Spring Play and Charley's

So yesterday, my daughter made her acting debut and is hoping for a nice run at the 2009 Oscars although it will take a major marketing push. It was the entire kindergarten class at her elementary school which includes 6 separate classrooms. Wow! Who knew, I guess 1st grade is going to be a little packed.

It was a cute spring play about a gardener named Herb, the "h" is silent you know. They sang songs and she did a couple of lines on stage. Plus they even had a rap song about "Weeds". The words were actually quite witty and cute. During the songs, they did hand motions and danced a little. Elena was totally into the singing and hand motions. She was having a blast even though she said she was nervous with all the parents.

She had been practicing her lines for the last two weeks but never really mentioned all the songs she was learning at the same time. Every so often she lets us know some interesting tidbit about her day at school but she's not much of a talker. She gets that from me. I did the only child dad my child's a star by taking video of the whole thing. I'm not sure how it turned out because I had to basically shoot with a full extended arm to get a view over the throngs of parents.

The play was almost an entire hour which was amazing. That wasn't the only cool thing that happened yesterday. I found out that Amber and Joe will be getting a rental car when they come down to Disneyworld to watch my half ironman. This means Charley's Steakhouse!!! And the infamous PRIME CUT...


This is a 56 oz porterhouse. I had one of these when Elena and I went to Disneyworld in December 06. My buddy Orion also polished off one of these and my daughter ate an entire 16oz filet. Orion and I both attempted this massive chocolate cake dessert but failed to finish it. This time I'm going to take it all down. I can't wait. I'll be using that steak to get me through the tough times during the Half.

In my continuing training for the Half, I swam my longest continuous swim ever this morning. It wasn't as fast as my swim where I experienced the swimmer's high. I went back to look at that week to see why I was so fast and I just can't explain it. I was consistently 2 seconds slower per 100 this time around. It was still a decent swim as I swam 3100 in just over 58 minutes. I wanted to swim for 60 but its always hard to making sure you have the right time for me. The last 1000 yards I stopped counting and it just seemed to last forever. I'm just over 1000 yards away from the total Ironman swim distance. One of the toughest things is to stay focus on good technique in order to keep a fast pace without using a ton of extra energy. Stuff like make sure you pull your hand all the way through and not immediately pull it out of the water. Keep high elbows on the recovery. Because of the requirement to stay focused the time goes by pretty slow because you can't daydream.

At the event in Orlando, I'm worried about pacing. I really don't have a feel for pace when I'm swimming especially as I get tired. In the pool, it's quite easy to see your pace and monitor it. I might not push myself enough in the swim. It's definitely a catch 22. You want to stay aerobic and fresh for the bike and run but you could easily lose 2 minutes or more in the half during the swim by being too lackadaisical. It's same for people who are knew to running. I have even been struggling with pace on the running side of things because of my overall slower pace than when I was running exclusively. 6 minute miles feel like 5:30 miles back in the day even though I can tell my leg turnover isn't that fast. I'm still working on my pacing strategy for Florida so we'll see.

Well we're under the 4 month window now...3 months 30 days...scary!