6 Updates: Life, Running, and Upcoming Half Ironman

• FIRST: If you remember, back in December I posted a bunch of photos of our garage project. I Instagrammed a photo from the new garage studio space a few days ago on Jan 1st:

"95% of my stuff has been moved out to my new studio space.
Now I need a few free days to sort. Send pizza. And babysitters. And pizza."

• SECOND: I'm only going on about 20 minute runs right now, but with this current chilly air stalled over Minnesota, that's all it takes to get my chops all icy:

• THIRD: Speaking of my mutton chops, they recently went away. Here are 2 photos from Christmas that show how sweet they got:

Our Christmas with Henry on the 22nd.


Christmas Eve with the family a few days later.

But then I Instagrammed this photo for Mom a few days back:

"Shaved off my mutton chops. Consider this your birthday present, Mom."

The bow was a nice touch, right? They needed to go before my upcoming trip to Israel because those could leave some nasty mid-winter tan lines. Yuck.

• FOURTH: Speaking of Israel, I got a few shots a couple of weeks ago to get ready. Henry was with me, and he was jealous of all my sweet band-aids. So the nurse gave him a few too:

Snoopy and Daffy. Sweet.

• FIFTH: Running is still going OK. I just finished a week of 20 minutes of constant running. I started a few months back with 5 minutes walking and 2 minutes running (x3). Then I progressed to 8 minutes running and 2 minutes walking (x2). Since then I've been doing 3 runs a week increasing by 3 minutes each week: 17:00 one week, 20:00 the next, and now I started 23:00 today. Today's 23 minutes equaled 3.16 miles running - and 3.5 total adding in the walking warm-up and cool-down! PROGRESS!

• SIXTH: So I took a leap of faith the other day: I signed up for the TC Looney Challenge in October! One of my favorite running races is the TC 10 Mile, but there's a lottery to get in. The Looney Challenge is the 5K and 10K on Saturday, and then the 10 Mile on Sunday (the first weekend of October). By signing up for this, you get GUARANTEED entry for the 10 Mile! They add up your times from the 3 races to determine your overall ranking in the Looney Challenge. This injury had BETTER be ready to run that race in 10 months! It's a good goal to have on the horizon to keep me moving along.

Here's an Examiner article about the 5 different running series that TC in Motion is offering this year. My wife is thinking about doing the ULTRA Looney Challenge, and my future sister-in-law (Matt's fiancée) is already signed up for the ULTRA!