Beach Vacation 2013

Last week we went to Navarre Florida for our nearly yearly beach vacation. Navarre is between Pensacola and Destin. We stayed in the same condo (The Pearl) and the same room as last year since we liked it so much. The condo has three bedrooms, three baths, kitchen, dining, and living areas. I looked up the square footage and its bigger than our first house (and 10x more expensive). My son brought two friends and my daughter brought one so we had three 16 year old boys and two 21 year old girls with us. As far as I know, they didn't get in any trouble, but then again, I was asleep by 10 pm every night. We all had a good time and with the big condo, never felt cramped. Anyway, here are a few pictures.

View from the front balcony

View from the rear balcony

One day I took the kids parasailing and we had a blast.

We went up about 500 feet. It was very relaxing.

The boys got dunked up to their necks :-)

I went up with the girls.

The boys

 

The girls

 

Hopefully we can go back next year.

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Biggest run month yet!

Without a race to train for, I haven't had much to blog about. I suppose I could blog more about food, but find it faster just to post pics on Instagram. I love looking at training and grilling pics there. If you haven't checked it out, you should. If you do, my username is Ransick (just like my twitter name and just about everything I sign up for).

Work has been crazy going from almost no travel to mostly travel. I counted my trips since January 1st and I've been out of town for work 24 weeks out of 31 plus 4 more traveling for fun. Luckily I like my job, the people I work with, the company I work at, and the products we design, develop, sell and support. All the solo triathlon training time has paid off in the mental toughness department :-).

Anyway, on to my running. I hit 118 miles in July! That is the largest run volume month ever and only the fourth month over 100 miles. I feel like I felt before my last half marathon that I PR'd by five minutes and thoughts of signing up for a half this fall and trying to hit 100 miles three months in a row is starting to cross my mind. We'll see. I do miss triathlons and watched quit a bit of Ironman Lake Placid last weekend.

 

Beautiful weather lately in the Midwest.

In other news, my love affair with avocados has reached a new level. I've been making fresh guacamole regularly and am honing in on perfection. What's your favorite guac recipe? I also grilled some avocados last weekend and they were amazing!

Loving my pampered chef avocado knife

 

 

I've been loving limes in my beer this summer too.

 

Figured out that a potato mashers works great for making guac

 

My guac recipe

• A few ripe avocados
• 1/2 red onion minced
• A couple Roma tomatoes blanched then diced
• Juice from a couple limes
• Fresh cilantro, minced
• Salt
• A clove of garlic, minced
• Half a jalapeño, diced

I'm in love :-)

 

Grilled avocado recipe

• Halve the avocados and lightly oil them with olive oil
• Grill on medium heat flesh side down for about five minutes
• Fill the center where the seed was with salsa
• Dab of sour cream on the salsa
• Drizzle fresh lime juice on
• Sprinkle with chopped cilantro

 

You're welcome!

 

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Mid-year goal check

I decided to simplify my goals this year and only have three.

1. Run 1000 miles - YTD 423/500. I have some work to do.

2. Do at least one plank a day, everyday. I did at least one a day through May then quit while on my fishing trip. I don't have an excuse except that I just didn't feel like it. I had my own room in the cabin and could easily have kept the streak alive. Once I missed a couple of days, I quit. Maybe I'll restart in July.

3. Stay under 160 pounds. So far so good there which I'm pretty happy about since I've been traveling nearly every week.

 

In other news, we had beautiful weather for a run today. Here are a couple pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

 

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Fishing 2013

Here are some pictures from my fishing trip to Hayward Wisconsin last week. It has become a yearly trip I go on with my best friend and his brother. Spring came late this year in Northern Wisconsin,so we weren't sure what we were in for, but we knew we would have fun regardless. We arrived at 5:30 pm on Wednesday to 50 degrees and pouring rain. We fished anyway and it was miserable, but we had fun :-). We caught a few fish Wednesday night. Thursday was also cold and wet and our boat caught four fish all day (one for me). The fish just weren't interested in eating. Friday, the weather was getting nicer, but the fish were still lethargic. I caught one fish Friday. No problem though, we had plenty of beer, beef jerky, chili cheese chips, trail mix, and slim Jim's. Glad my cholesterol test was two weeks ago :-). Saturday was another beautiful day and the fishing picked up. I caught 22 fish Saturday and our boat caught 42 sealing our third straight fishing tournament win :-).

Didn't take pictures the first two days due to rain. Friday was like this.

Borrowed my friend's late father's (Putie) fishing hat since I forgot mine.

The air just smells clean up there.

No service. Perfect!

This was the first decent fish I caught and my friend had his finger over part of the lense. It means I can make up the size of the fish later, right? Got a good laugh about that one.

Beautiful day

 

My friend bought us matching hideous shirts which we saved for the last day of fishing. We all got quite a chuckle out of it :-).

Kurt with a nice bass.

I had to take a pic with my finger in the way :-).

 

Almost covered my face :-)

Surgery on a northern pike that swallowed a lure.

Me in "the shirt" :-)

Until next year...

 

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And my next injury is.... Ribs

Saturday I was out running some local single track. It was a beautiful day out there and I was feeling good so I decided to run for about two hours. An hour and a half in, I tried on a root and before I knew it, I slammed to the ground landing on a root with my right rib cage. Ouch! It knocked the wind out of me and left me a little stunned. After feeling around to see if I broke anything I decided to continue my run. As I ran, my ribs hurt pretty bad and felt like something was loose in there. I walked a little poking at them and found a spot that really hurt. Tried to run again holding my ribs with my left hand, but it wasn't happening. Walked the half mile back to my car holding my ribs deciding whether or not I should drive to the ER or go home and shower first. I'm a guy, so yea, I drove home.

My view from the ground

 

After showering I decided to consult Dr. Google. The good doc said I bruised or broke a rib and the treatment was the same. Rest, anti-inflammatory and pain meds. I don't like taking drugs so I just went about my business. Sunday after having my morning coffee I started thinking that flying on Monday might not be a good idea if I had something worse than what I self diagnosed. Once I started looking at how late the urgent care place was open I figured that meant I just need to go get it over with. After a few X-rays and some painful probing, the doc said he didn't see anything broken but cartalidge doesn't show up on x-ray so something could be broken. He said I would know in a week, if it's bruised ribs, it will be better. If something is broken, it will still hurt pretty bad. He said I could resume normal activity, including running, if I could stand the pain. After lunch I decided to give running a try. Made it five steps and walked home holding my ribs. My pain level went from a three to an eight on the first step.

Tuesday my ribs were still about a three on the pain scale until dinner. Sitting through a three and a half hour business dinner, my ribs started barking. I didn't tell our customers about it, or my co-workers except for a couple guys that work for me. I was getting close to telling our customers and excusing myself early, but I stuck through it. That night in the hotel, I woke up about midnight and couldn't find a position I was comfortable enough to sleep. Eventually, I got up at 4 am and went to the front desk and bought a couple Aleve, which helped. Wednesday I had my pain med prescription faxed to Cleveland and I picked that up along with a bottle of Aleve on my way to another business dinner. Wednesday evening I took Aleve, but felt good enough to skip the pain pills. So far so good on avoiding taking the pain pills.

I'm five days in and still hurting. We'll know for sure Saturday when I try to run. Hope I'm better before my fishing trip in a few weeks. I'm the motor man in out boat and the thought of pull starting the engine a hundred times a day hurts. My best friend just might have to learn to drive a boat :-)

 

Soon to be view while fishing

 

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100 mile month

In April I had my third ever hundred mile running month. The last time I had one was a month before my 5 minute half marathon PR. If I could string a few of these together, I might be able to have another running PR. For now I'm happy not to be injured and that I got 100 miles running in April even with traveling every week.

Unfortunately my bike and swim graphs don't look so good. I am totally at peace with it though. Work has to take precedence since triathlon racing will never pay the bills for me.

I do miss cycling. I have plenty of alone time with all this traveling and cycling is a lot of alone time for me so not a total loss.

I'm not a strong swimmer and likely never will be but I do miss the solitude involved with swimming. At least my last race involved my best race swim yet.

In other news, I am still getting my cooking time in on the weekend. If you follow me on twitter and/or instagram, you've already seen these, but they are worth seeing again. :-).

I like my neighbor's recipe for baby back ribs.
- peel the back side skin off the ribs (let me know if you want more info)
- get a big roasting pan and fill with 50-50 water and apple cider vinegar
- add Lea and Perrins sauce and ground pepper to taste
- bake 2.5 to 3 hours at 250 degrees
- Move to the grill to finish them up

I made this up based on my wife showing me some Facebook post. It turned out amazing.
- slice zucchini
- Lightly cover with olive oil and dipping bread seasoning
- grill at medium heat for ~5 minutes (defined as holding hand an inch above the grilling surface and being able to tolerate it)
Grill side one for five minutes, flip then add Roma tomatoes and cheese. Grill another five minutes or until the cheese looks done.

So what is medium heat on a charcoal grill? If you can hold your hand about two inches above the grant for about 2-3 seconds, no more, no less, that is perfect. Enjoy!

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