payton's first 5K

payton has run a number of miles alongside me & kristin, but never before has he officially run a race. this morning that all changed & he joined me & my buddy mitchell for his first official run - the 3rd annual got guts 5K. in true payton form, he we a real animal!

he was the show of the party & in fact (not making this up) at the end of the race he gave an interview on camera (one of those small flip camcorders) to an older gentlemen that had never seen a ridgeback before & was really interested in the breed.

anyhow, it was a fun morning. kristin, carol, & kasey cheered the three of us on. the race continued to help in bringing awareness to celiac disease, introduced us to some awesome local businesses that cater to the gluten-free community, & even better mitchell & i received some real positive feedback about moon tower brewing - soon to be the first gluten-free beer brewing company in austin!

craigslist powers ACL

for the past few weeks i've been tossing around the idea of heading out to ACL this weekend. i've never been & with my bro from hawaii (bryan) moving to austin this weekend i thought for sure we'd have a blast at ACL this weekend. ACL sort of reminds me of the big mele in hawaii (huge outdoor music event with multiple BIG name bands).

this wednesday kristin scored two free ACL tickets for sunday & a day later she scored us two tickets (not free) tickets to the UT versus arkansas football game. talk about a sweet weekend in austin!

when bryan arrived friday we took him & bryan's good friend monica to manuels for some pupus (hawaiian for appetizers) & drinks at manuels in the arboretum. we then took the windy tour down 360 to maudies for dinner & drinks outside. jennifer & eduardo joined us for dinner too!

saturday was a blast. the game was over by the end of the 1st quarter though. the horns smashed the razorbacks; final score was 52 - 10. texas put their 2nd string team in before the 3rd quarter was over actually. after the game, bryan & i cruised over to opal divines for a beer & then we headed home. kristin cooked up orange ruffy for dinner & we washed it all done with some red bridge gluten free beer (see celiac disease).

bryan & i slept in late (7:20 AM) this morning, but kristin was up before the sun & hit the trail to knock out a half marathon. we took payton out for some exercise where he showed us his wings (long & scary story) & then we returned home to watch what was left of the CBS sunday morning show & then i made up omelets for breakfast.

around 11AM, bryan had to head out to meet up with a realtor in hopes of scoring a new pad for he & the family (carol & kasey). kristin & i started working on bills/budget & before we knew what happened the 2nd round of sunday football was starting. around 4PM we took of for some bird grub & on the way we stopped off at bone daddy's (kristin lost a bet & owed me a beer) for a quick drink. we then cruised to the bird to fill our bellys & by the time we returned home it was 6:30 PM. the bears game was starting in a few & i had to get up early the next morning to head to houston for an executive retreat & there were only a couple of bands left to see at ACL by this time (gnarles barkley & the foo fighters).

believe it or not we decided just to cash in & stay at home to watch the bears game & relax before this next week started. in an effort to get something for these tickets i quickly posted an ad "2x ACL tickets for $20 - still time to catch the foo fighters & gnarles barkley" to craigslist. within 30-minutes of posting i had 5 people e-mailing me for them. in less than an hour i had them sold to two UT college dudes who had driven here from central austin. by the time i had come back to the house to tear down the ad from craigslist i had 10 more e-mails asking if i still had the tickets available.

it's crazy how people are watching craigslist & are that quick to move on something. with craigslist, it's a wonder that anyone ever throws anything away or has a garage sale. as soon as you decide you don't want/need something anymore, just throw it on craigslist. regardless of what it is, it is sure to sell. one man's trash, another man's treasure.

first sunday brunch at casa

this easter sunday kristin & i enjoyed brunch at casa de luz with our dear friend danielle. this was in fact the first time that any of us had made it to casa for a sunday brunch. we've enjoyed a many of dinners at casa & every so often we are fortunate enough to make it to casa for breakfast & lunch.

the BIG deal about casa’s sunday brunch, so we thought, is there pancakes with fresh fruit. while they were healthy pancakes, they didn’t have the yummy factor i was anticipating. i would have been completely OK with the lack of yummy tastes if it were to have been replaced with a super hearty/healthy taste. instead they were pretty dry & boring; even with the fresh berries draped on top.

if you do like the sunday pancakes you are in luck because just like everything else they are served “family style.” now this part about sunday brunch i thoroughly enjoyed! for dinner & lunch you serve your own soup & salad (as much or as little as you like & as many servings as you like too) & the staff make your plates. normally your first plate is prepared according to the menu & brought to your table prior to you finishing your soup/salad & then should you want more (like me) you can either ask for another plate “as-is” or you can ask for a little of this, a lot of that, & none of that for example – again, as many trips back as you like (i’m a 4 – 5 plate kind of guy). anyhow on sunday everything is yours for the picking from the beginning! today’s menu – see below – was pretty amazing. i was a big fan of the tempeh veggie stir-fry & the black beans with suncheese (my first time to have suncheese). i was also quite impressed with the jalapeño hot sauce – it was a nice compliment to everything on my plate minus the pancakes, soup, & salad. to note, today was a 5 plate meal for me :)

sunday brunch
march 23, 2008

specials: pancakes w/ fruit sauce (contains gluten)
specials: tempeh veggie stir-fry
specials: *jalapeño hot sauce*
soup: cauliflower & summer squash
salad: garden salad w/ ume flax veggie dressing
grain: short brown rice
greens: mixed blanched greens w/ mustard & basil tahini sauce
veggie: baked sweet potato, kabocha & butternut squash
bean: black beans w/ suncheese
pickle: radish & onion
made with infinite love by: timo, ada, ciara, ross, cory, & rosi

heading to CDA on the b12

i just bought a new bike. the felt b12 is finally mine! it is gorgeous & will make me go so fast – it damn well better… good thing we sold the audi when we did :)

since december of last year i’ve taken 7 really nice tri bikes for test rides. if you are going to spend some serious cash on a bike & you plan to be on that bike a lot (say for 5+ hours at a time) you want to really take it out & ride it; not just tool around a stores parking lot.

while i love the folks at bicycle sport shop & i think they do a great job at what they do they can’t compete with a store like jack & adam’s when it comes to setting you up & getting you on the right tri bike. if you need a good road bike, mountain bike, or service on your bike definitely head to BSS – they’ve saved my butt a couple of times.

i did start at BSS back in december. i road an ’07 specialized transition e5 comp. it was a nice bike but it wasn’t carbon & it just didn’t feel all that hot. specialized has actually totally redesigned the transition for ’08 & according to bicycling magazine it’s a sweet ride. given that the transition is the only tri bike that BSS sells i headed over to J&A's put myself in the hands of the pros. right off the bat i knew i found the right shop – there’s no tooling around in the parking lot with the bike – they fit you & give you the keys to take it out as long as you need. need it for a couple of days to get some time in on it – sure thing!

my first ride was on a quintana roo kilo. i like the QR & since my current tri bike is a QR (a really old ’01 QR that i bought off craigslist – got a great deal actually) i figured i would see where seven years of technology/development had brought the kilo. the kilo has an aluminum frame, not a carbon frame & while this bike retails for $1,600 it is still considered an entry level tri bike. i got out on the kilo & while the fit on this bike was much better (J&A’s sized me for a 54 – my existing QR is a 56 (way too big)), the bike itself didn’t feel all that much different than what i’ve got. so after one long ride on the kilo i passed on it.

*** note: just like car manufacturers, bike manufactures change things up from year to year & most new bikes don’t arrive until late Q1 of the new year since in majority of states folks can’t ride their bikes outside because it’s too cold (doesn’t apply to us in texas). so J&A’s inventory was low & they, like me, were just waiting for the new bikes to arrive. ***

given that the racks in the shop were mostly empty jack set me up on a kestrel talon that had a carbon frame. kestrel is a damn good brand & a number of ironman championship races have been won on a kestrel. however, i wasn’t digging the frame or the look of this bike at all. while looks aren’t everything, when you are shelling out BIG bucks for a bike you want to enjoy looking at it. kristin has already warned me that whatever we buy i need to keep for the next 3 – 5 years so i can’t afford to make any mistakes on this purchase.

once i jumped on that kestrel with a carbon frame i knew there was no turning back to a bike with an aluminum frame. a carbon frame is just so much more forgiving on your body & so much lighter too. i told jack (owner of J&A’s – damn cool cat) that from this point forward i only wanted to ride carbon. we had a problem though - that kestrel was the last carbon bike in stock that was in my price range & until the newer bikes were to arrive there was nothing for me to test ride.

after doing some internet research & talking to friends i narrowed my search down to three carbon tri bikes that were in my price range: the kuota k-factor, the cervelo p2c, & the felt b12. all are damn fine bikes with their own little perks.

of the 3 bikes i was now shopping, J&A’s only carried two of them. they don’t have the distribution rights for the cervelo. the folks down the road, austin tri-cyclist, are the only guys in town with the distribution rights to the cervelo (jack, from J&A’s is working on this). while i am no doubt a huge fan of J&A’s, I needed to see what the cervelo p2c was all about. so i ventured down to the austin tri-cyclist shop & i have to say the cervelo p2c is damn sweet. the folks at cervelo hit a home run with this puppy. not only was it sweet, the guys at austin tri-cyclist were offering it below MSRP & they even were throwing in a package deal to include wet-suit, new shoes, new clips, & helmet for a $100 bucks over what the MSRP was on this bike. at this point i hadn’t ridden the kuota k-factor or the felt b12 (because they hadn’t come in yet) so i didn’t just want to move on the p2c without giving these bikes a chance.

the kuota k-factor was the first of the two bikes to arrive at J&A’s in january. jack called me up & that saturday we scheduled a fit & a test ride. when saturday rolled around i couldn’t wait to get down there & pick-up the k-factor. i ended up taking the k-factor on the 360 loop & back. while a nice ride, i wasn’t impressed. it was the cheapest of the three bikes i was now considering & while it had a carbon frame it just was lacking in so many other spots. i returned to J&A’s & told jack that i’d hold tight until the b12 was in.

at this point i was really getting sick of riding my QR. it didn’t fit me & i now knew what a real tri bike was supposed to feel like.

when the b12s finally arrived in early february i reserved the first available 54 (my size). i scheduled my fit for a friday night; that way i could take the b12 on a long ride with the t3 the next saturday. after work i gave jack a ring & told him i was on my way in to get my fit down. he had bad news – one of the guys goofed the scheduled & let someone else take out the one b12 in my size. i was devastated & a bit pissed because i’ve been waiting almost 3 months for this bike to arrive & when it finally did i still couldn’t get my hands on it. jack could tell i was bummed & that i was getting sick of riding my QR.

jack & i talked later that night & even though they were closing he told me to come down to the shop & he’d hook me up with something very fun to ride the next day. when i got there he had pulled the top of the line kuota kalibur off the rack for me. this was a very high-end tri bike - $4,000+ & if you add race wheels you are easily looking at a $6,000+. this bike was hot & i was looking forward to hopping on it in the morning. i ended up talking to jack for about the next hour while we dialed this bike in to fit me perfectly – no reason to ride a bike this sweet if it didn’t fit me just right. i learned a lot about J&A’s, jack, & the whole austin tri/athletic scene.

needless to say, the ride on the kalibur the next morning was awesome. i was riding the audi (i’m an audi guy – what can i say) of bikes. i was almost nervous that after being on this nice of a bike that the b12 wasn’t going to be all that i had expected it to be. it didn’t matter though – neither kristin nor i were going to spend $4K+ on a tri bike.

that third weekend in february it finally happened; another b12 in my size arrived & jack had it reserved for me. i was pumped to get out on it. unfortunately it rained the saturday & i my first “ride” was indoors on my trainer. the next day was the AT&T marathon & i crashed that race to get in my 15-mile long run. however, later that afternoon i did a recovery ride on the b12 down south with kristin around the veloway & the s. mopac loop - while only a 19-mile ride it felt good. i called jack & he told me to hang on to the bike until the following weekend so i could get a real ride on it. that next saturday the weather turned bad & i found myself indoors with t3 on the trainer for 3-hours – again, not how i wanted to spend my time on the b12. the next day, prior to our long run, ed, noah, i got in a 20-mile ride & we spent a little time on bee caves (fast, hilly, & good turns) & the b12 felt awesome! i called jack right away & told him i’d take it.

it took almost a full week until i was able to make some time after work this past wednesday to make it to J&A’s to get my official fit & actually hand over the cash for the b12. jack gave me a great deal on the accessories that i purchased with/for the new ride along with some other additional goodies for both kristin & i.

it took almost 4-months to find the bike that worked for me. never before has buying something involved so much work, yet so full of fun along the way. a BIG thanks to jack & the guys at J&A’s for working with me on this one. i am one happy client & i’ve got one kick ass bike! coeur d’ alene – here i come & i’m coming on a b12!

ironman training interferes with weekend tradition

when preparing for an ironman (especially your first ironman) it’s easy to let the ironman consume so many aspects of your life. when you aren’t training, you are preparing to train. you’ve got to plan your workouts, track your progress, prepare water bottles & nutrition for each workout, pack gym bags, eat right, get to bed early, etc. weekday (mon – fri) training depending on which phase of your training schedule you are in consists of 1 – 3 hours daily. it is those weekend training days when the hours really add up & we refer to these workouts as our “key” workouts.

during these key workouts we are supposed to be ready to perform at our best so it’s imperative that we don’t overdue it during the week. the weekends are our opportunity to log both the long miles & time. we begin to introduce some serious brick (swim + bike or bike + run) workouts into these workouts too. these workouts closely resemble the actual mileage that we’ll have to put in on race day. so for an ironman we are talking 100+ mile bike rides & 20+ mile runs. while we don’t move slow, we don’t hit these workouts at race pace either which means that many of these workouts will consume 6 – 8 hours of our day. since this season’s training has begun i’ve begun to wonder – where did my weekends go?

t3, the training group i’m with, schedules our long rides on saturday & our long runs on sunday. this weekend’s schedule included a 65 mile ride followed by a 30 minute run on saturday & a 15 mile run on sunday followed by a 1 – 2 hour “recovery” ride. we normally kick these workouts off first thing in the morning so we are done by mid afternoon. we of course spend the rest of our day recovering from that morning’s workout & preparing for the next day’s workout – sounds fun huh?

for the past two sundays i’ve been fighting back! while it’s great to meet up with the group prior to each workout i often find myself running by myself at my own pace on long run days so beyond the initial meet up i don’t get much from the group. as a result i’ve taken my sunday morning’s back!

for the past 4 – 5 years kristin & i have gotten into a groove on sunday morning’s. they are our special little time to spend relaxing with one another & enjoying the simplicity of things. we’d wake up around 7:30 AM (what used to seem early to both of us – not early anymore) & make a BIG pot of coffee. when it is cold outside we will bundle up with blankets & when the weather is nice we open the doors & windows & listen to the sweet morning sounds. we’ll go through waves of making the same breakfast dishes weeks on end until we get bored with it & then we’ll repeat this cycle until we begin to get bored with the next meal. some of the longest running dishes included ham, cheese, & mushroom omelets (no ham anymore since kristin is now a vegetarian), whole wheat pancakes, buckwheat buttermilk waffles with peanut butter, even plain ole’ cereal had its run, & now oatmeal is king. by 8:00 AM we’’ll sit down together with our cups of coffee & breakfast & watch the CBS sunday morning show with charles osgood. the sound of that morning trumpet from abblasen makes me smile from cheek to cheek. CBS sunday morning is such a simple show – mostly just good hearted news with some interesting & fun facts along the way. when the show concluded an hour & a half later (9:30 AM) with nothing but a scene of nature from somewhere beautiful in this world kristin & i were relaxed & looking forward for tackling those remaining weekend to-dos.

since ironman training & beginning to bike in general i’ve missed a many of sunday morning’s with kristin. i am happy that today i was able to steal back another sunday morning during this ironman training & now that i’m up between 5:30 / 6:00 AM i am beginning to enjoy the texas hill country reporter show that comes on just prior to CBS sunday morning. if you were to ask me what i’m going to enjoy most about not training for an ironman i’m positive i’ll tell you that it’s having my sunday morning’s back with kristin, our BIG cups of coffee, our ritual breakfast meals, & what our friends call our “old people” TV show.

long run with 13,000 runners

the weather yesterday was cold & wet in austin. i had conceded to sticking to my schedule of riding long on saturday & running long on sunday. however, my long ride was going to be in-doors on a spin bike at the gym or the trainer at home.

i was set on confining myself to the in-door trainer because today austin was hosting the AT&T marathon & while i decide a couple of months ago that i wasn’t going to run this race, i still wanted to get the “high” you can get from a race that is promoted as well as this one. last year, the course was re-routed to take runners through more of “austin” & the first ½ of the run consisted of some good hills & sights so i decided i’d crash the race this morning & get my long run in with 13,000 runners.

it worked perfectly because mile 14 was just a mile or less from our home. so kristin dropped me off at the race start right at 7am this morning & i cruised through the heartland of this great city feeling very strong. an hour into the run the sun was shining bright & the temp was warming up. i was feeling so good & getting so hot that i had to pull my shirt off – i love this city!

some really cool sites along the route: south congress (full of cool shops & local restaurants), north on 1st street (more cool shops & local restaurants), across our beautiful town lake, along cesar chavez (borders the lake), up enfield (tarrytown neighborhood), over mopac (main highyway that cuts through austin – no billboards allowed), up bull creek (through lovely rosedale – that’s where we live), & then i bailed out & headed home where kristin & payton (most beautiful girl in austin & coolest dog in austin) were headed too (they were cheering us runners on just past the ½ marathon mark).

this has been my best “long run” yet! next year, i’ll be racing the AT&T marathon – you can count on it!

taking advantage of this sunday

i've got a lot of "to-dos" to do today. i woke up super early (5:00am) this morning to run on my own. i was going to run my 14-miles with t3 this morning but after training for 8+ hours yesterday & not getting a lot of time for the weekend "to-dos" i decided just to get up early (kinda hard since kristin & i were out with friends last night for dinner & we didn't get to bed until just after midnight) & get my run in.

so i've got the rest of the day to take advantage of & throughout the day i take time to include some healthy blogging - i've got a laundry list of blog posts queued up :)