Lilith Fair - Chicago

Some pictures of Lilith Fair - Chicago - July 17, 2010 at Tinley Park.

The lineup was:
Courtyard Hounds - (Dixie Chicks minus Natalie Maines - awesome duo!! Get their cd)
Heart - they still sound and look (from 1000 feet away) amazing
Mary J. Blige - stole the show, I am now a new fan, she can belt it out!!!
Sarah McLachlan - outstanding as always, just bummed she only sang for an hour.

My Journey to 13.1

Well, I did it. Well, not just yet, but I took the first step to run and complete a half marathon on Oct 17, 2010!!! I signed up for the Grand Rapids Half Marathon. In my head I had the idea I would "train" for this and sign up if I felt good about it. I have been sort of following a training plan by Hal Higdon...a 12 week plan to a half marathon for beginners. A Half Marathon is 13.1 miles!!! 13.1 miles!! Last week I got an email from Gazelle Sports saying if I signed up at their store I would save $10. You know me, I like to save money and also felt this was a sign, so this past Saturday I drove there and signed up! Now I am committed. To be honest, I have days where I feel great and I am committed, on other days I am like, what did my evil twin do to me? She signed me up for 13.1 miles? What the hell? Its a vicious fight in my head!

See, a couple years ago I had tried to train for this with a friend, didn't sign up thinking I might not like it. I believe I got up to mile 8 or 9, and believe me, that was quite a feat, and I think I was like, "F THIS!!! What I am doing?" Well, these past couple years have been quite different. I feel like I am mentally stronger and have more determination than ever. In the past year or so, I have completed 5 triathlons, a 10K, and countless 5ks. I feel like I am ready to conquer something bigger, and see if I can do it? Hmmm....is this my evil twin talking again?

Well, this past Sunday I had to run 5 miles for my long run, the long runs are always on the weekends, and gradually build up to 10 miles (I don't even run 13 until the marathon?? Weird.) Then during the week, I run three other shorter distance runs.

I am writing this blog for #1, keep myself motivated and to give me a track record of my journey to the 13.1. Sure I will post other things besides running, but this will help me stay motivated and give me a sense of accomplishment when I can come back here in a few weeks and say how I ran 8 miles!! Woo hoo!

Diamonds are a girls best friend.

Well, I am talking about a softball diamond for me. Although my softball season this year, I have really cut down. Remember when I was playing 4 nights a week? Well last year I cut it down to 3 nights a week, and now this year I play 2 nights a week. And its perfect. Monday is co-ed league that Keith plays on too (and beer drinking. Currently we are named 3 STRIKES YOUR OUT but we are looking fora new team name. Tuesday is my Women's league, HOT STIX. Both teams we ended up in third place. My women's team actually was in a 3 way tie for first, but then they took the games that we went head to head with and ended up working out for 3rd place. Bummer. I wanted a champion shirt!! :) Playoffs start tonight for women's league, and we are going all the way!!!! Then second session of summer starts and goes through mid September. Summer is flying!

4th of July weekend

We had a great 4th of July weekend. This year we actually didn't go anywhere, stayed i GR and it was nice. Saturday I had my second triathlon of the year at Bostwick Lake and did well. My best time overall - 1 hour 26 minutes. The event was .4 mile swim, 14 mile bike and 3 mile run.












We bought one of those above ground pools from Walmart and filled it up a couple days prior and thank god! It was a hot one, upper 80s to 93 this weekend. I don't consider this a real pool having grown up with one, but I am so glad we have it. I laid on the pool raft for about 4 hours, lol! Relaxing! Keith took me out for dinner for my birthday, we ate at Tres Lobos, a mexican restaurant down the road, then had some Maggie Moos! I crashed about 9pm thought that night since I did my tri and hadn't had a nap.












Sunday we had a small cookout, not too many people in town, but cooked out, played baggo, cards, pool volleyball....yes we found a small volleyball net for $10...cheesy, but fun! Celebrated my birthday, sported a mohawk and oh, catch phrase!!! Later that night we watched fireworks from our backyard from the neighbors who put on a good show...thank you neighbors for spending probably over $500 on illegal fireworks! Later that evening we did some shots and sang kaaroke in the basement on the big screen.












Monday we did 9 holes of golf at Indian Trails. I shot a 56, Keith shot a 57. Hole 1 killed me with an 11! And Keith lost 4 balls today. Lol! That is least favorite part of golf, finding balls!

Well, time to make some dinner, leftover ribs?

HDR Photo - Downtown Grand Rapids

I decided to take a bike ride and go downtown Grand Rapids and take some photos last night along Riverside park. I shot in raw format with Auto Bracketing with my Canon camera and used Photoshop CS 5 HDR processing. It was just before sunset around 8:45 pm last night, and after a rain, so colors are bit more vibrant after it rains. Here are pictures, you will have to click on the them as they don't look good in small format:

Thank you strange young scary gangster man!

I have an all or nothing mentality. I either workout out too much or not at all. Right now, I haven't done any endurance workout since Sunday. I have had softball on Monday and Tuesday, but that is no excuse and I don't count that as exercise. I am in the midst of re-working my workouts on paper. I am setting a 30 day challenge for myself. I am back on track tomorrow with my workouts and will log every workout on Beginner Triathlete.com. I wish I could get the RSS feed to work and then it could stream into Blogger, but something is wrong.

So tonight, I was tired after work. Feeling down about not being on track, feeling ugly, fat, blah. You know...those days. So what better...nothing in the house seemed good to eat, so went and ordered a small pizza from Hungry Howies. I picked up the pizza and these 3 guys who looked like they were in a gang were standing outside of the pizza store, like guarding it or something. They were mumbling stuff and making motions, I have no idea. Kind of scary looking. I went inside to pay for pizza, then another lady came in the door and asked for the manager because she said these guys were making rude comments. So I was like, great, they were probably mumbling rude comments to me too. Time to walk out and go to my car....one of the guys said "Your gorgeous." I was like "Thank you" and got into my vehicle. But that comment made me feel good. Thank you strange young scary gangster man who said I am gorgeous. Maybe he was being sarcastic, or whatever was on his mind, but it made me feel good. After all, was wearing gym shorts and t-shirt. Anyway, I am back on track, and gangster man helped!

Doing my workouts as planned, and logging! Day 1 starts tomorrow!

Photo Shoot at the Steelcase Duathlon

Today is a gloomy rainy day, not a good day to compete in a duathlon, ha! Today was the Steelcase Dutahlon in Grand Rapids at Steelcase headquarters between 52nd and 60th off East Paris- The event is Run 5k, Bike 30k, Run 5k. I kept this date open just in case I wanted to do this if it was nice. But did not.

Instead, thought I would park my car on the bike route and practice taking some action shots with my Canon Rebel and Sigma telephoto lens. Conditions were gloomy, light sprinkles here and there. I started shooting with iso 100 on shutter mode at about shutter speed of 120, but noticed my pictures were still dark when shooting, so went down to 60 and had a good pics in the viewfinder (or so I thought). I then changed the mode to P (program mode) and started experimenting with more speeds and f stop. I also increased my iso to 200 and think my pictures came out better being the lighting was so low outside. Well, I probably took about 300 pictures using burst mode. I also started iusing manual focus, but can't zoom out as bikers come towards me and focus at the same time, so switched to auto focus. My pictures didn't come out tack sharp, but with practice I think I will get better. I am happy with some of the pictures I got, but need a lot more shooting practice. Actually the best picture that came out is this one above, and what do you know, I think this is Dave Horne, one of our tri coaches for Team Sync, he is wearing hot pink.

Below are more pics that I was satisfied with. Eventually I would like help volunteer to take photos at race events, I think I am on to a good start.