http://runkeeper.com/user/atcrawford/activity/69427514

And hopefully winning the Biggest Loser contest at work, along the way

Roll Tide

Need I say more?

This picture was from the breast-feeding class that we took. Only class remaining for us to take is Baby CPR.

I had a great view of this 4-nil “friendly” butt-whipping. It was still a lot of fun though, taking in my first live soccer game. Hard to believe that I got to see the World Cup champs less than one year after they claimed the title.

http://www.halhigdon.com/5K%20Training/5-Kinter.htm

I’ve had a couple of people ask what I’m doing now, so I figured it would be good to share it here. The only modification that I’ve done is bumping the Thursday runs to Friday so I can play basketball that day. I’m also playing basketball on Mondays.

This is the team picture from one of my basketball leagues this year. We made it to the championship, but couldn’t seal the deal.

To see the name and background of our (yet-to-be-born) baby girl, click here.

http://jsfiddle.net/

“JsFiddle is a playground for web developers, a tool which may be used in many ways. One can use it as an online editor for snippets build from HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The code can then be shared with others, embedded on a blog, etc. Using this approach, JavaScript developers can very easily isolate bugs. We aim to support all actively developed frameworks – it helps with testing compatibility.“

This is a pretty nifty tool that takes minified javascript and makes it pretty again.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. ~

Seems topical.

A little girl!

I still can’t believe how good the food was on that trip. I miss it!

Last Saturday I ran in the 6th Annual Zoo Run 5k at the Birmingham Zoo. As you may recall, this was my first run in which I had a true time goal. For all of my previous runs I’ve been primarily focused on finishing. I would set little time goals, but they were always secondary to finishing. Another aspect of this particular time goal is that I’m going to do nothing but 5ks until I reach it. At that point I’ll set a new time goal for a 10k, and so on.

So for this race I set a time goal of 25 minutes. My only reason for picking this time was that my previous PR was 27:30, so two and half minutes faster seemed respectable (and 25 is a good “checkpoint” number too). I honestly had no idea how hard or easy it would be since it’s been so long since I’d done a 5k.

My intentions from the beginning were to train for this run with a mix of interval training, distance runs, and cross-training (aka basketball). However it quickly turned into nothing but basketball. I joined two evening leagues and found a place where I could play 4 days a week in the mornings. In short, I started playing a lot of basketball.

The good news is that my basketball skills have been making a steady return. The bad news is that this doesn’t seem to translate at all to running. As a result I missed my goal time by 3 minutes. That’s just not good in a race that’s only 3.1 miles.

I did many things wrong regarding this race. As discussed above, I didn’t train properly at all. Also, I did not study the course before the race. Therefore I had no idea when the hills were, or how hard they might be. I didn’t even eat breakfast before the race. Just flat-out unprepared.

It’s back to the 5k drawing board for me. The 25min goal is still a good goal in my opinion, especially since I’m obviously going to have to make a concerted effort to reach it. Now the question is just how long it’ll take for me to shave 3 minutes from my time. I’m hoping by the end of July at the latest. I’m currently looking for races around town during that time. I may do one in late June just to make sure I’m progressing towards my goal.