As part of my winter running focus, and run up to the Carlsbad Marathon in January, I decided to take a spin through the Seattle Half Marathon this morning.  The race kind of snuck on me - so here's my confession: I never managed to get registered for this race but showed up and ran it anyway.  I did so self-supported though; I didn't take any support out on the course and just carried some gels with me.   I signed up last year, and I'll get off my arse and sign up when the time comes next year.  I...

Since moving from Spokane to the West side of Washington State in 1992, I've done the 280 mile drive many, many times.  I used to, uh, push the speed limit and could often do the drive, door-to-door, in about 3:45. Over the last few years, a few things have happened.  First, I've gotten a little older, and a little more risk-averse.  Second, I've gotten back into bike racing.  And third, I've gotten more concerned with my energy usage. My old driving pattern was to stick it just under 80 and cruise across the state.  In my Audi, this...

Here in Spokane with the fam, just did a nice 45-minute run with Deb on a crisp, sunny, cold Spokane morning.  Even when I think I'm running slow, I get back and check my pace (yay for Gmap Pedometer!), and I really am running faster..  Started thinking... ah, what the heck, I'll do a sappy Thanksgiving Day post.  And I should.  I have a tremendous amount to be thankful for.   What is it, something like 20% of the people on this planet don't have clean drinking water?  OK, here's goes.  In no particular order...I'm thankful... That I'm able...

This year I decided that I was going to continue to commute to work by bike, at least a couple times a week, as long as it was safe to do so.  This meant finally buckling down and investing in all the necessary paraphernalia that allows it.  Over the summer, when training allowed, I was riding into work about twice a week.  I really enjoyed it.  It's only 25 minutes each way, and I can usually factor it into my training a bit.   Any time on the bike is good time on the bike.  Especially riding home after work, it's...

Cutting 15-20 minutes off my Ironman run time next year is a big goal of mine.  The best way to do that is to just run a lot.  Before I started training for IMAZ last year, I'd run a maximum of 13.1 miles, exactly twice in my life.  In the following months of training I've run considerably farther than that on many occasions.   But I'm still very new to distance running and most runners will tell you it takes a lot of time and effort to get fast.  Immediately after Ironman Canada, I knew I wanted to spend the winter...

I moved over to a new blogging platform about two months ago.  I got most things ported over, but was having trouble getting it to redirect the old blog feed address to the new one.  I finally got that figured this morning so now when your blog reader pings, it's actually picking up my posts again, so all the posting I've done since the move is coming down all at once...