The End Of The Year

We have been pretty busy since the last time I posted. We finally got power back to the house one and a half weeks after it went out. It was nice to get back into the warm house and into our routine again. It was hard to get any type of workout in while we were living at the hotel room and a steady diet of fast food didn’t help our well being much either. Tulsa is still in shambles. We still have tree limbs stacked up along the streets and the sound of wood chippers and chainsaws have become a constant reminder of the carnage that the ice storm caused.

Christmas was good to us. Santa brought us a Wii game system and the kids are on it constantly. It’s funny before the game starts there is a disclaimer which states something to the effect you need to be in good health prior to playing the game. You’ve got to be kidding me? What is the world coming to? Braden has become quite a bowler and I like the golf game. Below is a picture of Braden really immersed into fighting evil as Spiderman?

Dana and I got iPhones from her parents and Santa brought the girls their first cellular phones. The iPhones are great. It’s a shame they don’t work in the operating room.

The weather is still crappy and icy around here so the other day I had to take my run indoors to the treadmill at the health club. One hour of boredom…uggh. There was this attractive woman running pretty well around the indoor track when I got up there. She was moving pretty fast and it got my attention. She looked familiar but I just couldn’t place her. She was doing supersets of weights followed by walking lunges and track work. She looked really fit like a track star. Have I seen her at a race? TV? School chum? Then it finally hit me…That’s Amber Valetta the supermodel and movie actress. She must have been home for the holidays and working out at our health club. Anyway, it made the indoor treadmill workout much less monotonous watching her go through her routine.


At the opposite extreme was yesterday’s workout. I am trying to get some longer rides in for the Epic Camp preparation coming up later in January in New Zealand. This is pretty difficult considering the sub freezing temperatures outside. I was forced to take my 60 mile ride indoors to my Computrainer. To make the ride even more dreadful, I subjected myself to watching the documentary “Sicko” by Michael Moore. Next time maybe I will rent an Amber Valetta movie. Listening to the drone of Moore’s voice go on and on about the catastrophe of the US health care system made my ride much more painful.


I just reviewed my year end training numbers. I worked out 710 hours last year which included 6800 miles (365hrs) of cycling, 1200 miles (148 hrs) of running, and 130 hours of swimming. I was surprised to find out that I only averaged 13.3 hours/ week. The total numbers were similar to last year only this year I cycled 400 miles (20 hours) more and ran 200 miles (32 hours) less.


The latter part of this year I have been injured which brought this year’s total numbers down a bit. To me it just seemed I did much more than that. I guess with all the other things going on in my life with my family and job it made it seem like I was working out all the time. I guess in every free moment I had… I was.