Marathon training begins/Vacation recap

Hello kind sir or ma'am!

It has been quite a while since I've blogged, but for good reason.  I was on vacation!  With my wife!  Without the kids!!!

As nice as it was, we did miss the little buggers.  The week was spent in Outer Banks, NC (aka OBX).  Which, if you live in Ohio and have looked at bumper stickers, is the only place people around here go to on vacation.  We now know why!  It was great.  Temps in the mid 70s all week.  Waves crashing on the beach (Cold waves though.  The ocean was not very warm yet).  We did the touristy stuff like a dolphin tour, mini golf (I won), and some light shopping.  We also found a triathlon store called Outer Banks Tri Sports.  I bought some compression calf sleeves.  The woman running the store was super nice (like most people in the south). We also had donuts from Duck Donuts.  A made to order bakery shop.  Freshly made every time.  They were amazing.  To the point where I have not had a donut since we got home on Saturday, which says a lot.  We also met some friends who live in Virginia.  Turns out seeing people in person is much better than liking their stuff on Facebook.  Who knew!?

FRIENDS!!!

Side note: my wife is great!  She has tons of beautiful, endearing, qualities.  So many that I cannot share them all in a single blog post.  One of them is forgiveness.  Because I may or may not have lost my wedding ring on vacation...  I didn't even lose it swimming in the ocean or running dramatically on the beach.  I more than likely lost it sitting on the beach reading a book.  Since I've lost a lot of weight this year, my ring is quite loose on my finger.  Now I know what you're thinking "Why don't you get it re-sized?"  Well smarty britches.  I can't.  It's made of a substance from outer space called "tungsten".  It cannot be re-sized.  So there!

Another great thing about my wife, which I have mentioned before, is her flare for photography.  So I will shut my mouth about the vacation and let you soak in some sights from our trip:

Our place was directly across the street from the ocean.  Not half bad!

waiting to see some dolphins on our boat trip

THERE THEY ARE!!!!  We ended up seeing 40-50 dolphins.

VACATION!

My beautiful one legged wife!!

Maybe change my blog to: Modelling for h2o?  Eh?

OK.. maybe not..

I got behind the camera too.  Easy to take good pics when your wife is this gorgeous!

I love this woman so much.  Do you notice the two birds above us?  Symbolism?  Aimee says no.  Just birds..

The night before we left we went to a nice restaurant to celebrate our five year anniversary.  We had two days of food money to spend since we left a day early (storms were coming in).  The two of us don't drink much alcohol but we ended up spending 100 smackers on dinner without it on the bill (tip included).  Best steak/crab/shrimp combo I've ever had.  If you ever go to OBX, and want to go all out, go to the Colington Cafe.  You won't be dissapointed!

----------------------------------------TRAINING UPDATE----------------------------------------

I managed to run and bike a couple times on vacation.  Only bad thing about running/biking down there is how flat it was.  Where I live in Ohio we have some good hills.  Running on purely flat ground was weird, and frankly kinda boring.  Biking was even worse because I was in the same gear practically the whole time. YAWWWWNNNN.  I like conquering hills.  What can I say?  I'm crazy.  The last work out was a 10 mile bike straight into a run brick workout.  OBX is known for it's mileposts.  Every store or restaurant advertises their location by telling you the milepost.  I only intended on running 2 miles but one of the mileposts was missing.  The 2 miles turned to 4.  Luckily I was wearing my new compression calf sleeves.  They weren't sore a single bit after the workout.  I highly recommend them!

Tuesday was the official start to Akron marathon training for Active:Water.  I had a painful start...

I start by putting one foot in front of the other.  Once I transitioned from my walk to my run my knee starting hurting.  Badly.  I don't say this with pride but I was using some language I probably shouldn't have used.  It felt like a knife cutting down the middle of my knee cap.  Stopped me right in my tracks.  I ended up going a quarter mile or more of walking to attempting to run and back to walking before I could keep a good cadence up.  While it didn't hurt for the remaining 4.5 miles I could feel something was up.

In August I'm also doing my first olympic (intermediate) distance triathlon.  1500 meter swim, 24 mile bike, and 10k run (6.2ish miles).  So Wednesday I was in the pool.  Today I went out for another run.  I started up again to have close to the same amount of pain I had the last time.  This time I didn't stop, or use my potty mouth.  Once again things sorted out and I was able to run 4 good miles.

A part of me was nervous when I felt that pain.  Nervous about the future and not being able to run this upcoming race.  I honestly feel that I'm not injured.  It doesn't hurt while I'm sitting/walking/swimming or anything else.  Only when I run.  When people are doing something for the Kingdom there always seem to be things getting in the way.  Mental and physical distractions.  My thinking is someone wants me to get afraid, and it ain't God.  I'm going to pray this pain goes away and for the Lord's strength through these next few months.  I hope you can join me!

Also, the main reason this marathon is happening is to raise awareness for the world water crisis and funds for Active:Water.  Through this fund-raising people in Zambia, Africa will have access to clean drinking water, hygiene sources, and employment in keeping these wells up to standard.  Along with that also spreading the gospel and the love of Christ.  If you want more information visit www.activewater.org.  If you'd like to donate visit my page here.

Thanks for reading this War and Peace length post!