YMCA Running / Birthday

Today I did something new.  I went to the YMCA and ran on a treadmill.  There were some really nice things about that.  I was able to control my speed very well.  Just a little adjustment and my speed was changed.  It is much harder for me to know what my speed is outdoors.  I can figure it out after a little while but this was instantaneous.  Very nice!

On the other hand though, it was very boring looking at the same thing for a the whole run.  I ran 4.25 miles and walked about .75 mile.

Overall it was a very good run and I feel great now.  The machine told me I burned about 650 calories.  Great!  It is my and Linda’s birthday today and we went out to the Seafood Buffet at the Rio.  That 650 calories that I burned probably paid for my dessert tonight.

While Linda and I were on our way down to the Rio tonight we were talking about when we met.  It was December 12th, 1986 and we were going to get together the next day on our birthday.  That morning I went out surfing and it was a great day with great friends and great waves.  I thought, “what a great birthday present!”  Then (without going into all the really cool detail) I came off this one wave with my board flying into the air.  When I came up out of the water my board smacked me in the face across my nose, chipping a bone, almost making my pass out, splitting my face open, and giving my one big black eye.  Wow – this great day has come to a quick halt.  So, I never went out that night and didn’t meet up with Linda.  It wasn’t until about 5 months later did we begin dating.

Now my thought was this.  When I turned 19, I could surf all day, but I couldn’t run 4.25 miles.  Today I am 41 and I can’t surf all day, but I ran 4.25 miles.  So, I am feeling pretty good about the run today!

Short Run

This morning I made it out for another run, although a short one – I made it.

I got up at 4:45, Kevin came over, and we were out the door by about 5:00.  It wasn’t as cold as it was two days ago when we ran.  I think it was about 42 degrees, not bad.  We ran 2 miles and it felt great.  Actually by the time we stopped I was just getting warmed up and could have went further.  Maybe it was the pasta last night.

When the alarm went off at 4:45 I had this thought, “you have gotta be kidding me!”  Thanks again Kevin for coming over.  If it wasn’t for knowing that you were going to be there, I would have certainly hit that snooze button.

Back to Running

I used to be pretty consistent with running.  It was always the same thing: I’d wake up and make an excuse of why I should not go running and then I’d go anyway.  After the run I’d always feel great (never during the run).  I would increase my mileage towards 20 miles per week, get injured, stop for a short time, and then start back again.

Somewhere about six-nine months ago I went running and was affected badly with allergies.  I felt sick for a few days and thought, “I can’t run when it is so windy.”  Then when I’d wake up I’d have a better excuse to not run and so I started giving in to the desire to not run.  I have really gotten out of the routine in a bad way.  Now it is hard to convince myself to actually run.

I realize that I really need to get back to running, for many reasons.  So, I am really going to try to get over the excuses and stick with it.  I remember how good I used to feel all the time when I was running.

This morning I was up at 4:45 and prepared to run.  Kevin Stewart got to my house at about 5:00 and we ran a short distance (1.25 miles).  It was about 40 degrees with the wind blowing a little bit and dark.  Thanks Kevin for the accountability and motivation – you really helped me today!

I’ll see if I can overcome my desire to not run tomorrow.

Running Update

I made it through the first couple week of the training plan with no problems.  Then I got got pretty sick, not from running just something going around.  That knocked me out for a week and a half.  Once I was better I began back to running but was not sure if I could recover the time I lost.  Shortly after that I went out of town for a few days which further threw my running off.  At that point I was pretty confident that I would not be able to get back to the training to run the half marathon by March 15th and so I really slacked off with my running.

I have been running a little bit but need the training motivation to push myself.  Since then I have not ran over 4 miles at one time.  I have only been running between 3 and 4 miles at a time.  I need to find another half marathon in the next couple months to train for.

Week #1

I have begun the training program for running a half-marathon on March 15th.  It is a very aggressive plan, since I really wasn’t running that much when I began.

On Saturday I finished the first week and was very surprised at how it went.  The plan called for: Mon – 2.0 miles @ 12:00 min/mi pace, Wed – 5.0 miles (tempo run) 1.0 mile @ 12:00 min/mi pace warm up – 3.0 miles @ 10:00 min/mi pace – 1.0 mile @ 12:00 min/mi pace cool down, and Sat – 6.0 miles @ 12:00 min/mile pace.  I didn’t know if I would be able to make it because I have never run for 72 minutes, but I did it without much trouble.  On Saturday’s run at the end I ran another 1/4 mile @ 8:00 min/mi pace and then a 1/4 mile @ 12:00 min/mi pace, for a total of 6.5 miles and 77 minutes.  I felt great!

If I can continue with this running plan I’ll be able to run the half-marathon in March.  The important thing is to not get injured.  If I can make it through the first four weeks of the training I will sign up for the half-marathon.  There is another great bonus to this race, Linda is training for the 5K portion.  She is doing great and will be able to run it by then!

Half Marathon Challenge

I am currently trying to train for a half marathon with some of my friends at the end of the year.  I appreciate my friends for joining me because it motivates me to train even though I don’t feel like it.

My wife received an email from a friend of ours, Beverly.  She sent the information for a local half marathon and 5K run on March 15th.  She suggested that I could run the half and Linda the 5K.  Well 10 weeks was not my plan for running a half marathon.  I believe that Linda could be ready for the 5K but me and the half?  So, I thought about it.  I laid in bed that night and thought, “could I actually do it?”

The next morning I checked out Runner’s World for a training plan for 10 weeks.  The first weeks long run is a scheduled 6 miler and 13 miles for the week.  I am only running 3-4 miles right now and 9-10 miles per week.  So, I figure that if I can follow the training plan for 4-5 weeks without injury then I would register for the half marathon on March 15th.  My first step would be to run 5 miles this weekend.  Suprisingly, I was able to run it without much problem.

One of my goals for 2008 is to run 2 half marathons.  If I can run this half then I’ll only have one more to reach that goal.  I may not be able to make this one so soon, because I may get injured trying to train too fast.  I’ll keep you posted.

 Thanks for the challenge Beverly.

Farming

I have been wanting to start a new small group study on Tuesday nights.  I am going to use the book 30 Days to Understanding the Bible by Max Anders.  I am going to adapt the material into an eight-week study.  My idea is to find new people to have this study with, preferably not church people.  I believe that God is at work in the hearts of people around me.  I just need to go and find where God is at work and join Him there.  I believe if I can find people that God wants to make disciple makers out of, a good place to start with them is teaching them about the Bible.

In the past I have done a lot of door knocking.  The approaches I have used have widely varied.  My goal was to always share the Gospel with them and I believed that is what I needed to do.  Today I tried something new.  My approach was to try to find people to build a relationship with through this study.  My focus is not necessarily to share the Gospel.  If there is an opportunity I will jump at it but my main focus is to build a relationship thought this study.  In the past I would go through a neighborhood and whoever answered the door I would talk to and whoever didn’t I would never talk to because I wasn’t coming back.  There are so many neighborhoods in Las Vegas that I figured why should I continue to spend time in one area.  I believe that I have been to over 15,000 homes in Las Vegas over the past few years.

As I went out today I only spent about 1 1/2 hours with my son.  When I knocked on the door I introduced myself as a neighbor having a neighborhood study in a couple weeks and I’d like to invite them to join us.  I told them the nature of the study and that I am a Pastor.  The response was completely different than I have ever experienced.  Some told me they were not interested but they really appreciated me being there.  I’d always tell them to keep my number because I am just down the street and they may need to talk to a Pastor sometime in the future.  Other seemed interested and they would let me know.  Then there were others who were not home.  I recorded all the information and then annotated it in Google Maps (take a look).  I plan on going back to these homes over the next couple weeks until I have saturated my neighborhood (240 homes).

I am expecting God to do some great things through this.  I don’t know what to expect but am hoping for at least three families to come.  Then I’d like to duplicate this same thing in other parts of the city.  I’d love to have these same studies going on all over the city during the week.  I’ll let you know how this goes.

Please pray for me over the next couple weeks.  Thanks.

New Year’s Day

First day of the year – what a great day we had!

This morning Linda and I went out for a walk/run.  What a beautiful day.  It was 48 degrees, clear skies, and no wind.  I was able to wear shorts and a short sleeve shirt.  The run was great and so was the company.  When we got home we all sat around and watched a couple Christmas TV movies.  Then we just hung out, watched the Rose Bowl, made dinner (great ham dinner), and then messed around on the computer.

It was so much fun to take a day where we just relaxed.  We had not done that in a long time.

New Year’s Eve

Las Vegas is one of those places many people come to for New Year’s Eve.  They estimated 303,000 visitors to our city for all the activities.  I would guess that with the locals added to that probably 500,000 people downtown on the strip.  Being in wall-to-wall people, where most of them have been drinking, is not anything I want to be part of.  So, we went to the store grabbed some snack food and a couple of James’ friends came over.  We hung out telling stories and related our life experiences to the Bible.  We had a great time.  The kids went home about 9:30pm and we watched TV.

At 10:00 they televised the events from downtown.  We watched from the warmth of our living room all the different activities going on.  As the clock struck Midnight there were fireworks that went off from the roofs of various casinos for 8 1/2 minutes.  As we were watching this fireworks show from our TV, I decided to see what it looked like from the upstairs.  It was so cool to go upstairs and watch the fireworks I was just watching on TV from out my window.

After it was all over we wrapped up the night watching a little more TV and fell asleep.

Anniversary

Last night was our 19^th anniversary. Wow! What a great time it has been. When Linda and I began dating I was only 19 years old and now we have been married 19 years. We have had a great time through those years. I am very grateful that God has given me such a wonderful gift as Linda for my wife! I am truly blessed by God.

I would have loved to been taking Linda to Hawaii for our anniversary but we went out to eat dinner instead. Maybe next year we will go to Hawaii. Well the plan was to go to the Seafood Buffet at the Rio. This buffet we have been to a couple times and it is the best place I have ever been for seafood. They have it all and it is all you can eat. You can sample everything your stomach can handle. It is expensive (that is why we have only been there a couple times) but it is our anniversary. I figured because it is Saturday before Christmas in Las Vegas, we better get there early. We ended up getting there at 5:30pm (a little latter than I wanted to but not bad). When I came into the Rio I looked from the balcony above and did not see the line, I was excited. Usually we would have to wait a long time just to get in. When we got up a little closer I was shocked – it was under renovation. It said “Opened Early 2008.” Oh man I couldn’t believe it. We really had our hearts set on seafood. What now?

We had heard that the Bellagio had a really good buffet with great seafood. Hmmm? That is only down the street about a half mile. We figured we would go there instead. We get onto Las Vegas Boulevard right in front of the Bellagio and it took us 20 minutes to drive one block, to get into the parking garage. Wow there were so many people down there. I am getting anxious because I know the closer it gets to 7:00pm the worse it is going to be for us to get into the buffet. Once we got into the Parking Garage it took us 20 minutes to get a parking spot. Then we went into the Bellagio and it was just wall-to-wall people. I had no idea where we were going to get to this buffet. We finally found it and now it is 6:45pm. It took us 1 hour to travel a half mile from one buffet to the other. I went to the entrance of the buffet and the price was outrageous and the line was unlike I have ever seen. The wait would be about 2 – 3 hours to get in. So, I went ahead and walked into the buffet just to survey what it looked like. It looked good but not worth a $100 (for two) and the 2 – 3 hour wait. What now?

We decided to go back to our side of town and just go out to eat somewhere we have been before. But – I thought – this is our anniversary it needs to be something special. So I decided that we go to the other side of town and try to find a nice place we have never been to before. The problem is, we don’t go out to eat much and are not familiar with this side of town. But, I thought it would be fun – kind of like an adventure. The only problem with an adventure is the time of night and our stomachs were growling at this point.

We finally found a nice Mexican food restaurant that looked like it might serve our needs for the night. At this point Mexican looked really good because we knew they would have chips waiting for us. We went in and it was exactly what we were hoping for; it was a nice atmosphere, great food, something new, and a place where we could just sit and enjoy what we had left of the evening. All-in-all it was a great night, even though it was not what we planned.

The lesson learned is that in the future I need to have a backup plan. No problem for next year though – we will be in Hawaii!