2025 Fargo Half Marathon

 Originally I'd signed up for the full marathon, but in March I had a problem with my left calf and needed to take 6 weeks for recovery.  With the missed time, and having a half iron man the following weekend I made the decision to switch to the half marathon.

Coming into the race I had a couple of plans. Plan A, the smart plan.  Run a relaxed pace, have a good time and prepare for my 70.3 the next week. Plan B, the aggressive plan.  Knowing what I was capable of, I could try for a PR. I could run hard, beat myself up and possibly compromise my performance for the next weekend. 

I made the stupid emotional choice. I started back of the pack, and kept a good hard pace throughout the race, finishing in 2:06 with a new half marathon PR. Which felt great.  After the race, things were sore, but not unexpectedly. 

2025 Tinman Olympic Triathlon

 It's been a while.  First race in years. I'm training for a full Iron Man next September, so as part of that this year I'm dong the 70.3 in Des Moines.  And as part of that the Tinman triathlon in Morris MN worked out to be a great tune up race.

The morning of the race I drove out with Connie and Ray, check in and setup of my gear was very rushed, but I got through it. Probably should have put more thought into setup and transitions. This is why tune up events are such a good idea, to learn what I've been overlooking.

The race went well, I feel I overperformed in all 3 disciplines.  the 1100 yard swim was done in under 21 minutes (1:54/100 yards).  The 19 mile bike leg on my new tri bike just flew by in 1:03 (18 mph) and the run went much better then expected.  I was dealing with a calf injury and had doubts about the run, but got the 10k done in 1:04 (10:22/mile)

Overall time with transitions was 2:34.  It was a great event, well run and hopefully I'll get a chance to do it again in the future

October sunrise on a very windy day

It's mid October and we just hit a high of 97 yesterday. All night long we've had strong winds and they're projected to continue throughout the day.  Here is a time lapse video of the "sunrise" you don't really see the sun, but it is interesting how the color of the clouds change as the sun rises in the sky.

Sunrise in August

This turned out fairly well, for some reason recording stopped automatically which was a little disappointing, also I caught a few smudges on the window.

Playing around with time lapse photography

The past few days I've been playing around with time lapse photography using my old phone. I tried out a few different apps and when I found one I liked I upgraded to the pro version. Now that I had a few videos I needed a way to share them and YouTube seemed like the obvious choice. Setting up a channel was easily done, and below are some links to my first few videos. I enjoy the feeling of just how big the sky looks when it's in motion like this.  I'm still trying to find a good balance between frame rate and how often pictures are taken.