Happy Halloween!

Those that know me know that I enjoy carving up a fancy pumpkin.  As Halloween weekend is upon us, I thought I'd slap up a quick post with some of my work from the past few years.  Enjoy!

It's great to be a Mountaineer

The Cottonwood Ale label.  This netted me 2nd place at their brewery (and a sixer of pumpkin ale)

Hide ya kids, hide ya wives

And this year's edition...The Swans-o-Lantern

Happy Halloween, everybody!

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Matt Gfeller Doughnut Run

If you've followed this blog, you'll know that I enjoy an occasional physical challenge.  Whether it be a true endurance event or something a little more fun, I like to set my mind to something, train, and do it.  In the "adventure race" vein, on November 12th, I'll be running in my third Matt Gfeller Memorial Doughnut Run.

This event is a fundraiser for the Matt Gfeller Foundation, which was created after Matt lost his life after a helmet to helmet collision during a high school football game.  The foundation is doing great things to raise awareness of, and help prevent sports head injuries, and the doughnut run is a great way to remember him and to raise money for the foundation.

The idea of the race is simple - it's a 5K with a food break in the middle.  If you sign up as a challenger (and why wouldn't you?), halfway through the race you pick up a half dozen Krispy Kremes and a cup of water and polish them off before you head back for the finish.  Casual runners can just eat one doughnut, but where's the fun in that?

I repeat, run to these:

Chow down:

Then finish the race:

Easy, right?  Well....As delightful as a glazed doughnut may be, after running a decent pace, getting 6 down the hatch isn't necessarily so easy.  The first year I did this race, I employed the doughnut sandwich technique.  That is, smashing all 6 into a compact little package:

I do not recommend this technique.  I struggled through and had to quit about 3/4 of the way through this overly sweet treat.  I did, however, finish the race in 40:36, but I did NOT want to indulge in any of the post-race doughnuts:

Last year, I did a little bit of running training and employed a one-at-a-time-but-fast-as-you-can doughnut technique, and while I saw others puke, I felt quite good and shaved 8 minutes off my time to finish in 32:35.  Not super quick, but improvement nonetheless.  This year, I haven't done any training (yet) but am officially signed up to give it another go.  So c'mon and join me in one of the few athletic events in which you consume more calories than you burn (you know you wanna!).  Sign up right -> here <-

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Ironman

We take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to give some mad respect to my pals, Nathan and Mike.  We go way back to middle/high school and Nathan and I were roommates all through college (still not quite sure how we survived that).  Post college, we all ended up back in town and have stayed close.  We have common bonds in many things, one of which is exercise (remember this?).  There's just something nice about getting outside with friends and riding/running/training for something.  These guys are pretty much family, which is why I can comfortably say that they are certifiably insane.

Exhibit A, a dramatization:

(this is hilarious for anyone that knows anything about endurance training regimens)

Yes, in less than two weeks, these guys will be heading down to Wilmington to take a shot at the Beach To Battleship Ironman Triathlon.  As much as Team Timmons would like to be there to support them firsthand, I'm not sure that Avett will be ready for a weekend away, so I have to give a preemptive blog post to show my solidarity in case we're not there in person.  And call them out for being nuts.

Now I'm not gonna lie, I enjoy an occasional endurance challenge and the idea and feeling of accomplishment of completing an Ironman seems pretty awesome to me, but I just absolutely can't wrap my head, heart or lungs around what it would take to do it.  That, and I tend to be more of an underwater, frogleg swimmer, and my foray into the freestyle stroke was not very successful.  But this post isn't about me...

For those not in the know, the Ironman is pretty much the pinnacle of triathlons.  By pinnacle, I mean distances farther than anyone should ever, ever complete.  We're talking about a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, followed by a 26.2 mile marathon, in case you missed the video clip above.  If you're an elite athlete, you might finish this undertaking in 8 hours (for reference, it took me almost 5 hours to run the Big Sur Marathon alone), but the absolute time cut-off is 17 hours (I can't even imagine doing something I love for 17 hours IN A ROW).

Mike and Nathan decided on this event, did some research and have been training for what seems like eternity to prepare.  The training load has progressively increased and just from the bits and pieces I've heard, sounds pretty intense.  Training "just" for a marathon was plenty for me, but this is a whole other level of nuts.  While I've enjoyed weekend mornings at home sipping my coffee, these guys have been hitting the pool and/or trails and/or pavement for long training days.  And while their dedication is impressive, let's not forget the unsung heroes here: their significant others.  Sara and Stephanie keep normal life going and support the guys' efforts in crazytown.  I'm pretty sure everybody will be glad when they cross the finish line.

I couldn't be prouder of these fellas.  Just being ready to start one of these events is an accomplishment, and I know they'll do great.  And after you do great, you'll come back from the dark side, right?  I miss my riding buddies...

UPDATE:
This friggin' did it!  Congrats fellas, I'm in awe of your massive accomplishment!

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Say hello to my little friend

I wonder how many inadvertent hits my blog just got from that title.  Sorry, misdirected fans of Tony Montana...

This is going to be another heavy on media, light on content post, as I'm sure most of you really just want to see pictures of Avett.  Our friends at Urban Bloom Photography came over to the house last weekend to catch some of the little man's early moments, and again caught Ruth Ann and me in some of the shots and made us look GOOD.  Good being a relative term, as Ruth Ann always looks good, and good for me is not much more than "not goofy".  I digress.  Here are some highlights from our session and you can see more here.  Enjoy!

One of the very few sleepy shots

Party of Five

Yes, we stare at him a lot

Little Bit

Proud Mama

Love them, lots

BIG Crib

Hanging On

I may or may not have been sleeping while standing in this picture

Hi

Lucky

Proud Papa

Staring again

Stop licking me, Wrigley

There you have it.  The first two weeks with Avett have flown by and we are so glad to have these early memories captured.  Here's to many, many more...

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Strange New Parent Moment

So as any new parent will tell you, the first couple weeks are rough.  You have this tiny thing that you're responsible for taking care of, and all you really want to do is stare at him in amazement.  And sleep some.  Here is a human person that you need to help grow, and by the way you need to figure this thing out with no instructions and make sound decisions with minimal rest.

Sleep is a hot commodity for us right now.  It comes in short bursts, is typically interrupted by a dog barking, Avett crying, or an alarm beeping telling us it's time for the little man to eat.  I'm a guy that likes requires some beauty rest.  If I could go to bed at 9:30 every night, I'd do it in a heartbeat.  Needless to say that's not a luxury I can afford these days, and as a result of this sleep deprivation and new Dad duty, my body is doing strange things.

Case in point, a couple nights ago one of those dinner bell alarms went off in the middle of the night.  When I set an important alarm, it has to be set somewhere out of my immediate reach, so this one was across the room.  I got up and stumbled over to the alarm to turn it off, then started to walk back across the room to start the feeding process.  It was halfway to the bed when something dawned on me.

This is not an infant.

You're reading this right.  I got up, found the alarm, turned it off, turned on a light, and turned around only to hear RA ask "what are you doing?".  What I was doing was cradling the pillow I'd been snuggling in the bed.  Obviously.  Somewhere in my mind and maybe muscle memory, I was so used to holding the kiddo that my tired brain thought that there was a chance that my faithful drool catcher was a baby and it needed to be handled with care.  Wowser.  And if we're being absolutely honest (and we always are here on Team Timmons), I did this again after a nap on the couch, except this time I was a little quicker to realize that my pillow wasn't a living thing and didn't carry it around the room (perhaps I was a little more rested).

To any of you other parents out there, do you have a strange newbie story that can top this?

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