The horse jockey

Today wasn't the average day for me.

I got up and nobody was really awake. Either that or they were looking for my sister's dog. He had gotten out of the backyard somehow. My oldest sister found him and brought him back home.

All day I was either watching Seabiscuit or editing videos.

I'm so tired of the terrible audio from the new HD camcorder. So lame.

I've waited to late to write this and the thoughts of today are leaving my brain.

It was my brother's birthday today. He's gotten enough attention from it so that's all I say about that.

I went to his training today. I filmed him with two HD camcorders. The first one I used a lot and it looked fine on the camera. The pictures and the videos I took looked fine. The second one I knew would have better sound quality and the video wouldn't be as great. Turns out, they are both terrible! So terrible. I'm upset by it. All of the awesome riding he and Alex did looked cool! But NO! The cameras have to have a mind of their own.

And so the sky speaks

Last night, nerds like me and hopeful people stayed up to watch the lunar eclipse. I filmed it because it was a neat experience. The footage wasn't the best though. The camera couldn't really capture the lunar eclipse because clouds had gotten in the way. Did anybody else see this wonderful event?

For me, seeing the lunar eclipse reminds me of how the sky can speak to us. Around this Christmas time last year, Venus and Jupiter came very close and made what looked to be a bright star. It was the closest they have been since 2 B.C.

Does that remind you of anything? That's right, the Messiah's star! You might know it as the star of Bethlehem.

Have you ever wondered about the Messiah's star? You see Christmas light decorations of the nativity being displayed with a star. Was it real?

The star wasn't really a star. It was Jupiter and Venus together in retrograde motion. The Bible has a different classification than today's classification of things. Everything in the water is a fish. Everything in the sky is a bird. Everything on land is a land animal. Simple yes? Not only that, but the sky was classified too. The sun and the moon are the only bodies in space that are differentiated. The rest are called stars. Planets and stars fell under the same category.

There were actually two stars. First was when Regulas, the king star, was crowned by Jupiter, the king planet. Jupiter went into retrograde motion placing a sort of crown over Regulas. This signaled for the wise men to set out to find the Christ. They were magi and not kings. Then Jupiter went onward to dance with Venus. The mother planet. The magi had made it to Jerusalem and saw the star stop. Stars don't just stop, but these two dancing planets stopped. They were in retrograde motion.

Retrograde motion is really simple. If you see when you're in a car as you pass another car, the car being passed isn't standing still, but it sure does look like it. That's retrograde motion.

The following will lead you to the site where it is better explained.

http://www.bethlehemstar.net/

World Championship

Today was a great day!

Know why?

Because it was your birthday!!!!

Just joking. If it is, awesome! If not, okay then.

Today was the 2010 Ironman world championship viewing. The event happened on October 13th earlier this year. It was greater than the ironwar when McCormack and the other guy made the closest race ever!

Craig Alexander didn't get his three-peat which was disappointing. He's like the Zenyatta of the Ironman distance. They both get that start where the other racers are a great distance ahead of them, catch up, pass and then win it! Not this year. Alexander was at a different pace and finished either fourth or eleventh. I forget which one. He ran a great race none the less. Amazing athlete.

I missed one of my favorite triathletes, Normann Stadler. It didn't show him much. He's a beast on the bike and holds the record at the ironman distance. The bike portion is 112 miles which he finished in four hours in 2006. The Hawaii winds are a great stress for the bike portion and he overcame that situation. Fastest rider for that distance and he deserves it.

Again today, Chris Lieto lead on the bike portion. These past few years Stadler's and Lieto's strategy was to set a fast pace on the bike to get a nice space in the running portion. Last year, Alexander caught up to Lieto in the last six miles of the race and took the crown. I think Lieto finished fourth or eleventh this year. I forget.

Chris McCormack was the star for this year. He is one of the greatest triathletes out there. Having the greatest number of triathlon wins ever and this is his second time winning the world championship. He also had the strategy of "win it on the bike portion." It was a close race and the closest ever in IM world championship history! In the last mile he was head to head with some other athlete whose name I forget. I feel so terrible not remembering. (I just remembered, his name is Andreas Raelert) In the last mile, Chris McCormack boosted up to grab the win with only one minute and twenty seconds to the runner up. AMAZING RACE!!!!

For the women, the gorgeous three time IM world champion Chrissi Wellington did not make it. She came down with an illness and was a no-show. Belinda Grenger had gotten high hopes and said that sixteen women are now in competition against each other. Chrissi Wellington was a three time champion and had not lost once at the ironman distance. She won in her first try at the ironman distance as well.

This gave the title to the beautiful Mirinda Carfrae who is the new womens IM world champion. She deserves it! I knew she would win this year or at least give Wellington some competition. Carfrae broke the IM marathon record with a shorter time of two hours and fifty seven minutes last year. Last year was her first IM world championship also and in her second year, she won it!

Gingerbread houses and Charlie Brown

Today was a great day for me. Full of excitement and relief!

Other than the IM, the season has gotten to me.

I love winter so much! It's when I come alive! This past week I couldn't stand seeing other people make or talk about building their gingerbread house.

So, using my niece as an excuse, I got a gingerbread house. We built it with happiness! It came with the old Demon Claus, a sleigh, and two reindeer. I placed the icing on the gingerbread and my niece place the pieces together. Teamwork, for a while. Me being that perfectionist, I felt I took the joy out of making it for my niece. I was demanding of the direction of how they should be placed. Also being the impatient person, I make things happen. I didn't want her to be sad so I let her decorate the entire house. I got it so I could decorate it, but she needs it more than me. I was stripped from my childhood and I don't want her to be. I want her to have fun when she's a child. Yes, I'll still prepare her for the future, but it's in those moments where the child's memories will stay.

The day after, she got out of school early and we went to the mall. If you know me and my reasons of the past, I hate hate HATE the mall. I don't hate it because what happened there, if we go by what happened there, then I would never want to leave that place. I hate it because I want to keep the memories the same. I don't want them to be changed. Remembering those events is hard. It's not that I don't want to move past, but that I have no reason to move past them. Well, on to other subjects.

One of the issues I've been struggling with is loneliness. I'm very outgoing and very friendly, yet I am not compatible with many people. It's hard finding somebody else who loves to run, cycle, or swim. And when I do find a person who likes one of those, it's only for short distances. I'll ask if they like to run, they say the love to run. We should run together, I suggest. Sure! How far?, they ask. Ten miles I say. Apparently, that's way to far. So on with the search.

I felt very lonely and very bored with my surroundings. Then it happened. PEANUTS aired on television. YES! It was the old happy Charlie Brown wants to know the meaning of Christmas. Linus tells the story of the coming of the Christ and Charlie Brown walks away satisfied. He doesn't care about the people who discourage him at the things he does and walks past them with a smile. It's not about them. I now feel great about the same situation he was in. It's not about the gifts, the decorations, or the holiday sweets.

I can now say I enjoy the season of being single and know that it will pass.

Exercise

Many people hate exercising. I don't understand why. I admit, I don't exercise as much as I should if I want to be a pro triathlete. At least I exercise though. 56mi and 16mi. I used to run for two hours for my fitness class on campus, but that's over and now I'll have trouble keeping track of my running.

Well, I don't know about you, but now it takes a lot for me to get sore. When I first started to lift weights, I was sore just about every day. I love love LOVE being sore. It get's me excited. I don't know why, but it does. Boot camp exercises always make me sore and I love it!

The first time I tried boot camp work outs was about three or four years ago. Billy Blank's boot camp videos were awesome. I did the 1 hour beginner, the 30 minute ab workout, and the 1 hour advance workout one right after the other. I wasn't sore nor tired at the end of it all.

The next day was a different story. When I woke up, I had something in my eyelash and I was going to brush it off. Up went my right arm and then I felt it. My entire arm was sore. Then I tried to move my left arm and the same feeling. Entirely sore! I was going to try and get up, but then I felt that my abdomens were sore like insanity. I was then going to turn my body using my legs to get out of bed. Then I felt the best pain of all. Sore legs. I don't know what it is about being sore that arouses me so much. It gets me anxious to do stuff. I want to move and flex so I can feel the soreness because there is no other pain like it. Seriously. Explain some other pain that feels like being sore. So great.

So it took me about an hour or two to get out of bed. I had to roll my body to the edge of the bed and then drop my legs down. I felt like jelly all over and one ounce of trying to flex hurt tremendously. SO GOOD! Mmmm.

During the day I got used to the sore feeling. My endocrines were kicking in. Or something. It allowed me to tolerate the blah blah blah. Walking and moving were the best part. I would walk like a robot. Not by choice, but my leg could only move so far until it gave up trying to move forward and stopped almost instantly like a robot. Same with the arms.

I used to volunteer to clean my church. So getting there was a new problem. Getting into the Explorer was a challenge. I was shorter then so I practically had to climb into it. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! I hurt so badly. I had to pull myself up, take huge steps, and then fix my self to sit. Then came the seat belt situation. OH MY GOODNESS! I love being sore, but it started to get ridiculous. Reaching for the seatbelt that was behind me was probably worse than getting out of bed. Turning my torso, moving my right arm, and pivoting my legs just to get a seatbelt! Yes, I was smaller, so all of those movements were required.

Cleaning the church wasn't so bad. We used to have these old old pews that gathered dust like a magnet and one of the jobs was to hit them with a shirt so the dust would come out. It was hilarious because there was no point in it. But being sore and whacking those pews hurt my pecks. It was past the point of annoyance and to the point of where it just made me laugh.

After all of that the end of the day came. I just jumped right into bed and hoped for a better next day.

Treadmill and the stationary

Does everybody else run on a treadmill except me?

I hate the treadmill.

I love running. It's where I started my triathlon training. Cycling became my favorite part though. And water has never really been my friend. So, I'll learn to love the water, later. I got some new shoes a while ago and they are great. A little wide though. I never knew shoes to be wide like these ones. Once they wear out, I'll get thinner ones. Cross trainers I hope.

Anyways, the treadmill has always been boring for me. At the gym, I would run on it and be so incredibly bored because it was facing a mirror. I don't know about anybody else, but I hate looking in the mirror. It's not that I hate the way I look, I just don't want to see myself or anybody else behind me working up a sweat. It's gross. Well, my treadmill isn't like the ones at the gym. It only goes a measly 10mph at it's max.

COME ON!!!! HOW SLOW IS THAT?!?!?! GRAH!!!!

Wimpy is what I say. It was always great when I came into the gym wearing compression clothing. People would look at me and pay attention to a place where I didn't want them to pay attention. My quads. I'm just joking. I only went to the gym once wearing compression clothing. People stared at me like I was an alien. They were all wearing sweats or a T-shirt and basketball shorts.

HA! After that one time I came in compressions, they all decided it was cool to do the same thing. The worst part was that they didn't even break a sweat!

WHAT'S THE POINT OF THE $100 SUIT IF IT ISN'T GOING TO BE PROPERLY USED?!

That reminds me of the stationary bicycles at the gym. They aren't stationary TT bikes, they're stationary cruiser bikes.

WHAT?!

How are you supposed to get a work out on that? Fixed gear? Ok. Not these though. Ridiculous. So, to try and improve the form, I would lean forward and put my elbows on the handlebars. I got plenty of looks. As if I didn't know how to ride a bicycle. HA! I know more about bicycles than many of those people there. Haha! Pedaling with their heels and having a low cadence of 20 on level 5 and saying they had a great workout. NO! Not a chance! Pedaling doesn't not consist of using your heels! You pedal with your metatarsals! I'm over on that lame stationary in a TT position with a nice cadence of 120 on level 15 and I'm the one who doesn't know how to cycle.

PISH POSH!

Oh well, I'd rather run outside anyways. And I did.

I'd rather cycle on the roads too! That I did as well.