... and the winner is...

Di! with a "strong" finish by Stronger, only a half hour later!!!
Comm was a good guess, but who besides TriDummy posts dead animals hanging in his garage????
As with all pillows, TriDummy custom ordered his.... I think it's going to be great in his man room.

Guess who gets this one...

Here's a deal - the first person who guesses whom this pillow is for, gets a free one! Meaning I will make it for you without requiring you make a donation to a charity first. Hint: this one goes to a certain blogger who made a recent donation to TriBoomer's site.

The Hole-y bucket

I had a really nice 13 mile run this morning - felt great from mile 1 to mile 13. Finally!

I was sick in the fall, and took too much time off, and when I got back in the swing of training, I was only getting in (maybe) 1 swim, 1 bike, 1 run, and I had given up my personal trainer. (I used to do 2x swim, 2x bike, 2x run, 2x weight training every week).

So when I did get out and run, I was weak, out of breath, and barely spoke to the people I was running with. I thought it was because I'd gained about 10 pounds. But now I think I can blame it on the Hole-y Bucket.

Training is like pouring water into a bucket that has a small hole in it. Once your bucket is filled, you can keep it filled simply by topping it off regularly. But when you take too much time off, the bucket starts to empty and you have to put in a lot of effort to fill it up again. I finally feel like my bucket is [almost] full again.

I get it now - this is how I have to spend the rest of my life. It's not like reaching any other goal, where, once you reach it, you've reached it, like ringing the bell at a rock-climbing wall, or completing an Ironman. I have achieved those things. No one can ever take that away: it won't slip away through a small hole anywhere. But the health and fitness - the training - can (and does) slip away.

I have to stay on top of my bucket's contents for the rest of my life. Get used to it. My training regimen has to be here to stay. Every week, every month, every year. Like brushing my teeth, conditioning my hair - it's gotta be just something I do.

Thank God I think it's fun.

I am not alone!!

If you have access to Men's Journal (I don't subscribe, silly, Bob does!)... check out the article on pp. 55-60 of the March 2008 edition, and you will learn all about my "heart condition". 

It sounds almost exactly like me - all the way down to the "spot" on the author's heart - only he describes his as the size of a nickel, where mine is the size of a quarter.

The other key difference is that the author only gets PVC's, where I get those, plus VT's, A-Fibs, SVT's, and Brady's --- all day, all night. While it was a relief to know it's not all that unusual, the article ends like this:

Until your heart is in the bucket, that little spot will remain a mystery."

Which isn't really the "this will go away on its own very soon" answer I was hoping for.

Want to meet 5X Ironman champ Heather Gollnick?

... and train with her in Florida?

My friend John Shelp is a pro triathlete and top-notch triathlon coach. He and Heather are hosting a training camp March 6 - 9th in Sarasota Florida.

You can contact John at info@scsmultisport.com, if you have questions, or you can check out his blog and send him a comment. http://www.shelper.blogspot.com/ . He doesn't have a link there, but just comment him and he'll get back to you.

Valentine's 5K

This has been a great weekend. I talked with Greyhound yesterday and whatever problem he was having with his scrotum is all cleared up. I still am laughing that he had a drawing of his balls on his blog. bwahahahaha!! I'm still laughing. I know that the real problem is some remote muscle tear deep in his abdomen, and I do SINCERELY hope it gets better soon, but I can only remember the part about the berries. Someone save me from this bout of the giggles.

Then I started today with a great chat with Di - she always makes me laugh. I can't wait for CDA so we can hang out and crack each other up for three days in a row. I'm so glad that Bigun's irregular heartbeat that alarmed him for a few days has gotten back in normal rhythm. Thank God.

After hanging up with Di, Bobby and I went down to the Valentine's Day 5K at Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. In his last 5K he got a 35:24, so he wanted to see if he could beat that. Below is a group shot with Bobby, me, Terri, Marta, Laura, and Greg. It started out at 16 degrees, but by the time we finished it was 25, and it's 35 right now. (and that's ABOVE ZERO!!!) ;-)

Bobby scored a PR with a net time of 32:01!!!!!

He was so pleased he beat his mom by 4 seconds,  and I was so proud of him. All during the run he kept asking if I thought he was on pace to PR... it was so cute... he had such great focus, and I love that he is a "pace man". That means he could one day be Mr. Teenage Endurance Athlete. He's 9 now... so it could happen... wouldn't that be perfect??? ;-) We have four more 5K's in the Team Ortho series.

Last week IronLaura and IronGreg and Zurich and I went snowshoeing on the trails behind the house - it was so gorgeous. We went over to IronTerri's house (she lives on the other end of my neighborhood). After we got back, IronTriNick, IronRobert, and Ales were at my house for a going-away dinner that Bob made for Ales. Ales is our friend from the Czech Republic - Nick introduced us all last year, and he was back in the states for business for two weeks. It was great seeing you again Ales! I hope you enjoy the rest of your American tour, and then have a safe trip back home.

Bobby and Ally in front, then me, Nick, Robert, Laura, Ales and Greg.

Tonight we are having a sleepover with our friends the Andersons... Randy and Bob both love to cook, so they are making dinner for Bea and me. Their kids are friends with Bobby and Ally from school. I am sure wine will be poured, and rich food will be served, so I have to pace myself so tomorrow's long run doesn't kill me.

Have a great weekend everyone.

What... has it really been almost a month since my last post?

Arghhh - so much has been going on around here since I last posted from the Phoenix marathon/ blogger reunion weekend. I hardly know where to start.

I ran the St. Paul Winter Carnival half marathon last weekend with IronLaura and Erin (some of you met her in Phoenix - she promised she'd start blogging, but I haven't found her blog yet - have you? ;-) and a handful of other Gear West Tri Club runners. We saw Pharmie and Steve and I did take some pictures, but I still have to figure out how to get them from my PC to my Mac. It was lovely - 20's and only mildly windy. Laura and Erin ran ahead of me (would you believe I was talking and taking pictures), so they had to wait for me to finish, but I ran it in 2:14. I was happy enough.

I have my first ski race this weekend, but I have yet to get on my skis this year. Laura and I are hoping to get on them tonight after work. We will surely suck in the race, but at least we'll have cute outfits on and our matching hats, like last year.

I turned 46 on Superbowl Sunday and Bob gave me a Mac laptop for my birthday (which I got to open about a week early). So I've been going to Mac College - one hour a week - college in the mall - how great is that? Some young Mac savvy kid teaches me the little things that PC users need to unlearn. Like holding the "fn" button while deleting, so you can delete forward, not just backwards. And how to get to the end of a line of text in one move rather than holding down the right arrow one character at a time. (That was going to drive me crazy.) And how to enter calendar events in different colors for each family member. So now I must learn how to load pictures onto my blog. I JUST figured out how to get them from my camera to the Mac. 

Anyway, Laura and Greg had us over to watch the Giants beat the Patriots and TriNick,

 

Robert, IronKaren and IronTimmy came, too. Our friend from the Czech republic arrived on Saturday for a couple weeks, so Nick brought him over. The kids played with Zurich (who is seriously the most beautiful yellow lab) and everybody had fun. Thanks for the party Laura and Greg - I love you!

Oh - and here's some must see" 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej9wCko6dR4&feature=related