House Rearrangement

Doug:

So the last few weeks have been filled with (a) trying to figure out what the hell we need to buy (Sandy has covered that already) and (b) doing lots of re-arranging of our house. This post is about the latter.

Anyway, not much commentary, just some pictures for those of you that are curious. First, the room that used to be known as the "Craffice" is being converted into the Twinkies' room. To date, we have pretty much managed to clear everything out of that room, but haven't done much more. I think the plan is to next paint it yellow (I say I "think" because you know who really gets to make these decisions.) A picture is below:

So if you were wondering what happened to everything in the "Craffice," well we now have a room known as the "Guoffice." This is short for Guest Room/Office. First, we (Sandy) got rid of the big desk and Sandy found a smaller desk from West Elm to replace it. Here's a picture:

Then we moved the futon from the craffice to the guoffice and put the old guest bed in the garage for now. Sandy also painted the futon black so it would match the new desk (a pregnant woman buying spray paint; what could the clerk at the hardware store have thought?):

Anyway, if anybody comes up to visit us, you will now be welcome to stay in the Guoffice.

The other part of this equation is the garage. But I don't even want to go there...

Girls!!!!

Doug:

Okay, so in our household, we currently have:

Me: Male

Sandy: Female

Miliya: Female

And soon to come, the Twinkies: Both Female.

That's a 4-1 ratio.

If we get another dog, its going to be a male. And I'm not neutering him!!!

Finally Really Pregnant

Sandy here:

There's been something missing from my pregnancy (well, morning sickness, but I'm supergrateful the barf fairy passed me over) given that I am a modern 21st century woman. Starting Wednesday I will no longer be "fake-y" pregnant--I'm going to start prenatal yoga! While I love living in Durango, sometimes it does have its drawbacks. One of those is the difficulty of finding a prenatal yoga class in the evenings or on the weekend--well, honestly, finding a class period. If you went by the number of prenatal yoga classes offered here in Durango, you would swear that no one is having babies in this town. However, off the top of my head, I can think of at least 5 people who are having babies right around when I'm due (we toured the Birthing Center at the hospital recently and there are only 10 rooms--I may have to sweep the legs of some pregnant woman to ensure I get a room!) and that doesn't include other women I know who are due before/after me or those I see walking around on the street or in the store.

Maybe they are all too busy hiking and biking and running and rock climbing...

Garage Sale-ing

Doug:

Okay, now that we know we're having girls, Sandy feels like she can safely start to buy baby clothes. And today, oh boy, she hit the motherload. One thing about Durango, it probably has more yard/garage sales per capita every weekend than any other place on the planet. I think that's a consequence of living in a place where the average house costs about $450,000 but the average annual income is about 50 bucks (its those damn second home owners from California and Texas, I tell you). Well today, Sandy stumbled across a great yard sale with tons of baby clothes, all little girl clothes. I don't believe I have ever seen her so happy as she was when she was going through and picking out all of the cute little baby girl clothes. We spent like 30 bucks on baby clothes, which is a hell of a lot of baby clothes at a yard sale!!!!


Anyway, she stacked everything up in a little pile at the yard sale and made sure I looked at everything. Then we drove to the bank and she went through everything again while I was driving. Then she went through and looked at everything again when we got home. Finally, this evening we went out to see our friends Kirsten and Andrew and their 2.5 year old daughter Lucy for dinner, and on the way home, Sandy insisted we stop at the grocery store so we could buy some "Dreft" and she could wash all the new baby clothes. They're in the dryer as I speak. Now keep in mind, the Twinkies are not due until January, but I guess its never too early to be prepared.


There was one thing I picked out at the yard sale, the pink camo Durango Fire Rescue outfit to the right. How could I resist. I imagine this is how Sarah Palin dressed her daughters when they were newborns.

It's a Girl!!!!

And another girl!!!!

All is well with the girl Twinkies and we are now stocking up on barrettes, dolls, Duke cheerleader outfits and little dresses. Oh, and uh .... trucks too, definitely trucks. But, you know, cute trucks. Cute little pink trucks with flowers on the side and stuff.

Unfortunately, there was a tie in the reader contest. Vanessa, Matt, Kathy, Scott and Eric all thought it would be girls. Go figure; who would have thought that so many people would pick girls? Well in light of this unexpected tie, we have had to retract the prize; besides, its not like we can name a couple of girls Matt, Scott or Eric. Come on!!! Instead, we will be presenting all of you with some lovely parting gifts.

The Uterus

Sandy here:

Shortly after Doug and I "came out of the pregnancy closet" my good friend Brian came out to visit. He lives in Portland, but I managed to convince him to come to Durango. Brian and I have a long history of debauchery and I knew I would have to come clean about not being able to be his partner in drinking crime as soon as he arrived. We had just been to the doctor for our first ultrasound (this one had nothing to do with twins--it came because I'm of "advanced maternal age" and as a result I won an early ultrasound) and had some of those funny black and white photos. The nurse was able to get a good shot of the twinkies, and I had to show Brian. He made the comment that we went back many years and had a long history, but this was the first time he had seen my uterus.

The more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed. In some senses, the uterus is a very private place, but once there's a baby in there, people (including me) don't seem to think anything of showing those pictures to anyone who will look.


So, this is an old picture, but one of my favorites. I was 6 weeks along--I don't think they were even seahorses yet.

Animas Mountain Mug Run

Doug-

Today I ran in a local trail race, the Animas Mountain Mug Run. They call it the "Mug Run" because, instead of giving out t-shirts, they give you a handmade coffee mug (see the picture to the right). It's supposed to be 6.6 miles (Sandy's Garmin said it was 6.1) and has about 1500 vf of elevation gain. But first, a quick update on my running progress:

Ever since Imogene I have pretty much felt like crap whenever I try to run kind of hard. I had a disastrous tempo run the Weds. afterwards, and then last weekend I went for a long run on Sunday. This was another disaster; I got through 10 miles okay, but then my stomach fell apart and I bonked severely. I had to visit the restrooms at the park at about the 11 mile mark and then I walked/slow ran the last 4 miles to get home. I can only describe the way I felt as "fluish," and I felt the same way the night before after doing a short, easy 4 miler. Then I went to do speedwork with the local running club (http://www.go-dmt.org/index.html) at the high school track on Wednesday evening and felt okay (1200/4:40, 1200/4:50, 800/3:00), but during the last repeat I had to pull up to take a "pit stop." I don't know what all of this is about, but I wonder if I was actually fighting a bug of some sorts. The Mug Run was a "C" priority race for me, so yesterday I decided to do a "semi-long" run in the late afternoon. This was the first time I actually felt pretty good during a run since Imogene, so I did 11.5 miles in 1:42. This was probably a bit long for a run done about 14 hours before a race, and I felt it today.

Anyway, I learned a few things today during the Mug Run. First: If you're doing a trail run that is largely on single-track, be very careful where you place yourself at the start. I started way to close to the front, and the problem on a narrow, uphill trail is that once you get slotted in a place, you feel compelled to keep up with the people around you because otherwise you're holding people up. This meant I went out way too fast on the steep first mile and would pay for it the rest of the way. Second: The one thing that has been missing from my training this year is sustained anaerobic threshold work. In short, I did my first mile too fast, and then was smoked because I haven't had to sustain that kind of effort for any races to date. Three, and finally: Stay away from chocolate donuts the morning of a race. I know better than to try something new on race day, and really should know better than to eat a donut anyway, but you know, they just looked so good (http://www.durangodoughworks.com/) and I thought, "what the heck, its 2 hours to the race start." Well, apparently my system does not digest a donut in 2 hours.

Final time: 1:08:45. I was 30th out of 53 males, but I beat most of the women!!!! I was hoping to break an hour, but just felt tired from the day before. However right now, I need the miles from Saturday more than I needed today's race, so I think I made the right choice.

P.S., This time, Sandy and Miliya actually made it to the finish line in time to see me. Picture to the right.

Pregnant Brain

Doug-

We don't know if all pregnant women go through this, but Sandy has recently developed a tendency to lose stuff. We call this "pregnant brain," because it really is a new thing. For example, she washed, dried and folded some shorts a few weeks ago and quickly proceeded to completely lose track of them. Yeah, I know, where else would she put them, but no, they are not in the drawer or any typical place in between there and the dryer. We still haven't found them, but I fully expect to open some random cabinet in the garage or something in a year or so and ... hey, there they are!!! And then of course she'll be like "of course, I was headed for the drawer but then I decided to get a rake from the garage first but then I needed to free up my hands to unwind an electrical cord so I could plug in the circular saw and I put them in that cabinet." Now the difference here is that usually she can retrace these kind of non-sequiter steps, but lately, everything just disappears.

But last night topped it all. Sandy totally lost track of the tape measure she uses for her knitting. She had a long day at work and was very tired and came close to having a complete meltdown when it disappeared. I imagined us looking all through the house for it, checking kitchen drawers, taking the cushions off the couch looking under beds, climbing down into the crawl space (I would have had to do that one by myself, Sandy does not do the crawl space), etc... Finally, after a long and arduous search I found it:

Yes, that's it, the round, white thing with the little red dot. And it was on the top of the coffee table cube that sits in front of the couch where, you know, she keeps her knitting stuff. Although I will admit it was kind of camouflaged against that sheet of stickers.

Reader Contest!!!!!

Okay, the moment at least a few of you have been waiting for a long time is quickly approaching. Yes, that's right folks, next Weds. we are going to get the 20 week ultrasound and hopefully find out .....

The Twinkies Gender!!!!!!

(Personal note, I hate to call it the twinkies "sex." Maybe its just me, but I don't like to think about babies and sex in the same sentence. I prefer the lawyerly term "gender," but I am apparently the only one that feels this way because everybody else refers to it as the babies "sex.")

Anyway, here is where you, the avid reader come in. We want everybody to chime in with their guess as to whether the Twinkies are boys or girls (and for those of you that missed it, they are identical, so there's none of that one boy, one girl thing going on). The winner will have the great honor of having one of the Twinkies named for them.* The results (of the ultrasound) will be announced here on Wednesday night. If nobody guesses, we aren't telling. Think of it as us holding the Twinkies hostage.

By the way, Lisa's 4 year old son Owen has already predicted we are having boys, and he is apparently 4 for 4 in predicting baby gender to date.

Give us your guess in comments (this is really just a sneaky way for us to find out if anybody is reading this stuff).

* If there are any ties (say two people pick girls and it turns out they are girls), then we reserve the right to change the prize.

CU-17 West Virginia-14

Doug-

There was a time when it wouldn't be unusual to see CU beat a ranked team at home, but lately (see Barnett era) there haven't been that many quality wins. However, in the last 2 years Dan Hawkins seems to be re-building something of a home field advantage in Boulder. Last year there was the HUGE upset of Oklahoma, and then last night CU hung on for a win in OT (thanks to some really bad clock management in the final 2 minutes and then a chip shot field goal miss by WV in OT).

Now West Virginia probably isn't that good anyway, but its still nice to see CU start 3-0. A big win in Tallahassee should get them into the rankings.

But the real highlight from yesterday was hearing from Scott who was in Boulder for the day (supposedly, he was meeting with some people at the Boulder Google offices) and watched Ralphie's trailer go by three times and also observed that every other house seemed to have a porch party going on at 4:00 in the afternoon (I was working at that point, he was driving home). I said that it did sound fun, but that there were advantages to being adults and not being in college anymore. However, neither he nor I could think of any at that time.

"Shoulder to shoulder we will fight ... fight ... fight, fight, fight!!!"

Overwhelmation

Sandy here:

This past Saturday Doug and I made the trek to the big city to visit our closest Target. One hour after getting in the car we arrived at the metropolis known as Farmington, New Mexico. We had big plans--to create a baby registry. Now, Doug and I are no strangers to registering--we created a Target one when we got married. All morning before we got to Target Doug kept asking "I get to use the gun right?" I think that's how stores get the guys to do this registry thing--give them a laser gun with which to shoot things.

Now, a wedding registry is really fun. It goes something like this: "Oooh, Calphalon--we need a big fry pan" (Boop--Doug got it) "and a 3 quart sauce pan" (Boop) "Let's go get some sheets! And towels!" (Boop, Boop)

A baby registry sounds something like this: "Don't we need one of those swing-y bouncy type things? Good lord--there's 15 of them here--which one do you think is best?" And if you're expecting twins, you can add on "Are we going to need 2 of these? Should they be the same?" I got a little overwhelmed thinking about some of the big purchases, so I thought we could "warm up" to this registry thing by Booping a few small items. "Pacifiers. They need pacifiers. Oh shit--there's a 1/2 wall of pacifiers." After the pacifier experience I couldn't even turn around to look at the bottles--I think I might have started shaking uncontrollably.

There's so much riding on all of this--I mean, the entire happiness of our little twinkies is at stake! (Not really, but you sure feel like that.) Not to mention that even though Doug and I have watched lots of people have kids, we still don't know what the "best" things to get are.

So I did what I do when neither Doug nor I are sure of our next step. I called my brother.

His advice? "Burp cloths. Lots and lots of burp cloths."

Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop...

Bump Picture

Doug-


Sandy has been wanting to get one of these pictures on here for some time. This is the status of her "bump" as of 18 weeks.

As you can see, the second picture shows her trying to shoplift a volleyball. I think we're going to go to the sporting goods store and have her assume that position and head for the door and see if they stop her.

Thanks Peach Fairy!

Sandy here:

Tonight when we came home (after a happy hour stint--it's amazing how low your tolerance gets when you're pregnant), waiting on our front porch, in a bag, were approximately 24 home grown peaches! No note, just peaches. I've never noticed peach trees in any of our neighbors' yards, but then again, I've never really looked.

Hello peach cobbler!

Tucson Marathon

Doug -

Kathy and Doug (Sandy's folks) asked about a reference I made to the Tucson Marathon in my Imogene post. Well my second big athletic goal this year (after the Ironman) is to qualify to run the Boston Marathon. Boston is probably the granddaddy of American marathons. It was first run in 1897 (following the introduction of the marathon as an event in the 1896 Olympics) and is the world's oldest marathon. It is one of the world's great marathons and, at least within the United States, may only be rivaled by New York in prestige.

However, the main thing runners know about Boston is that, unlike most marathons, you can't just sign up and show up to participate. No, to run Boston you have to actually qualify, by running a designated qualifying time in another sanctioned marathon in the 18 months before you want to compete. As far as I know, Boston is the only "standard" marathon that has this requirement (races like the Olympic trials and "extreme" marathons such as Pikes Peak may also have qualifying standards). And the qualifying times, weighted by age and gender, are not easy to obtain. For example, if you are a guy under the age of 34, you need to run a 3:11 or better to qualify. This is pretty fast for 26.2 miles. At last year's Denver Marathon, only 48 out of 1,578 runners broke 3:11 (granted the Denver course is pretty tough and the weather was atrocious last year). At Portland (a popular qualifier with a flat course) only 185 of 7,700 broke 3:11. In other words, you need to be pretty fast just to qualify for Boston, and for most runners, qualifying is a lifetime goal of sorts.

With that being said, there are three strategies I am using to try and qualify for Boston (something I have had my eyes on for 15 years).

First, pick a year when I move up an age group and as a result get an extra 5 minutes in my qualifying time. For me, this means that if I qualify for the 40-44 age group, I can qualify with a 3:21 as opposed to a 3:15 for the 35-39 age group. The trick here is that I can qualify for the 40-44 age group even though I am actually 39 as long as I will be 40 at the time of Boston (April of 2009). Pretty cool, huh.

Second, pick a fast course. This is a past-time of people trying to qualify for Boston, debating the fastest courses. The fastest courses are usually largely downhill, but can't exceed certain standards to be sanctioned. Maybe the most popular is the one in St. George, UT which drops 2,600 vertical feet from start to finish; last year 394 runners broke 3:11 out of 5,155.

However, St. George did not work for me this year because of its timing (early October). Instead, after considerable analysis of different marathons and qualifying times, I came up with the Tucson Marathon which drops almost 2,200 feet from start to finish. Tucson is also within driving distance of Durango and takes place December 7, which gives me enough time to adequately train.

Finally, strategy number 3 is to try and get this done before the twinkies arrive, because who knows when I'll get another chance to do it after that. In this respect, because I get 18 months to use my time I'll probably actually try to run in Boston in 2010, not 2009.

By the way, my legs are still fried from Imogene. Sunday wasn't too bad, but Monday and Tuesday, I was barely able to walk because my quads were thrashed, and stairs were a real adventure. Weds. was a little better, so yesterday I tried to do a Tempo run (2*3 miles at 7:15 with 1 mile between). That was a disaster; I did my first mile in about 7:30 and pulled the plug after 1.5 miles. They still hurt today, although it is getting better. I'm hoping I'm okay to do a long run (2:30) this weekend.

Wish me luck.

Imogene Pass Run

Doug-

Sorry about the brief hiatus from posting last week, we had a busy week with work and other obligations (like sleep). Sandy has gone back to work after a nice summer of being pregnant and unemployed (lots of naps) and we're adjusting. Yeah, yeah, I know, just wait ...

This past weekend we traveled about 75 miles north of Durango and over three mountain passes to Ouray, CO so that I could run the Imogene Pass Run (http://www.imogenerun.com/) with Scott, Molly, Scott's friend Andy and my co-worker Josh. For those of you that didn't click the link, the Imogene Pass Run is a trail race that goes from Ouray to Telluride (sometime home of Tom and Katie!!!) over, you guessed it, Imogene Pass, a 4wd jeep road. The race is 17.1 miles long and there's really only one hill on the course, but that hill is 10 miles long and gains 5,310 feet of elevation, topping out at 13,120 feet. Yeah, it's a haul. This is the third year we have gone to Ouray for the race. Two years ago Sandy and Scott were thoroughly obsessed with this race and worked about as hard as two people could to get in shape, only to have the race shortened because of snow on the pass (instead, we just did a loop where we went about halfway up the pass and then back to Ouray). It was a serious bummer, but they both did very well on the shortened course (except for the half mile or so after Scott drank some chicken broth at the "summit"). Last year they were slightly less obsessed, but they still worked very hard and finished the full course on a bluebird day. Molly also did the race last year (she was pregnant year 1) as did their neighbors Adam and Elisa (http://aemaines.blogspot.com/). I did the race too, but somewhat casually as Elisa had some significant altitude issues in the last few miles of the climb and I elected to hang out with her to make sure she got over the pass okay. We were technically DQ'd for not making the summit on time, but Elisa soldiered on bravely and we eventually made our way to the finish on our own.

Anyway, Sandy was out for this year due to the twinkies, but I decided this was my best year to run the race on my own and see what I could accomplish. I hadn't done much specialized training for running 10 miles of uphill (and 7 of downhill) and I didn't taper, but I have carried some fitness over from the Ironman and have also started serious marathon training for Tucson in December, so I was hoping I could make it to Telluride in 3.5 hours. I ran the first mile or so with Scott and then headed off on my own. The weather was pretty cool but clear and I hit my mile marks just as I had hoped, running the flat and moderate sections and power hiking the steep sections. The first five miles or so are really a series of flats and rolling hills and I made it to the 5 mile mark in just under 1:00. I tried to keep everything reigned in for the next 2.6 miles (where things get steeper) and I made it to the 7.6 mile mark and the last aid station before the summit right on schedule at 1:40. Then I started to hammer (meaning, hike fast, nobody except the very top guys run this part) the upper section hoping to make the summit by 2:30. I was pretty psyched to see that I was moving faster than just about anybody around me; in fact, I wasn't passed at all between the last aid station and the summit and I probably passed at least 40-50 people. The biggest surprise was coming to the 8 mile mark and realizing that my co-worker Josh was actually ahead of me at that point (how the heck did he get in front of me!!!!). I actually hit the summit 6 minutes ahead of schedule, but then wasted 4 minutes at the aid station trying to get the lobster claws that seemed to have replaced my hands in the cold to work so that I could get gloves on, mix up some Gatorade and open a gel. I had to actually get help from a very nice volunteer just to get the Ziploc bag of Gatorade open. It was pretty cold on top.

It was extremely frustrating watching all of those people re-pass me while I futzed at the aid station, but even more frustrating was watching another 30 or 40 people pass me in the first 2 miles of the downhill. Let me put it this way, the first two miles are steep, loose, rocky and very uneven. Its almost too steep for the speeds at which I like to run. Actually, it is too steep, so I thought it would be wise to just take it easy and be conservative and, you know, avoid any concussions or broken teeth or a fractured skull that might come from a trip or a fall. Well I was apparently the only one that felt this way as I spent those two miles feeling like a guy doing 20 mph in the center lane of the Interstate. Seriously, these people were nuts, but I have to admit, I only saw one person go down. It was impressive. Things flattened and evened out at mile 12 and I was able to step it up and re-pass some of the psychos in the last 5 miles, even ticking off some 7 minute miles. I hit the finish at 3:27, 3 minutes ahead of my goal. A good day's run I would say.

Final stats: 3:27:10. Summit at 2:24:28. 161 overall among males (out of 596), 29 in my age group (out of 107).

Josh ended up finishing about 7 minutes behind me, Andy came in around 4:04 and Molly finished in just over 5 hours. Scott had an unfortunate case of GI distress in the days leading up to the race and this made for a rough day, but he very bravely continued up and over and finished as well, just not as fast as he had hoped. Here's Molly finishing.

The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out at the rental house with the above characters as well as Andy's wife Lisa, their sons Owen (4 y.o) and Wesley (1.5 y.o) and Josh's girlfriend Rachel. We went to the hot springs pool, grilled burgers and brats and all of the adults watched the second half of the movie Cars even after all of the kids had gone to bed.

BTW, one of the best things you can do as an expecting parent is hang out with people with young kids. For example, Scott and Molly had a rough night with Audrey the night before the race (Friday night) and didn't get to sleep until 3:00 a.m. or so. I can't say I really learned anything from observing this experience, but it sure looked like it sucked. In fact, I guess what I should say is that one of the best things you can do if you're trying to decide whether to have kids is hang out with people with young kids.

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of me finishing because I beat Sandy to the finish ... again.

The Greatest Jogging Stroller on the Planet

Doug:

Babies = Lots of stuff to buy. You have to get cribs, car seats, funny little books, onesies (I still have a hard time saying that with a straight face), those things you stick in their mouths to keep them from crying, etc... It's a lot of stuff, and add in the fact that for just about everything you need there are dozens and dozens of choices available (really, how many styles of crib can you come up with, its just a little bed with a fence around it) and picking it all out can be a bit overwhelming. To deal with it, I have developed a strategy ... I just let Sandy pick everything out.

With one exception ... the jogging stroller. This is probably the one item where I have gotten heavily involved in the choice. In fact, I just kind of made this decision on my own. After all, a car seat is a car seat, right? But jogging strollers, there are a lot of differences in jogging strollers. And I know from watching other new parents that if I hope to do any more triathlons, marathons or bike races in the next 4 years, I better plan on developing a nice long-term relationship with a good jogging stroller.

Enter, the Chariot Cougar!!!

This thing is nicer than any car I have ever owned. It seats two munchkins and functions not only as a jogger, but also as a bike trailer, a ski trailer, a hiking trailer (we probably won't do that, but it's nice to know we can) and, I think even has a cycle for washing delicates. It's kind of like a transformer robot. It's also got full suspension, folds up to the size of a small travel umbrella (not really) and has all kinds of things that are supposed to be good for the babies (like ventilation and sun-visors and padded seats and stuff).

Anyway, it's the first baby thing we've bought and is now waiting for us at REI. I can't wait. And, yeah, we'll get some of those other things too at some point. But I'll let Sandy post about that stuff.

For the Second Time

Sandy here:

Every woman I've talked to has told me at least one story about hormones and "going off the deep end." Well, it happened to me yesterday. After a frustrating 1 3/4 hours at the doctor's office (everything is fine, I just had to wait around for a very very very long time), and then waiting in line 20 minutes at the pharmacy counter in the supermarket (only to be told that my prescription wasn't ready yet), then being shoved aside before I could buy my chocolate bar, then going to the front to be confronted by the longest lines I've ever seen at the store, then throwing my chocolate bar down in a huff, then driving home and hitting Open House car and pedestrian traffic at the middle school by my house, did I think that maybe I was overreacting. But that sure didn't mean I could stop crying.

Luckily I have a husband with a good sense of humor who laughed at my story, made me dinner and then went to the store for me to pick up my prescription.

And I got my chocolate bar.

Small Town Livin'

Sandy here:

A couple weeks ago on a Saturday morning Doug and I went to the Farmer’s Market (it’s quite the local scene—we are guaranteed to run into several people we know there). There’s a booth there that sells both flowers and goat cheese. I was in the mood for a little alternative cheese, so I started to walk to the booth. As I’m walking over, I look at the woman behind the table, when I realize that it’s my Ob-Gyn doctor! She doesn’t own the farm, but she helps sell at the Market.

I love living in Durango.