Canyons and Stuff

You know what the problem is with getting new hobbies and interests? There is a crap-load of new stuff that you have to get if you really want to get involved. There is always the option of borrowing stuff, but then you are at the convenience of other people and not yourself. And it's not even necessarily that it has to be the high quality equipment, just the basics. For example, I love golfing, and I've been going almost every week, although it doesn't really show it in my golf scores. Getting into golf has been costly - clubs, balls, clubs, tees, not to mention all the fees for actually playing.

Want another one? Amy is a huge fan of camping and canyoneering. We've attempted three other times to do some canyons, and only this past weekend were we able to finally get to it. I'll do another post and talk about the experience once she gets me some of the pictures, but I have to say that it was a really fun experience. In the meantime, let me relate a little side story to the trip.

On the last day, we ended up going to Medieval Chamber in Moab. It has two pretty sweet rappels of about 100 feet and 100+ feet. When we got to the first rappel, two other groups proceeded us, so we had a wait time of over two hours for the first one. By the time we got to the second one, one of the groups went ahead of the other, and we were left watching as the other group was finishing up.

When I got to the scene, one of our canyoneers was helping a little boy of about 12 go down this over 100 foot descent. The kid was paralyzed with fear, only able to take a few steps down before freezing completely as his only movement came from the sobs and whimpers his body convulsed with the prospect of having to climb down the rock face. Amy was so sympathetic to him, but I could only laugh at his plight. With camera in hand, his father looked on while shouting words of encouragement. We all were rooting for him, although I couldn't help but laugh at his terror. As the member of our party coached and comforted him enough to get him down the rappel, the father mentioned to us as he chuckled, "poor kid, I owe him a big ass ice cream cone."

On the right is a bridge, and the left is the rock face that we, and that little boy, all rappelled down. What's really cool is the last part where you're descending about freely only hanging on to your rope for about 30-40 feet.

I laughed even more at that thought. I know that I've been that kid many times growing up. My parents enrolled me in a number of different things to try and get me good experiences and to help my brother and I assimilate into the culture around us. I have cried, whined, and whimpered many times about not wanting to do plenty of things, but I feel like in the end that's what has helped me have enough confidence to try and embrace new experiences. One of my friends expressed about his own kids that he never wants them to be able to say no. I don't really know anything about parenting, but I feel like that's one philosophy that I would also like to have.

When I am growing through my own life's trials, and I'm paralyzed with fear and sobbing to myself, I wonder if Heavenly Father looks down and says to himself, "oh man, I owe that kid a big ass ice cream cone," just like that other father did. I'll bet that he sees our aches and pains, and looks forward to the time when we'll emerge from those troubles and sorrows, ready and eager to give us the prize on the other side.

I suck at golf. I spend as much time enjoying the game as I am frustrated and annoyed with it when I'm out playing, but I still want to figure it out. I've never really been a camper, but I'm acquiring a taste for it and all of the adventure of the outdoors. And I suck at working on my thesis, but I want to blow through this thing.

I feel like there are a lot of things that I'm pretty good at, and then there are a whole lot of other things that I'm not any good at, but I like to think that I have a pretty open mind to at least trying them out. It takes a lot of time and practice of just trying new things, whatever they may be, to get to the point where it becomes comfortable trying something previously unexplored. Pretty rarely, I feel, is it the case where new experiences are not beneficial. I just hope that I can always stay open and eager to try them as they come along.

Shark In The Water

Going down to Moab for the second weekend in a row. Going to attempt to go canyoneering again. This will be the third such attempt. I'm kind of thinking that it's not something that you actually do, but just talk about doing and get disappointed every time because there is some extraneous variable that always prevents you from actually doing it. That's my experience with canyoneering thus far.

In the meantime, enjoy this song, and have a great weekend:

I Always Seem to Forget

When I get back into marathon training, there are always a few things that I forget:

• I like getting the calcium fortified orange juice to drink before my long runs. Calcium is a key electrolyte, and I'd rather do without having my digestive system try and process milk before and during my run (although the digestive system does shut down during vigorous exercise).
• It takes me a few hours after a run of 12+ miles to feel like I can function again.
  
• Running on shoes that are on their last legs is not a good idea on long runs. My feet start to get increasingly sensitive the longer the runs, and the effects of the pounding increases disproportionately in a negative way.
• It's always, always, always better to run in the mornings than any other time of day, for me at least. I'd rather run in the morning and little sleep or with a poor night's rest instead of with plenty of rest in the middle or at the end of the day. Unless it's really late at night. I don't mind that at all, but it keeps my wired for a few hours if I do that. Running in heat is equivalent to running at higher elevation and can slow you by as much as 10-20%. Beat the heat by avoiding it altogether.
  
• I love the feeling of accomplishment following a long run, and I guess that's enough to offset how much I hate doing them in the first place.
• I sleepy terribly the night before a long run. Always.
• And the biggest part is probably just all of the preparation that goes into doing my long runs. It starts the night before with what things I'm eating, and what time I try to get to bed even though it never really matters because it's either going to take me a long time to get to sleep anyway, or I'm just not going to sleep well as it is. I set my running clothes aside before going to bed. I map out my long run on Walk Jog Run. I wake up and fight all of my thoughts about how much I don't want to run, or I think maybe I can shorten it and make it up another day, until I get out running and go ahead and go through with it. I drink a glass of OJ, take some vitamins, and eat a banana, while I go and plant my Gatorades along my route. I come back and rub out my legs and stretch, and then I'm off. It's very involved, but I think my whole routine gets me into the frame of mind to go ahead and get on with it.
  

So what is it that I never forget about marathon training?

...that I hate marathon training.

The nice part about this time around is that today I ran 13 and felt fine. I am about 4 weeks ahead of my schedule from last year, and this year the race is only one week earlier so I hope the payoff is that I'll have more time to devote to building endurance over the last 4-5 miles of the race. I did some hill repeats this past week and me being the nerd that I am, wrote down all my times and made a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress. I hope that I can be a weekly thing. Doing those made me much more sore than anything else I've done up until this point. We'll see, I guess.

Here's an ad campaign from New Balance that captures well the running dynamic.

Well Would You Look at That

The US won in the 91st minute of today's game against Algeria, staving off elimination, winning their group, and allowing them to advance to the Round of 16.

At the 89 minute when Beasely got that yellow card and Algeria made another substitution I was beginning to resign myself to another American disappointment, but then Tim Howard (the goalkeeper) started a fastbreak, and all of a sudden it looks like we can get a very favorable draw in the next round.

I'm not usually a TV yeller, but I totally was today. I couldn't believe it. Bless those players, they played their little hearts out.

It's been an amazing sports week. There really is nothing like seeing your team down, on the brink of defeat, only to comeback and snatch victory from the gaping jaws of defeat. There are going to be a lot of good games coming up in the Round of 16. Here's to the games coming up this weekend!

***UPDATE***

And now for some video of the goal...


USA 1-0 Algeria

Simão | MySpace Video

World Cup Fever

I've come down with a case of it. I watched a couple games last week and didn't feel like I was that invested, but it's finally come around and now I can't get enough of it. I wake up every morning wide awake just before 8am and I'm ready to watch the World Cup. It's my first thought every morning now - who won the early morning game? Who's playing next? Which superstars/superteams are playing today? and on and on...


I've been impressed with a few things:

• David Villa of Spain is a stud. I think he kind of disappeared in the Switzerland game, but that guy was eating up every guy on his side of the field yesterday. His first goal yesterday was my favorite of the cup. It was pretty unreal, and an amazing individual effort.
• Landon Donovan. The guy kind of stunk at the last World Cup, and I was really disappointed with him when he couldn't hang in the Bundesliga, but his transfer to Everton this past year really gave him a lot of confidence. The guy is about as good as anyone is right now with set kicks that are of the crossing variety, and he works and does great things for the US. The guy is finally playing at an elite level. His goal against Slovenia was pretty awesome too.
• Portugal. I thought they stunk in the game against the Ivory Coast, and I didn't even see them destroy North Korea, but anytime a team wins 7-0, it's a big deal. Very impressive.
• I always hate Mexico, but Dos Santos is pretty fun to watch. The guy has endless energy and I feel like if he had some more talent to work with, he would be really top notch.
• Is Fernando Torres the most handsome soccer player in the world? He blew some good chances yesterday, but he also had some pretty sweet moments in developing plays. It'll be nice to see him match-ready again.
• I know I'm a little biased because I served there, but isn't Chile kind of fun to watch? Those guys run non-stop and are down on the ground on like every play. They play really hard, and aren't falling all over themselves like so many of these guys in the cup. I hope they advance.
• Brazil looks pretty good to me, but I can't really tell much about them until they play an elite team. That Portugal game is going to be quite the fixture. I don't know much about Fabiano, but he looks pretty decent. The hard part about Brazil is that they make everything look so easy. I thought they played an okay game against North Korea, but then they just kinda packed it in at the 80th minute. They did a similar thing in the Ivory Coast game, but they really handled those guys.
• England looks terrible. They almost have an all-star team, but those guys look so tight to me. Rooney is pressing way too hard, and there is no cohesiveness. There's no way they should have tied Algeria, and they should've had a much easier time with the US than they did. I hope they get it together just because I like most of the guys that they have. Heske looks awful up top. He's a huge black guy that should be a much stronger presence than he has been. They're all looking pretty bad.
  
• I haven't seen any of Argentina's games, so I'm excited for their match against Greece, but those guys seem very formidable. Messi is amazing.

I'm really excited for the pool play to be done with and start having more match-ups between these big time teams. Time for the good stuff to start!

Mike and Lauren, Together at Last!

How easily Mike and Lauren came together makes me laugh. Once they started dating, it became pretty clear within a several months that these two were going to get married. At his younger sister’s wedding I joked with his dad that Mike makes getting married look so easy – so Mike has shown me that all it really takes is getting up to BYU, pick out the first girl that you think is cute, go out with her, kiss her about a week or two later, become bf/gf right away, and then get engaged. Why didn’t I ever think about that?

What’s really cool is seeing the ways in which Lauren has helped make to stretch himself and become more than he would otherwise be on his own. They got married this last weekend up here in Salt Lake City, and had their wedding reception that same night at American Fork Amphitheater. The really nice part about all of this was how perfectly it worked out for me. I went on Amy’s family vacation a little bit earlier in the week, was able to still take care of some of my responsibilities midweek, and then all of the Reids came out this way to celebrate Mike and Lauren’s nuptials.I was really excited to have everyone that I really love and care about all in the same place for this weekend, but I was a little disappointed that Greg wouldn’t be able to come out and celebrate with us. I had called him on my way back to Provo from Zion and he gave me his story about how he wished he could make it, but between finals and another trip he has planned next week, it just wasn’t going to work out blah blah blah. Come to find that at the rehearsal dinner the night before the big day Greg walks in with his flowing locks and surprises us all. I should have known that was coming because Greg does love surprises. Freshman year when he went back home during winter semester to save money, he made a trip back to Provo to hang out, and he came a day early and it surprised the heck out of me. I still remember him walking into our prison cell dorm room and my jaw dropping, not being able to say anything from the shock of seeing him there. Anyway…

This wedding was more in line with traditional weddings that we don’t normally see in the church. Far from being the kind that holds a reception in the cultural hall of the local church and saving on every expense possible, Lauren’s family was the kind that could afford the sky’s the limit sticker price for her wedding, and she was the kind of bride that was going to maximize on that opportunity. Unfortunately for her, she had to wake up to cloudy skies and rainy weather for the one day in her life when she was dreaming of crystal blue skies and warm temperatures.

The sealing was at the Salt Lake Temple. I swear, I always get so much out of the brief talk that every sealer gives before performing the actual ceremony. This temple sealer also happened to be the mission president that preceded Mike’s mission president in Texas when he was a missionary, so he had a loose tie to the couple. My favorite part about the sealing was sitting on Mike’s side, facing Lauren across the altar, and seeing her lips quiver throughout the entire ceremony because she was trying to smile, but trying to hold back her tears. It was so endearing to see and made me feel a little choked up as well.

There were only a few pictures outside of the temple with the photographer, which worked out just fine because it also happened to be the wettest part of the day. As always, events took a little bit longer than expected, so everyone was cutting it close getting back to American Fork in their attire to do photos and be ready for the dinner that was before the general reception. The dinner itself was really nice, but my favorite part of the food provided was the dessert bar and the ice cream going around with the servers.


The nice part about the day’s events was that sun finally peeked from behind the clouds for the reception and when everyone had to be outside. A tent was setup that was lavishly decorated, with dozens and dozens of different kinds of flowers.

My favorite part of the day? By far it was the dancing. They had a dance floor on one side of the tent, and they had a DJ playing for a portion of the evening, but even better was the band that they had hired to play for the wedding. I couldn’t believe how good they were, and they had a male and female singer so that they could do a variety of different songs, not to mention that no song was outside of their range. My favorite was probably when the guy did a Bee Gees medley that I thought was amazing. You want to know another thing? I love dancing. I was a little bummed that all my buddies that I like dancing with only stayed out there for a few songs, but luckily for me Amy also loves to dance so we were on the dance floor for most of the evening. That’s the one thing that I want to make sure of at my wedding – that there is good music. I feel like so many receptions just become about visiting with people and just putting your time in, and getting in and out as quickly as possible that it becomes much less about the fun and celebrating that should be had. This was by far my favorite reception that I’ve ever been to. In fact, all of my favorite receptions had some element of dance involved. Lauren’s brother and sister-in-law and some other friends put together a choreographed dance number to top off the night for the happy couple. But you know who loves dancing even more than I do? Ryan and Tyler. Those kids had endless energy and moves on the dance floor. I thought it was so funny that they didn’t even care who they were around. They were just out there to let their little hearts scream out in their hopping and break dance moves. It was so funny.

In the last few months, there have definitely been times when I’ve felt a little put out by how much time Mike (and obviously Lauren) had to put towards wedding preparation, but in the end everything really paid off. Everything looked so beautiful, I think there were elements for everyone to enjoy that attended, and the importance of the sealing was not lost amidst all of the effort that went into preparing for the wedding day. Amy made a good point when we were talking about some of the events surrounding the wedding, that it’s important to remember that the day is more about a marriage than it is a wedding, and I’m so glad that it looks like both of those things will work out just fine for those two kids.

World Cup 2010

Are y'all ready for this? It is 4 years in the making, and a month long celebration of the world's most beautiful sport. It starts tomorrow. Want a preview? Visit Kent's blog here. For a complete schedule, go here. Want to fill out a World Cup bracket? Try this one here. I don't know of any good ones out there, so point me to 'em if you know 'em.

I have a couple of allegiances when it comes to the World Cup - USA and Brazil. I guess it's nice that Chile qualified, but I don't really expect them to do anything special. Team USA has a good draw this year with England (not the good part), Slovenia (good part), and Algeria (also good). Brazil has Ivory Coast, Korea, and Portugal, which would have been really tough, but the Ivory Coast lost their best player to a broken arm last week.

Being that the tournament will be played in South Africa, games will be on early with starting times at 5am, 7am, and 12pm. I kind of like that. US opens up against England this Saturday at 11:30pm, which would have been great, but some idiot decided that he was going to get married right in the middle of that.

It's always so fun to watch everything as it unfolds, all the drama surrounding the matches, the upsets, and the rising stars and underdog teams overperforming. It's really awesome.

And if you're still having a hard time getting excited, try watching this Nike commercial:

Waiting for "Superman"

On Monday nights I usually have a crew of people that I'll watch some TV with, and normally the show is 24. A few months ago we got into this pretty heated discussion that started with the health care debate that then went into education. One of the girls argued vehemently for public education as it currently stands, that there needs to be some way to be able to reach all of the less privileged kids and families that might not have the means for private education. I had a hard time engaging in the argument with her because she knew absolutely nothing about charter schools and the immense, obvious, and proven benefits that they provide as opposed to public education.

One of the best examples of this is the Harlem Children's Zone. It's unreal what they're doing, and the impact that it's having on people over there. I'll let this segment from 60 Minutes explain more (this is the first part):


The man who started this program, Geoffrey Canada, was also featured on This American Life. The website for the program is here.

Anyway, what's really cool is this documentary that's coming out that will be tackling this topic. Check it out:


The movie looks like it is going to be a very high quality film. Go here to see the website for the film. Something really cool that some people associated with the film are doing is a pledge system, where once they reach 50,000 pledges from people to see the movie, the foundation will donate 250,000 new books to struggling schools across the country.

LDS Scripture Citation Index

Have you all had a chance to use this yet? This is something developed by some of the people here at BYU. The LDS Scripture Citation Index allows you to reference any scripture, or groups of scriptures, and see any General Conference talk from 1942 to the present, and from the Journal of Discourses that references those verses. It's amazing. It's totally made some of most recent studies so much better. You can find it by clicking here.

Here I Come, St. George

So this week kicks off the official start of my 18-week training program leading up to St. George. You know what? I was feeling nervous about all of it until last week. I had been kind of battling a cold for the previous week or so, and I hadn't run much at all. I finally started to get over it last weekend, so I decided that last week I would get a full week in of good running. I ran 5, 5, 6, and then 8 miles Saturday which I hoped would clue me in as to whether I'd be ready for the 10-miler I have this upcoming Saturday. I wasn't sure that my previous base fitness level would carry me through all of that running, but it totally did. The 8-mile run I did went from my place up and around the temple. It was pretty killer, but I had no problems during the entire run and I managed to run it in decent time to boot.

That's the thing about anything. The mountain is always its tallest when you're standing at the foot of it and you haven't started climbing it yet, but once you start making your way up there, it turns out that the apprehension you used to have about scaling it starts to vanish. Running is that way too. You can get so caught up in the miles, and the time and all the preparation for it that it seems almost impossible to ever do, but if you can just convince yourself to get out the door and put one foot in front of the other enough times, pretty soon you'll realize that you'll be ready for, and able to finish the full 26.2.

The program I'll be using can be found by clicking here. It's just straight running, no interval training or anything crazy like that. But it does bump up the runs from the 4-day weeks that I had used previously, to 5-days a week, and it covers 625 miles of running before the marathon, which is about 200 more than I have done previously. Those things give me pause, just a little bit, but you know what? I realized also while running on Saturday that it's good to push myself, and not cut corners, it is also okay to take days off and maybe run a little bit less depending on how my body is feeling. Sometimes I forget that these training regimens are not set in stone. I can adjust them according to what fits my needs. I'm also hoping to start swimming. It won't be more than once a week, but I need to get some use out of my 24 Hour gym pass (which only costs me $49 a year, woo!), and swimming is the best cross training that you can do.

I kind of forgot until last Saturday how much I love running. I love how all the aches and pains go away after the first 20-30 minutes and then I finally settle into my groove. I love all the self-talk that I have to go through while I'm working up the stones to finish the full run, take on every hill, and make sure that I'm giving myself every opportunity to maximize on my fitness. I love the weight loss and transformation that my body goes through as I get into marathon shape. In the last couple of weeks I have dropped several pounds, and I am already getting leaner after my 25 miles from last week. I love the post-run high.

You know what's crazy about St. George? You get in based on a lottery system, but I know four separate people who registered independently and they are all running it too. The lottery is supposed to make it limiting, but everyone I know that tried registering have all gotten in. I'm really excited for this one. It'll be nice to do a well-run (pun intended) marathon that's dedicated only to the marathon, with a good amount of participation from other runners, as well as the community at large.

Anyway, so like last year, but not the year before, I'll probably have some running posts now and then, but not on a weekly basis. It's funny how much that time to myself spurs my thinking. I'm excited for round of marathon training. Up until last week happened, I wasn't really looking forward to it, but now I am. So here I come, St. George.

This song has no relevance to the post. I heard it yesterday for the first time in awhile and remembered that my old roommate used to listen to this song every night when he came home from work. I miss that guy.