy that came after the race sold out, and that marked a significant departure from policies of years past.

Yesterday, the marathon announced that they will offer full refunds through the end of August. I think it's a great move on their part, and is fair to all involved. If you can no longer run the race, if you're hurt, if you just changed your mind, if you had your own sketchy plans of selling your bib for a profit like last year, and if you know you need more than 6 hours to finish 26.2 miles -- well, all of those people can now turn their bibs in and not be out any money.

Great move by the marathon organizing committee. Can't wait to get out there and run the half in January!

There's no question Michael Phelps is one of the greatest Olympians of all time. He absolutely dominates his competition and I love watching every second of his swims. I've been glued to the TV for each of his races.

In my previous post, I actually wasn't trying to argue for or against Michael Phelps as greatest Olympian ever as much as I was trying to point out that medal count is very subjective and dependent on your sport.

Take Misty May and Kerri Walsh, the US beach volleyball duo. They similarly dominate their competition (they haven't lost a single match all year!) but no matter what, they can only win 1 medal.

I think there are arguments on both sides. And June said something on her blog about how it makes her crazy to "see/hear people who it seems wants to make something controversial when really it's just something to celebrate and be proud of..." I hadn't really thought about it that way before, but she has a point. Why argue semantics when what really matters is that an athlete is putting on a phenomenal performance and doing things no one else has ever done and may never do again?

But I brought up the medal count because I find it interesting, and because it's something I've thought about during previous Olympic games as well. I guess what I was really trying to say is that Phelps's status as the "greatest Olympian ever" should really be based more on his complete dominance over his peers and by his margin of victory (which has been on the order of full seconds, with the exception of the 4x100 free relay), and less on the number of medals he's won.

Anyway, I've had fun thinking about it and hearing your opinions!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Michael Phelps is amazing. He's now won 11 career gold medals, more than any other Olympian in history. He's won 5 in Beijing alone, and will probably win 3 more to beat Mark Spitz's record of 7 golds in one Olympics. It's incredible. I read a story on ESPN this morning that said: "He's not just the greatest athlete in Beijing, and he's not just the greatest swimmer ever. He's the greatest Olympian ever." And he truly is awesome. But is he really the best? Ever? I mean, how can you judge that? Can you really say that a single person in a single sport is the best out of everyone, ever? There are tons of Olympic sports. Why swimming?

Here's my point: All of the "greatest ever" taglines are being made based on medal count. And with 11 gold medals, Phelps is on his way to his own personal Fort Knox. But I can only think of a couple other Olympic sports where an athlete even has the potential to even compete in 8 events, much less win.

Gymnastics? Team competition, all-around... I guess if a male gymnast could compete in all six individual events, plus wins the all-around, plus his team wins a medal, he could end up with 8 medals in one Olympics. Highly unlikely, but possible, though I think the equivalent of a gymnast pulling that off would be Phelps winning with every stroke...not just the 200 freestyle and butterfly, for instance, but the 200 backstroke and 200 breaststroke as well. And for a female gymnast, it'd be impossible because they only compete in 4 events.

And team sports? Basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball? The greatest team players in the world can only win one, count it, one single medal per Olympics. Accumulating eight medals would take 28 years!

I'm not entirely sure because I haven't found any count of medals available in all sports, but I would venture a guess that swimming awards more total medals, by far, than any other Olympic sport except perhaps track and field.

Track and field? Eight medals would also be possible there I guess, but it would be insane. You'd have to be both the best sprinter in the world (winning the 100m, 200m, and 400m) and the best short distance runner in the world (winning the 800m, 1500m, and 5000m), and then also pick up medals in the relays as well.

That may sound doable, but my running readers know how impossible that would be. To be good enough to be in medal contention for everything from 100m to a full 5K? I'm not sure it's ever been done, at least not in the modern era. Maybe if they added multiple track and field events at the same distance, since in swimming there are 4 events for each distance corresponding to the 4 different strokes. 100m skip, anyone? 200m backwards run? 400m bunny hop?

None of this is intending to imply that Michael Phelps is not an absolutely incredible athlete. It's awe-inspiring to see him make winning look so easy. I mean, he doesn't just win -- he crushes his competition.

There are some track and field athletes and gymnasts who have won 7, 8, and 9 career medals over the course of multiple Olympics. Carl Lewis had 9, spread over 4 different Olympic Games from 1984 to 1996. But in order to win the most medals ever in a single Olympics, your only real choice is to be a swimmer.

Work has adopted a pseudo-9/80 schedule where you can work 9 hours per day and then take every other Friday off. I'm trying to get myself into that schedule, but it's surprising how one measly hour makes the day feel so much longer. I don't want to stay later since I already stay until 5:30-6:00 on most days, so I'm going to have to come in earlier to make it work. This shouldn't be a huge problem since "earlier" really just means 8:00. But I've gotten pretty used to rolling in around 9:00...or even 9:30...

I may have pushed myself a little too hard on my run last night. I did 3.6 miles in 40 minutes, so the average pace wasn't that fast. However, I was running hard for 3 minutes at a time and then recovering very slowly for 1 minute afterward. I felt bad for the rest of the night. Actually, it's probably not that I pushed too hard. It's much more likely that I was feeling the effects of eating basically nothing the whole day because I was watching a sim at work. I had coffee and a doughnut for breakfast, and of course I forgot my lunch because I always forget my stupid lunch. So the only other thing I had to eat all day before running were some animal crackers and a muffin out of the vending machine. I was hungry and dehydrated. Not my smartest move.

Congratulations to the US men's gymnastics team for beating the odds and winning a bronze medal. Watching gymnastics is so nerve-wracking. You know that one little slip can totally their chances, and the commentators make it even worse. They love to say things like "oh, that mistake will be devastating to their score," and their choice of adjectives always just makes me even more nervous. And when the gymnasts fall, it always looks so sudden and painful. I hold my breath anytime someone lets go of the bar, or when a girl jumps into the air above the balance beam. Ugh! Watching gymnastics is totally stressful, and yet when everything goes right it always looks so cool.

Jose and I each did our first day of the 100 pushup challenge last night. I did the prescribed sets of 7, 7, 5, 4, and 7 without too much trouble (with 1 minute rest between sets). It was hard, and I felt the burn, but I managed. Jose did 10, 10, 8, 6, and 8 and was similarly pooped at the end. I had my doubts about the challenge being some kind of gimmick, but it is no joke! Perhaps it will motivate me to start doing more of the strength training I have always avoided in the past.

The software that runs this blog, Movable Type, has been giving me fits for the past month or so. And ever since I upgraded and lost my old template, I've been thinking of switching to Wordpress. The latest version of Movable Type is very slow to load and publish, and to be honest, it just has too many features than I need. I'm not taking advantage of all the bells and whistles, nor do I even really understand them all, and it might actually be too much of a good thing. Especially since it's acting up. I know some people are getting errors when they try to leave comments. Probably the same errors I'm getting half the time I try to publish.

My host makes it really easy to install Wordpress, so last night I tried to switch. I logged into Movable Type to export my current blog so that I can pull all my entries into a new content management system, but the export didn't work. I thought it was something to do with the software installation itself, so I figured I'd upgrade to their latest version and export again. But before upgrading they recommend that you backup the database, and even that was giving me errors. So maybe it's a blog software issue, and maybe it's a database issue. Either way, I can't upgrade just yet. I've got a ticket in to my host's support people, so I expect to figure things out soon.

All that is a long-winded way of saying that if you see funny things going on around here in the next few days, I'm working on some changes and hope to get everything straightened out soon.

One.

Did you watch the men's 4x100 freestyle relay last night? Did you see that? That was incredible. I was sitting on the couch watching quietly, and as American Jason Lezak made the turn to begin the final 50 meters of the race, I turned to Jose and said "dang, there's no way he's going to catch him. The French are going to win." I mean, the French swimmer -- the world-record holder in the 100 free -- had at least half a body length on Lezak. With 25 meters to go, I still thought there was no way. And then Lezak seemed a little less behind. And he got closer and closer, and then they were even, and when they hit the wall and I saw that the US had won the relay, I jumped off the couch and started whooping. That was AMAZING. What a race.

Two.

So I am moving next month. Not far, only about 5 miles down the road, though my address will officially change from Houston to League City. Though I can currently pretend otherwise, I will now officially live in the suburbs. I am going to move all of my stuff that can be packed in boxes on my own, but in no way, shape, or form do I want to deal with moving my own furniture. I don't want to bug my friends to help me, I don't want to rent a truck, and I don't want to deal with a bunch of heavy, awkward stuff in the still stifling heat of early September. So I am looking for a good local moving company. I've got about 5 pieces of large furniture (bed, dresser, couch, etc) and another 8-10 pieces of smaller furniture (end tables, bookcases, etc). I already have one quote from Allstate Movers for a fairly reasonable $245. But here is the question to my Houston friends: have any of you used a local moving company before, Allstate in particular? Any recommendations?

Three.

After reading about it on many other blogs, I told Jose about the One Hundred Pushups challenge. We did the initial test while watching the Olympics opening ceremonies on Friday night. I could do exactly ZERO pushups of the traditional variety. (Oh, I could do a couple if I only went down a small amount, but if I did a real pushup with my face almost touching the floor, I couldn't get myself back up.). So I downmoded to the girly pushups using my knees instead of feet and mustered 11 pushups. Then my arms hurt the whole weekend.

Jose did 21 pushups of the manly variety (that is, a real pushup). Tonight we'll start week 1 (or level 1, as JD is calling them, smartly I think). Since I did 11 pushups, technically I'm supposed to use column 3, but that seems insane. A total of 41 pushups when I could only do 11 on Friday? I don't think so! I'll do column 2.

The original plan was to spend the first three full days of vacation in Anchorage, but about a week before we left we made the rather spontaneous decision to drive south and spend a day in Seward. The town is ideally situated on Resurrection Bay off the Gulf of Alaska, which made it the perfect spot to try our hands at sea kayaking and take a cruise around the bay. This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made, and the day in Seward was one of the highlights of the whole trip.

Since we'd been up late at the wedding, we were able to sleep in a bit, but we wanted to be on the road by 9 am to make sure we had time to get to Seward (only about 125 miles away, but all of it on small two-lane roads, so we periodically found ourselves stuck behind slow-moving RVs) and grab some lunch before sea kayaking at 1:00. The drive was absolutely lovely. The first half of the drive is on a highway nestled between Turnagain Arm, a long thin body of water that comes off the Cook Inlet and border Anchorage to the south, and the Chugach mountains, which border Anchorage to the east. The day began overcast and cloudy, but it looked like it was clearing up in the south so we were hopeful we'd get some good weather.

After a quick lunch, we headed a mile down to Lowell Point for our 3-hour kayaking trip with Sunny Cove Sea Kayaking. Some of their longer trips sounded like fun as well, but weren't sure our arms would hold out since we'd never kayaked before. Three hours turned out to be just right, especially since the first 45 minutes were occupied with getting ready to go. First there were rubber boots to put on to keep our tootsies dry as we stood in the shallow water at the shore. Then there was the "spray skirt," which is worn like a skirt with suspenders. There is an elastic cord that runs around the bottom and fits over the lip of the kayak seat to keep the cold water out and your legs dry. We'd come prepared with our raincoats to keep our top halves dry, so after that we just needed the life jacket to make our oh-so-stylish outfits complete.

After getting geared up, we headed over to the shore for a quick lesson in paddling technique and what not to do, so as to avoid tipping the otherwise quite stable kayaks over, it was time to go! There were about 10 other people in our group and all of the kayaks were tandem. The guides suggested that the Type A personality take the back seat, since it involved multitasking -- having spotted my Lonestar Tri hat earlier, one of them jokingly said "Type A...like triathletes!" However, the back seat had pedals that controlled the rudder, which immediately got Jose's attention. (Rudder pedals! Like an airplane!) So he took the back seat and I slid in up front, which was the "photographer's seat" according to our guides. Perfect.

We pushed off from the beach and headed south along the shore of Resurrection Bay. Almost immediately, we started seeing some wildlife. There was a huge bald eagle's nest in a nearby tree, and there were two eagles on either side guarding it. Next we saw some harbour porpoise fins sticking out of the water as they swam along. After that, we noticed we were being checked out by a harbor seal. He kept popping his head up for a moment and then disappearing underwater, only to reappear on the opposite side of the group. He was very cute.

Just before we turned around, we came to Tonsina Point where a river dumped out into the bay. July is the middle of salmon spawning season, and while we didn't actually see the fish swimming upstream (though we did see the splashes as some of them jumped out of the water), we did see four bald eagles sitting on the beach enjoying their salmon dinner. At one point they flew up in the air for a bit, spinning and diving and looking for another fish (I assume) but we didn't see them catch anything. Their call, though, was really cool. I guess I'd never heard a bald eagle before, and I'm sure they also do the typical long piercing bird of prey sound, but the calls they were making as they flew around the mouth of the creek sounded like laughter. It was really neat. You can see their "bald" heads in this photo, but I couldn't get any closer for a better shot because the water got too shallow.

We headed back to Seward after that, a little disappointed that we hadn't gotten a closer look at the eagles. We shouldn't have worried! As we pulled our kayak on shore, we heard the laughing call of another eagle sitting on a pole directly above our heads! He took off, but only flew as far as the tree next to the kayak shack. His eagle friend was perched in another nearby tree, and they stayed long enough for me to grab my "good" camera from the car.

All in all, kayaking was a lot of fun, and reignited the thought I have occasionally of renting a kayak to tool around Clear Lake and the area bayous. Of course in Alaska, the weather was cool and the animals cute, while in Houston, the weather is hot and the animals are alligators. With teeth. Eek. But kayaking was only the first activity of the day! We drove back up to the main part of Seward and had about an hour to wander around the waterfront before getting on a Kenai Fjords Tour that went all around the bay and stopped for dinner on Fox Island.

Our tour was surprisingly empty -- there were only about 30 people on the boat which seats a couple hundred. (It was a typical short cruise boat. Lots of benches both inside and outside, and a little counter with hot drinks in the back.) The lack of other people was nice, because we had plenty of room to stretch out and enjoy the cruise. It was chilly outside in the wind, but Jose and I bundled up in our warmest clothes and were fine. We definitely did a good job of preparing for the chilly temperatures after living in Houston all summer. (I've lost any cold tolerance I ever had, apparently.) During the cruise, the sun came out, which made it warmer.

We cruised south through the bay towards Fox Island and got there in about an hour. Dinner was a buffet that looked a little iffy, but turned out to be quite tasty. In fact, Jose said that the salmon steak he ate on Fox Island was the best one of the whole trip -- and he ate salmon seven times total during the trip. After dinner we had just enough time to skip stones on the shore before leaving. The entire shore consisted of thousands upon thousands of flat, smooth stones so they were perfect for skipping. Too bad I suck at skipping stones.

After dinner, the cruise really got good. We continued south far enough to get a pretty good view of Bear Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. It looks like it's a tidewater glacier (one that comes all the way down to the water), but apparently it is not. The sun was slowly beginning to set and was directly above the glacier (it was about 8:00 at this point), so it was hard to get a photo that really did it justice. We both took some good looks at the ice through Jose's binoculars, and it was very cool.

As we left the glacier behind us, we turned towards the east for a bit before heading north on our way back to Seward. We were now on the opposite side of the bay and the back side of Fox Island, and there was quite a bit of wildlife we were able to see -- puffins, sea lions, thousands of roosting sea gulls, and a super cute sea otter who just floated there staring at us as we went by. The boat captain also told us more about the area. At one point, he asked us to look at the mountains to our right and compare them to the ones on Fox Island on our left. The ones to the right were a rich brown color, while the ones on Fox Island were gray like granite. The brown rocks were igneous rock, while the gray was sedimentary. I didn't fully understand what this meant (we needed Meryl and James there with all their geology knowledge!) until the boat captain finally made his conclusion. Turns out the entire Resurrection Bay area lies on a fault line. "This would not be a good place to be in an earthquake," our captain nicely pointed out. It reminded me of the stories we'd already heard about the 1964 earthquake and the jets of water that shot out of the earth due to all the ground movement, not to mention the resulting tsunamis. Whoa.

We got back from the cruise a bit before 10:00, and even though we had a two-hour drive back to Anchorage ahead of us, I still insisted that we take a short detour to see the Exit Glacier, another large glacier coming off the Harding Ice Field in Kenai Fjords National Park. We didn't have time to do the hike up to the closest lookout, but we still got a good view from a distance. If I ever find myself back in Alaska, I'd like to do the trail that goes up to the top of the glacier.

We were both very tired, but somehow we made it back to Anchorage -- where we could still see light on the horizon when we arrived at the Lake Hood Inn just before 1 am! Our day trip to Seward was a huge success, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for some cool activities within a day of Anchorage. Here's the full slideshow of our day there. Enjoy!

After the Olympics Opening Ceremony (which, by the way, WOW on the massive amounts of incredible pyrotechnics), Jose and I found ourselves watching an episode of Modern Marvels about...chocolate! This of course made us hungry, and led to a very important discussion about our favorite candies.

I'm in favor of pretty much any combination of 1) dark chocolate and 2) berries (raspberry, cherry, blueberry, mmm). I worked at Godiva for two years in high school and my favorite items were the dark chocolate truffle, raspberry truffle, and raspberry starfish. If any of those got damaged, it wasn't hard for me to find a place for them: my stomach! But it's hard for me to pick a specific favorite because there are so many varieties, and I can't name any of the big brands that have an item I really love -- and the mainstream stuff doesn't tend to be fruity. Of the brand name chocolate bars, I'd say Twix is my favorite. Something about the caramel and crunchiness is yummy. I like mint chocolate a lot as well, but I'm pickier about it than I am with berries -- I like it when the mint is integrated into the chocolate, as opposed to injected inside it like a peppermint patty or similar. Jose's favorites involve nuts -- peanut M&Ms, Snickers, and Baby Ruth. His favorite Godiva piece is the open oyster, full of hazelnut praline.

So that's my random topic for the night. (I promise I'm still working on Alaska reports and photos.) What's your favorite kind of chocolate or candy?

The one thing I forgot to mention about our two days in Anchorage is the one big item in the city's history that gets mentioned everywhere you go. In fact, it would probably be annoying to hear so much about it if I didn't find it so fascinating.

The 1964 Good Friday earthquake occurred at about 5:30 in the evening and was about 40 miles west of the town of Valdez, Alaska. It's the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America at a staggering 9.2 on the Richter scale. It caused surprisingly few deaths, mainly because Alaska is (and was) so sparsely populated, though there were people in California and Oregon that died in the resulting tsunami waves. The stories we heard and the evidence we saw of the quake's destruction are mind-blowing.

It was impossible for people to remain standing without holding onto something as the ground shook for almost 5 minutes. Streets cracked down the middle like in a movie. The control tower at the Anchorage airport collapsed. Entire towns were almost completely destroyed by the shaking and ground movement, and coastal towns like Seward, Valdez, and Whittier were severly damaged by the waves (Valdez, for example, now sits 4 miles away from where it used to be). Some areas of land rose by 30 feet, while others areas dropped by 10 feet. Landslides took out homes and businesses. For 18 months -- a year and a half! -- Alaska residents could still feel occasional aftershocks. And today, more than 40 years later, you can still see groves of dead trees as you drive down the Seward Highway along the Turnagain Arm. They were killed when the land dropped and the trees were flooded with salt water.

I've always been fascinated by earthquakes, so it was interesting to learn the history. I've only ever felt one -- a very minor 3.5ish quake while I was in grad school in California -- and that was weird enough. I can't comprehend what it must have been like to experience such a huge quake. Today, Anchorage is of course aware that they're always at risk of another huge quake. The tallest building in town is only about 10 stories.

I've barely been home for 48 hours, and people are already clamoring for photos! I know I had a whole day off yesterday, but I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped because I slept until almost 1:00 p.m. (I was a little tired from lack of sleep on our red eye flight back from Anchorage.) Yep, I slept through the whole tropical storm, which wasn't much of a storm -- Edouard took a turn and came ashore east of us, so the weather in Clear Lake was nothing more than about 2 inches of rain and some wind. It had stopped raining by mid-afternoon, so I ran for the first time since the day we left for Alaska. Man, the weather was nice! Edouard cooled things off for a day. I ran with Jose, who has decided to give running another try. We both have the goal of losing 10 pounds by Thanksgiving. (Amazingly, I only gained 1 pound in Alaska -- a relief given the massive quantities of good fish that I ate and good microbrews that I drank.) We ran 3 minutes and walked 3 minutes, and after a half hour we'd completed just over 2 miles. Nice and easy for me, perhaps too much so, but I do like running with Jose!

There's so much to share, and I think the best way is going to be doing this in four parts: our first couple days in Anchorage, our day trip to Seward, our three days in Denali National Park, and our final two days in Anchorage. So here we go with part 1!

We took all of Friday the 25th off work, and it was really nice to be able to relax that day and get ready for the trip without feeling like I was in a packing frenzy. I managed to avoid my standard pre-trip anxiety almost entirely, which I think was aided by that relaxing day. We left for Intercontinental at 3:00, which was just early enough to avoid rush hour traffic. Parked, rode the shuttle to the terminal, dropped off our bags, and it was time to go! Our flight made a 1-hour stop on the ground in Seattle, and we had the most amazing view of the Cascades as we flew in. Mt. Rainier was right beneath our wing, and Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Hood (my best guess at what the other three were) were all visible in the distance to the south. It was a truly amazing view.

The sun set while we were on the ground in Seattle, and the horizon was pink fading slowing into blue as we took off for Anchorage. Here's the weird part: that twilight remained almost entirely unchanged for the entire 3 hour flight to Anchorage! We were essentially following the sun, and heading far enough north that it couldn't completely set. It didn't start to get dark until after we were on the ground -- and mind you, we weren't on the ground until 11:30 pm! It was like we were stuck in a world of endless twilight, and the sensation was very strange.

It was almost 1 am before we finally got to bed, but here's the even weirder thing -- we were strangely not feeling very tired, despite the fact that it was now 4 am Houston time and we basically hadn't slept at all on the plane. We had to close all the shades to keep the light out (though the sky darkened, it never got to a point I'd call fully dark) but we finally fell asleep and didn't bother to set an alarm. We woke up around 8:30 the next morning, feeling pretty good. The time difference never got to us too much, and after bumming around our hotel room for a few hours (I even caught the recap of the Iron Girl triathlon on TV!) it was time to head out into Anchorage.

In January, Alaska will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its statehood, and plans for the celebration are obviously underway. There were banners across the main streets, and t-shirts for sale in all the stores. The "We're In" headline comes from one of the state's newspapers, which published that headline after the vote passed to make Alaska the 49th state.

Jose's friend Meryl had recommended a handful of restaurants for us, and most of them were microbrews. I couldn't help but think of JD each time I sampled a new beer! :) On our first day in Alaska, we had lunch at Moose's Tooth, a popular pizza place. They were setting up in their parking lot for a big 12th anniversary party that night featuring Wilco -- which we could've heard from our hotel room if we hadn't been at the wedding was that night! Jose won the lunch round of eating by ordering the halibut pizza, which sounded strange but was actually quite tasty. I tried the raspberry wheat beer, which was good enough, but not as good as I'd hoped. Jose had their regular hefeweizen, which was also good, but not as good as BJ's hef. Still, we were big fans of Moose's Tooth in general. Great pizzas, good beer.

From lunch, we headed downtown. Anchorage has a market on Saturdays and Sundays in the summer that features all sorts of random items from native Alaskan crafts to animal pelts, food to photography. The selection of stuff for sale was a bit disappointing after what we'd read about it, but we still found some gems. As we were leaving the market, the gray skies opened and it began to rain lightly. We wandered around the downtown area, which is filled with a ton of tourist shops, and got some souvenirs. It was a little strange to see a city where the downtown was so dominated by things for visitors -- especially when the tourist season is so short. After a while, we found a cafe and settled in for a little while to warm up with some coffee and cake. The day was a little disappointing in a way that's hard to explain. We knew we were in Alaska, but we saw no signs of that except for all the tourist shops and postcards. It was so gray and overcast that we couldn't see a single mountain!

We headed back to the hotel to change clothes, and it was off to Meryl and James's wedding! They had it at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art which was a very cool location. The ceremony was held in a gallery lined with gorgeous huge paintings of Alaskan scenery, and the reception was held in the main lobby of the museum next to a cool fountain and big staircase. The hallways surrounding the lobby were lined with one of the museum's current exhibits showcasing Bradford Washburn's awesome photos of Denali and other Alaska wilderness.

Meryl is one of Jose's best friends from college, and I'd met both her and her fiance (now husband!) James once before when they were in Houston last year. (They met in grad school at Penn State.) The funny thing is that they are actually moving to Houston in a couple weeks. James is a paleontologist who just got a job with one of the oil companies. Meryl is a geologist, but isn't sure what she'll do yet. They want to move back to Alaska eventually, but it will be cool to have them in town for a while.

Meryl is Inuit, and grew up in Unalakleet, a town of less than 1000 people on the west coast of Alaska that's only accessible by airplane or boat. She had a ton of family members in town for the wedding (which was held in Anchorage mainly because she said it would have taken too long to get everyone into Unalakleet). The coolest part of the ceremony was when all of her family sang a hymn in Inupiaq, their native language.

Later during the reception, we noticed a tub of some strange blue substance on the table next to the cake. Everyone was taking some of it, so Jose and I got some too along with our cake. It looked like blueberry whipped something. We tasted it and it was...interesting. Jose said "I think this has fish in it!" but we had no clue what it actually was. A bit later Meryl came over and explained. It was Eskimo ice cream -- made with crisco, canola oil, sugar, berries, and -- yes -- fish! (Traditionally it's made with lard and seal oil instead of crisco and canola oil.) You can see it on the right side of this photo. It was definitely a new taste, that's for sure.

The wedding capped off a great first day in Alaska, and we were pooped by the time we got to bed that night. We got up fairly early the next morning to head to Seward for the day, which I'll write about in the next blog entry. That night, though, when we got back from Seward, we were able to settle in for two nights at the Lake Hood Inn. I found this place in one of the guidebooks and it was indeed a great little bed and breakfast, right on the shore of Lake Hood, which is the world's busiest seaplane base. The owner is a pilot himself, and the entire inn (which has only 4 rooms) has an airplane theme. It was the most expensive place we stayed, but also by far the best. The room was lovely, and our balcony overlooked the lake so we could watch planes taking off from the lake. There were even speakers and headsets on the deck that allowed us to listen to the Lake Hood control tower! So it was definitely a cool place for a pilot like Jose and his aerospace girlfriend. :)

We slept in on Monday morning since we'd gotten back from Seward quite late, and then headed down the road to visit the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum. The museum was pretty cool and featured a lot of historical items and facts about flying in Alaska, from the early bush pilots to the later days of regional airlines and on to today, when Alaska has one of the highest number of pilots per capita in the world. The sad part of the museum is that while they had many great old planes, a lot of them were in absolutely horrible shape. They're doing the best they can, but they need a lot more money and time to get all of their aircraft restored.

After the museum, we had a late lunch at the Glacier Brewhouse. Jose won again, with a delicious salmon burger. I had the fish and chips, which were great, but I paid for eating such a large amount of heavily fried food later on with a stomachache! And of course, for JD -- I had the hefeweizen, while Jose had the amber ale. Both good, again. We never had a bad beer in Alaska, that's for sure.

After picking up some snacks in preparation for our journey into interior Alaska, we headed back to spend the rest of the evening relaxing at the Lake Hood Inn. The place was just that comfy! And we got a great view of the sunset. For the record, this photo was taken at about 11:00 pm!

Here's a slideshow of the full set of photos from our first two days in Anchorage. If you're reading via RSS, you may have to come to the site to see them -- or just check Flickr.

Jose and I are back from Alaska safe and sound. We got back to my apartment about an hour ago and had already planned to take today off work to nap, unpack, and check out all our photos. But now we get an unexpected extra day -- JSC has already decided to close tomorrow due to the impending Tropical Storm Edouard. In fact, they're closing at noon today.

Hooray for extra days of vacation, but it stinks to fly back to Houston only to be met with severe weather.

Alaska was, as expected, completely awesome. Many photos and stories to come, but here's a teaser for you -- a video Jose took during our flightseeing tour yesterday. We flew up the Capps Glacier and down the Triumvirate Glacier in a little Cessna 206. There were five of us in the plane including our pilot. These glaciers and peaks are about 60 miles west of Anchorage, but from our highest point, we could see Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker 100 miles to the north. It was absolutely incredible.