Lake Forest Firecracker 5K

We started our 4th of July bright and early at the Lake Forest Firecracker 5K. Jena almost ran with us, until Cheryl reminded me how she has a tendency to stop and go to the bathroom right in the middle of the path. So, she had to hang out on the sidelines with Jim.

Cheryl had a AMAZING race! She is getting so FAST! Cheryl came in 2nd in her age group!

Cheryl's time: 24:37.0
age group: 2/33
women: 55/597
overall: 239/1141

Cheryl left me in the dust!

My time: 25:09.3
age group: 5/51
women: 69/597
overall: 268/1141

Chris had to stop during the race and use the port-o-potty...

Chris's time: 25:38.7
age group: 58/78
men: 213/544
overall: 294/1141

After that we went to my mom and dad's for a visit and early dinner... then on to the Galaxy game, where they lost with just seconds left to go. Well,at least the fireworks show was good!

Rock n' Roll Baby!

We are ran the San Diego Rock and Roll half-marathon today! The picture below is us at package pickup. What a zoo that was! There were 31,000 people registered for the marathon and half-marathon and most of them did package pickup between 12-5 yesterday! We did have fun at the Expo. It was great with LOTS of freebies :oD

Cheryl decided that we should run in costume. Chris vetoed the tutu, and I veto's the fishnet stockings (can you imagine the rash?), YIKES!

We decided to start slow on the costume thing... Michael's had t-shirts on sale for $3 each today and I had a 20% of coupon. We all picked a rock and roll band/personality, and made t-shirts. We used iron-on transfers. They were so easy and the results came out GREAT!

The shirts aren't done by a long shot... Next step, we will all take scissors to our shirts and personalize them for the run.

Here we are dark and early this morning!

You can't see Cheryl's shirt in the picture so I had her model it for me when we got home. Isn't that COOL?!!!

Anyway back to the race... We got up at 4am. Jim drove us to the drop off site at 5:05am to catch the bus to the starting line. I have never seen so many buses! There were buses as far as you can see!

Bye, Jim! See you in a couple hours!

We thought that we'd be waiting at the starting line for an hour! Well, not quite... the bus got stuck in traffic and dropped us off a LOOOONG way from the starting line. There were 40 corrals. We started in corral 9, so we had to walk past legions of port-o-potties, baggage drop off, and 31 corrals before reaching ours. We had only about 5 minutes to wait before the race started! Jim told me that it took them 1 hour and 15 minutes to get all the corrals started.

I'll post some more pictures of the race when I get them, but here are our results:

Chris : 1hr 57mins
Cheryl : 2hrs, 10mins - 2 minute port-o-pottie break = 2hrs 8min (a new PR)
Me : 2hrs, 8min - 5 minute port-o-pottie break (there was a line) = 2hrs 3min


That reminds me.. Check this out!

They were selling port-o-pottie Fast Passes! Yes, believe it or not... It's TRUE!!!

OC Half-Marathon

Today was our 5th race in our 12 races in 2012, AND it was Cheryl's very first half-marathon. We got up at 4:30am to get to the race for a 6:15am start. This is a point to point race... starting from Fashion Island and ending at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

We met up with my friend, Paloma, from work, which was a miracle considering there were 10,000 people running in this race. Look at that sea of people... and that sea of people need a whole fleet of port-o-potties, hahaha! Have you ever seen so many port-o-potties? (blog header)

Well, somthing went wrong with the web site... my stats and Cheryl's stats are missing. We ran together and finished in 2hrs 9 minutes. That's faster than my first half marathon! She ran the whole thing without stopping.

Here's Chris's stats:
Overall: 1353 out of 8708
Men: 930 out of 3472
M 16-19: 15 out of 42
Age/Grade: 53.01%
Place: 2528
Finish: 1:54:20
Pace: 8:44

I told Cheryl that her first half-marathon would be her hardest. She said that she hopes so, because that was really HARD!

Next race: Rock n' Roll San Diego Half-marathon!

This and That...

Chris and I ran a half-marathon this weekend. It the first time either of us has run serious mileage since the Huntington Beach half-marathon. We started kind of far back in the pack (between the 2:00 and 2:10 pace groups).

Chris took off at the start, when I saw him around mile 3, he was running with the 1:30 pace group in 5th place! He ended up falling off his pace and said he didn't finish very well. I ended up passing the 2:00 pace group, so I know I finished under 2 hours. I'll post exact times when they are available.

After running 13.1 miles today, Chris is running his very last track meet this week. He's been entered into the Varisty 1600m at the CIF Preliminaries on Tuesday. After this week, High School sports are over...

Cheryl has only one more week of classes and one week of finals, and she is DONE! It's official... Cheryl will be attending Cal Poly Pomona in the fall. She got her rejection letter from CSU Long Beach this weekend. Due to the budget crisis, CSU Long Beach is only taking out of state transfers... BUMMER! Cheryl is still optimistic that she can transfer to Long Beach after she finishes her BS at Cal Poly Pomona.

It's back to work tomorrow...
I hope the everyone had a great weekend!

Happy Birthday Chris!!!

We spent Chris's birthday morning at the Irvine Invitational track meet. Chris usually runs the 800m, but there were some change-ups today. Jose got shin splints, so Alex ran the two mile in Jose's spot, and Chris had to run the one mile in Alex's spot. Chris decided to make the best out of it and said that he was going to try to PR in the mile, since "I'm never going to run it again." Chris's last PR was 5:12. He came in with a NEW PR: 4:59!!! Chris is now a sub-5 runner! YAHOO Chris!!!



Chris's online friend from Costa Rica sent him a Happy Birthday Cookie! Isn't so sweet of her? Here we are celebrating... in the garage. Even though the kitchen is done, we can't put the table and chairs back in until the grout dries for 2-3 days.

We got Chris a digital camera for him to take some pictures of his own when we go to Europe this summer. Cheryl got him a nice case for it. We'll have a big family birthday for him in a couple of weeks when my mom gets back from Kauai. Hopefully I can get everything back in the kitchen by then.

YUM! How sweet it is!!!
Happy 18th birthday Big Guy!

XC: The End of a Season...

It takes 2241 photos...

58 photo albums...

Each album with unique photos for each boy...

9 commemorative frames for the Seniors...

And one VARSITY LETTER!!!...

To make a GREAT XC season! So long XC!!!

Photo Share...

I just had to share this one of the XC Seniors from their end of year photo shoot at the beach.

This photo just makes me smile!

So Long XC....

Chris ran his very last High School Cross Country race yesterday. The JV race was supposed to start at 1pm. It was hot, Hot, HOT!!! 99F! There were supposed to be 8 races: boys/girls - JV/Frosh/ Soph/Varsity. Just before the race was supposed to start, (Chris and the other JV boys were warmed up, had their numbers pinned on, and were headed to the start line) The officials decided to cancel the race. In fact, they canceled the first two races (JV and Frosh) because of the heat and planned to have the Frosh run with the Soph and JV run with the Varsity at 4pm...

Whoever made that decision was not from around here... everybody knows it would not be cooler at 4pm than it is at 1pm! Oh well, I went back to work and returned to the High School at 4pm and 100F heat! There was talk about canceling the entire meet. That would mean CIF qualifying would be decided on just one race (the race two weeks ago). The schools, who hadn't qualified, didn't go for that! The race officials waited an hour more. When it had cooled off to 95F, they decided to run two races all boys and all girls. I heard that one school refused to run, so there were 5 schools in the race. Lots of girls dropped out during the course. There were lots of turned ankles. I watched one boy from SJHHS collapse 4' in front of the finish line and crawl/roll across the line. Also, two Capo girls were taken to the hospital in ambulances.

Chris finished in good time, and Capo came in 2nd place; qualifying them for CIF prelims. After the race Jim went to look for Chris and found him sitting on the ground just past the finish line. He was completely burned out... he crossed the finish line, sat down, and couldn't get back up. Since there were awards and medals following the race, he didn't get home until after 8pm. He lay on the floor until I finished reheating his dinner. He ate dinner, took a shower, and went straight to bed.

Chris will be on the sidelines during CIF prelims, cheering the Varsity team on to victory... and hopefully qualifying for CIF Finals! Go Capo!

Mt. Sac XC Invite

Mt. Sac XC Invitational in Pomona is the largest XC invitational in the United States! High School teams show up from all over Southern California to compete in one weekend. All of Capo's JV runners are back to compete in this prestigious event. An XC team must have 5 runners to score, and Capo JV just has 5. Some teams had over 20 runners entered in this race! In order to score well, ALL of Capos runners would have to place high.

The Capo JV doesn't have any SUPER FAST runners, but they do have 5 FAST runners. They do what Chris calls, "pack tight." They all finish together, sometimes right behind each other, causing a block; pushing slower finishers from other teams to a lower place.

Capo's team strategy paid off, and Capo JV finished 2nd place in all of Southern California!!! YAHOO!!! GO CAPO JV!!!

I haven't posted any cute Jena photos for a while. Here's Chris relaxing with Jena after the meet... aren't they ADORABLE?

Huntington Beach XCI

The boys have barely had a chance to recover from the meet on Thursday, and they are running in their second meet of the week on Saturday. The top-12 are running the State course in Fresno. That leaves Chris, Phil, and Ricky to carry the Capo team at the Huntington Beach Invitational. This is their first time running this meet, and the bus didn't arrive with enough time for them to checkout the course... so here's the boys consulting with Coach Airy on the map.

Here's the JV team warming up!

This course does a lot of turning back onto itself. It's great for spectators, because we got to see the start, the finish and saw the boys pass by three times. Chris doesn't like this type of course because he said it feels like they do a lot of running but don't go anywhere. This was also a very hilly course, which is another reason why it was so tough.

Times for this course were 40-60 seconds slower than most of the boys' PRs. Chris finished in 17:58 (behind Phil and in front of Ricky). It was 44 seconds slower than his PR, BUT he finished very high in the standings... 35th out of about 300 boys, which earned him (and Phil) a very cool medal.

Great job, boys! GO CAPO!
OC CHAMPS next weekend!

XC League Meet

It's the first SeaView League meet with Capo, Trabuco, Mission Viejo, Tesoro, San Juan Hills, and Laguna Hills. Poor Chris was sick. He still ran JV and got a 17:20; not a PR, but still a good time. He finished 4th for Capo. The Capo JV team finished in 2nd place overall! They have their eye on State Finals this year!

They turn around quickly and have another meet tomorrow in Huntington Beach. The top 12 runners are going to Fresno... that leaves Chris and Phil the top Capo runners running at Huntington Beach! Either one of them could come in 1st for the school! Phil is tricky... He lets Chris lead for the whole race and will try and pass him in the last 400 meters before the finish line. If Chris can hold him off, Chris will win... otherwise Phil will win. We shall see! It will be exciting!

http://www.fvhsxc.com/pdfs/CentralParkMap.pdf

Cross Country AGAIN!

It was blazing hot. I put our outdoor temperature sensor in the sun just to see how hot it was... and it was 137F!!! YIKES!!!

The Dana Hills Cross Country Invitational runs, rain, or shine, or HEAT! Thankfully, since they are closer to the ocean, it wasn't quite as hot there.

Chris reminded me... "Mom, you need to update my PR on your blog!" LOL! Yep, Chris has a new 3 mile PR! *** 17.14 *** That 8 seconds off his PR from last weekend!

There were only 4 races this weekend: Freshmen, Sophomore, Juniors, and Seniors. All the varsity runners ran with their own age groups. There are 4 varsity seniors, who all came in under 16.30. The first non-varsity senior came in just under 17.00, followed by Chris at 17.14. So, he got 6th place... non-scoring... but still a GREAT time!

In fact, the entire senior team finish under 17:30! They are going to have a GREAT JV team this year! The boys already have plans to take 1st-6th place overall in the league cluster meet next week!

YAHOO! GO CAPO!

EDIT: *** The Senior team took third place overall at the Dana Hills Invitational! The boys cross country team got a nice BIG trophy for the school trophy case!

High School Cross Country!

It's the night of the Woodbridge Invitational. There are five races this evening: Freshmen, Sophomore, Juniors, Seniors and Sweepstakes (Varsity). Chris's raced with the seniors. The second to the last race of the evening, starting around 8:15pm. He said the boys were so pumped up by then that the first mile of the race was really violent... lots of pushing, shoving, elbowing, hitting and words (not very nice words). The team captain told them to start fast in the first mile, pass other runners in the second mile, and hold their position in the third mile. Chris beat his one mile PR in the first mile, 5.09! AND beat his XC PR by 30 seconds!... FINISHING in 17:22 (2 seconds after the 3rd place runner on his team). He was the 4th senior across the line, so in a scoring position, and earned himself a medal!

In fact, ALL the seniors finished under 18 minutes! Just 30 second pace under the Varsity. We've been looking for how the Senior Team did relative to the other schools, but haven't found it... I bet they placed really well!

Everyone was so happy, and congratulating each other while walking to the bus... And the bus was GONE! It turns out that the girls cross country team took both buses back to Capo, and left the boys stranded. The coach called one of the bus drivers, and he had to come back to pickup the boys. Chris didn't get home last night until 12:15am!

Congrats Chris! Congrats Seniors!
Go Capo!

Congratulations Bob!!!

Uh... Who's Bob? Bob is the name of the co-ed team that Cheryl plays on with World Cup winner and Olympic Gold medalist Joy Fawcett. If you are wondering which one she is, she's the one with her arm around Cheryl.

Team Bob lost in the finals, so came in second place in the league, but it's the furthest that Bob has ever made it in the play-offs! Congratulations Bob!

Congratulations Quakes!!!

Cheryl's little girls started off the Spring season losing every single game. They just moved up from 9 players per side to 11 players per side. It's taken some adjusting and adding a few new players, but they've got the hang of it now!

QUAKES WIN 1ST PLACE in SBU CUP!!!

WELL DONE! CONGRATULATIONS QUAKES!

The Season Ends, and Dimensional Details week 5

Track season is over... Chris qualified for CIF Preliminaries as a Varsity runner this year! YAHOO for Chris! Runners are numbered with their regional ranking. There were two heats in the Varsity 800m, 15 boys in each heat. Chris was wearing #14. He tied his PR at 2:14, but that wasn't good enough to qualify for CIF Finals. He LOVES running the 800m and wants to do it again next year!

I'll finish off this post with a layout share. The photos are from last Fall (Cross Country Season):

No more stinky shoes...

I have a non-scrappy crafty share! Chris has been complaining that he doesn't like putting his cross country bag in his school locker because it smells so bad... If a 17yr old boy says it smells bad, you can bet it smells REALLY BAD! My mom found an article and my dad forwarded it on to us. It had instructions on how to make shoe deodorizers. All I did was dump some kitty litter in a pair of socks and sew the tops closed. Then, he just slips these babies in his shoes after practice. Believe it or not it works!!! I asked him if he's shown this idea to his running buddies. He said that he would, but they're PINK! ooops...

I was remiss in reporting on last week's track meet... it was very very forgettable. The meet was against the #1 track team in Orange County. Track scores 5 points for 1st, 3 points for 2nd, and 1 pt for 3rd. There are 10 running events, 4 jumping events, plus shot put and discus. Capo came home with only 16 points. Needless to say, they lost...

Chris ran in the Varsity 800m again and finished in 1.16. It was last place for Capo, BUT he was not last place overall! WHOOHOO!

April Fool!!!

Cheryl and I played an April Fool on Chris yesterday. We got a pair of really obnoxious boxers and stuffed them in his track shoe. He found them at his track meet yesterday, LOL! He actually got off easy... Cheryl wanted to stuff a thong in his shoe, BAHAHAHA!

Speaking of track meet... Chris ran the Varsity 800m again yesterday. He started out in a good position, and finished his first 400m in 1:03. I pasted this photo together, but the field was really that close together after the first lap. Unfortunately, the entire field passed Chris during the second lap (Phil doing his typical and passing Chris just feet before the finish line). The field was very close... The winner finished in 2:07. Chris finished LAST at 2:13... A NEW PR FOR CHRIS!!! He keeps getting better!

Weekend Sports Report - San Clemente Invitational

I worked over 60hrs this week... a real week from "you know where"! We had failed test flights and, grounded aircraft. Whew! I'm sure glad that's over. Welcome weekend, YIPPEE!!!

Chris was invited to run his first track invitational as a part of the 4x800m VARSITY relay team. It was such a beautiful day! This photo of San Clemente High School was not Photoshop-ed! It was really that gorgeous!

Here's the team! What a great looking group of guys! Jose-M ran first (on Chris's right), Chris second, Phil third (on Chris's left), and Jose-V anchoring the team (in the back with red hair).

Poor little Jose-M was grabbed and shoved out of the way during the start. After the first leg, Capo was 5th out of 6. Here's Chris just pulling past a guy from Newport Harbor HS. He finished just in front of him and moved his team up one place during his leg.

Here's hand off to Phil... Phil lost a place. That put Capo back in 5th. The last leg was a FAST one! Jose-V just couldn't hold on to Capo's slim lead and Capo finished last.

This was Chris's first relay and he LOVED it! Too bad the 4x800 is only an invitational event. It's hard to time relay legs, but the coach said Chris finished around 2:16, Jose-M in 2:14, Phil in 2:17, and Jose-V in 2:16.

Cheryl's little girls started their spring season. They had two games today; the first in Whittier which they won 1-0. Their second game was in Mission Viejo. Beach Blvd was closed down to one lane and the team was late getting all the way back. They had to drive straight to the field... no stopping for rest or lunch. They lost 0-3. They have another game tomorrow.

Galaxy season starts again!!! We have our season tickets and are excited for their first pre-season game tomorrow against CD Aguila, a Salvadoran team. Go GALAXY!!!

I hope everyone out there is having a great weekend!