Going to Pop Pop & Grammies

Sam is super duper excited to be going to see his Pop Pop and Grammie Re tomorrow. As soon as we got home from school today he rushed upstairs and packed a pair of shorts, a shirt, a pair of underwear and doggie in his backpack and came downstairs. It takes a lot to explain "time" to a 3 year old. All night he ran around saying "Pop Pop"! At bedtime he giggled for minutes when he and Cheri were talking about the trip. I am sure he will get up at 5ish tomorrow, fun fun.

Well, the race is finally here. There is a mix of excitement, anxiety, worry, joy and fear in my head. I am glad to be getting to Louisville on Wednesday to really psych myself out, I mean up for the race. Yes, I do have goals, none that will be published here. This race has been a long time coming and everyone has sacrificed something for me to be able to run it. It means a lot. Here's to 10 hours on the road with boy wonder tomorrow!

Olympic Fever!

Wooo Hooo, how bout them swimmers! If you have not seen the 4x100 mens relay yet, go here and get ready to be moved. Stop reading now if you don't want me to spoil it.....

100 meters in 46 seconds! This is what the anchor of the US team swam his 100 meters of the race in. Just to give you some reference, I can swim that same distance in 1 minute and 40 seconds. They could cut to commercial and come back to see me finish. 46 seconds is faster than anyone has ever gone at that distance, and he beat the current world record holder in the 100. The best part of this video is at the end when the US swimmers are on the deck when their anchor hits the wall. There is a 2 second delay before they find out they win the gold and you can feel the anticipation. Amazing.

Sam loves the olympics. We discovered this on Saturday when I got him to watch volleyball with me. He loves volleyball! He does not even have a preference between indoor and sand. He also watches soccer, swimming, and gymnastics. The best part is you can go to NBC and watch any olympic sport you want to. He probably watched 2 hours of olympics today. Oh, he was home sick, nothing major just a little fever. I also took down the "happy birthday" video because we are submitting it to Americas Funniest Videos, and they don't want me to post it anywhere.

Go USA!

Mt. Mama and ugly shirts

Saturday, I went out to a little town in western VA called Monterey for a bike ride called Mountain Mama. It was just another prep for IM Louisville.


I camped out the night before in the pouring rain and they delayed the start of the ride an hour to let the rain clear up. It finally did and we rolled out in a slight rain that cleared right up. Riding in the mountains is cool because you get to see all of the scenery from the top of the mountains.

One of the cool things about doing races is T-shirts. I love T-shirts as Cheri will attest. Normally the race shirt is a cool design on a regular cotton shirt or technical shirt. I like these shirts because they are fairly unique and they remind me of the race. The shirt for Mountain Mama takes the cake. This is one ugly shirt. I will still wear it though.

Ballgame!

Last Thursday, I took the afternoon off, picked Sammy up from school just before lunch, and we headed over to Harbor Park to watch the Tides play some ball. He was very excited to go to the ballgame. They have a few day games every season and there are always kids and families there. We had seats just 6 rows off the field, and it was screamin hot. I think the temp that day was 96 or so. We grabbed a couple dogs, some water and sat down to watch the game. The seats were hot! I knew that our time in this location would be limited, and it turns out we lasted 3 innings. The highlights of the game included catching a foul ball, yelling at the ump for making a bad call (Sam loved this part), and seeing Rip Tide.

Sam is terrified of Rip Tide, and at the same time, very interested. As soon as Rip came out of the dugout, Sam was keenly aware of his location at all times. Sam also had all the people around us rolling as he tried to throw back the foul ball two times.

We moved up to a shaded area for another 3 innings and then called it quits to take naps in the cold A/C. It was a good day.