Half Marathon results

We finished the half marathon! It was fun. There were lots of Disney characters running around and tons of people!

We left the house at 4:30am to get to the race before the 6am start time. Traffic was so bad that Cheryl and Jim had to drop us off. We walked to the start to find our corral, while they parked the car in the Mickey and Friends parking structure. Jim and Cheryl were waiting at the start line, but they said the start was such a huge mob of people (10849 in the race plus spectators) that it was impossible to pick us out.

People were stopping to take pictures with the Disney characters, and lots of runners were dressed as characters themselves. It's amazing how many men were dressed as Minnie Mouse and Tinkerbell. They are either very confident or kind of weird. There were radio stations, marching bands, cheerleaders, hula girls, boy/girl scouts, and a mariachi band all along the course. With all the spectators cheering us on, it was a very fun time!

Chris and I started in the the third wave of Corral F (2:10-2:15), because we had no idea how long it would take Chris to finish. He took off and left me after the first mile. Chris finished in 01:50:43 with a pace of 8:26. Based on his finish time, I should have started him in the first wave of Corral C. He ended up having to dodge around people for the entire race, so he may have finished faster if he started earlier. I finished in 02:16:57 with a pace of 10:40. When I met Chris at the finish line, he already ate and had his picture taken.

*EDIT*
Chris finished in 1:50.43
Chris finished OVERALL in the top 7% : 770 out of 10849
Chris finished 30 out of 123 in his age group

I finished in 2:16:57
I finished in WOMEN in the top 25% : 1627 out of 6407
I finished 192 out of 717 in my age group

Saddleback College Soccer

College soccer started today, and Cheryl was in the starting lineup as Center Defender (Sweeper), the last defender before the goalie. She played all 90 minutes. She had never played that position before, so was very nervous. She got especially nervous when the Right Defender was injured and had to leave the game. The other girls were very encouraging. The home game against Palomar today ended in a 0-0 tie.

A new layout

I had such great plans to scrap all summer... But here it is, only my second layout and summer is just about over. This layout only uses one piece of patterned paper by Rouge de Garance called "Make Your Mark", one photo, two stickers, and a grungeboard swirl.

A sad day at our house...

You all remember Itch? Well, poor Itch passed on to the big fish bowl in the sky. Cheryl was very sad... Good-bye Itch...

Summer's Over...

The final cut for the Saddleback College soccer team was today. Cheryl made the team! She is now playing college ball! Her first game is next week Friday. Here is her entire schedule, but check with us first, Papa, because she won't be at all the games. Her class schedule was difficult to work with this semester because she waited so long to register. She has Psychology, Physics, English, Art, and Soccer (all classes that she needs to transfer to USC). The math classes were full, so she will have to complete her math during summer school. Go Gauchos!!!

Chris made the cross country team at Capistrano Vally High School. He is also going to play AYSO Fall soccer. His school schedule this year is: English, World History, Spanish 2, Chemistry, Geometry, and Cross Country. He's set to start the
Tuesday after Labor Day. Go Cougars!!!

Chris and I still have the Disneyland half-marathon next weekend! I hope the weather stays in the 80s. It would be miserable to run in 100F heat.

I went in to sign papers for my new contract today. I start back to work at Rockwell-Collins on September 16th, 32 hours per week. My summer is also coming to an end.

We have had one busy summer after vacations were over!
Four vision checkups
Six visits to the doctor (including the emergency room)
Eleven visits to the dentist
One visit to the vet

More Training...

My friend Tami posted this challenge on Iraq and Back. It's a training program to reach the goal of 100 consecutive push-ups in six weeks. I've let my weight training slip while I've been training for the half-marathon. This looks like a fun way to get back into it. Anyone else want to join us?

I'm starting with day 1 of the program tomorrow. My initial test is 7 normal push-ups.

Wordle, Wordle, Wordle!!!

I love the look of word patterned papers and embellishments. One little word can set the entire tone and feeling of a layout. What about 10 or more carefully chosen words? Even better!!!

I found this great site on the TallyBlog, called Wordle.
http://wordle.net

Here is a screenshot:
You can "point" Wordle to a blog or webpage and it will pull words off the page to create a fun jumble of text.

Another fun option is to use your own words instead of letting Wordle select them from your blog. Which is what I did for this card. The FAQ section explains how to make some words larger than others and how to keep phrase words together (like "Wish Big"). I type the words I wanted on the page, I just clicked on the Go button underneath the box and it pops up with my custom word art. The menus on the top can be used to change the font and colors.

Here is how I got this to print out in the size I wanted:
1) Make sure the browser window is active and do a window capture (Alt-PrintScrn).
2) Open an image editor, like Photoshop.
3) Create a NEW photoshop image. (File-New)
4) Paste the window capture into the new photoshop image (Ctrl-V)

Now you can crop, resize, and even edit your wordle. In my case, I resized it to fit on the card, and added some fun dingbats to fill in the empty spaces.

In this layout, I generated the wordle using a quote, "Look for what is good and you will find it." When the wordle was generated, it was just a jumble of words:

I used Photoshop to copy the words onto my photo, and move the words around so that it would read like the quote.

This is so much fun!
I hope you'll all give it a try.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Yep, 23 years today! How did we celebrate? A trip to the Candy Baron of course! Cheryl came with us, but she's still hiding from the camera. And our big dinner this evening... take-out Chinese Food! Happy Anniversary to us!



Can you see Chris's hair in the photo? Jim trimmed it up. Now his hair is black with frosted tips. Looks pretty cool, huh?

Cheeky-munk

Here's my poor little Cheeky-munk... shhhhhhhh... hehehe!

Half-Marathon Training - week 12

I haven't done a running post in a while... I'm still on my way to Ohio. I've run over 800 miles since January! And I'm still training for the half-Marathon at the end of this month.

I made all my goals last week. Yahoo!!! Here are the training goals for this week.
Here is my schedule for this week:
SUN - off
MON - 13x800m miles
TUE - off
WED - 40-60 min
THU - off
FRI - 40-60 min
SAT - 25 min

I ran 16 miles last Monday, and I feel great!

Chris stopped keeping track of his miles. He's been training with the cross country team for the last couple weeks and is getting back into race shape. The next tryout is this week. He's very sure that he'll make the team.

We did some running while we were in Kauai. The weather was great! Not too hot, not too humid. Here are some photos of our runs. This is Waimea Beach. It's a black sand beach. We run along the beach to the Waimea Landing:



My Aunt, Uncle, and Grandma live right on the Waimea River, so we also ran up the river trail. Here is a good picture of the river from the Swinging Bridge. We just took pictures here, we didn't cross...



Along the river trail, it's really beautiful!

Good-bye Wisdom Teeth, Hello Breaking Dawn!

Cheryl had her wisdom teeth out on Friday... After she came out from the general anesthesia, the nurse put her in a wheelchair and took her to the elevator. The elevator was mirrored. She took one look at herself with the two rolls of white, bloody gauze sticking out of her mouth and said, "Hey, I look like a vampire!" We've had vampires on the mind waiting for the new Twilight book, hahaha!

I got an email notice from Amazon that Breaking Dawn has shipped! Cheryl and I have been looking forward to this book! Will Bella changeover or not?

Anyway back to Cheryl... When she came out of the general anesthesia, she started chattering away... non-stop! I couldn't understand most of what she said because of the gauze stuffed in her mouth. It's such a change from when Chris got his wisdom teeth out. Chris said nothing... got in the car and said nothing... got out of the car at home and went to bed.

After Cheryl got home, Chris made her some mac and cheese while I went down and picked up her prescription. I got home and put the mac and cheese in the blender. I know it sounds disgusting. It even looks disgusting... but it tastes just like mac and cheese. LOL!

She won't let me take her picture, but I think she is so cute with the fat cheeks. I've been calling her my cheeky-munk.