Running with Skeletoes,Teenagers, Laser Tag, and Puerto Rico

Took a few days off two weeks ago so the kids and I could accompany Jennifer to Houston while she did a training for work. Karlie, Tristan, and I visited the Battleship Texas, the San Jacinto Monument (where Texas gained its independence from Mexico), and the Children's Museum of Houston (voted #1 in the US by Parent's Magazine). We had a great time and because we were so busy, I did not make time to report last week.
It was back to a full week of work this past week, but I'm very pleased to report that thanks to a wonderful year of foundation support, the College of Education is forecast to have its greatest fundraising year ever. Our previous best year was my second year here (over $12 million) and this year we look to finish somewhere over $15 million. Not bad for an office of 2.5 people. May be the best per capita performance of any college on the UT campus. Looks like it's time for me to finally take my summer vacation. More on that in a minute.
This past week was Tristan's thirteenth birthday. We now have a teenager in our house. Considering the boy has facial hair, is as tall as his mom, his voice has changed to where people confuse him for me on the phone, and he has a girlfriend that could be the cutest girl in his entire middle school, I should not have been too affected by it. I should have been prepared. I have to admit, it hit me pretty hard. The little boy I knew is now a young man and he needs different things from me than he did before. I'll miss the little boy but I'm very proud of the young man and look forward to this new stage in our evolving relationship. We celebrated his birthday weekend by inviting his best friend for some laser tag. Tristan came in first out of all the participants on three teams in our second and final battle. We then went to the movies to watch Captain America. It was a really nice day.

Did my third run in Skeletoes this morning. I've really grown to like them. The first run in them three weeks ago left me with blisters and calves that were sore for nearly a week. After using BodyGlide all over my feet for run #2 two weeks last week, things went much better. I had little if any blistering. My soreness was much less after some good stretching afterwards. You will run a more natural movement than you do in shoes and the muscles you emphasize will be different than those you might emphasize in running shoes. I hear people say the same soreness happens when using Newtons due to the way they put you more on the forefoot than the midfoot or heel. Today's run was pure pleasure. It was a 45 minute out and back. I negative split by 1.5 minutes and it felt so smooth and fairly easy. Considering I've only made time to run once a week, I was really pleased with how good the run felt. I followed it with a nice core and push ups session while I watched the final day of the Tour de France on Versus Cycling.
The family and I leave on Tuesday for Puerto Rico. This will be our kids first time to the birthplace of their father, the first time Jenn and I have been back together in some 19 years, and the first time I've been back in nearly 10 years. We will start in Isla Verde where my mom lives, visit Viejo San Juan, Carolina, where I lived with my grandparents, and work our way west to San Sebastian, where the Lugo family hails from, and end up in Rincon, known as Puerto Rico's surfing town. On our way back to San Juan, we will spend a few days at El Conquistador Resort and go for some hiking at El Yunque National Forest, the only rainforest in the US National Park system. It's going to be special to take my family to the place of my birth, introduce them firsthand to the culture they've only experienced through my stories, and see them meet many of their family members for the first time, including my father and uncle. Peripheral to that will be a chance to relax and have some fun in the sand and sun. I'm in dire need of a vacation and I cannot wait!
Spending my day today editing a friend's script for a TV show. That should be a fun, new experience. I also need to get a haircut and work on a website I'm helping build.
Have a super week, one and all. Kia Kaha!

Bacon Weeks (many of them) Quaker State 400 Endurance Challenge

Ive done the Team Topper Tri blog no justice this summer....Bacon has been covered up with training, travel, racing, fun, and work. Schmidt dog has already posted the great time we had at the 2011 Lakewood Valley Triathlon in Owensboro... This race was my second of the season and I lead out with the Get Fit Triathlon in Morganfield Kentucky and again seeing a decent effort and performance at this race. I have continued my focus on training and adding 4 or 5 workouts per week varying...haven't been on the bike as much as I have been running and swimming. Remaing plans for teh summer are a few more tri's and running races...more to come..

Last weekend was quite an endurance experience and worth sharing on this blog.

I was fortunate to have a friend, who has a friend that's a jackman for the Aflac Carl Edwards NASCAR team and he invited us to the inagural Kentucky Speedway Quaker State 400 Sprint NASCAR Race and provided us with pit access. Im a fan enough to know when an rare experience is placed in front of me so I readily accepted. We left Owensboro at 11:30 cst in order to make a 7:30 race time and the tracl is about 2.5 hours from my house. Taking i-71 we hit traffic about 15 miles out and we quickly decided to abandon i-71 and find a 2 lane road that gave us a better chance at no line. To our disppapointment a few hours later we were in yet another line of cars some 9 miles from the track...we moved 1/4 of a mile in an hour, so time was on us to make a decision..leave OR .... I asked Greg if he was up to a blisterting hot, 8 mile run to reach the track. He quickly agreed and we parked the car and prepared for the run...luckily we both wore running shoes!!! 2 miles into the run we passed Leroy's Knick-Knack shop and saw 2 bikes out front of his shop embraced by many vines. Ray was out front watching the traffic so we hollered and asked if the bikes were for sale...he said and we hurried over...he help us attempt to pump the tires but time had taken toll on my chariot so no way she was moving..Greg's bike took some air and he jumped on, cranked twice, and POP!! the chain broke and sent him flygin over the bars...he popped up, and a steady stream of blood was coming from just below his knee...he had a significant puncture wound. Leroy offered Gregs a dirty moo-moo from an old box to wrap his knee, we declined and use Greg's shirt as a bandage to stop the blood...I asked Greg to turn around and abandon the adventure, he declined and we pushed on! Several miles later, a lady jumped out of her car as we approached stating she was an EMT and asked if we needed help as she noticed the bloody shirt used to clean up the leg..we assured her we were ok and hardcore and we pushed on!!!! Extreme heat, BIG hills, Ray's, and 8 miles later we reached the NASCAR tent to get our passes just 20 minutes before race time...we covered the distance and advetnure in 1:55.. a respectful time for what we had endured. The race was very cool, the pit expereince was second to none.. Race over and now the dread of an 8 mile journey back with many drunken fans at midnight and past had me concerned...2 miles into the return home and we heard "hey, it's the bike guys!! Get over here!!" It was the EMT lady and her Marine husband who had offered help earlier...she was our NASCAR angel who swooped us up in the dark of night and delivered us back to our car!! You cant imagine my relief!! What a day!!! I had skipped a local 10k running race to attend this event...who knew I would end up with this endurance challenge...I will never forget the expereince and plan to tell the story often...it wwill get longer in miles each time I tell it:)

Grandma Rosie Comes to Texas

Started back on my hundred push-up and 200 sit-up programs this week. My son is doing the program with me and we are one week in. I didn't get any other workouts in other than a nice 30-minute run on Saturday. It was my first run in a month and it was nice to be back on the road and trail. I wore my new Fila skele-toes and despite a few blisters (expected when using new running shoes that require no socks), I had a really nice run. I negative split by 2:30 minutes and felt really fast and strong coming home. I have to admit, however, to having major soreness in my calves last night and today. I think I went out a bit too fast considering I hadn't run in over four weeks. The skele-toes make you run in a natural forefoot position and that activates those calf muscles. Look forward to more running in them and strengthening my form.
My grandmother is visiting with us this week. It's been really nice to have her with us and I love watching our kids interact with their great-grandmother. It also enabled Jenn and me to have a date night last night. Our second date night in as many weeks. We are getting spoiled.
Have been enjoying watching the Tour de France. I tape the morning edition each day and watch it in the evenings. Find myself learning a lot about racing and learning the racer and team names. Grandma Rose, Jenn, and the kids have been enjoying it with me. We are all TDF fans.
Watching the Tour has me itching to ride but unfortunately, both my TT and road bike need some mechanical work and I've just not had time to take them in for servicing. We travel to Houston starting Wednesday through the weekend, so it will probably be another week before I get them in for servicing. Wish I knew a little more about bike mechanics.
Claude and I have unveiled the Travelete brand in beta. We have our Facebook page up, our blog is up and running, and our Twitter page is tweeting daily. Please connect with us on all these pages and be on the lookout for our website and forum coming soon. We'd be honored if you'd share these pages with your friends and family. Building our following is important in this early beta stage. The more feedback we get in these early stages, the stronger our product will be in the end.
I hear Schmidt Dog is in England before traveling to France for the TDF. Dennis is dancing Euro Rican music in Louisville. Jeremy continues traveling all over the US. Claude is new pit man with AFLAC NASCAR. And Ashley is considering a job transition into car sales. Lots of exciting stuff going in your lives.
Make it a great week! Kia Kaha!

Men's Health Sexiest Female Athletes List

Tour de France and Travelete

Took the entire week off training/exercising. As the final week of the month at work, I caught up on my June activity reports and finalizing my numbers for the month. Our fiscal year runs Sept. 1 to Aug. 31, so unlike many of my colleagues around the country, we still have two months until the close of our fiscal year. I am pleased to report that at the end of May, the college's development numbers were 28% ahead of last year. I'm optimistic to end the year with one of our best fundraising years of the past few.
The next few weeks are full of activities and promise to make July pass like a flash. My grandmother visits from California this coming week, our family is taking a few days in Houston the following week, we celebrate Tristan's 13th birthday the third week, and we leave for Puerto Rico the final week of July. Being a month since my participation in the CapTex tri, it is also my intent to get back to training starting this coming week. I won't be training for any particular race but instead to keep up with my cycling partners. That's all the motivation I need right now.
This weekend is the beginning of the Tour de France. It has me itching to ride. We had a weekend full of family activities this weekend that kept me from riding, but I plan to get some rides in over the next few weeks.
This week is also the unveiling of Travelete, a web concept Claude and I have been visioning for several months, perhaps a year or more. The idea is to provide the traveling athlete a place to share their training locations and thus providing a crowdsourced resource for people to find the best (and worst) places to train, race, and exercise from around the world. With Claude's hotel background, this also provides hotels a place to brag about the ways they cater to the traveling athlete.
We hope you will visit our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/travelete) and LIKE it; follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/travelete_); and check out our Tumblr (http://travelete.tumblr.com). In true startup fashion, we are doing this on a shoestring and are putting this out there so we can "fail early and fail often." Only in this way will we build the concept people want. Please post your own training location photos, comments, and advice on Facebook, Twitter, and/or the Tumblr. Send us your recommendations/suggestions. We are in the early stages and we covet your involvement and advice and critiques.
Happy 4th of July! Make it a great week, All! Kia Kaha!

Tour de France TV Schedule, Versus and NBC Sports

Training Center: This month, train like you’re racing the Tour