What's New With Us...

A few weeks back we headed out to Granite Bay, CA to cheer on our friend Anthony as he ran the Rio Del Lago 100K trail race. Originally he was scheduled to run the 100-mile course but due to a severely twisted ankle, he elected to “reign it in” to a mere 62 miles instead (still crazy, right?)…he was awesome and ended up winning the race by a significant margin (he was actually so fast that the race directors weren’t ready for him to cross the finish)! We managed to congratulate him and share a few words, but then we had to head up to the Rattlesnake Bar area to help work an aid station for the 100 mile race. Michaela is a part of the ultrarunnerpodcast.com endurance team and since they were handling the aid station, we thought it’d be fun to go and help out for a few hours while Landon played in the dirt.

Well, we were right on both accounts…we had a ton of fun helping the runners (several of our friends were running the 100 mile race as well), and Landon was covered in dirt in about 3 seconds flat. After a few hours of running around with his new friend Nicholas, Landon was covered in a mixture of dirt and sweat and looked remarkably similar to Mel Gibson in Braveheart….but the boys had a blast, throwing rocks (we were out in the middle of the wilderness, so we didn’t mind), dancing with all the little girls running around, and cheering for runners as they came through.

We arrived around 6pm and ended up staying until just about 11pm, which was a very late night for Landon. We had hoped that keeping him up later would help him zonk out quickly, but we forgot to consider the “crankiness” factor that comes with a late bed time. While normally we’d let him skip bath and go straight to bed since it was so late, he literally looked like we had tied him up to the back of our car and dragged him home, so we had no choice but to dunk him in the bath. Let’s just say he was less than happy about this and my ears were still ringing the following day from all the screams.

Working an aid station is a very rewarding experience and I strongly recommend it to anyone that has considered running a race of any distance. You get to be a part of the action, help motivate the runners, and it really gives you the opportunity to get yourself inspired to go out and do it as well. If you are ever interested in helping out, I know a certain someone who is intimately involved in planning local races and would be more than happy to receive the help!

Speaking of Michaela’s new job(s), both are still everything that she hoped for. She continues to work closely with Julie Fingar to plan several upcoming races, with her first one actually taking place this coming Saturday. Michaela will be arriving at the VERY early time of 4:30am this Saturday in Granite Bay to kick off the Sierra Nevada Endurance Runs. I will be arriving a few hours later to crew our good friend Melisa as she looks to rock out the difficult 50 mile course…unfortunately it’s looking like it’ll be another hot one this year so I’ll be roaming the course with pitchers of ice water, snacks, and whatever else I can to help her endure, overcome, and obliterate that sucker. Since it’s looking like the race is going to take up the entire Saturday for Michaela (and a good chunk of it for me as well), Landon will be hanging out with a few sitters, and then I’ll bring him to the finish line later in the day so he can run around while I help Michaela finish up.

With regards to our own running, Michaela is still training for the CIM in December, and she was advised to run a 10K (a little over 6 miles) to check her fitness level. Well, she ended up coming in 1st place for women, so I’m thinking her fitness level is still pretty stellar! As for me, I continue to ramp up my mileage as the Last Chance 50K gets closer and closer…I’m excited to be sure, but just kind of wish it would get here already. We are both running 5 days a week as part of our training and some days require a lot of work just to get out of bed and hit the road so early.

As for Landon, he’s still doing great. He continues to pick up new phrases all the time. This past weekend my Dad and sister Nicole came over to watch the Cowboys squeak out a victory over the Niners…at one point Landon was playing with my iPad and he took off the cover (which is easily detachable)…when I went to put it back on for him he looked at me and just said “let’s not worry about that right now Dad”…in the same tone as a parent saying it to a child that asks a silly question…he also says “yeah sure” a lot now which totally bugs us when we ask him things like “would you like some milk?” and he’ll occasionally bust out the eternal classic “whatever”…I kid you not, my three year old son will say “whatever Daddy” sometimes when I ask him to do something! Good times!

With the weather looking like it may start to cool down soon, we did a quick inventory of clothes and realized that Landon’s grown so much this past year that it’s going to be shopping-spree time fairly soon…I know it’s something that all parents go through, but I swear our kid just grows like a weed…it seems like we are recycling shoes on him every few weeks! But that could be that he’s a boy and extremely hard on his clothes…I mean, there’s just so much to explore and/or destroy. I'm not exactly sure what his measurements are since it's been a while since we've been to the doc, but he loves stepping on the scale and he last weighed in at 45 lbs and I believe his height is right around 41" (since that was the cutoff at the water park we went to a few weeks back and he barely made it)....so yeah, he's a three year old giant!

And I know this is a bit of a tangent but I don't think we've mentioned it in our blog before so I'll just say...this kid is flippin' fast! Michaela and I are thinking about slapping our Garmin running watch on him and doing some wind sprints with him to really see how fast he is, but when he puts his head down and starts motoring, we both need to exert some serious effort to keep up with him...I'm guessing he got this speed from Michaela, because I was always an athletic kid but you would never have mistaken me with Usain Bolt (for speed purposes, I mean it's pretty obvious that Mr. Bolt and I look very similar otherwise)....

Anyhow, that’s what’s up with us lately. If you’re in town on Saturday, come on by to check out the race that Michaela’s been working so hard on…if not, we’ll see you next time!