Monday, April 24, 2017
We're Pregnant!
When Kati and I first got married neither one of us really wanted to have kids. Kati was very ambitious with her schooling and I just found kids to be, well, pretty annoying. After a number of years some good friends of ours had a child who we saw often and would babysit periodically. That was the turning point for us. We started thinking that this was something that we wanted. So the journey began.
We had no reason to think that we would have any problems conceiving but it just didn't seem to work. The other issue was that with Kati in school we just didn't have the finances to dig very deep into the reasoning as to why it wasn't working. So it got put on the back burner for a long time. Probably too long to be honest with you.
Years passed without talking about having kids at all. Kati went back to school for her PhD, then couldn't find a job, then found a job where she was working excessive hours. All of these things made us keep pushing the decision off until we were in such a routine that we wondered for a few years whether throwing a child into the mix would cause the whole thing to come crumbling down. That fear led to idleness, idleness led to selfishness and selfishness led us to finally asking the question "What are we contributing to society and our future?" Part of this change came because, through church, we started working with a retirement center. Each Monday night either Kati and I or another family from our congregation would visit this retirement center and share a short Bible lesson and have an activity with them. This really got us thinking "Who will come visit us when we're this old?"
The agreement between Kati and I was if both of us weren't 100% on board with this baby thing then we didn't proceed with it. I'll admit that I was the hold out to the point that I put a moratorium on discussing it at all. I was just tired of it dominating most of our conversations. While I felt like a jerk for doing it, I believe that this was exactly what I needed to come around. I needed a break from it and to let the thought percolate in my own time.
It didn't take long for me to come around and that we were going to pull the trigger and get this thing going. We knew we couldn't have biological children and agreed that if we were going to have a child it was either going to be both our genetic child or neither and since we knew it wasn't going to be both this left us with less options at our disposal. We could adopt a baby or older child or we could adopt an embryo from a family who had done IVF, had all the children they wanted but didn't want to destroy their remaining embryos. This was an option that we had never heard of and it seems that a lot of people haven't either considering the response we've received from people that we've told. Even a number of doctors we've talked with had no idea this was an option. When our fertility doctor gave us this an an option to think about Kati and I both knew pretty immediately that it was the direction we needed to go. I don't know why but it was the only one that we felt good about.
In some ways this mixed the options of adopting a child and IVF. We still had to go through some legal paperwork and work with a lawyer to draft up an adoption contract, review families and their medical history to see who we wanted to adopt from and go through the implanting of the embryo.
On January 17th, 2017 we were officially the owners/parents to 3 embryos and on February 14th the best embryo was transferred. It will have to clarify that Valentines Day was not something that we chose in order to have the event be more meaningful or corny (depending on how you look at it. I think it would have been corny). It just so happens that the doctor only does embryo transfers on Tuesday and Valentines Day was on a Tuesday this year.
The transfer was followed by 9 anxiety ridden days. All one could do was wait and use Google to try and find out if there was really any way to improve ones chances of having a successful transfer. I read about everything from eating pineapple cores and avocados to acupuncture and message. Who knows whether any of those actually work. These were the longest 9 days of my life. Finally we got to do our first blood test and see what the baseline hormone levels were. The Dr. said we wanted something greater than 50mlU/ml and we were at about 92mlU/ml (I think). This was a good start. Now a 4 day wait for the second test where we hoped to be around 350mlU/ml which would tell us if the embryo liked its new home. We were ecstatic to hear that to levels were at 420mlU/ml. We were pregnant!
In respect of space and time I'll close this one for now but hopefully I'll post more later as we go along.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
An Open Letter to Alberto Contador
I understand that you've gotten the short end of the stick at times and that in America's eyes you are the one who defied orders and "attacked our Lance" on stage 7 of the 2009 Tour on Arcalis in the Pyrenees. But let's put 2009 behind us. You know that was a bone head move, we know that was a bone head move and it got you more enemies than allies. Let's move on.
I feel as though I was finally starting to come around for you this year. You made a small effort to makes amends with Johan and the team that helped you win the Tour last year by delivering watches to them (as is customary of the winner) as a thanks. That was mighty big of you. My hats off. But just when I start to think that you're growing up and becoming less selfish you go and do something...well, selfish.
Let's take stage 12 as our first example. Very end of a 210.5Km day in the Alps. The last climb of the day, Cote de la Croix-Neuve, and your team mate has charged ahead for the win. He is absolutely of no threat for the general standings. He was going hard and had no one that was coming up behind him, he was going to win the stage. Then Joaquim Rodriguez (also a non threat to you) decided to make a go of it on his own and for some reason you decided to chase. Why? Rodriguez was 9th going into that day and over 4 minutes behind you, there wasn't 4 minutes left in the race. You could have stopped when he broke away, waited for him to cross the line and then started riding again and you still would have been ahead of him in the GC. Instead you broke one of the cardinal rules of cycling and chased down your own team mate that had been working for you the last few days in the Alps. I know you "let" him win the following day's stage but that really doesn't make up for it.
My second example comes from yesterday's stage 15. Again, the last climb of the day. A beast of a climb, again in the Pyreness, and one that many riders had been dreading. There's only 31 seconds dividing you and Schleck. Each of you were keeping a close eye on each other and the stage was turning into a great duel. Then Schleck's chain jumps as he attacks, just a few Kilometers from the peak, and he has to pull over to get it back on gear. The unwritten rule of cycling is if the yellow jersey has a mechanical problem then the second place pulls up the reigns and waits for him. This is not a sign of weakness from a competitor but of respect. The person that wins this race should know that he won it on a level playing field and not because he exploited his rivals misfortunes.
Now I've heard and read many sides of the argument. Some say that Schleck got his mercy when the whole peloton waited for him (and every other GC contender) on stage 2 when everyone crashed on the descent from the Col due Rosier. Some have said that it's karma because Schleck didn't wait for you when you had a mechanical during stage 3 on the cobbles and some have asked when are we going to stop pandering to the maillot jaune?
My response to the first claim is that, like I said, everyone that had any chance of winning the Tour was in a wreck on that descent. At the start of stage 4 there was more white gauze at the starting line then there was spandex. This had nothing to do with Schleck individually but the entire GC. The carnage was vast and it was in everyone's best interest to slow things down so that they could get back into the peloton so the standings wouldn't be turned on their heads. As far as stage 3 on the cobbles goes, you were in 7th place going into that day and Schleck was in 59th. I watched the Tour de Suisse just as I'm sure you did and had no idea which Andy Schleck was going to show up, 2009's Tour de France Schleck or 2010's Tour de Suisse Schleck (say that 10 times fast). I don't think anyone was sure that you were going to need to worry about him at this point in the race either. On a side note, Armstrong was in 5th place (ahead of you) heading into that day and I didn't see anyone waiting for him when he had a flat and now he's sitting at 31st place. My point is that during stage 3 of a 20 stage tour no one knows where anyone is going to end up on that last day into Paris. I know that I never would have guessed that S. Sanchez and Menchov would be up this high in the standings, would you have? Sure Menchov won 2009's Giro, but what has he done for me lately?
In the end my fear is that you're becoming the Terrell Owens of cycling. You're insanely talented but lack the teamwork and tactical skills to be a threat for the duration because teams just won't find that you're worth the trouble. Just like Owens I believe that you will find yourself abhorred by the masses (except Spain) and looking for a job towards the end of your career while you still have a few more tours left in your legs. All the while you'll complain that you did nothing wrong and play the victim role looking for one more shot at fame.
Please Al, winning is nice but not if you have to swallow your ethics to do so.
Love and Kisses,
Patrick
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Numbers Are In...Again
Training for this race start in the first week of December and ran all the way through to race day on May 1st. So all this was done in what was, more or less, a 5 month period.
Swim
113,132 yards
64.28 miles
34:53:40
Bike
2,353.29 miles (I could have ridden to the race and then back home)
141:32:17
Run
428.77 miles (I could have run the length of Utah and then some)
102:37:50
Calories Burned
143,470
41 pounds (That a little over the average weight of a 4 year old male)
Total Training Time
279:03:47
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
The Run & The Finish
The run course was a 2 loop out-and-back course that is being considered the most difficult run course of any Ironman. It definitely chewed up a lot of racers that day.
60045-123-029
The Bike
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Race Morning & The Swim
The athlete shuttles from the finish line to the reservoir ran from 4:30-5:30 so Kati dropped me off and I hopped on the bus. This is one of only two races I've done alone so that shuttle down to the swim start was a long lonely ride. Once I got there I got my bike set up and sat down next to it to eat breakfast which consisted of a bagel (270 calories) and peanut butter (approx. 500 calories), 1 Ensure (250 calories) and 1 Gu gel about 15 minutes before the swim start (100 calories).
My sweet bike spot right at the end of the row, easy to find running out of the changing tent
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Place Your Bets
Saturday, April 24, 2010
1 Week
- The swim start. The swim start can be brutal. With all the other "mass starts" I have done, the swim start has been only with other racers in my age group but the way Ironman does it is that everyone starts at the same time and I mean everyone. I haven't yet decided on my strategy for the start. Do I sit in the back and pass people as I need to and sacrifice time or do I take the more offensive approach and get into the mess of it all? This might be a race day decision. I do know that in order to keep my faculties I nned to keep in mind that I'm not surrounded by 2,000 people but that I'm only surrounded by 6 people
- My ankle. I had some tendinitis flare up in my ankle a few weeks ago. It's definitely not disastrous or a game killer but I have no idea how this is going to react on race day. It doesn't tend to rear it's ugly on the ride but on the run it becomes a little uncomfortable.
- Hydration. This is a double edged sword. You have to drink a lot but then you also have to use the bathroom more which also eats up time. I usually have to hit the bathroom far more than I would like so I need to try and get this done while still on the bike and moving forward.
- Weather. I have no control over this one so I'm trying not to think about it too much. At this point the weather is showing that the day will have a high of 63 with a 30% chance of rain, this would be great weather. The X factor is the wind though. The wind could be hard enough to actually cancel the swim due to excessive chop. Let's hope this doesn't happen.
I must say with being this close to the biggest and most difficult race of my life I am relatively calm. I've trained through horrible cold and ice, rain, sun, wind and every imaginable weather condition that Texas can throw at me so I feel as though I have earn myself a good race. I've done multiple rides of over 100 miles, 7 runs of half marathon length or longer and last week did a 2.7 mile open water swim in 1:24. Due to these facts I feel as though I'm justified in my confidence.
What's going to keep me going through this whole thing? More than anything the fact that I'm going to have quite a bit of family there cheering me on. They'll be Kati, my mom, sister, brother-in-law, niece (the one that doesn't like my beard) and two cousins. Knowing that I'll see them multiple times during the day is going to be my driving force and motivation.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
"A Big Day"
16 Days
Last Weeks Totals
Swim: 7900 yards
Bike: 135.4 miles
Run: 31.9 miles
Last week was my last week of hard workouts. From here on out it's time to taper down to race day. Meaning that workouts will fall in amongst more rest days and they will be far less arduous then they used to be. This is the time that we try to let the muscles recover and rebuilt from the last 5 months of training and hopefully end up stronger than when I started. But of course we couldn't end the hard stuff with anything less then "A Big Day", at least that's what the coach called it.
I had been looking forward in awkward anticipation to this day for months. I knew that it loomed in the horizon but wasn't exactly sure when it was going to happen.
The original plan for this day was to swim the full 2.4 miles, then take a few hours of recovery, ride for 5:00, another few hours of recovery then a 1:20 run. The purpose, I'm told, is to get the feeling of what it's like to go all day. Unfortunately some of the more important workouts don't always seem to go as planned. The original plan was to swim at the lake but Kati had to go into school Saturday morning and preferred, understandably, that I not swim at the lake alone. So then it was off to the pool for 80 laps, no excited about this. I got up at 4:30, to try and simulate race morning wake up time, and began eating my race day breakfast. 1 bagel with peanut butter, 1 bottle of Ensure, Gatorade, and 2 Gu's - one 45 mins. and one 15 mins. before I was to get into the pool. That's approx. 1,100 calories before most people were even awake for the day.
So I get to the pool around 7:00, when the swim leg of the race would start, and to my surprise the gym was not opened yet. So I drive to another one, not open. I call a third and there's no answer. What respectable gym isn't open at 7:00 on a Saturday? LA Fitness that's which one. So I got the coach on the horn and we decided to bypass the swim for the day. My Big Day is now turning into not such a big day.
I proceeded to drive down to Cedar Hill to find the closest thing I could to race day climbing. The schedule was for a 5 hour ride no matter how many miles that ended up being. The last time that I drove down to Cedar Hill I forgot my helmet so this time I made sure that I had all the essentials, that is except sunscreen.
The ride went remarkably well considering the wind and that I was riding solo. The whole thing was over before I knew it. That's one thing that's been interesting to see happen over the last few months. Workouts that once seem daunting have now become the norm and no more unusual then having to go to work. A five hour ride used to be something that I fretted over during the week and now unless the ride is over 100 miles I don't even think about it until the night before as I'm getting my gear together for the next day. I guess that was really the goal in all of this. As I pulled in at 5:20 the ride ended up being a little under 90 miles. Not a bad day on the bike.
I would have preferred at this point to throw on my running shows and bang out the 1:20 run that was scheduled for later in the day just to see how my legs would feel on a hilly run with that many miles underneath them but I had to obey the coach or face his wrath. So I drove home.
I was supposed to take a few hours to recover and eat. I made the mistake of laying down on the couch and watching the world championship cyclocross race and ended up falling asleep in the process. What was intended to be a 2 hour rest turned into 3 before I got out the door for my run.
I wish I could say that something eventful happened on the run but it was just a regular run on tired legs and nothing more.
It's kind of strange to think that the last long day is behind me now and that whatever physical and mental gains I've made over the last 5 months are all I'm going to have going into race day. Sure, over the the next few weeks as my muscles recover I'll gain some more strength but at this point what I have now is what I'm going to have on race day and that's a little frightening. I find myself looking back on all the long rides and runs and wondering if there is something else that I could have done more of or harder or longer to make myself feel more prepared but since this is my first Ironman I guess I don't know what it's supposed to feel like to be prepared so I have to assume that I am.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Lesson Taught But Not Learned
Last Week's Totals (Rest week)
Swim: 3400 yards
Bike: 139.9 miles
Run: 20 miles
I've always been one of those people that has never had to watch what they eat. The only way that I do watch what I eat is as the food enters my mouth, from there it was of no regard to me whatsoever. I've never weighed over 140 lbs. and even before training couldn't gain weight if I tried (which I did). I don't say this to brag but to point out in this post that this "blessing" is not as much of a blessing as you might think it is.
Since I started training and racing triathlons a few years ago I've lived by the adage: "If the furnace is hot enough it will burn anything", meaning that if you're working out and training then your body will use whatever fuel you provide it. I still believe that this is true to a point but have learned many times that doesn't mean your body will burn the fuel efficiently.
In my last post I said that I had a back up plan for my botched weekend long ride. That plan was to call in "sick" to work (with my bosses permission) on Wednesday and head up to Muenster (1 hour drive NW) for 115 miles of hills. Muenster is a great place to get a long ride, hilly in. Each April this German town hosts a road rally in conjunction with their German festival. So you go out and ride, then come back and eat your weight in bratwurst. That's my idea of a perfect weekend. Unfortunately it had been a number of weeks since I had been out there and they've been doing some road construction so the roads were so rough that they actually unscrewed my bottle cages and then proceeded to tighten them again.
115 miles is a tough distance both mentally and physically, especially when you're out there all alone. Heading north with the wind was so very nice. I ended up averaging 19.7 mph for the first 25 miles. But then I had to turn south for the long 25 mile journey into the wind. This is when my head started to mess with me and doubt started leaking in. It was understandable to start getting tired fighting the wind for over an hour and a half but I was more tired than I should have been and my motivation and confidence were fading. It wasn't until mile 75 that I started to realized what was going on. Again.
What clicked in my mind around mile 75 was what I ate for dinner the night before. I went over to Jonathan and Milina's house for dinner to watch the MMA fights and play with the kids, this used to be a weekly occurrence before Ironman training started. The standard dinner all the years that we've been doing this is homemade pizza but this time Milina also made fried pickles (I love fried pickles). This pre-ride dinner was definitely not sufficient for the next days training ride and I started to bonk around mile 85 and knew that I didn't have 30 more quality miles left in me. I even ended up calling Kati at one point for a little encouragement, that's when you know things are going down hill (I wished that I was going down hill). In the end I decided to cut my losses and call the ride done at 103 miles. 12 more miles might not seems like that much further to go but when your head is in a bad place 12 miles is an eternity away - that and I still had to go for a short run, which went surprisingly well considering how the ride went.
Since that ride I have been thinking a lot more about nutrition, what I eat and what I should be eating in order to fuel myself and perform the way that I want to and know I can. My coach read somewhere that a person doing 15 hour training weeks (this week will be somewhere around 17 hours) needs to be taking in 9 grams of carbs per kilogram of weight. That means that I need to get about 573 grams of carbs per day, that's almost 2,300 calories in carbs alone. That's the average, moderately active 30 year old's entire daily allotment of calories just in carbs. I can't imagine that I was getting this and even if I was they weren't good carbs.
So since that fateful day on the bike I have been really watching what I eat. Eating whole grain breads, whole grain brown rice, quinoa, fruits and vegetables with lunch and dinner, less Dr. Pepper and less refined or processed foods. I have found that this new diet is quite a bit more expensive though - why is it so cheap to eat crap foods? I wish that I would have learned this lesson the first few times that it was taught so I had time to compare older workouts to workouts on this new diet but there aren't too many more long workouts left.
Don't worry though I still enjoy my ice cream most nights and a few Chips Ahoy Soft Batch cookies each day. So I haven't completely fallen off the wagon.