boulder beer mile

we learned a few things today at the boulder beer mile.

1) don't ever trust a man dressed in a smokers jacket...for they can both run & drink
2) blake ottersberg could not only pass as a Mexican but also hugh hefner w/ a fro



3) i didn't realize boulder triathletes were such wusses and would watch but not compete in a race as great and important as the boulder beer mile





4) pete valenytik is a stud -- the defending BBM champ had a flu bug and finished 2nd today
5) practice makes nearly perfect as Barry Siff (5430 sports race director) showed today with his 7th place BBM performance
6) world champions & olympians will watch and wish they too might one day have the tenacity to complete a BBM (Matty Reed, Simon Lessing & Joanna Zieger in attendance)*

Here are a few pics from today....



*Zeiger was 1 of 3 female competitors in the BBM today and defended her crown as female champ, doubling in the impressive double double award of 70.3 Ironman champ and BBM champ.



My sister-in-law, Kendra Deppe, finished second in her first race at altitude.

pathetic -- beermile practice attempt

I know this sounds pathetic, and on the edge of extreme tri-dorkiness, but tonight I completed a test "workout" for the upcoming Boulder Beer-mile.

Em was a champ and acted as the official heckler, I mean timer, and Thor & Izzy dutifully served as pacing rabbits. However, this horse took nearly one minute to chug the first 17oz Bitburger beer, a little less than two minutes to run each 1/4-mile, and just over a minute to drink the second 17 oz Bitburger.



It had been nearly five years since I've attempted chugging a beer and it was a sobering display that leaves me in a fragile mental state going into next Wednesdays Beer-mile race. The only consolation was knowing in the actual race we will only have to down 12 oz cans each lap and not 17 oz ones (I drank the equivalent of three beers).



Hope you enjoyed the photos...

x-mas gallery

anticipation



flatirons, boulder, colorado



talk softly, carry a big stick



izzy with her mommy



thor & izzy with their daddy



have a merry christmas, from the finangers

we got the jet lag blues

While Emmy is busy casting her vote for the "hottest male athletes of 2008" on Roman Mica's Everyman Tri blog, I thought I would jot a few notes from this past week.



We've been plagued by jet lag since flying home from Asia last week. We've both done a lot of traveling but we've never been hit this hard. We even had trouble staying awake through the entire episode of The Office last night! 2:30, 3:00, 4:00 and this morning 4:15 were our wake up calls this past week. Things are looking up though as we went to Slumdog Millionaire (Mee-lan-air) tonight and are still up as the clock strikes 11pm! Let's hope that means we can sleep in tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy the videos recently added to the side bar of this blog site featuring American cyclist David Zabriskie's new company, DZ Nuts. These commercials are hilarious but the product is, um, a lifesaver out on bike rides.

On a slightly less hilarious note, Normann Stadler flew in from Germany this last week to get a bike fit at our Retul headquarters. He also demo'd our new outdoor motion capture tracking tool called Retul Red. I put together a short video with highlights (and lots of blinking red lights). If you're a cyclist, you might enjoy.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxPOxqGiRpU

Forecast in the mountains tomorrow is snow, so Emmy and I are planning a drive up the canyon to Eldora for a snowshoe. Will see about getting some pictures.

Home

We got home from Thailand last night after 26 hours of straight traveling. We actually left Thailand on Friday and spent the night in Singapore and had a walking tour of the city and started the long trip home on Saturday morning. It was good to see Thor and Izzy again and they seemed pretty happy to see us. We are so lucky that we had our friends Rob for the first week and Carole for the second week to watch the dogs. Thor won't leave Lars' side since we have been home for fear that he will leave again.

We actually took pictures this trip which is out of the norm for us. My parents have a digital camera that can be used under water so we got some pretty cool pictures from our snorkeling trip in the Phi Phi Islands.

On our last morning in Phuket I saw the two baby elephants visiting with the kiddos at the Sheraton resort. There was one elephant who was 1 year old, named Lucky, who played the harmonica and danced along as he was playing. It was pretty cute. No pictures of that but lots of other pictures. Some of Phuket and some from the Phi Phi Islands. Here are the pictures:

Thailand

News from Phuket

We have been in Phuket for a few days and today we are stuck inside due to some rain. The big news of the day is that today we won the Fun Run associated with the Phuket Triathlon. We tried to enter the triathlon last minute because there were several cancellations and there would have been a chance to win some money if we could have found bikes. Unfortunately, there weren't any bikes available so we had to resign ourselves to do the 6k Fun Run. When signing up there was an option to enter into the 'pro' division of the Fun Run. It is a bit of an oddity to have a pro division in a race called a fun run but that is how Lars thought we should sign up. I think it was my first running race that I have won since the 5th grade Turkey Trot when I was the only girl racing. It was nice to be in the low stress race and I think we would both benefit from doing more hard run efforts like that throughout the winter. Lars' Mom and Dad also ran in the Fun Run and my parents were in charge of taking photos and cheering.

We are getting nice and tan and having a very relaxing vacation. We got some elephant kisses after the run from one of the baby elephants they have walking around the resorts.

for all you couples out there...

Especially to our friends, the Marshes. We're expecting a bit of a wardrobe change from the two of you....

Check out this dedicated couple...http://www.modbee.com/local/story/517554.html