Earthquake

I've experienced everything I wanted to in CA after tonight. Jen, Hayley and I were at a Halloween party when we started to feel a vibration that turned to pretty good rattling. At first we thought it was just kids jumping around but after a couple seconds everyone realized it was an earthquake and a semi panic broke out as everyone went for their kids and started heading out the door. In all it lasted about 5-10 seconds. We went outside and the water was splashing all around in the pool. It was a pretty cool experience as soon as we realized everything was all right. The Earthquake measured 5.6 but we were about 10 miles away from the Epicenter. Read When we got home and turned on TV and the news had broke into all major networks, kind of like the first big snow storm in MN.

Extend or Not

A couple days ago we got an offer to extend our rotations here in Sunnyvale. It's been a tough decision and I'm still not certain on what to do. With twins coming we really need the extra money. With the market the way it is we're probably going to end up taking a loss on our house... but we really could make it work there, albeit a little cramped. So is the extra money worth staying here and missing family and having the twins here in CA.

A little ink and some creativity

What happens when you leave a toddler alone with ink stamps for a 5 minutes?

Next Race - Silicon Valley or Golden Gate

Since finishing the San Jose Rock-n-Roll half marathon I've been itching to get out and race again. My legs feel fresh again after a few days rest and I had no trouble running for an hour tonight. In fact all week I've been thinking of racing again and how I can work to improve my time. There are two races coming up on November 4th, Run the Golden Gate, and the Metro Silicon Valley Marathon. The Golden Gate marathon would be cool since the route goes over the Golden Gate bridge and back, but it goes up to Vista Point which is a pretty steep climb. Chad said there's probably no way I'd break my 2 hour time on this race. It's also a big hassle getting to and from San Fran so I'm kind of leaning towards the Silicon Valley marathon. However, the experience of running a race over the Golden Gate Bridge would be pretty cool.

The Silicon Valley marathon includes both a full marathon and a 1/2 marathon, which is intriguing since I kind of want to run a full marathon sometime in my life. With Jen expecting twins this might be my only opportunity for a long time to run a marathon, and I'm probably not going to be in this good of shape after the kids are born. So I'm kind of mulling the idea of running the full course. This weekend will be my deciding factor. If I can run 15-20 miles without killing myself I'll run the full marathon, if not I'll settle for a 1/2.

Race Day

It was a great day to run my first 1/2 marathon this morning. Temps were in the low 60's with little wind. I stayed up a bit late last night so I didn't get as much sleep as I would have liked and I had a slight headache to start the morning. Nothing 6 Advil couldn't handle. Chad and I got there around 7:00am and warmed up a bit as well as finding Joe. I started training for this with a goal of beating 10 minutes a mile. Early last week Joe mentioned that he would be happy getting a time under 2 hours. I mulled that over and decided to shoot for the same goal. My best practice time was 2hrs 15min, just over 10 minutes miles so trying for under two hours was going to be a stretch. I normally don't run with a watch but I decided to today so I could tell how I was doing mile to mile.

I had a 10 minute mile to start and I was pretty upset by that, but by the end of the race I was running at a clip of approximately 8 minute miles. I was surprised at how strong I got towards the end. I've always faded in practice but running in the crowd gave me a boost of energy. Another big boost was getting water every mile. I've never run with water before so after today I'm going to change that.

The race was pretty cool, there were garage bands about every two miles playing music of all different types. The crowd was pretty thin in areas but I wouldn't' know better since I've never run a race before. Chad said that in the Twin Cities it's wall to wall fans through out the race. After today I'll definitely run a lot of 1/2 marathons. As far as a full marathon goes, well I might give it a shot someday but for now I'll stick to the 1/2's.

I ended up getting in under 2 hours with a 1:57:44 time. I thought that was pretty good but I guess for my age group I got in just under the 50 percentile. Next time I'll shoot for the top 40th.
Chad finished with a 1:48:23 time - full details here
Joe finished with a 1:47:49 time, just barely beating Chad - full details here

My results:
Place Overall: 2415 out of 8787
Men: 1778 out of 3985
M 30-34: 261 out of 587
AgeGrade: 49.70% Place: 4111
FINISH: 1:57:44 pace: 8:59
5k: 29:13 pace: 9:25
10K: 57:00 pace: 9:11
10Mile: 1:31:00 pace: 9:06

Hayley and I after the race.


Chad, Joe and I

Baby News ... X2

Just wanted to pass along some baby news. Two weeks ago Jen went in found out she was having twins, however, the doctor didn't see a membrane separating the twins, a condition called "monoamniotic twins" which would've been really bad news. The doctor said it's common that a regular ultra sound won't pick up the membrane cuz it's so thin so she scheduled a High Resolution Ultra Sound which we had today. The tech found a membrane in about 10 seconds which had Jen and I almost jumping around the room in excitement. Both babies looked healthy and they had healthy heart beats. They are about 12-13 weeks along and their due date is April 23rd. The tech thought they were probably identical cuz she only could see one placenta but the doctor would know more. Click on the picture above for a larger image. The babies are in the bunk position, meaning one is on top and the other is on the bottom.

Heading back to MN

My flight leaves in a few hours so I'm sitting around waiting. This weekend we'll be hammering out details on our house on what we need to do to get it ready to sell. Looking back I wonder if we shouldn't have just broke down and purchased a bigger house to start with. With the housing market the way it is we'll probably be stuck for a long time. It's a great location and we haven't had to stretch to make payments so I can't complain to much.

The ducks are a flying and it's going to be hard to be in MN and not out with the brothers hunting. I haven't been out for two years now so the itch is getting worse. My brothers have new dogs so I'm curious to hear how they do. Besides hanging out with my brothers, dogs are my favourite part of hunting. I would hunt just to watch the dogs work.

Wii Weekend

Since Jen went to MN on Friday I've played about 30 hours of Wii sports, mainly bowling. The Wii is cool but the remote is deceiving because it really only needs to move 6 inches for any game. I can rest the remote on my knee while playing tennis and just flick it 2 inches to hit the ball. Bowling makes absolutely no sense. I throw the ball exactly the same every time and the ball never ends up in the same spot. After about 100 games I figured it out that if you flick the remote sideways instead of straight you'll get a mean hook and major pin action, so it's way more forgiving when missing the pocket. Golf is fun but playing the same 9 holes over and over gets pretty boring. Boxing is dumb cuz the remotes don't work worth a crap. Baseball is ok but you only pitch and bat, fielding is done by the computer. It's fun to play home run derby and that's about it. I'm can't complain though, Wii sports was free with the Wii and it's provided hours of entertainment.

I was looking for a game to buy but I don't want to pay $50 for a game that I haven't tried. I have 2 free rentals a month from Blockbuster but they are always out of any game I'd be interested in renting. I'm almost to the point of trying game fly but I'm to cheap. I stick with Wii Sports for the time being.