Monday, June 30, 2008

Kearney Community Olympics

We had a great time at the Kearney Community Olympics again this year. I am felling it though. I really need to get back in shape. I'll try and remember everything that we did. We started things off with some stretching, then we sat around for a few hours until it was our turn to do the obstacle course. That was pretty fun but I messed up with the soccer dribble part and that hurt us a lot (sorry, it's been since about 8th grade since I played last). It was fun though. During our wait we watched the tug-o-war and our team got first in one of the brackets.

The next morning we had the 5k. I've only been running again for a couple/few weeks after almost a year off so I wasn't expecting much. I ran the mile or so (there weren't any markers of type on the course) with Amy then I took off on my own. I should have just ran the whole thing with her though, I finished in 27:55 and she only finished a minute and half behind me. Even though I was getting close to running a 5k in 20 minutes last summer I'm not disappointed. That was my longest run since I started running again. Maybe I'll be able to keep running all year and be ready for a good race next year.

Let's see what else did we do, we played ultimate Frisbee and that was a lot of fun. I got called a dirty player and stuff but whatever. Just because I'm bigger than someone and they fall down after running into me doesn't make me a dirty player. Amy and I really enjoyed playing though and put our names down to get into a league or play some pick-up games once in awhile. Then I played a little badminton and Amy went and did water aerobics. We lost our first badminton match. We had a nice comeback but came up a little short. Then to finish off the day we played a little volleyball. It was fun but we lost our first game again. The other team was pretty bad, but we were a little worse. We went over to one of Amy's coworkers after that for dinner and hung out for awhile. It was a pretty busy but fun day.

We started things off Sunday morning with a nice little 2 mile walk. Then we went and did the Adventure Race. We got put on it because no one else wanted to do the 1.5 mile run, a couple of other people got stuck doing it with us too. We were looking forward to it and thought it'd be a lot of fun so we were glad to take one for the team. It started off with a "surprise event", which was pulling apart a frozen t-shirt and then putting it on one of us, I was the lucky one. Then we were off for the 1.5 mile run. That went pretty good for us, we all finished it anyway. Little did we know the hard events were yet to come. We had to carry a 5 gallon bucket of water on a wooden pole with one partner over a course of sand, through water, uphills and down hills. It was pretty tough and that bucket got pretty damn heavy by the end of it. After that we had to run all over the park to try and find three people that were hiding to get stickers from them. That doesn't sound so bad but we had to carry a short little rope with us that all four of us had to hold onto the entire time. I don't know what our final time was but we were in the middle of the pack. It was a lot of fun but it was a ton harder than we expected it to be. Dodgeball was the last event that we did. That was good times. I couldn't believe how tired I was by the end of it though.

I think these games are such a great idea, it's a great way to get people off the couch for a weekend and show us all the different stuff Kearney has to offer. There are a few other towns that are going to start doing them too, like Grand Island, York and someplace in Missouri.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Back at it

Man it sure has been a long time since I've posted. A lot has happened since then. I'll get into a lot of it but not quite everything.

As I feared my last semester was brutal and between it and work I had very little time for anything else. I ran 22 miles in January and then stopped until a week or two ago. It was the most involved semester that I have had since I've been in college, and I've been in college for 8 years. I had my first math class in 5 years and it was a 400 level one. I worked my ass off to get through but I got through it with a B- and learned a few things along the way. My other class was a lot of fun and a ton of work but I'm not actually done with it yet. I had to take an incomplete because of some family things that came up. I have the rest of the summer to get my project done, if I don't I'll get a C. Needless to say my goal of 1000 KM this year is not going to happen.

A couple weeks after the semester ended Amy and I went to Ireland for two weeks and had a wonderful time. It was an incredible experience that will provide a lifetime of memories.
I'll post more on it later but words can't explain how it really was and the pictures didn't capture it.

While we were on the other side of the pond there was some excitement here at home. A tornado, ok actually 6 tornadoes, hit our town. My car is now famous. It was picked up by the tornado and placed on top of a couple other cars. The picture of it was all over the place, including CNN (my car is the one on top). We would have had to put $800 into it to make it road worthy and it would have needed probably another $500 to fix some other stuff. Since it is 15 years old and we only had liability we decided it wasn't worth it and sold it for $300. Which was just enough to cover the towing and storage bill of $260. We are currently in the process of looking for something to replace it with but it is slow going. We'll probably end up getting a Honda Fit or Civic though. Fortunately no one was hurt and nothing happened to the apartment we live in. The building next to ours and our clubhouse weren't so lucky though. Everyone in the building next to ours had to move out because part of the roof got blown off and our clubhouse was destroyed.

I did start running again a little bit now that we've been back. I don't really have a plan right now though so I've been pretty inconsistant. It is just nice to get out there and run. In the next week or two I'll try and figure some new goals and get a plan to help keep my going.