My pre-mid life crisis?!

I turned 29 this last May, and a certain panic has set into my life. I think it a started this last March when I looked into the mirror for my morning ritual of flexing when I came to a very grim realization: I have a 30 year-old's body! See this was a huge surprise to me because I have always looked at myself with a biased slant. I would see a chiseled 18 year old muscle-filled physique when in fact there was nothing but a 30 year-old's body that had some old worn out muscles mixed in with some chub-chub. It was kind of like finding some ancient ruins buried deep in the jungle. With some imagination, one could tell that this find used to be something great, but some unknown catastrophic event sent it into obscurity! I was blinded from reality by my own opinion. Think of it this way, there are plenty of ugly people in the world, but no parent thinks that they have ugly children. In the end, I was the parent and my body was the ugly kid, complete with love handles!

THE GOAL: Regain my body through exercise, good eating, and all the other bull crap that I read about on the internet.

THE PLAN OF ATTACK: Sign up for as many weekend warrior races (triathlons, 5k races, etc) as my schedule would allow!

REALITY: In early April, I talked my brother Spencer and some of my buddies in the neighborhood to join me in the Cache Valley Triathlon(1/2 mile swim, 15 mile bike, 5k run, that order). It is held just around the corner from my house at Hyrum reservoir and it was on my list of life goals (compete in triathlon, run a marathon, win Olympic gold, etc). With peer pressure in effect, there was no going back. We were training at the gym together, we were swimming twice a week together. It was really turning out great, and I was getting some results: I was losing weight, I was regaining some long lost muscle that went into hiding long ago, it was great!

To give you a little background, last year was my first triathlon. My older brother, Ryan, challenged me, and since it was on my life list, I thought great, it should be no problem. I kind of went through the motions of the training but I wasn't taking it real serious. I figured that since I have done everything in the race before (I had ran a 5k in high school, accumulatively I have swam 1/2 mile, etc), then it would be no problem. How could I go wrong with this logic?! Not to mention, I spent 3 weeks in Australia for work only to arrive home 3 days before the race. Needless to say, it ended in disaster. Oh, don't get me wrong, I finished, but to give you an idea on how it went, at one point my dad had asked my mom if he should go look for me while I was out on my bike ride. If your family is talking about putting together a search and rescue party during the race, it is not going well. I guessed I looked like death warmed over as I crossed the finish line. A couple days later, Carlie lovingly suggested that maybe I shouldn't compete in any more triathlons. She was really concerned for me. I couldn't let my triathlon career end like that. I had to redeem myself!

Going back to the previous story, I started into my training and was ready to go, even though I was in shape, I did have some serious concerns about the swim. The Saturday before the race I went boating with the family and the water was a frigid 59 degrees! Yuck!

Putting that aside, I was able to pull myself together and threw down a pretty decent race. I cut off ten minutes from the previous year, more importantly I didn't look or feel like I was going to die. At the end off the run, my family was cheering me along at the end and Olivia came across the finish line with me, she thought that was great! I felt that I redeemed myself from the year before.

So the next day my neighbor Charlie who competed in the triathlon with me started to talk me into a 15k (9.3 miles). To make a long story a little shorter, I decided to do it on the last day of pre-registration. The act of signing up will go down as the single dumbest decision of my long and lack-luster athletic career. Here is the ultimate lesson that I learned: just because you are in shape for one sport or event, doesn't necessarily mean you are in shape for all sports or events.

I ran that son of a gun and I ran the whole time: all 1 & 1/2 hours (9:30 minute mile pace) it took me to complete it. I didn't walk once! Now 9 miles is a long ways to run and it took a long time, thus it gave me a lot of time to think about stuff. This is basically how my thought process went: "Man, I am feeling pretty good, I am in as good as shape as I need to be", and "this just goes to show that my mind is more powerful than my body".

Now, this is probably a somewhat truthful statement, but the thing that I didn't realize was that even though your body will do anything that your mind tells it to do, your body will get even by shutting down vital functions for days at a time after such events. In my case, those vital functions that were blocked were silly things like walking upright, blocking delusional thoughts, walking at a pace that was faster than a 90 year old lady. Oh, and my body decided to enhance such functions like magnifying every nerve ending from my hips down.

To sum, here is a list of the morals of this story:
1 - It's good to get in shape, but remember that your body can't do what it use to do.
2 - Just because you are "in shape" for one thing doesn't mean it transfers over to another.
3 - Even though you can will your body through many physical limits, your body has a way of getting even...and then some!

The killing of ferocious beast!

Here are the pictures of the trophy-size beast that my brother Spencer and I speared in my house. Our spears were constructed with broomstick handles with a nail fastened to the end with electrical tape. Before engaging in the hunt, we felt that it was imperative to blast the stereo with the soundtrack from “The Last of the Mohicans”. This, of course, aided us by setting the mood we needed to be in to face such a dangerous journey.

We tore the entire house apart to bag this ferocious beast. It was a worthy foe, but in the end, we came off victorious. We were able to corner the beast from a distance with an air-soft gun that is normally used to shoot wild cats that enter my garage. (a lot of good those cats did *sarcasm implied*). Spencer made the first successful spearing from 2 ½ feet away, Robb was credited with the assist because he flushed him to Spencer. A second spearing was required by Robb to put the vicious monster out of its misery.

We have concluded that the savage beast entered the house one afternoon when Carlie and Olivia were playing (they left the door open for a while). It is assumed that the beast sought refuge in our house due to construction around us.

A small memoriam, to honor our fallen foe, was constructed near the site where the diabolical creature met his ultimate fate. The animal is currently at the taxidermy and will be place next to his memoriam.

Ethan Robert Lifferth

Life in Hyrum is good. We just received a new addition to the family, Ethan Robert Lifferth on February 26, 2008 at 1:27 AM. He has a ton of dark hair, he weighed 8 lbs 1 oz and is about 20 inches long. He is super cute. Olivia loves helping out with changing diapers and she kisses him about every 3 minutes! It is pretty funny.
Mom is doing better. She has suffered from a constant headache since the birth, but it seems to be subsiding.

Carlie was really glad that he waited so that he was not born on her birthday (Feb 25).

We are adjusting to life the best we can. It is crazy going from one child to two, but we are glad to have him in our lives. We have received so much help from our family and friends. Last night was the first night we cooked dinner for ourselves. We have had so much food brought to us. It has been really helpful.