Step Away From the Cake

This is the dashboard of my car. The newest addition is the snowball Jack. This is one of Wyland's whaling walls. I pass it everyday on the way to the freeway. Traffic!!!!! Even in Hawaii we have this blasted traffic...... I hate rush hour..... This is the tunnel I have to drive through to go home. I live opposite Honolulu and it's either go through the mountains or go around them. Through is quicker :) This is inside the tunnel. I was playing with my Palm on the way home. Yes, it's Friday and I'm easily bored.......

It was tough. I did freak over my marathon and I'm not sure why. I've kind of set my mind that it's not going to be great (not near as good as the 1st one) and just move on. I've prepared and it's too close now to do much more so whatever happens happens. Mentally I've already moved on to next year. I've got another 10k before I leave and I'm looking for a New Year's race in the SF Bay Area cause that's where I'll be. Once I get back it's right back into the yearly race calendar. As you may have guessed we don't really have an off season here. ************************************************* A while back I decided to do a 1/2 Ironman in June 2006. I've been rethinking that goal for this year. I'm thinking of focusing on duathlons (we have a couple here) and tris (we have tons of sprints and a couple olympic). The 1/2 Ironman we have here is a qualifier for both Ironman Kona and the new 70.3 championship in Florida.

Thanks La and Bolder, I think maybe I am freaking out a little bit. When I trained for my last marathon by this point I was extremely confident that I could complete it. This time I'm not so sure and with it so close I guess it is getting to me a little bit. Also, I do have some issues with this coach and I probably won't join this group again, though I really like the people... Part of the problem is he doesn't do distances. Our training Sat., which will be our last long run before we taper, is set for 4 hours not a specific distance. That bothers me because I need to run 20 miles and know I've done it. It helps build up my confidence. Last night we did some hills and it was great. We ran hill repeats (by accident) on this hill that's about 1/2 mile long and pretty steep. Due to lack of communication we ended running up and down it 3 times. It was tiring but it was good. We then ran around Enchanted lake for a total run of about 6 miles. I was running wit

I've been feeling very discouraged about my marathon training for a couple of weeks and I was actually very close to not doing the marathon. I THOUGHT my trouble was due to my intestinal problems and ankle injuries and that's what was bringing me down. I was thinking that I really may not be ready for the marathon in 25 days and I was starting to get concerned. I just decided to do some analysis of my running/training over the past year and try and figure out what happened and should I drop out of the marathon. Well, that's when I got pissed. Earlier this year I was running between a 10 and 12 minute mile in all my races (and there were tons this year). Once I started training with this marathon group in September my pace increased to 14/mpm. I tried to put it down to longer races/training runs but a 1/2 marathon I did in June (while I was injured) was faster then my 1/2 2 weeks ago. I let this so called expert coach put me in a slower training group. And now that I

This week is not going so well. I have a habit of grinding my teeth in my sleep. I haven't done it in a really long time, in fact, it's been so long (years) I can't find my mouth guard. Well, this week clearly something has been bothering me because I have been grinding my teeth like crazy. This, of course, causes me to wake up several times a night due to the pain and noise. I then have trouble getting back to sleep as I try to relax my jaw so I don't grind. Needlessly to say this results in pretty crappy sleep and no desire to get out of bed in the morning. I've been doing okay up to today but now the cummulative effect is getting bad. I'm tired and don't feel like doing anything. So this morning, I didn't. I think I'll stop at Long's today and get one of those cheap mouth guards just so I can get some sleep tonight.... Tonight is marathon training. We are supposed to do hills again - ugh!!!! I don't know if I'll be up to it.

Through the gracious help of Bolder in Boulder I now have the weather on my sidebar there. It's very cool. Now you guys can see how cold it gets here in Hawaii ;)

It's hard to see but if you look close you can see a hazy white mist hanging just above the ground. Last night, for the first time since last winter, the temperature dropped below the dew point. This results in really wet grass and that white mist hanging over the grass. While I was walking the dogs there was a slight chill in the air. BRRR!!! Time to break out the winter clothes :) Just a few minutes later I noticed the sunrise. This picture is the best of the bunch but it doesn't do the colors justice. The red was fireball red. Just beautiful.... Well, the reason I'm out taking pictures before the sunrise is because I dragged my butt out of bed and exercised. I have marathon training tonight so I did the elliptical machine and upper body weights. It felt great and inspired me to capture the morning in pictures.....