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Yesterday we went down to Jaqua’s Flag City Trap Shoot to watch the last few rounds of Grandpa Berlet and Uncle Dirk’s competition. Sorry, no photos of Cora holding or shooting any firearms…maybe next time, but we did get some good photos…and a video of Cora’s fun new sound…

Monday evening marked the first ride of 09 to take place somewhere other than my living room (except the one time over at the bike shop). I have been pretty good about doing my monday ride each week all winter. I’ve missed only a couple weeks due to travelling or holidays. It is time to see if all that hard work has paid off. For my first ride I had about an hour to an hour 1/2 to ride, so I decided to ride the Slippery Elm Trail (26miles round trip)…It was a great ride, weather was perfect, though a bit of a headwind developed on my return trip. Nonetheless, I was happy to just be outside, riding, feeling the wind, passing others out on the trail…Here’s the photos.

Friends Jason, Sarah, and Pippi have returned from England and as part of their reintegration to life in the New World, they stopped by Bowling Green for almost a week to hang out and pack up their things they had stored in another friends barn. Here’s the photos:

One nice thing about training for this year’s Glass City Marathon (Toledo, OH) is that the 18 week training program started the last week of 2008. This is nice because it helps to think of 2009 as a fresh start with a new training cycle. I’m pretty excited as it looks like there will be others training for the same race (or the Half) all together! So far we’ve had 3 people confirm that they’d like to do the training, which brings me to the reason for this particular post…

SPEEDWORK!!!

I know, I know, speedwork is a necessary part of the training that increases overall running speed and endurance, thereby decreasing the risk of bonking mid-race (see columbus marathon 2008 for jeremy), and I didn’t make it any easier on myself by not looking at what the program calls for and making my own workout up (read: went overboard). So the workout we were supposed to do was like 4×800s, what we actually ended up doing…(notice the decreasing pace times as the distance decreases…for the most part)

Interval Workout # 1 (2009)

Luckily, I felt good during the workout so it wasn’t as bad as some other workouts I’ve participated in. Here’s to a new year, new training cycle & hopefully a good racing season…

It’s the 4th of November and I’m still hanging on to the hope of a few more nice days before putting the bike into storage for the winter…Today is 70 degrees and sunny, so I rode my bike to vote this morning then on to work. The weather is perfect and I love being out in the air smelling the smells of fall. I took a pic of my ride home for lunch…In case you’re wondering, yes that’s my bike (Yamaha V-Star Classic) and no I’m not telling you what roads I take to work and back in case you are the fuzz and are looking to make me pay for allegedly photographing myself riding my motorcycle, which may or may not have actually happened…allegedly.

The results are in from yesterday’s Portage Lakes Triathlon, which is the last of a storied racing season for both Tiffany and I..Photos are starting to pop up here from all of the weekend races(Click Here for Photos).

Tiff and I had fairly good races, the weather was very cooperative (even with the bit of drizzle during the bike). Nothing spectacular happened, all the times were just sort of average for this year…Here’s the official results for us.

Jeremy (Swim 1500m: 27:46), (Bike 40K: 1:04:51), (Run 10K: 51:02)

Tiffany (Swim 1500m: 27:33), (Bike 40K: 1:11:46), (Run 10K: 47:27)

The exciting result from the day is that Tiffany is now officially the winner of the Wheelie Fun Triathlon Series for the Female 25-29 Age Group and I came in second place for the same in my age group. Tiff will go away with a Wheelie Fun Championship Jersey. I’m not sure what (if any) is the prize for second place…I’ll accept a hardy handshake with a little attaboy.  Here’s a link to the current standings.

Last night tiff and I went for a ride with Pat P. and my dad. I finally remembered to take my camera along and ended up with what I’m considering my favorite photo of tiffany…I love the overall composition of the image, the blurred road/trees and the smiles on her and Pat’s faces.

Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing people out with their pets, especially if it gets more people outdoors. I do take issue however with those that use the retractable leashes while on a closed bike path or road. Personally, I don’t use these leashes, don’t even own one, and I find it difficult to come up with a good use for them. It seems that this style of leash has no redeeming value. Let me explain…

My most recent example comes courtesy of a lady who was walking her tiny little ankle biter down my little street. When I say this dog was running circles around her, I actually mean running circles around her. Now she was walking just inside the grass of my neighbors yard, just off the road (we have no sidewalks), but her dog was making his circuit in about a 10ft diameter around her, which put him smack in the middle of the road for a few seconds each revolution. I put aside my olympic watching for a moment and followed her progress while still in view from my large picture window. I began to think to myself, hmmm I wonder what she would do if a car came around the corner…and behold a car just happened to be approaching from around the corner (in front of the lady, so she should have seen it). This dog was still running around his circles when the car came near and slowed to a stop and waited for the lady to notice and get her pet away and secure it while he passed by.

This lady is probably nice enough, obviously loves her pet and wants to get a little exercise for herself and the dog, but this leash (i’m using the term loosely) creates the environment for her to potentially get her dog run over and ruin her evening and whichever driver happens to be in the wrong place…

This is not my only example of people not using common sense with these leashes, in fact I think that common sense is the price paid for this leash. I’ve almost ran over a dog myself when I was unable to see the thin little rope that comes out of that thing as I passed a person on a bike path…another ankle biter hiding in the un-mowed grass just off the bike path.

I don’t really mind if others don’t want to have well trained pets, but when it starts to interfere with the safety of others and even your own pet I start to get a bit frustrated. I’m actually amazed that some communities haven’t yet banned these things as it just seems like a recipe for disaster in so many ways. I would like to go ahead and offer my formal apologies to anyone who is offended by this email, but it’s how I feel. Comment below if you like.

You really just have to watch the video…This was surprisingly difficult to keep a straight face while filming…I was mostly successful…Me and one of our summer interns did this video yesterday and posted them just this morning…My video is below…If you want to see the other one you’ll have to check it out on my work blog…Here.

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…