Meyer Mix

The family took part in a 5K race fundraiser race this morning for the girl’s school.  It was the first time Emma and Grace participated as runners, since we all just walked it in the past.  Emma finished with a time of 29 minutes, and Grace finished at 38:00!  And, they both finished in the medals for their age groups (both 3rd place) and received prize bags!  Awesome!  You two clearly take after your father (well except for the whole finishing on the winners stand that is).  Grace’s friend in the picture, Allison, won 1st place again.  She’s wicked fast, and almost beat Emma too.

Jenny and I (along with our friend Jill) ran our second half-marathon last month. It was the Chicago Rock and Roll Half.  I finished it in 2:08:14, and Jenny did it in 2:24:16. Jenny felt is was important to note that I beat Jake from The Bachelor, and she only lost to him by one minute.  We were relieved to also know that we both beat Al Roker by an hour. Whew!

A while back, we were talking over dinner about the upcoming orchestra and band performance at the school. Emma said, “it is sooo much cooler to be in the band.”

Of course, we responded with our unconditional parental love and protection “What? No way. Orchestra is great. Just wait and see how much better it keeps getting.”

Emma, “oh really? Then whey does the band get to play songs from Queen, and Star Wars, while we have to play music called ‘Ready, Set, Bow.’”

Ouch. Good point Emma. You might want to downplay the orchestra thing for a while.

We did it! After following our training plan for 10 weeks, we joined about 16,000 other Illinoisans to run in Champaign on May 1st. I felt strong, so naturally I kept up with the professionals at the start of the race. However, after mile three, my body informed me that I was an idiot, and that I had no reason to be running that fast. So I spent the last 10 miles giving up ground to every other runner. I ended up running 10 min/mile, with a time of 2:11:05. I was in the 43.8th percentile for my division, which means I have a lot of work to do. Jenny ran 11 minute miles, and as she says, “ran just like she trained, with a steady pace throughout.”  She ended up finishing in the 45th percentile in her division.

That night, we signed up for the Chicago Rock N Roll Half-Marathon for August 1st…3 months away. I think we might have roped Cory (Jenny’s sister-in-law) and Andrea (Jenny’s brother’s girlfriend) into running it too. Interesting how the brothers aren’t stepping up though.  Anyone else interested in training for it?  This is the plan that we followed to go from scratch to half-marathon: http://www.halhigdon.com/halfmarathon/ . Let us know!

I realize that for many of our readers who “live away” from Illinois, you haven’t had closure in our home renovation story.  I do apologize for all of your sleepless nights.  Below are a handful of before and after shots.  If the house is gray, it is a before shot.  Green/brown, then an after shot.

Front:

The key comparison features on the front of the house are the bay window (including it’s base and roof), the front door, the hardscaping, and the window above the garage.  Oh, I have a new garage door, currently in boxes, waiting to be installed when I find the time, and find the expertise.  It might be a while.

Back: For the back of the house, the key comparison features are the twin french doors, the triple window in the kitchen (near the service door), and the hardscaping. Oh yeah, and the shed built to the right of the service door.  You can see from the before photo that there was just a big bush in that spot before.

If we waited until the trees had leaves, and the flowers were blooming, then the after photos would have a greater impact. But these were shot a month or so ago just at the beginning of spring.  If we get around to landscaping, then I’ll try to remember to put more pics up.

I bought this book as a gift for Jenny, to celebrate our decision to train for a half-marathon together.  I heard about the story a while back, and while I didn’t think Jenny would enjoy a technical book about running, I did think the cultural context of this story would definitely interest her.  I was right. She is loving it.  Really loving it. She is almost done, and is upset that the story is coming to an end.  And is thinking about rereading it again as soon as she is done.  I would say that was a successful gift.  But, this story doesn’t end there…

Jenny is so much in love with the book, that she said something crazy, “Brian, you should read this book.”  I know, that’s nuts. But she says those things anyway.  The details she has given me about the book are:  that the author is over 200 pounds, is training for a ultra-marathon, and has drawn the conclusion that running shoes are inherently bad, because they require you to heel strike. However, running barefoot requires you to land on the balls of your feet, which is apparently connected to our primal ancestors, and as a result causes less injury to our bodies.  And then a bunch of other blah blah blah.

So sure, I could have read the book, but instead I heard these key words: “heavy runner” “barefoot” “less injury.”

So, I woke up on Friday at 5:30, to do my 3m run on the treadmill, and I thought ‘why not?’  I got on in just my socks, and started running sans shoes.

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Happy holidays 2009!  Happy New years!  Happy MLK Jr. Day!  Happy Valentine’s Day! Happy Presidents’ Day! Happy Casimir Pulaski Day! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Happy Easter! 

I don’t think we missed sending out a holiday photo and card in the last 10 years.  This year, our plans were initially held up by my unwillingness to begin writing the letter before New Years.  But to complicate matters, we then struggled to find a photo from the past year that we wanted to use.  While on winter vacation, we took this photo below, on a little snowshoe hike in the woods.  I say a “little” hike because we are only about 5 feet from the cabin.  Olivia fell down.  Lauren was being pulled in a sled by Jenny, and was screaming because she wasn’t allowed to walk in the snow (it was 1-2 feet deep).  Jenny was crying because the sled was a pain to pull.  But boy can they all smile nice for the camera.

Anyhow, we thought htis would be a good photo for the holiday card. When we got back from vacation, a week or four went by, and we realized we were outside of the window to send a holiday card. We thought we should just send it instead for the next holiday coming up, and that way it would be unique.  But I’m not sure a picture in the snow works for Valentine’s day.  Well, before we knew it, St. Patricks day passed, and we still haven’t done it. 

So, I don’t think it is happening for 2009.  Better luck to us next year.  And don’t feel left out that you didn’t get a holiday card.  No one did.  Bah humbug.

No, we haven’t actually run a half-marathon, but Jenny and I have started to train for one. The idea came to me when on a trip to the library, I picked up a Runner’s World Magazine and saw a race in Eagle River Wisconsin that was 12 weeks away. Jenny and I were looking for ways to keep ourselves motivated to continue physical exercise, and I proposed that training for a race like this would work. Jenny was on board, because 1. she was tired of watching the super-slow-mo visuals of my waistline expanding on a daily basis, 2. she has been running 10-12 miles a week on our treadmill for the past year giving her the foundation to kick my ass, and 3. the location in Eagle River means that it is unlikely anyone would know us and thus remove the fear of public humiliation.

It turned out however that the race was on Mother’s day weekend, and we wanted to be in town for that.  We decided to start the training plan anyway, and after keeping it up for two full days, we agreed to still give the plan a try, yet run a more local event. There is a half-marathon in Champaign, IL on May 1st.  It is only the second year of that event, but they are expecting about 17,000 participants between the different races.

We will get to stay over the night before with our friends Greg and Jill in Champaign.  Jill is a runner and will also be doing the half-marathon. I think Greg is undecided (if he is still a runner, and if he is doing this race).

Some of you have realized however that Jenny will no longer be able to run in this event with anonymity…which was an original condition of her accepting the challenge.  Now that we are running it closer to home (and on a college campus filled with coeds), Jenny stated it would be my responsibility to create a diversion so no one would look at her.  This race ends with a stadium finish at U of I, so I started looking into setting up a fireworks show for as soon as Jenny enter’s the stadium.  That way everyone will look up and she will have her privacy.  Upon hearing my solution, Jenny said something like, “no dummy, I don’t care about the finish… if I make it there, then everyone should cheer for me…I care about people staring at me during the 13 miles of the race itself.”  Hmm.  Ok.  If we fly a blimp over the course, directly over Jenny the entire time, then perhaps all spectators will be looking up?

I shared the blimp plan with a colleague, who pointed out that I just go to those ridiculous non-solutions so I can act like I care, make fun of Jenny, and at the same time don’t really try to solve the problem.  To which I say, “Duh.”  She continued to say however, that if I really cared, I would wear an insane costume and run about 20 feet behind Jenny, which was a realistic solution that could actually be implemented.   She’s right. I don’t really want to solve it.  Besides, if I did put on a costume (I’m thinking a clown wig and pink capri hot-pants, I would wear a t-shirt that says “I’m with her” and run next to Jenny the whole time.   It is just my way of showing that I care.

Jenny and I tend to be overly optimistic around the holidays about everything we think we can accomplish the following year. Knowing that I have severely neglected the family blog the past six months, I considered a New Year’s resolution to have at least one blog post every week for the entire year. I’m still weighing the practicality of that resolution, but thought I should just put it out there on the blog, in case I do want to go through with it, but wait until the second week of January to decide (see, without this post, I would have already failed, get it?).
So, consider this a place holder. Our next post should be the official New Year’s resolutions we plan to take on. In addition to weekly blog posts, other resolutions in contention are: food/diet, exercise (typical and boring, I know), printing more photos of the kids, painting colors other than white on our walls, etc.