Provo River 1/2 Marathon

Back in March of this year I publicly declared my goal to run in a 1/2 marathon at the end of the summer. I registered for a race on August 8th and have been training all summer. I had some good stretches of training and some times where I was less faithful.

Every single time I went for a training run I recorded the data on www.buddyrunner.com/jacob and also updated my status on twitter and facebook to keep myself accountable to my online community.

Yesterday was the day of the race and I'm pleased to report that I survived! This is without any question the longest distance I have ever run at 13.1 miles. I am sore everywhere and even a day later my legs still feel like jelly.

We had to meet at the finish line at 4:45am to be shuttled in school buses into Provo canyon up South Fork Road. Being on the first bus up I had to wait in the cold and dark for two hours until the race started at 7am. The whole course was beautiful and peaceful as we would through Provo canyon along the river.

I estimate that there were over 3000 runners and this was a different type of runner than I'm used to seeing in my 5K and even 10K races in the past. These were serious runners. No baggy basketball shorts, a lot of heart monitors, and GPS tracking watches.

My wonderful wife Ami, son Simon, and parents were at the finish line along with my sister Shannon and her family. It was really great to have so much support. They had watermelon, pancakes, and granola bars for the runners at the finish line, but my dad brought me a couple of snickers bars (that or he happen to have a couple on it at the time) and a good thing too because I was weak and famished.

I finished in 1 hour 52 minutes and 33 seconds which is about 25 minutes faster than I had hoped for. This put me in 502nd place overall and 32nd in my age group 25-30.

All around a very satisfying experience!

Springtime is Arriving

We have had an exciting couple of weeks. I'm trying to make it a goal to get out of the house with Simon and Ami as often as possible. Last week we decided to go see Stonehenge. As famous as it is we weren't super impressed, but Simon had a good time climbing on the stones.
We also took an outing to the local pet store on center street. They didn't have any puppies but Simon still loved the birds, pigs, rodents, and very much so the fish. That was a good time.

Last weekend we had a lot going on. We had all of Ami's girl friends here between sessions. I call them Ami's friends but truthfully they are our friends since I knew them all in high school also. Here is a picture of Ami and the gals:

The next day Kody came by between sessions to hang out a little while before driving back home to Laramie! Great times were had!

I'm grateful to good friends of both the past and present. Spring is a busy season for me but an enjoyable one also. Simon loves being outside and we do too. I'm starting to get more serious about training for my half marathon later this summer. I'm so pumped to both get ready for it and to actually do it. Its going to be awesome!

The First Day of Spring

As you will see by the pictures below Simon & I enjoyed the first day of spring. We celebrated by making our back yard appear as it did in the fall. I used the leaf blower to blow all the leaves off of the back fence area into the grass where we will in turn mow them up. (Way to lazy to rake) We meant to do this in the fall by just were too lazy then also.

The first day of spring was the end to the cold I've been fighting for about 10 days. It was unfortunately the first day of Ami getting the cold that I've kicked. Simon & I were able to hang out all day while Ami rested. I'm quite glad to be healthy again since I haven't been able to get out and run for over a week.

I am still on the look out for people who want to run a 1/2 marathon with me in August. Jeff, my brother is still on board and that makes me happy :)

As for Simon, he is quite energetic these days and wants nothing more than to be outside all day long. He either wants to be walking around the back yard or in his stroller on walks around the neighborhood. His vocab is expanding very slowly. I think a complete list would include: mooo, woof woof, dog, duck, ball, car, dada, mama, and on a single occasion the words Jesus and candy.

As for work things continue to go well. Agel is flourishing & the spring means an increase in my JPTees and JP Squared business. Recently I was contracted by a local reseller of the Magic Jack product to do some self-improvement newsletters and webinars and that has been fun.

Hope you like the pictures of our "fall-looking" spring backyard.