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This year, Thanksgiving was busy, as always, but we had the added dimension of this being Cora’s first Thanksgiving! We had lots of fun with her as she continues to travel well and be a real sport when being passed around to family and friends the entire day. As always, we ran the Turkey Trot 5mi in Miamisburg on Thanksgiving morning (this year with  my dad, my uncle, a cousin, tiffany and I, no cora this time). We went on to make our way back up rt. 75 to New Knoxville to finish out our day. Friday was an off-day, then we had another thanksgiving meal with my immediate family in BG on Saturday…concluding with a 5K race in Maumee (Holiday Hustle…race reports for both races coming soon)…If it sounds like a lot, it is…but it is always fun each year we do it and we consider it a blessing to have so much family that still gets together with so many relatives! Here’s some of the pictures from the opening weekend of the 09 Holiday Season…

UPDATED

Results for the Turkey Trot have been posted and everyone did really well!

• Jeremy: 36:42 – 7:21/mi pace
• Tiffany: 33:15 – 6:39/mi pace
• Craig: 44:28 – 8:54/mi pace
• Scott: 40:44 – 8:09/mi pace
• Kara: 40:44 – 8:09/mi pace (bandit)

Also of note: friend Johnny Moore completed the race in 34:41 in the wheelchair division..awesome

if i’m forgetting anyone else from this race…i’m sorry

Results and photos have been posted for the Holiday Hustle..Tiff ran a 19:32…awesome! Cora and I ran a frustrating 23:34 due to the amount of traffic at the beginning…to the right is the photo they took pre-race….click for race results.

Yesterday was a special race for a number of reasons. First, It was Father’s Day! My first Father’s Day since becoming…a Father. Secondly, it was Tiffany’s first race since Cora was born. Finally, it was Cora’s first Triathlon spectating experience. Quite a day indeed!

Let’s start the reporting off in reverse order of importance…Me first…

Being my second race of the year, and my first olympic distance, I felt as prepared as I could be given the lower training levels compared to last year. My wave was well after Tiffany’s as she is doing sprint distance this year, so I get to wait around a while until getting my piece of the melee that is triathlon beach starts. I can’t really say much about this race other than that I felt strong the whole way and didn’t overdo any one part. I was excited, however, that my average bike speed for the 24mi was 22.1 mph! The other exciting thing about the race is the photo above, where I actually look like I am running!

Now on to Tiffany’s comeback race!

She will probably say that she didn’t train nearly enough, which is possible, but given the outcome, I’d say she is doing just fine. With a 20.4 mph bike average and a 22:06 5K she took 1st place in her age group by a whopping 6 minutes and 3 seconds!

As far as Cora’s first spectating experience, I’d say that too was a success. Tiffany’s mom, [read: grandma] came with us and the two of them and friend Mike W. hung out together while watching us. Sadly, we have no photos of this as I forgot to pack a camera…I guess she will just have to start racing to get photos at these things…

Last weekend Tiff and I drove to Lynchburg, VA for my good friend Abe Loper’s Wedding. Much fun was had and the newlyweds are now happily honeymooning in Sunny Las Vegas and in cabins in the woods…Here’s some photos from the event…

All I’ve got so far is the photos to show. My plan is to do a proper race report in the near future…So for now, enjoy some photos from the weekend and race itself.

Wow, even typing it takes a while. I’m not trying to say that I didn’t enjoy my Independence Day weekend, just that it was very full. We kicked it off Friday morning with a 65 mile bike ride during which we met up with a group from the toledo area and rode to Grand Rapids, OH for breakfast before finishing the ride. Then, later that afternoon, we went to Toledo for a wedding…Congrats Jon and Missy…and back to Bowling Green for the reception over at Stone Ridge GC (Speaking of weddings, I wrote a post over at my work blog about weddings…read it if you like here).

On to Saturday where we woke up and ran a short/easy 4 miles (after which I took a long nap…happy day!!!) About noon I started packing for Sunday’s race while also preparing for our second wedding of the weekend. There is a certain trick to packing bikes and wetsuits while dressing for a wedding (the key is the order in which you do things…I know I’m a bit slow sometimes). Our plans were to leave the reception early and get to a friend’s house mid to late evening and spend the rest of the day with them, which we did…

Sunday Morning…5:30 wake-up and 6:00 out the door, we arrived at the park just before 7am. I’ll cut this short because there are a few things I want to hit on before i lose everybody with the length of this post…

1. I successfully completed my first triathlon on my new bike setup (converted to a Time Trial setup) Yay!!!

2. Tiffany won her age group…again…but I think she enjoyed this race a bit more because she was trying to take this one a bit easier and enjoy the race…Must be nice to take it easy and still win…but I’ll never know that.

Anyway, we go from that incredibly busy weekend and now we’re officially on our taper for IRONMAN… I’ve only been tapering for two days now and already I’m starting to feel anxious about it…

So if you happen to be in Lake Placid for the race…congrats and hope you enjoy it…

Tiff and I don’t do much but train & work, so the people we train with are pretty much our only contact outside each other. We have gotten to know another couple through speed workouts (read: pain while running in circles). A while ago Kristin and Joe were involved in very serious accident and the local paper here in town did a feature on them for the saturday paper. I will not try to recount the story as the writers of the newspaper got paid to do it, so here’s a link to the article…CLICK HERE

So we went camping this past weekend to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. We had great weather and lots of fun hiking, swimming, and just plain sitting around the campfire. Here’s a couple of photos from the trip…

Here’s a link to the whole gallery of what I’ve gotten uploaded so far…

Red River Gorge 07

We also did some biking and running, but I’ll do another post for all that fun…

Northwest Ohio is flat. How flat you ask? Well, the run we did yesterday morning (Aug. 30) the elevation change was less than 20 feet. It’s really flat here, which is good for Tempo bike rides or running, but the only hill workouts we can do here are overpasses. We do one overpass that is 1/2mi one-way, and repeat the loop about 6-10 times (boring).

As the subject of this post indicates, we are going to the hills. Camping actually, in Red River Gorge, KY. We have gone the last couple of years and I absolutely love the bike rides we get there. It’s really a training highlight for me.

Here’s the elevation chart for a ride I’m hoping to do this weekend…

Pretty cool if you ask me.

…

Here we go…

Sunday August 19th, Tiffany, Kristen, Rob, Liz and I will be competing in the “Great Buckeye Challenge“.

Previously I have joked with Tiffany about how she somehow manages to “trick” people into competing/training for endurance events. I like to call it “Team TMMDI” which stands for “Team Tiffany Made Me Do It”. We’ve even discussed getting t-shirts for this because the list of distinguished members keeps growing (I see this as a great thing and fun to joke about because she really is good at getting people more active and encouraging them in their training).

Anyway,
Kristen, Rob and Liz are entered in the Sprint distance (0.6mi swim, 12.4mi bike, 3.1mi run) and this will be their first triathlon…ever. It should be a great day (Temp should be around 80 with partly cloudy skies). Kudos to them for going for it in this race.

Tiffany and I will be doing the Half-Distance Tri (1.2mi swim, 56mi bike, and 13.1mi run…wow). This will be my first triathlon of any distance greater than the sprint, so I’m really excited and a little nervous. My training has been pretty good so I have nothing to fear in any of the events. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict a finish time for myself….(drum roll please)…I’m going with 6hrs 5mins. There it is, i’ve said it, so now if I don’t get that time I’ll have to explain/justify why I didn’t. That’s all-right though, this being my first of this distance tri, I have no real benchmark to base any of this on and only arrived at this by figuring out what I think I’ll do in each event. So get ready for the post race report on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Yesterday Owen Beck & Diana Hartz were married. Lots of fun was had, especially for me because they had…you guessed it…A Mariachi Band!!! Love it. I was able to snag some photos of the festivities…Here you are…