Let's be realistic here

When I was in high school the first week of x-country practice was really hard. You go from not really running to running 10-12 miles per day. So by the end of the first week, you hurt. All over, your biceps, your abs, your shoulders, your neck and those are the things that just swing, you can imagine what your legs are like. While I was in High School I discovered a secret to beat all this.

Protein shakes! Sure they don't taste great, but being someone who likes to cook I doctored them up into something delicious! I made protein shake root beer floats, with cookies-n-cream ice cream because that's my favorite, or if I didn't have root beer then a Protein shake malts.

Annnnddd... They were amazing you could literally feel the soreness go away. I would drink 5 serving per day. Sure maybe it was placebo, but it worked and they were a whopping 3000 calories but I am pretty sure we were burning that during our workouts. Anyway, it was like an ace in the hole. Guys would be hurtin' but I would feel only mildly sore and I could finish the workouts hard.

SO fast forward to today. Yesterday I ran 5 miles for the first time in over a month. It was probably the 10-15th time I've run since the baby was born. I was sore, I could feel it the moment I got off the treadmill. It was that kind of sore that you instantly know you're gonna hurt tomorrow and makes you scared of the next 36 hours. So, I resorted to my old trick, though not as big because 3000 calories today will just make me fat. Within hours the soreness started receding, and this morning I feel 90%, today I'll run 5 miles again. It is part of my plan to shock my body and to at least get it ready to survive some of this 50k, but lets be realistic I'm gonna need a lot of protein shakes to recover from this dumb idea.

Christmas!

Well now we're far enough away from Christmas to start thinking of New Year's eve so before I forget I figured I would tell everyone about our Christmas day.

Christmas Excitement

I worked on Christmas Eve and when I went to lunch I saw an good deal on something I wanted to buy the wife, but the stores never had one because they were sold out due to a Thanksgiving sale they were struggling to maintain stock on. I thought I had found one and after a little negotiating (I never buy big items without at LEAST a 10% discount) I got the item at 15% off!! :-) There was however a catch, the store I bought it from was not the store where the item was located. Nevertheless, I was soooo excited, that I left work early at 2:30 to go pick up the item and return my wife's gift I had bought her, some boots. After returning the boots I headed to the store to pick up her new gift, and I was beaming with excitement!! I went up to the customer service desk to pick up my item only to be met with a disappointed clerk that said, there was a mistake and they didn't have the item in stock. Apparently, he explained, their computers only update twice per day and someone had purchased the item between the last and next update. :-(

Now Regret

So at this point my head is spinning on what to do. I now have NOTHING for Christmas... WHY did I take the boots back? Why did I do this on impulse? I thought in my head disaster! So I started thinking ok IF maybe there was a mistake to I started asking people, they checked the back of the store, nothing. There was a nicer gift in the same style as the one I purchased for her but it was more than twice what I paid for the one I THOUGHT I was getting! Hope was fading for a Happy Christmas for the wifey.

Not Really a Miracle

After trying to strike a deal with several people to purchase the more expensive gift and getting about 10% off. The manager got involved and this is where magical things started happening. At this point I am very close to being defeated. I know achieving the deal I want was probably not going to happen and I can't go back to the store and re-purchase the boots I just returned. So I asked the manager for a deal on the gift, but I told her if not can I just get an empty box for the display so that I don't just have a receipt on Christmas Day. Then when you get more in on Jan 5th I'll return the box and pick up my wife's gift. I know, I know, it sounded like a sad attempt to get a deal but it really wasn't and she seemed to be ignoring me anyway as she furiously typed in the computer. A few moments later she said, "Ok the best deal I can do is $, would you like to buy this?" I struggled to maintain composure because she gave me 30% off!!! I couldn't believe it. It was brand new, no open box, no returned item. Brand new!! As calm as I could, I politely said, "Yes!", and they processed my purchased and I ran out of there fearing they would change their minds. I love negotiating but sometimes you just get lucky.

The Real Fun

So Christmas Day I gave it to her with excitement and I think she loved it. However, I was surprised by what made the day for me. It was our baby scratching at the boxes with her little fingers, every once in a while catching the end of the wrapping paper and pulling a half-dollar size off. It was really great. She has no clue what was happening, or "the meaning of Christmas." But what she continues to show me, is if I love her as much as I do, and I enjoy watching her learn, play and explore and try new things. I cannot fathom God's love for me, for us. I have no explanation for why I don't trust His love as much as I want her to trust my love, especially knowing, I'll fail her, but He'll never fail anyone. The depth of His love is really something I'll never understand.

Seriously, I'm gonna die

and not in the, "We're all gonna die some day... blah blah blah!" I don't like to blog about the same thing repeatedly but seriously there is not stopping the approaching doom I'm about to face.

That whole schedule of running 5 miles per day and 1000 flight of stairs per day, it was just reality in my head, and while I was typing it out in the blog world. In the real world, it was cold this week, I was tired this week. I did not get up and run, I did not do anything. Oh wait that's not true, I just remember I did do something this week. I went on two short walks with the wife and kid(s), in our fancy BOB stroller that I bought to run with, but I'm sure it didn't do anything to counter-act the 1430 calories of my favorite type of candy (fruit jelly pure sugar kind) I received from Santa

I know what your thinking, "YIKES!! 1430 calories!!" But relax I didn't eat them in one day, it took me a full 36 hours to eat them all. That's only 40 calories an hour, unfortunately it amounts to almost 1/2 lb of fat no matter how you look at it.

So now you know why I'm so sure I'll die, and you know why I had to share with you again my failure to get back on the horse of physical torture they call endurance sports.

AHHHH!! Bandera 50k

OMG!! Really January 9th, might be the last day I'm alive. At best it might be the day I survived but lost any kind of status as an athlete.

I really haven't run in probably 4 weeks. Sad but true! And prior to that I had only run about 7 or 8 times since the baby arrived 6 months ago. If you miss a few days or even a week or two there isn't much difference that goes on in your body. Any perceived change is mostly mental. It takes more than 2 weeks to really start noticing an effect in your performance. Well for me it has been 6 months. I was supposed to compete in a 1/2 Ironman race the day the baby was born and can confidently say I was in the best shape of my life. Just under 6% body fat, able to swim more than 2 miles without stopping, bike 56miles maintaining a 21mph speed, and run a 1/2 marathon with a 7min/mile pace, all on the same day without a rest in between. NOW if I could just swim 2 miles, I'd be happy. I don't even want to bike 56 miles and when I ran the Rock-n-Roll 1/2 I was just happy it was over. But 50k is 31 miles and it is 31 miles of rough terrain, steep hills, and loose soil. I am sitting here thinking what was I thinking?!

The only good news is I've got a partner that is faster than me, which will help me push harder. I have a good idea and experience on how to handle my nutrition during the race and hopefully enough experience to know when to take it easy. We were supposed to do the 100k, but due to my partner's injury we're cutting it to the 50k so if anything I can just be glad I'm only doing half what we originally planned.

Here's what I'm thinking, I'm going to start running 5miles every day in the morning, and 1000 flights of stairs on the stair-treadmill thing at the gym. It might not do much but at least maybe I can shock my body back into shape. Pray for me!!

Teething!!

Ok so you hear stories about how teething is terrible and how the babies hate it. Well I can now say to other parents I feel your pain.

The baby is cutting teeth! The past week she just didn't seem like herself, we thought she was just tired from all the traveling we did. All the while people were saying, I think she's teething but we would feel her gums and look and we wouldn't see anything. This weekend pretty much everyone said, she's teething, but we would feel her gums, look and see nothing. Then last night, my mom and grandmother took one look at ther and said, she's teething!

My mom pulled her bottom lip back and NOTHING! Then she pulled her top lip up and there they were. 4 little teeth, clear as day! Turns out, I didn't know how to feel or look for teeth. I was looking in the wrong place. Someone should do a better job written how to check for teeth. I thought I was follow the directions correctly BUT I wasn't.

Anyway it was a huge relief because I was starting to think all this sleep loss had messed her up. Normally one good nap fixes all problems for miss Daisy, but not this time. So to have an explanation was good. Now hopefully we'll get through these teeth and have a few months before the bottom ones show up.

A Brookshire-Katy Christmas

Well I was really looking forward to this weekend, I always have a lot of fun with my wife's family at their Christmas.

BUT this time we had a baby, the day (Saturday) started out great! The baby slept the whole way to Katy but then all the stimulation and everything going around the baby didn't sleep again!! She was miserable, normally she is a great baby. Happy, smiley and just all around content with life. This time she was miserable and everything made her cry and she didn't want to be anywhere but held. It ruined my day. My wife and I fought and it pretty much zapped all the energy out of me. Things were a little better on Sunday because she got two 1 hour naps but we were in a hole from the day before and so our normally smilely baby just looked and didn't interact much. Hopefully she'll be able to recover from this weekend today and be back to her normal smilely self tonight.

Business as Usual

Ok so I've been really spending probably too much time on this business thing. I have made a bunch of spreadsheets, with all sorts of formulas. They are really cool, you can change one field and about another dozen fields updates how the changes effects your profits.

Change and employees pay or hours and BAM! the 20 things update related to the bottom line. Update the price per sq-ft for the land or building costs and BAM! you can see how it effects the bottom line. Ok you get the point it is fun and since I love numbers it is really fun.

BUT here is what I've realized... this thing could have positive cash flow from day one. It should be a gold-mind of potential earnings. It should easily pay for itself and then some. My estimates is that we could pay off the mortgage in as little as 4 years but by 10 years by conservative estimates.

Of course there is always some kind of problem, not everything can be rosy. This is really best with 100k to 200k investment. It will work with just the measly 50k I have but I would like something more guaranteed so 150k is perfect. It is almost fail-proof with that in ital investment.

Cue the doubt! Now what do I do? Risk 50k for something that should still work but be more vulnerable? Find an investor who is going to want 50% ownership or more of the business? Oh, what to do? What to do? What to do?

If you want to invest, I was thinking of selling shares at $50 a piece. I'm estimating the minimum annual dividend would be between 1-3%. The great news is according to miniature golf course owners, the potential could be as high as 69% per year!! Based on their projected gross revenue. The really bad news is, just like any business it can fail.

20 shares ($1000) would get you 1% ownership.

Big Business

So I met with the Agents for the piece of land I want to build a miniature golf course on. I was plenty nervous but after a few minutes the nerves were calm. The whole thing went really good, I had a lot of questions they answered, I got a good feel for what they want and they got to ask me a lot of questions about what I wanted. It was a good meeting; before, this whole idea was abunch of e-mails, and business plan words and excel spreedsheet numbers. I guess it is similar to looking at houses on-line, it only gets you so far, but when you actually go with your realtor to see a house it really helps define what you want and/or what you can afford.

So I think I've firmed up my decision for where I want the course, now I need to find an design/construction company to design everything and get me a number that I can get financing for. It would be really helpful to have 100k right now, I don't think I need it but if I had 100k of liquid cash this whole thing could start happening next week.

Part of doing this thing will require us to sell our house, which is no big deal emotionally for us, but it is a lot of work and some money and then there is the question of where will we live? A lot of change but I am convinced this is a great opportunity especially with the way the market is.

Post-Op

Alright I'm feeling pretty good. Yesterday I only took Advil, and everything seems alright. Today I'm gonna see what no pain meds feels like and so far everything is good.

SO I'm gonna get on the trainer today. I'll try and take it easy, nothing to crazy, but I need to get going on this training deal since I have a 1/2 Ironman coming up in 7 months plus this 100k/50k race.

My 100k running partner got hurt. Whew! I'm sad she got hurt because that is no fun, it just plain sucks BUT the good news out of it is that I don't have to endure one of the toughest tests I could imagine. However, it looks like she wants to do the 50k which is going to be really hard so I guess I'm not quite off the hook yet.

In other news I'm going to meet with the Plum Creek guys on Thursday. I'm nervous, I really want this mini golf idea to work and I'm about 2 steps away from needing to put my name on paper and put some money on the line. It is a great idea, one that will work and one I'm willing to make my job. I think God has provided some of the means, we'll see what happens.

Whew! That wasn't so bad afterall

Ok so I was kind of worried about the recovery time for having my gall bladder taken out. I don't know if the Doc was just not telling me the full story in June but he told me that I could be down for one or two few days. I could be back to training for 1/2 Ironmans and triathlons in no time in less than a week.

BUT this time around he said 3 weeks, prefaced by you're in good shape so maybe a little less. That's a radical change if you ask me, and one that is much longer than I really wanted to even if I don't really have time for training right now.

Good news!! Today I feel good, my bell button (where they pulled out the gall bladder) is the sorest part of me. I've eaten my normal breakfast, played with the baby and did some work from home. Now I'm just waiting on wintery weather, that I'm starting to get skeptical about. It is 8am and above 37 degrees and all the precip is off to the far Southeast.

I want to take my wife for all the support she gives me!