Class Trip to the Lindsay Museum

Today Conner's class ventured off for a field trip to the Lindsay Museum.  I got to be a driver / chaperon and hang out with the kids all day.  It was good fun.   The museum specializes in rehabilitating wounded animals found in the area and then, if possible, returning them to the wild. There were lots of up close animal encounters with local wildlife. The tour guides were awesome and seemed to really enjoy entertaining the kids.

The fast trip consisted of a half hour drive to get there, 20 minutes to get organized, a one hour tour, lunch, play, and then back to school.  Done!

Danville Hikers Club

Today was the first of many planned monthly hiking trips.  We drove up to the small, very cute town of Clayton behind Walnut Creek and wandered along a fire road and beside a creek. Everyone was well behaved and so we are definitely on for the next one.

Thanks Julian for organizing!

Conner Chats Up the Ladies

Conner has started attending church with Grandma. He has begun to meet some of the congregation and appears to be fitting in very well.

A note to Grandma that was forwarded along seems to sum it up!

From: tneburch@comcast.net
To: "Kershaw, Verna" <VKershaw@aol.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:50:03 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: your grandson

Hi Verna,

Not sure if I'm spelling Conner correctly or not--anyway-what a dear child. Only in 1st grade, mature vocabulary, has lived in Europe, a great imagination. We were playing with playdough that I had made. He said, "It looks like fondant icing"!!! "My favorite TV program is the Food Channel!!! We had quite a discussion about the huge cakes that are made. We made a crocodile and an alligator hiding in the water(out of the playdough). Heard all about his siblings and the exchange student living with the family. Thanks for sharing this dear child with me this morning.

Love, Elizabeth

Conner Gets an iTouch

Conner joined the modern high tech age today with the purchase of an Apple iTouch. It's exactly like the Apple iPhone, except it has no phone or camera. It uses WiFi to connect to the Internet and it can download all the cool applications and games available for the iPhone.

He has paid for half the cost and is doing chores for a little more cash to add to the pot. All those missing teeth are paying off :)

We've set him up with an email address, so feel free to send him a message at ConnerGlynn@Gmail.com. He can also instant message via Google Talk.

He has spent the day playing with it, accessing Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and trying to figure it out. At 6:30 am, his new alarm goes off!

Meet the Team: Tom Glynn

Meet the Team: Tom Glynn

Tom gets interviewed by his Triathlon Coach from Endurance Nation.

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Parker Loses a Tooth

It was not a good week week for Parker's teeth.  On the weekend he was playing downstairs and clipped his chin on something, which somehow caused him to bang his tooth.  It was very lose almost immediately.  We called into the  dentist and left a message.  

The next day at school, the very lose tooth popped out at snack time. Parker did not appear to be phased about any of it.  He did know that Conner got cash  for missing teeth, so he enlisted Conner's help to write a note to the tooth fairy. Conner's cash rewards started out at a dollar and somehow have worked their way up to five.  Parker figured four dollars was a pretty good deal.  

We did have to tell him that we wouldn't be paying out any more cash if he purposely knocked out another tooth.

More discussions with the dentist and it was decided that we should have an X-ray done and then just leave the hole for the the next three years until something decides to grow into it.

Conner - One More Makes 7

It has been almost four months, but Conner has finally lost another tooth.

We were at Disneyland sitting at the ice cream shop snacking away when Kira passed her huge candy covered waffle cone around. Conner bit, touched his tooth, pulled, and then exclaimed that he had lost the tooth.  High fives all around followed a little mopping up of the blood made for a fun day.  Amazingly, the tooth fairly knew that he was staying at a hotel and not in his own bed.  

Tom's Half Ironman in Oceanside CA

I had a great race. I was hoping to shave 10 minutes off my last year’s time of 5:23:49. My bike power is way up from last year as is my running vDot score. I hadn’t done a triathlon since IMLP in July of 2008, so it had been a while.

Executive Summary:
2009 2008
Swim

38:41/41:47
Bike

2:38:18/2:49:59
Run

1:33:24/1:44:08
Total

4:59:16/5:23:49

Details

The drive down from the San Francisco Bay area to Oceanside / San Diego on Thursday worked out well. The car was crowded with myself, Dianne, four kids; Kira, Conner, Parker and a Katryne, a friend of the family visiting California for the first time. Plenty of stops along the way including Denny’s, McDonalds, a gas station, and some other snack place that kept everyone in a good mood.

Friday was check-in day in the morning. Dianne pretended to be on vacation attending to multiple conference calls while the rest of us headed off to the expo and registration. After I purchased t-shirts for everyone we headed over the 20 steps or so to the beach. Kids had a blast. Parker insisted on being naked in the sand. Negotiations ended when he agreed to lose the shirt, shoes, socks and underwear, but the shorts stayed on. Conner wandered into the water with track pants on and complained for hours that his pants were completely wet, as he sat in the sand. Kira and Katryne just sat around getting sun burned. After lunch with John Stark we headed back to the hotel to pick up Dianne, who was suffering from cabin fever and we all drove the 40 minutes from Oceanside to San Diego to wander around. Friday evening was the Endurance Nation Triathlon Team (EN) dinner, which I attended and the family politely declined. Had fun, had a beer, and then went home to go to bed.

Saturday weather was excellent. A little cool in the morning, but when the sun came up, you could tell it was going to be a nice day.

The water was a typical 59 degrees. In prior years that had been my first open water swim of the year and it took 10 minutes or so to acclimatize, get over the panic attacks, freezing face and other exposed limbs and otherwise getting on with getting the swim over with. This year, I managed a couple of swims at Del Valle, a local lake over the past two weeks. I got the suffering over with and the swim turned out to be quite good. There was a lot of thrashing in our age group swim wave, and half way around we ran into a bunch of slow swimmers from the wave ahead of us. I was out of the water in just under 39 minutes, a couple of minutes ahead of last year.

T1 was comical as usual. The wetsuit came off really well, but then I went to apply a little body glide, only to find it had almost all melted. On to the sunscreen. I pulled the cap off and the bottle went flying. For a second or two I thought about just getting on the bike, but decided to chase the tube and reapply, fearing a major sunburn. My body still has a sunburned area from IM Arizona in 2007, so I gave up a few seconds to be a little smarter.

The bike went well. I averaged 242 for my Pnorm, up 20 watts from last year. The power dropped through the race, but I felt great, passed a bunch of people all day and didn’t worry about it. I could have gone faster on the back end, but I was doing well and didn’t want to blow up on the run. My IF was just under 0.8 and the VI was 1.05.

Nothing exciting in T2, just in and out.

For the run, I wasn’t sure what to expect. My last half marathon was a stand alone effort in October. The all out effort ended with a great 1:31 time for me. My running has improved over the off season and I’ve run a few very fast 5Ks, so I felt I could do better than last year’s Oceanside run of 1:44, but was not sure how much better. In the back of my mind I was thinking somewhere between 7:15 and 7:30 miles. I ran the first mile in 7:04 and felt like it was quite easy, except for the cursed sand. I can’t believe they reinserted the 100 yards of sand running again this year; single track running, where, of course, someone is always walking in front of me, so I have to run through 4 inches of beach sand to get around them for most of the distance, cursing to myself. Of course, it’s out and back, so four times across this mess. I digress. After the first mile, my brain goes into overdrive. If I go out to fast and blow up, Coach Patrick will surely make some comment – that I would totally deserve. I decide to plow on and see how it all falls out. In the end, I averaged 7:08 miles and was completely consistent all the way until the end with virtually no slowing down.

I knew that I had blown away last year’s numbers but was not sure of my final results. Kira met me at the end for a high five. The wave starts had me begin at 7:37 am. We checked her phone for the time (teenagers don’t have watches anymore), backed out the time it took us to meet and figured it was right around 5 hours. I’m not really sure why a few seconds really matter, but at the time, 5:00:01 was a whole lot different than 4:59:59. In the end a 4:59:16 was posted, so I smiled a lot all afternoon.

I have to add that the race organizers added a fantastic kid’s area to keep families busy during the race. The kids played in the jump houses for a long time, got tattoos, snacked at the “aid stations” and had a blast. Thumbs way up from all the parents. Kira also helped out applying tattoos and the organizers thanked her and presented her with a $15 iTunes card. She was stoked. This was the best ever IM family idea.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, it’s Disneyland. Wednesday, back in the car and heading home.

How many days until IM CdA