Half marathon = full day, SSR geneology, Juicing, gagging on ginger, back on the trail, poo golf

So I received our new Breville juicer late last week.  We did a small test run with it, first juicing some oranges and then apples.  Both fruit juices came out very tasty with an almost creamy like texture from the high speed juicing process.  Cleaning up the juicer afterward was pretty straightforward and easy to do.  The biggest hassle is making sure the stainless steel strainer basket with it’s tiny, tiny holes is clean.  On Friday evening during my Sam’s trip I bought some juicing supplies, picking up large containers of apples, blackberries, carrots, tomatoes and celery.

Over the course of the 3 day weekend we had varying degrees of success with our juicing efforts.  It will take some trial and error to determine what we do and don’t like.  For example I put a piece of ginger root, something that is included with many juicing recipes, about the size of my thumb into the juicer.  It made the juice that also included tomato, celery, and carrots taste absolutely awful.  I choked down all but the last sip or two but I was literally gagging on it at the end.

When Ali and I first discussed getting a juicer it was with the intent of trying a 10 day juice fast.  Well after three days of juicing I think we are adjusting our goal based on what we have run into.

Despite being relatively easy to clean, the entire juicing process is very time consuming.  In addition to the juicing and juicer cleaning process you also have to prepare the raw materials before juicing them by either washing them, trimming, skinning or any combination of the three.

To make appreciable amounts of juice requires large amounts of raw materials.  I bet in total we spent $70-$80 just on fruits and veggies for juicing over the weekend.  If you were doing nothing but juice 24/7 you are looking at huge dollars.

So anyway I think our current adjusted plan will be a mixture of juicing with conventional healthy eating.  I had juice for dinner the past two nights and it didn’t bother me much.  If I mix in juice as my “meal” on weeknights where I otherwise would be popping a processed frozen meal in the microwave I think that is a very solid trade off.

It is still very much a work in progress but regardless I think it is a very positive step towards better nutrition.  I even packed almond milk in my lunch box instead of my normal skim milk.

On Friday I mentioned how I realized that my SSR had been lowered from it’s stock height.  I also said I was going to see if I could track down Eye Ball Customs, the place that evidently did the customizations.  I did a quick search for them but did not turn up anything that looked like what I expected.

So just for the hell of it I threw the question out on the SSRFanatics forum, asking if anyone heard of the place. Within a few hours somebody responded back with a web site as well as a Facebook page.  On that page was a photo album titled 2005 SSR, LS2 6 Speed.

When I looked at the pictures it became pretty obvious this was my truck with the low profile and silver bars in the trunk which are non-stock.  I sent an email to the guy, hoping to hear back some history on the truck and exactly what was customized on it.

Over the weekend I put the SSR up on ramps to take a couple pictures of it’s belly so the forum members could possibly help me identify any other custom work that was done.  One of those pictures was called out by a forum member as a side effect of the lowering and a bad one at that.  Evidently the panhard bar has a slight bend in it.  Evidently when a vehicle is lowered this bar is normally replaced with an adjustable variety since the stock bar will be a bit too long.  Well this wasn’t done and the bent bar is the end result.  I don’t think it is something I have to rush out and fix tomorrow but it is on the list of to do’s.

So two of the three days of our long weekend were eaten up by a lot of half marathon duties.  Ali went down to the running store where early packet pick up was held Thursday, Friday and Saturday for most of the day.  I told Ali while she was there on Saturday I would bust ass around the house to get everything done.

Not only did all the chores get done but some axillary items did as well.  I finally took down the outside Christmas lights.  Taking them down myself isn’t nearly as bad as putting them up myself would be.  I worked diligently and had them all down in probably an hour or so.  The spools that the new LED lights come on make the storage chore much more organized and easier.  I sort of hated to take them down, I really liked having our house/trees/fence lit up, regardless of the date n the calendar.

The other chore involved fixing some dog damage.  For some reason Sadie decided to paw at the screen on the lanai, putting a rip in one of the lower panels.  Subsequently she discovered she fit her chubby 65 pound body through the rip, creating an impromptu dog door to the outside world.

So I spent another hour or so replacing that section with super screen, she won’t be ripping THAT section again although she has another 12-15 she could choose from.  Ali and I really scolded Sadie to try to make sure she understood that ripping screens was not an approved behavior.

I am getting pretty good at screen panel replacement.  The new section is tight as a drum.

So I headed down to the running store late Saturday afternoon to join Ali.  I brought the SSR with the top down even though the temps were quite cool, in the 60’s.  I found that putting the side windows up and turning the heat on made this situation very tolerable.

I brought a printer with so we could print the registration lists on the spot.  By the time I got there registration was winding down.  We wound up with 1980 people registered for the race, about 50 less than last year.

So Saturday night we got everything ready to go.  I was double and triple checking my mental check list to make sure I had everything done and packed.  This race is not one where I want to get caught with my pants down.

The half marathon starts very early because of the long distance.  The 7 AM start time translated to a 3:45 AM alarm for Ali and I so we got on site by 5.  It was cold Sunday morning, in the upper 40’s.  Ali had on three or four layers and was still cold.  I had on three and was ok but that was mostly because I was on the move leading up to the race setting up equipment.

This was the first race we were using our new inflatable finish line, it looked great.  There was one drawback, the fan/motor that is used to keep the arch inflated was loud, especially if you were set up right in front of it which my table originally was.  Moving my table about 10 feet past the finish line seemed to make the noise level more tolerable.

This race is the primary reason we bought the second set of timing equipment to allow us to provide a chip start time for runners.  The advantage of a chip start with a big race like this is runners are able to see both their gun time (time the race officially starts) and compare it to their chip time, the time it took them to get up across the start mats to the end of the race.  With this many people it could take someone as long as 1-2 minutes before they actually cross the start line.

I had all of the equipment set up well ahead of time and had it up and ready to go.  There was a power problem (more stupid timers that kill exterior outlet power) at the start line that killed the PA system about 2/3 of the way into the national anthem.  The runners improvised by singing the last couple verses themselves, it was cool.

We had the start mats right after some small islands that jutted out into the road, forcing the runners to condense before they crossed the mats.  The timing box was ringing non-stop as thousands of feet crossed the mats, everything seemed to be working as planned. However when I imported the file of start times I noticed something weird.

I only had around 1325 start times.  With almost 2000 runners registered it made no sense to be missing that many times, even with the normal 10-15% no show rate.  After the race I did some field testing at home with the start mats.  It seemed like the weakest field strength exists right along the left edge, the area that probably had the highest density of all from all of the runners getting merged at that spot.  Oh well live and learn.

I utilized the second set of timing gear at the finish line as well.  I laid one of the mats about 50-75 feet before the official finish line.  This was connected to a laptop that was in front of our race announcer.  It allowed him to instantly have the names of finishing runners pop up for him.  In years past we relied on a manual system where he used a two way radio with spotters to call out bib numbers that he then had to try to quickly key into the system to get the runner’s name.

With the old way when big waves of runners came in it was impossible to keep up with the names.  With this new system I don’t think he missed a single finisher, big improvement.

My 3 layers of clothing didn’t help me too much as I sat around at the finish line.  After awhile I felt chilled to the bone.  I snagged a cup of coffee to help combat the chill.

Ali ran the race as well despite being very negative about it going in.  In the past month she had not stuck to her original intentions of training well for the race, including running further than half marathon distance to make the actual race feel better.  I reminded her that going into a race with a negative attitude pretty much guarantees a negative outcome.

I have experience first hand with not being all that trained for something but still performing relatively well just because I decided I wanted to perform well.  Sometimes this simple truth is lost on Ali. Your head has to be right.

Ali decided to run with Christy the entire race, helping Christy get her best half marathon time to date of 2:22 something.  Ali originally had talked of shooting for that 2 hour milestone.  After the race Ali found me and I congratulated her on the finish.  Later she commented that I didn’t seem as enthusiastic as I should be.  I tried to explain to her that I always support her running races but my view of what a race represents apparently is different from hers.

To me a race is THE time that you push, push as hard as your body allows you to push.  If you aren’t interested in doing that I don’t understand why you are even paying to do a race unless you are more interested in the swag than the actual act of racing.

Now of course everyone is entitled to their own viewpoint of what a race should be, I just expressed where I was coming from, and why that attitude prevents me from gushing over finishing versus racing.  It’s just the way I am wired. I am proud for Ali for being able to run 13.1 miles, even without solid training leading up to it.  I just am not going to pee down her back and tell her it’s raining, if you know what I mean.

Michelle, whom I didn’t even see before the race turned in a fantastic time for her, setting a PR, finishing just under the two hour mark.  According to Michelle she hadn’t been training all that hard either.  Ali and Christy thought she had to be doing some closet training.  I think she just decided she was going to do it. Michelle is sort of like me in that regard.

So the last timed runner came across at something like 3:34.  Post race I had several timing issues to work on, most of which were the result of human error which is unavoidable with a race of this size.  By the time we were packed up and out of there it was around 11 am.

When we got home I had a ton to do of course.  Ali helped me get the chips accounted for, we were missing roughly 7 or 8 of them. After eating lunch she headed back to the bedroom for a pretty much all afternoon nap, she was understandably beat.

I was busy with various race related duties for the majority of the afternoon, probably only finishing up around 4. I was so tired by the time Sunday evening rolled around, it was ridiculous.

The main reason I busted ass Saturday was so our Monday could be free.  It allowed us to take the dogs back to Bird Rookery Swamp.  I was excited for Ali to see it.  The dogs were so excited as we approached, Nicki was crying and jumping around the van.

Sadie didn’t wait long till she dropped a big deuce on the path leading to the boardwalk.  We didn’t bring bags since I knew there weren’t any trash cans on the trail and it is a swamp after all, there is poo.  Regardless I didn’t want to leave her pile of stink right by the path.  I found a stick and played an impromptu game of poo golf.  I would get the stick behind a turd and “golf” it into the water.  I had one shot that carried quite well. Ali thought it looked pretty funny, which I am sure it did.

It didn’t take long till Ali saw why I raved about how cool the place was.  The dogs were happy to lead the way, loving every moment of it, even with being tethered to their extend-a-leashes.  We stopped at the picnic table and ate our PB sandwiches while the girls sat under the table.  The cooler temps compared to the prior week made all that walking more bearable for them.  We went slightly deeper into the trail than when I went solo. We are hoping we can increase our distance slightly each time we go to get the dogs more exercise.

Ali took a bunch of great pictures along the way.  It is just so quiet and beautiful there.  We saw lots of birds but little else wildlife along the way, until we returned to the parking lot.  As we were getting back in the van I spotted a HUGE gator in the lettuce lake facing the lot. It may be the biggest gator I have seen in person in the wild since moving to Florida.

We left the swamp anxious to return on a regular basis, it’s so awesome.

During the afternoon I made my first normal mode attempt at this month’s Bar-barian forums challenge. It is 5 sets of maximum rep diamond push ups with no more than a minute break in between sets.

Diamond push ups are more difficult than conventional push ups, you put your hands together so they form a diamond between them.  Having your hands that tight means you are utilizing more of your triceps and less of your chest.  With my long monkey-like arms it is not a very easy exercise for me.  I managed to squeeze out 105 total reps across the 5 sets.  It was an average number that landed me in the bottom third of people in the contest so far.  I am hoping to give it another shot and bump up my reps a bit.

Ali and I then hopped in the SSR to go get dog food and more juicing supplies. It was my second stop at Sam’s of the weekend.  We are hoping to hit a local farmer’s market next weekend to compare variety, quality and pricing versus Sam’s Club.

Almost every night before bed I have been plowing through 1.5 to 2.5 episodes of 24.  I am really enjoying the show.  Just to put it in perspective, even though I have the most current seasons of Breaking Bad and Dexter on dvd (courtesy of Randall)  I have decided I am going to finish season 1 of 24 before cracking those open.  That is some high praise.