Home ownership

Saturday saw Tasha and I logging some long hours looking for a new house. The day started with us meeting with our realtor who was quite upset. She said the 3 houses I sent over to add to our wish list had all sold. We were fairly devastated as we thought we really had some gems.

Mary (our realtor) explained that she decided she wasn't going to be in a bad mood. Instead, she completely started over and had a list of about 15 houses she wanted us to look at. On our way to the second house of our tour we received the pamphlet that described the house and had a few pictures. It. Was. Nasty.

It was located in Bloomington, just East of Normandale in a great neighborhood. We took the tour of the house...and loved it! The pictures were poorly taken and most of the best attributes were left out of the pictures. We drove around and looked at a bunch of other houses but none compared to this one.

We headed back after dinner to look at the house again. We decided we loved it and wanted to make an offer. We made a low offer expecting the person selling to counter offer and we wanted to be able to negotiate and still get the house for a price we felt comfortable with.

We discovered the woman who owned the house died two years ago and her son who lives in California was the one selling it. Our realtor was in touch with his realtor but couldn't get a hold of the guy to accept or counter or offer.

Mary took the opportunity to tell his realtor all about us. The fact we volunteer for Young Life Capernaum, that we have a baby due in May, etc. His realtor said he grew up in Young Life and still attends several fundraisers/banquets.

He finally gets in touch with the son who is selling the property. The son just happens to be legally blind and loves the fact we volunteer with kids with disabilities. They accept the offer. No counter offer. Just straight up accept it.

Crazy how a day that includes God can start off on a bad foot and end with a great story!

We hope to close at the end of this month at which point we will feverishly begin organizing our traveling croquet league! Updates on that to follow.

Don't call it a comeback...

A lot of time has passed in between posts. The good news is, I have 0 followers so not many people will notice and/or care.

Since my last post detailing my pursuits of completing Ironman Wisconsin...I backed out of that race due to a lack of time/training, completed the Square Lake Triathlon (Half IM), completed the Minneapolis Marathon, and knocked up my wife.

I also met Mike "You think I can't!?!" Nelson. AKA The Inspiration, AKA Limits are for Losers. His pursuit of all things cool has brought me back to the blog-o-sphere. On top of dropping Twitter bombs on my 4 followers, I will be blogging to my 0 followers.

Sunday Funday

Not only am I working to get back into a structured routine for training, I promise I'll get more structured in my posting too.  To catch you up to speed here were the last few days:

Thursday - Had a sales party at night so had to get a workout in before work.  I was at the gym by 5:30 am to get in an hour long swim and a 30 minute bike.  It was a little tough waking up, but once I was upright, I was good to go.  After the workout I felt great and was glad I did it.  I'm officially excited to train for an Ironman!

Friday - I had a 30 minute run.  After a late night at the party a workout in the morning was out of the question.  We had our annual fundraiser for the group we volunteer with (Young Life Capernaum.  It's a ministry that caters to kids with disabilities and is all sorts of wonderful!) Friday night.  I left work early to help with setting up.  A busy Friday meant no workout for me.  I officially suck at life.

Saturday - My wife (Totters) had her parents up for the weekend so I was a little concerned about hosting/training and how the two would work together.  We were able to hop on the trainer for an hour Saturday morning while we watched a DVR'd IMWI.  Pretty awesome to bike to the course you're going to actually do.

Sunday - Here we are today.  After a quick run to get a paper, gas, and the world's best donuts I was headed home.  After hammering down two donuts loaded with calories that will now make my 45 minute run worth nothing, I'm questioning why I choose to think with my taste buds.  I'm going to actually go run now before a busy Sunday turns into make up Monday.

I hate you zone 2!

Well although it feels great to be working out with a purpose again, I must say, I thouroughly hate the early workouts that limit you to zone 2.  I find it difficult to just relax and run/bike at a slower pace.  I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually and realize I'm doing an Ironman and not a 100 meter sprint.  Today's workout was pretty good, I hopped on the trainer and watched a little Seinfeld and then took of for a run in 15 degree temperatures.  

After a few steps one thing became apparent.  There was no way it was 15 degrees out, I would say 5 tops.  I was freezing (probably due to my thinking I would be fine in just a light jacket)  After running into a park I realized there was no one else in the park and there were no lights on.  All of a sudden a car pulled up and slowly patrolled the perimeter of the parking lot before coming to a stop.  I was thinking it had to be a drug deal given the fact there was literally no reason for anyone to be in a dark park (especially in a light jacket).  I then began to think, if I was selling drugs I probably wouldn't want anyone to see me.  The only logical thought was that they would soon attempt to kill me.  Before I knew it a cop car pulled up in the parking lot looking equally suspicious.  He parked and after a few minutes took off and left the park.  It's back to me and the people that obviously want to kill me to save their inevitable drug transaction.  I decided I should probably get home since 1. my run was almost done 2. I could no longer feel my face and 3. I was clearly on the verge of being killed.  I began running home only to realize it was about a mile of nothing but dark road.  This must be when the drug dealing murderers would make their move.  They would simply chase me down in their car while I was in the middle of nowhere.  Needless to say I peaked around zone 4 as I very efficiently made my way home.  

After I shut the door I thought how ridiculous I was.  I then immediately began thinking, "now the killers know where I live..."  Hopefully I'll make it through the night...

First official day of training

Technically yesterday marked the start of Ironman, however it ended up being an off day.  Why not ease into training.  So the next 6 days consist of structured workouts (Doing Don Fink's competitive program).  Today was a 30 minute run on the treadmill while keeping my heart rate in zone 2.  This focusing on the base building and working out in primarily zone 2 could end up being quite frustrating!  After that I ran back to work to finish out the day.  Fast forward a few hours and I'm back at the gym getting ready to hop back in the pool.  Shockingly, I didn't really miss the pool all that much.  Afterwards, it did feel great to get a swim in.  It's crazy how good I feel physically after a few laps in the pool, yet how much I dread it mentally.  Oh well, I'm going to have to find a way to get mighty comfortable with the pool over the next 30 weeks.  Or I could skip it and just drown during the race...I think I'll find a way to get some quality swims in.  I'm actually looking forward to signing up for a Masters swim class.  Back to training, means limited free time...that said, I'm going to bed. 

Day 1 of not being fat...

Well, after many months of doing nothing but being fat and increasing my overall waistband, today was finally the day that the Ironman dream would be resurrected. I woke up and immediately knocked back a couple of cups of coffee to ensure my energy would be high throughout the day. I was starving come 11 am...probably because I absolutely stuffed my face for the past 7 days while in Mexico. I chose to ignore that feeling thinking there was no way I could actually need more food. Around the same time another manager I work with asked if I wanted to go out to lunch and catch up from the last 7 days of me being out of the office. I politely declined saying I was in training...seriously this time and I would be eating a homemade burrito. Totters met me at they gym for a mid-day work out. I was slightly nervous going in, knowing it was my first actual workout in awhile and knowing how much I HATE treadmills. Surprisingly after the workout, I felt great. The time on the treadmill flew by and I felt for the first time in a long time that I was back on track.

Day 1 in the books and I ate healthy and also managed to get a decent workout in. Overall, a success. I plan on weighing in every Friday just as a general check-in but couldn't help but see if I made any progress after day 1. I surprisingly dropped a little over a pound. This was most likely just reducing the previous levels of sodium (about 8000% of my daily needs...daily) that I had been ingesting. Nonetheless, a gain is a gain. Officially moving in the right direction towards my race weight of 225!

Last night of freedom...

Well, tonight was it...the last night before my quest to becoming an Ironman begins. My wife (Totters) and I are planning on attempting our first Ironman on September 13, 2009 in Madison. To give you an idea of where we're coming from, and were we're headed (hopefully), let me fill you in on the past 4 months or so...

I got married Septebmer 27 and since then have really not done much training...at all. After a mini-honeymoon to Chicago, we came back only to move into a new house. The weekends consisted of unpacking and numerous trips to Ikea. Before we knew it we were closing in quickly on Thanksgiving. We figured it would be good to have a month or two off before we begin an intense Ironman training program. We'll start after Thanksgiving...

Well Thanksgiving was great and made us quite full. We get back and decide to jump start tri training by spending lots of money. I bought a new Garmin Forerunner 305 heart rate monitor, a new wetsuit, new shoes, some cold weather running gear, and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff. Is it wrong I tried to single handily jump start the economy???

Well after Thanksgiving, and a few busy weekends we saw Christmas quickly approaching. So, we'll just start after Christmas. We get back and got a few quality runs in outside in the frigid cold and thought we were back on track. We took a short break for New Year's and next thing you know we have a delayed honeymoon planned for the end of January to Cabo San Lucas. Work got busy and I put in a couple 12+ hour days and decided we might as well go crazy the next 2 weeks, go on our trip (all-inclusive no less) return to MN and hit it hard. We got back late Friday night and thought this was it, finally back to healthy eating and working out. Unfortunately...Super Bowl Sunday was today...

Totters and I were planning on hitting up a Super Bowl party and needed to make a dish to bring and needed a few things from Target. We figured after the past several months we didn't deserve to drive and began walking to our local Target (6 miles away). En route I decide that enough is enough, I'm going to buy a scale to ensure tonight is the last night of poor decision making. We get the scale and necessary items for our pizza dip and while walking home, Totters decided she needed one last meal at Great Moon Buffet (Chinese). Who was I to step in the way of her dream. Fast forward 25 minutes - we're now walking home with stomachaches and a scale in my hand and have a Super Bowl party to attend in 45 minutes. I'm not feeling very good about myself at this current point, so I decide to hop on the scale to drive home the point that tonight HAS to be the last night of poor eating/no working out. 245.1 lbs! I now feel like I should be training for Sumo wrestling as opposed to an Ironman. To give you an idea, I raced last season at around 225 lbs (I'm 6'6...so I'm not that fat) Totters also weighed in. I believe we're keeping that confidential at the current time. Needless to say, this will be our last night eating poorly.

Tomorrow I will take one small step towards becoming an Ironman. Hopefully...