Merry Christmas 2007

I've thought a lot about my faith in Jesus Christ during the last few months and feel so grateful for my belief in Him as a Savior. There's nothing this world needs more right now than peace and goodwill, which is what His message and sacrifice is all about. As this wonderful editorial in the Washington Post outlines, it's hard to imagine how this peace will be achieved amidst all these wars. Even still, I am full of optimism that great things can be accomplished out of small seeds. Nothing has rejuvinated this optimism more than the experience of becoming a father. This beautiful girl growing inside Sarah quite literally grew from our small seeds and will grow to become a beautiful woman. It's true I haven't seen her yet and don't know her personality, but if as her mother's daughter I'm confident she'll be my greatest contribution to the world so far. This is a picture of Sarah and I opening up her very first Christmas gift. For the record, it was a beautiful sweater and hat that my mom crocheted for her. In the background is my step-sister Tiffany and her fiance Fred who will be married in 3 weeks!

Christmas in Mesa

Didn't I marry the cutest girl? I took this picture of us in front of the Mesa, Arizona temple after attending a session with my Grandparents. This is one of the oldest LDS temples I've been to, and of the really old ones I've seen, this might be the best example of renovations improving the building and temple experience without losing its historic feel. Because I'm kind of a nerd about keeping spreadsheets to track things like running, I have a record of every time I've been to a temple. For example, I know the exact number of endowments I've done, or the number of temples I've attended, and the exact number of times I've been to each. In case you're wondering, I've been to 20 temples with Montreal the most frequented. The rest of the list is: Manhattan, Idaho Falls, Boise, Bolivia, Provo, Washington DC, Boston, Salt Lake, Logan, Bountiful, Mt Timpanagos (UT), Jordan River (UT), Ogden, St. George, Manti, Las Vegas, Raleigh and Edmonton.

Inside the temple visitors center was a beautiful display of nativity scenes created by artists all over the world, including a beautiful collection of french pieces. We loved our private time with Grandma and Grandpa before the rest of the crowd arrived.

Tales from the road

It's Sunday morning, December 23rd in Mesa, AZ; day 4 of our 17 day journey through Arizona, Utah and Idaho. After going to the UNC basketball game and staying up way too late on Wednesday night, we were up at 4:45am to get to the airport (thanks for the ride dad!). It's great to be with my Bingham grandparents and all the other family that's coming into town. I'm real dissapointed to be sick (I blame everyone in Chapel Hill who was sick last week), though I'm starting to feel better. I've been really looking forward to running in a place that's warm, flat and not humid, so I've decided that I'm going running on Monday regardless of what I feel like.

We really haven't done too much other than hang out with family and eat some wonderful meals, but we'll get some pictures uploaded soon.

HPAA Grad in Congress

Perhaps you heard about the special election yesterday in the Virginia 1st Congressional district to fill the seat of Rep. Joann Davis (R-VA) who died earlier this year. Robert Wittman (R), a 1 term member of the VA House of Delegates comfortably won with more than 61% of the vote which wasn't really a surprise to anyone. The interesting thing though, is that he has an MPH degree from my department at UNC, Health Policy and Administration (HPAA). He's the only HPAA grad in congress that I know of, and I feel a bit of pride for his accomplishment.

We're having a girl!!

As Sarah posted on our blog, we had our ultrasound on Thursday and are thrilled to announce we'll be having a baby girl. It was an unbelievable experience to watch my 8 inch daugther move around on the screen, showing us her toes, thumbs, arms and all the other appendages that she seems just as enthralled by. We would of course been just as excited to have a boy, but it's wonderful to finally be able to start referring to our baby as "her" instead of "it." My world feels like it's been completely changed and I didn't know I could be this happy. It's pretty wonderful. I hope you enjoy the following pics, though they are not nearly as great as watching her move in real time.

I love the shot of her little foot! As I look at the other two, I'm reminded of a scene from the West Wing I saw recently. Toby is looking at the ultrasound of his twins when the technician announces, "Mr. Ziegler, here are your babies' heads." To which he reacts with much more emotion than his character usually shows, "My babies have heads!" That's what I felt like saying each time we saw something new, like the four chambers of the heart, the spine, her thumbs, her nose, ears, toes, etc. I've always thought of the creation of life to be a miracle, but now that it's actually happening to me, it seems to be even more than a miracle, though I don't quite know what word to use.

These are some of the 4D pictures of my daughter. They didn't turn out amazingly well since she's still so young (18 weeks). The tech said that if she had been around 24 weeks, we would have been able to see her features really well, but at this point, they all just look like old men.

Mormonism in the Media

There has been LOTS written about Mormonism in the media lately due to Mitt Romney's presidential aspirations. As a young democrat Mormon who has in the past and expects to work in government/politics in the future, I feel I have a lot at stake in how Romney handles questions about his faith and the stereotypes and frames that get developed as a result. He's not who I will vote for next November, though I think he has done a very good job dealing with these questions and paved the way for aspiring young Mormons like myself. Here are some snapshots of the media coverage.



This is one of my favorite videos in the mainstream media, because it shows that we are truly a worldwide church now, now simply dominated by the Utah culture.



Since he got in the race, many have suggested Romney would eventually have to give a speech about his faith like JFK did in 1960. Once former Baptist Minister and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee passed him in the Iowa polls, the timing was suddenly right for Romney to deliver such a speech.



This is the full video of his speech pulled from the Romney youtube page. All in all I think he did a good job of discussing the role of religion in society without defending the specifics of his faith.

It's too soon to tell if this speech will help Romney's campaign in Iowa, but here is some of the press coverage so far:

The New Republic, where former Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet concludes, "Mitt Romney, you're no Jack Kennedy."

EJ Dionne's Washington Post article, which described the speech as both "brilliant and frustrating," as well as "inspiring, yet also transparently political in its effort to find the precise balance that would satisfy Republican primary voters." I agree with Dionne that one of the weakest parts of the speech was the assertion that freedom requires religion. Does it?

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson (the one who wrote term "Axis of Evil" but has since criticized the Bush White House) wrote that JFK's speech remains a landmark of American rhetoric, Romney's bold and intellectually serious speech deserves to be read along side it.

Finally, David Brooks column in the NY Times which suggests that while the speech might down as a historic event for Mormons, his reaction is more muted. Even still, he concludes it was not a mistake for Romney to deliver the speech and that he threaded the needle well.

Liverpool vs. Porto

Liverpool - Porto 2-1
Uploaded by robotdotcom

As much as I love baseball, basketball and hockey, the best annual competition in the world has to be the Champions League in Europe. The top teams of country compete in a large tournment which eventually gets narrowed down to 32, 16 and so forth, until one team lifts the trophy. Last year Milan beat Liverpool, the year before Barcelona beat Arsenal. This week Liverpool had what was essentially a do or die game for them in the group stages against Porto from Portugal. In front of their home crowd at Anfield (their stadium), they won with a dramatic goal by the newly signed Spanish forward Fernando Torres. Now, the fate of their champions league season rests entirely on one game in Marseille in two weeks. They win, they're assured of going to the round of 16. If not, well, they keep their focus on doing well in their English league games so they can play in the Champions League again next year.

Health Care Editorial

Click here to read a letter to the editor published in today's Daily Tar Heel (the Chapel Hill newspaper) that I helped write. Two classmates and I created this survey, sent it to 3 schools of public health, compiled the results and drafted letters to the editor of the school newspapers for those 3 schools, as well as all the major papers in NC and the Country. The total print circulation of these papers is 10 million! Of course we don't expect to get published in all of them, but in addition to the Daily Tar Heel, we expect to be published in the Greensboro News and Record in the next week. Kind of fun!

Dr. Oberlander in NEJM

Dr. Jonathan Oberlander, the prof I work for as a research assistant, had another publication in the New England Journal of Medicine this week. Click here to read his profile of the health reform plans being offered by all the different candidates. There's also a link to an interview you can listen to.

England vs. Croatia

England vs Croatia from F T on Vimeo.

The qualifying round for the Europe 2008 tournment just finished with some very exciting matches. I missed them because I was in NYC, but as always, I got all the highlights on www.footytube.com. The big story was the England-Croatia game. All England had to do was tie this game and they would qualify to play in the huge European tournment in June. But as you'll watch in this game, they gave up two early goals, dramatically came from behind on a Lampard penalty kick and a Peter Crouch goal, only to concede the go ahead goal right at the end. Absolutely tragic! Of course, the coach didn't make it more than 3 days before being fired. As a side note, France did qualify for the tourney, but it was a long tough road.

First heartbeat!

We had a midwife appt just a couple days after Sarah came back and it was wonderful!! She put this little machine on Sarah's tummy and clear as day we heard "thump, thump, thump" going 140 beats per minute!!! It was incredible, I had a huge grin on my face the whole time and asked Sarah how much it would cost to buy one of those machines (too much apparently). Her tummy is starting to show now, and occassionally she feels movement in her tummy. I couldn't be more excited about this pregnancy and love the time I have spent talking to our child already about everything under the sun, from sports, cartoons, politics, family home evening, etc. We're now at 17 weeks, so we're almost halfway there!

UNC basketball

My dad recently moved to Chapel Hill, NC where he'll be working on his PhD distertation. We are so happy to have him close by and have already done a lot of fun things. For example, we had a great time at one of the UNC basketball exhbition games. Our apt is literally a 4 minute walk from the Dean Smith Center, or the "Dean Dome" as it's known down here. In case you don't know about UNC basketball, it's practically its own religion. They are consistently among the best teams, and this year is no different. They started the season ranked #1 in the entire country, and still haven't lost a game!

Emotional Goodbye

Here's a picture of our emotional goodbye at the Raleigh-Durham airport on Oct 17th. Sarah ended up being in Canada for more than three weeks, but she came back with a visa! Sorry I don't have a picture of when I picked her up, I didn't let go of her long enough to reach for the camera...

Pres. Sarkozy

When I heard that he'd be giving this speech, I thought it would be a great thing for my wife to enjoy and so I looked into how we could go. Here's a link to the cspan archives of his speech; you have to scroll until you get to Nov 7. The video quality starts off poor, but be patient. When it turned out she would be stuck in Canada, I decided to find a way to go anyway, so I called my Congressmen and Senators, asking them for information. Nobody had details, so I called a couple newspapers, congressional committees, until finally the office of the House Clerk told me that each Member of Congress would get two tickets, one for themselves, another to give away. My chances got a whole lot slimmer at that point. I called my Congressman (David Price, of the 4th District in NC), and my two Senators (Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr) to ask if I could have their extra ticket. Though I'm Democrat and the Senators are both Republicans, they were incredibly kind to me and did what they could, though with a whole state full of people to give tickets to, I obviously didn't make the cut. However, David Price apparently didn't have anyone else bugging him for the ticket, so on Monday night I got an email from his staff member saying I got the ticket! All of a suddent I had to make plans to leave for DC in a day. I called my Aunt Mere who lives in the Virginia suburbs south of DC and she said I could stay with them.



So the next afternoon, after voting in the Chapel Hill town council elections, I got in the car and drove 4.5 hours to their house. The next morning I rode the train into DC, picked up my ticket in the Rayburn office building, read through the Washington Post in the staff cafeteria, then headed over to the Capital. It took 25 minutes to have a background check before I was let up into the gallery at 10:40. The Senators filtered in around 10:50, and Sarkozy came in around 11:05. It was amazing to be in the House chambers for a Joint Session of Congress, to see the most important people in the nation (other than some notable absences, like Clinton, Obama, Dodd, Biden, McCain, who were all out campaigning). I did see Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, Hatch, Sec. Kempthorne, Sec. Chertoff, and tons others.


As for the actual speech, Sarkozy is a powerhouse. My translation thing didn't work, and the sound wasn't turned up very loud, so I had to struggle to hear and understand, but I did alright. He received lots of applause and I thought he did a fantastic job. I'm very curious to hear more about how the French people are responding to his efforts to strengthen the Franco-American relationship.

I spent the afternoon attending a Senate Judiciary Committe, an extremely important and prestigious committee with oversight jurisdiction over the whole federal judicial branch of government. This room, Dirksen 226, is where all the Supreme Court Justices have been confirmed. The actual meeting wasn't that interesting to me, but it was a great way to end my day.

As it turned out, my mom was in DC for a meeting, and was able to get a hotel room with 2 beds for the same price, so I stayed an extra day and hung out with her. It was great to go out to dinner with her and stay up "late" talking, as well as have a nice breakfast with her. Of course, as great as it was to be there and with mom, it was so great to hit the road and drive practically straight to the airport to pick up Sarah, who I hadn't seen in over 3 weeks!!!

Speaker Pelosi at Meredith College

I got to hear Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speak at Meredith College in Raleigh recently. I read about it online, found it was free, and arranged to meet some friends there. It was an all girls college, so you can imagine it being a pretty uplifting and inspiring experience for the students. She spoke a bit about breaking the "marble ceiling," as well as about the direction of the country. It was a fun experience to see the first woman Speaker of the House, but little did I know I'd see her again in just 5 days!

Sarah's Back!

I can't tell you how great it is to have Sarah back! She had her interview on Oct 19th. Although it went well, they didn't really give her many details about when she'd get the actual paperwork allowing her to cross back into the States. They never actually said the words, "you're approved," so I wouldn't be totally relieved until she was physically walking off the plane in North Carolina. The visa ended up arriving on Wed Oct 31st around 10am. Sarah wrote me immediately, so I got the good news on my laptop during class and obviously didn't focus much on the lecture. We had already purchased a flight for her to come back (thinking it would be cheaper to move a flight, rather than purchase a new one), and since it was scheduled for only week after on the 8th, we decided to save the couple hundred bucks and not change the ticket. As planned, she landed in the Raleigh Durham Airport around 7:20pm on the 8th and life has been so much better since!

Immigration Situation

Pray for Sarah on Friday! We received word on Wednesday night that she had been invited for a visa interview in Montreal this Friday. She was planning on going back to Canada next week, so it's not a huge deal that this letter came this week, in fact it's pretty good timing. Except they only gave us 2 days notice!!! Can you believe it? We have had an unbelievable adventure with the immigration process over the last 18 months (regardless of the outcome on Friday, the adventure is far from over), but this is the most unbelievable thing so far. The letter was actually dated and mailed on Friday the 12th, arriving in Gatineau on Tue the 16th. We got word of the appointment around 6pm, went to a previously scheduled dinner at a friend's house in which I studied with a couple friends for Wednesday morning's exam.

By 8pm we had switched Sarah's flight information so she would be leaving the next day and cancelled our hotel reservation in Wilmington for Thu night (we were going to spend Friday at the beach). A friend came over around 9:45 and we gave Sarah a blessing that her body and mind would be at ease and that she'd make it through this stressful experience well, having learned a lot and ending up grateful for it.

I started going through all our application information, going through the pre-interview instructions, scanning dozens of pages of stuff into my computer for our records, double checking everything. Of course I found a couple mistakes, and had to update a couple forms. I needed to start from scratch on another form relating to my financial situation, and since I wasn't going to be there in person I had to have it notarized. Since Sarah was leaving before any notary opened, and it was too late to get to one, I would have to UPS it to her Wednesday morning to arrive on Thursday for her interview on Friday. In other words, if the mail had been one day slower, we wouldn't have been able to get this document done correctly!

Sarah did a couple loads of laundry, I ran out to the bank (the interview fee is $100 in US cash) and drove around to make sure I could find the UPS store and the notary in the morning, as well as filling up the car with gas. By the time we finished all that and went to bed it was 3:30am. Sarah woke up around 6:15, I woke up at 6:45. We left for the airport at 7:25, and I said my goodbye as she went through security around 8am. It's hard to explain why I felt so emotional, I feel confident everything will go well, but I cried while driving back to Chapel Hill.

I drove straight to the UPS store where they notarized the document and sent it on its way. I got home, changed shirts (no time for a shower), barely caught the bus and made it to school on time for my exam. It went ok, though I'm glad it's only worth 10% of that grade and that I'm generally doing well in that class. I had two other classes that day which were very relaxed because it's the start of my 4 day weekend fall break.

Sarah had a pretty insane day of flying. Most flights would have cost almost $700, though she found a way to go for $350 by making two stops. It meant that she would fly south to Orlando, Florida, then up to Newark, NJ before arriving in Montreal at 6:37pm. Well, our motto is that if something can happen, it will, so of course there was a lot of fog in Newark and they closed the airport for a bit. She was able to find a way through Cleveland, which worked out fine, except she didn't end up landing until 9:15pm, 13 hours after I had said goodbye to her. Have I mentioned that she's pregnant and has been throwing up at least once a day? Thankfully, she didn't throw up once all day! Unfortunatley however, she has already thrown up today's (thursday's) breakfast. Hopefully she'll feel well during the actual interview tomorrow. The other good news is that the UPS I sent her arrived this morning despite mechanical problems with the plane in Kentucky, and that the parcel Yohann sent (the original interview appointment letter) arrived in Montreal safely as well.

As far as we can tell we've done everything we are supposed to do and she should be approved to receive this visa. Of course, this is just a K3 visa, meaning she can work or study yet, but she can live in the States legally while she wait for her greencard application to be approved. She's nervous but will surely do well. Like I said, please pray for her.

France - Euro 2008

France-Lituanie 2-0 Qualif Euro 2008
Uploaded by foot0406

Now that baseball season is over (why are they still playing now that the Yanks are out?) I've shifted my attention over to European soccer and am really enjoying the qualifying rounds of the Euro 2008 tournment which will be played in Austria/Switzerland next summer. All the countries of europe are broken into groups of 6 or 8 teams in which each country plays all the other countries in their group twice, once at home and once away. You get three points for a win, one for a tie, none for a loss. The best two teams in the group advance to the actual tournment. Yesterday's game against Lithuania was huge for France. If they lost, they would go into their last game desperate for the right circumstances. If they win, then they control their destiny in which a victory in their final game next month puts them ahead of Italy and Scotland, the other two teams still in contention from their group. The score was still 0-0 going into the last 15 minutes of play. How did it end up? Watch the video!

Pregnancy so far

How have the 10 weeks of pregnancy been so far? Well, since the beginning of the pregnancy is defined as the first day of her last period, the first week and a half was real easy (conception hadn't happened yet), the next week was a lot of fun (conception), the next two weeks were a mixture of anticipation and downplaying anticipation (didn't know yet). When I found out on Saturday evening Sept 1st, I was extremely excited, but I felt a physical reaction as I considered how my life had just changed. Weeks 5-9 have been a great adventure summarized perfectly by the above picture. Sarah's body is going through a lot and she's constantly tired and sleeping a lot. She's also had some uniquely specific cravings, such as for sushi (don't worry, she didn't eat any raw fish), certain kinds of bread, and ramen. She has been throwing up a bit, but is feeling better now.

Hogan

A couple weekends ago Sarah and I house sat for one of my professors as he and his wife went out of town. We were there from Thu to Sun and had a blast. Our main responsibility was to take care of their dog Hogan and keep the place standing. I love dogs and really miss mine, so it was a lot of fun. As you can tell from this photo, it was in an extremely beautiful and isolated setting, making it the perfect getaway (even though it's only 15 minutes from our apt). They have a patio room that's fully enclosed by screens, making it the perfect place to study. What a great weekend.

I'm going to be a dad!

Here's the proof, I am going to be a father! I can't even begin to put in to words the feelings of love and concern I already have for my child. It's a pretty overwhelming thing to think that throughout this person's life, they will look to me as their father. I deeply pray I'm up to the task and feel particularly grateful for the parents and grandparents I have who are such great examples for me. I am especially grateful for my beautiful wife and look forward to watching her develop as the mother of my children. You can read the full story of our finding out at www.sacutojones.blogspot.com.

Yanks

The Yanks are on a tear lately! It's about time. Their magic number for winning the wild card is 7 and it's 14 for winning the division. The Red Sox are still in first place (only by 2.5 games) but have a magic number of 9. All this means is that each time your team wins, or the other team in question loses, your magic number decreases. When the number reaches 0, you've won the division or the wild card or whatever you're talking about. Since there are only 11 games left, this means the yanks have a very good shot at winning the wild care, and though it's certainly possible they could win the division, it's not mathematically likely. I love the last two weeks of the baseball season!

On a different note, I have some huge news to announce, but since I don't have the picture on my computer yet, I'll wait. Sorry.

Sept 10, 1932

2 initial thoughts: 1) I can't believe this is the third 9/11 I'm writing about on my blog; time flies. 2) I really don't have it in me to say anything about Sept 11,2001 today, so I'm going to commemorate a different anniversay about city I grew up in and love. ou can read my 2006 and 2005 9/11 posts by clicking on each year. Sept 10, 1932 was the first time the A train made the trip from one end of Manhattan all the way down to the other end. Growing up in Washington Heights, the A train was my lifeline and connection to the rest of the city and I'm sure that on average I probably took the A train about 2 times every day of my childhood. Going to Jr. High, I rode it to 168th where I transferred to the downtown 1 to Harlem. During High School I also transferred at 168th, but rode it uptown to the Bronx. Going to work during my summer jobs I rode it either to 42nd and then went crosstown if I was working on the east side, or rode it all the way to the Chambers St. if I was working on Wall St. Of course it got me halfway to Yankee Stadium, I'd transfer at 145th for the uptown D. Anyway, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of that first ride from the top to the bottom of Manhattan, the MTA ran a few old trains dating back to before WWII. Of course I live in North Carolina and didn't get to ride one, but here's the link to the article in today's NY Times.

Health Care Reform

In one of my classes we were asked to write a hypothetical proposal for health care reform as if we were an adviser to one of the Presidential candidates. Here's my response:

Great question. I've done a bit of research on the current proposals for my work, so you'll probably get a longer answer than you wanted.

My answer depends on who the candidate is and at what stage of the game we're at. You need to be general enough to not tie yourself down in the Nov election and once elected, but specific enough to get yourself to that point. First of all, recent polls show that people on both sides of the spectrum see health care as one of the top issues of the campaign (one poll this week had health care tied with Iraq among democract voters), so both sides should definitely talk about it. That being said, I think that during the primaries Republicans need to be careful not to support anything too closely resembling "socialized medicine" or requiring a lot of gov't regulation, or even the most well-meaning candidate won't have a realistic shot of making it past Iowa (or whatever state ends up being first). With Rudy leading all the polls, conservatives are showing they're willing to have someone who has been pro-choice and in favor of gay rights, as long as they stick to the free market system and don't let gov't get too big. I would give a Democrat similar advise, suggesting they learn lessons from 93-94, and not get themselves too locked into one firm inflexible set of ideas now, since it would cost them later, either in the general election or during congressional battles. I find it interesting that this is exactly what Hillary has been doing. Other candidates aren't as well known and would probably need to be more specific and focused in their platform to give themselves a fighting chance. If I were advising one of them, I would suggest they focus on answering the following questions:

1) Will the plan be universal? Yes.

2) How? With "shared responsibility" by employers, employees, and everyone else. I am intrigued by Edwards' proposal of creating regional health markets (essentially the Clinton plan of the 90s though I would do everything possible to de-emphasize the similarities) and think that might be the way to go. There would need to be some minimum standards set up, but it shouldn't be too overly regulatory (or it would never get passed). This way, individual states would have freedom to pursue the path that best suits their needs. Perhaps include an individual mandate, as the Mass. plan does, so you can cut down on emergency room spending, but not require anyone to change plans if they don't want to. I would also sign an SCHIP bill like the Senate and House just passed and get rid of the ridiculous new HHS regulations on how SCHIP expansion would have to be applied. There's enough support on both sides of the aisle that I think this could get done. As all the Dems are saying, I'd get rid of restrictions based on pre-existing conditions.

3) How will it be paid for? As all the Dems are saying, the main way would be through letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 (Obama's people estimate that would bring in $65 billion). Also, think of the available money once we're out of Iraq. I think we spend something like $8 billion per month in Iraq! The democrats could become the party of small gov't by putting some of that money (which never seemed to be availble for anything in the past) towards universal coverage. Also, the idea would be that with regional health markets, and not screening out pre-existing conditions, operating costs to insurance companies would be dramatically lower and due to local competition, they'd have incentive to pass the savings on to the consumers.

4) Why would this system be better? Like Rena, I would increase the focus on prevention and would try to eliminate a lot of the wasteful spending that goes to bureaucracy by improving health information technology. Improved use of technology would also increase access to health care for those living in rural areas. As I heard Rudy say this week (advocating a different plan), the average person our age will change jobs repeadetly during the first 20 years of our careers. By making our insurance status independent of our job status, we'll see increased stability and savings, as well as fewer people uninsured because they're in transition.

The tag line would be that the plan is universal, affordable because it's not overly regulatory, and better because it provides choices and saves the average family $x amount per year.

Fayetteville 10k

On Sat Aug 18th I ran a 10k race in Fayetteville, and had a blast. Here's the photo essay of our experience:

We drove into town Friday evening after a full week of orientation and crashed at the HOJO after a big pasta dinner.

Sarah had been training for the 5k, but decided not to run because her foot had been seriously bothering her during the weeks leading up to the race.

Can you spot me at the starting line?

Here I am after the race. I've never been a fast runner, so my goal of doing it under 1 hour was quite modest. It was still a stretch for me, but that's what I was shooting for during my training the last 2 1/2 months. There are a few reasons I stopped caring about that goal and readjusted to make my goal simply finishing comfortably: 1) since my big toe injury I missed a large stretch of training, not running for an entire 10 day period, and then not running more than 2-3 times per week. 2) I didn't run as much because of the transition and work associated with moving and being on vaction 3) when I arrived in NC it was freaking hot! The first week we were here it reached 120 degrees with the humidity factored in! You should try running in that, especially when you live towards the bottom of the hill. My final time was 1:06 and change, which is so much slower than when I trained in Ottawa, but oh well. I'm still proud that I did it and have the shirt to prove it!

Left Leg prob #2

As you might have seen from my recent post, I had a serious problem with my toe after dropping a piece of wood on it while moving last month. For the record, the nail fail off last night, one full month after the incident! During my orientation 2 weeks ago I tripped and fell and scraped up my leg pretty badly, giving me my second problem on my left leg in 3 weeks. I wish I had a more dramatic story for how it happened, but it was honestly while playing a game of tag on a grass field. I know it doesn't make much sense, but it's the truth.

the iRack

As my wife said, "oui, c'est drole, mais c'est trop vrai!" Or, "sure it's funny, but it's too true!"

My big screen debut

If you're new to my blog then I invite you to go through the June 2005 archives to read my posts about being an extra in my church's movie about Joseph Smith. It was a great experience to get paid to be in a movie of such an interesting and historically important person. I first saw myself up on the big screen during the summer of 2006 when I was in Salt Lake City, but since the movie isn't out on DVD yet I've had no way to prove to others that I really was in it. Well, when Sarah and I were in DC a couple weeks ago we stopped at the Temple visitor's center and watched the movie together. I knew when my scene was coming up (more than 30 minutes into the movie) so I pulled out our camera and bootlegged my scene! Now I have proof! If you were able to zoom in on the four people unloading the barge on the other side of the river as the scene opens, then you'll notice that I'm the second from the left. It's movie magic that I am on both sides of the canal at the same time! Without further ado, here's the video clip:

21 years in a row

While Sarah and I were in NYC recently, my dad took us to a great Yankees game. I was relieved the Yanks played well and that Sarah had a good time, because her first Yankees game was really boring! This was a special game as ARod was one home run short of 500. Each pitch he faced brought electricity to the crowd (literally, as you can see there were tons of camera flashing during each pitch). Unfortunately he didn't get #500 that day, but when he did a few games later, he became the youngest player in baseball history to reach that milestone. I think there's only something like 26 other people who have ever reached 500.



Having grown up 25 minutes from Yankee stadium I've been to many games, including one season when I went to as many as 26! While this will most likely be my only game this year, it's special because it keeps our streak alive of having gone to a Yankees game together for 21 straight summers. As far as we can remember, we've been to a game every season since 1987 when I was 6 years old. My favorite part of any Yankee game is singing New York, New York along with Sinatra at the end.

Big Toe

Here's a picture of my big toe as it was starting to heal. Unfortunately this is a photo of how much better the toe looked compared to when I first dropped a piece of wood on it. I can't complain since it was the only casualty from my long distance move.

Immigrant Museum

While we were in NYC I couldn't help but be amused by the image of Sarah standing next to the sign for the immigration museum at Ellis Island. We know a thing or two about the anxiety of immigrating to the US!

UFO?

While having dinner with the Charland family last Sunday (he's our Bishop at Church), we heard a loud noise over their back porch patio. We looked up, and there was a hot air balloon, right above their neighborhood, maybe 30 feet (around 10 meters) in the sky! I could have thrown a baseball to them they were so close. So we put on our shoes, and with the rest of the neighborhood, we ran a couple blocks and watched as this huge balloon hovered in the air and landed in the middle of the street! What a wierd experience to watch a hot air balloon land on a suburban street completely unannounced. Apparently there was no wind and they were going to run out of gas if they continued, and there was no better place around, so they just landed. They called a truck and we watched as they brought the balloon down, folded it up and put it in away. The whole thing only took 4 minutes! We told the Charlands that they really didn't have to go through all the trouble to arrange something like that for our sending off! Read about the rest of our good-bye dinners at our family blog.

Nigeria vs Zambia

Last week Sarah and I went to the Nigeria-Zambia game in the FIFA under 20 World Cup of soccer. The rain storm was crazy, the game was close and the African fans were a blast. In the end Nigeria won 2-1, which led to a massive party in the stands. One large group had drums and trumpets and paraded through the outside of the stadium with the rest of their group dancing and singing; it was great! The first video are the official highlights of the game from FIFA's website, the second is a video which I pulled off of youtube posted by someone from an earlier Nigeria game, but it gives a good sense of the party atmosphere we enjoyed. FYI, Nigeria has since been knocked out of the tournment (as have the US and Canada) and two teams we've seen (Argentina and Czech Republic) are in the semi-finals and could face each other in the finals. The other two teams still alive are Austria (who beat the US) and Chile.

Romney Fundraising

This is an enjoyable video posted on the Romney's family website about their recent fundraising day in Boston. It's interesting to me for 3 reasons, the first being that it demonstrates the huge importance of money in modern politics and how most of the campaigning and idea sharing that seems to be going on revolves around raising money. Secondly, it shows Romney's growing strength. Amazingly, he has raised more money than any other Republican in both quarters of 2007 so far, and has spent his money well to bring himself from 4th or 5th in Iowa and New Hampshire to leading in those states. On his Washington Post blog, Chris Cilliza even ranked Romney as in the lead for the overall Republican nomination! This due to McCain's implosion and Rudy's not so conservative record. It'll be really interesting to see how this thing plays out over the next 7 months (the primaries are mostly in February).

The third interesting aspect of this is the incredible importance of youtube as a source for spreading messages, both for canidates and for anyone else who wants. The biggest example of this are the two following videos which have played a major role in perpetuating the perception that Romney is a flip-flopper and political opportunist. Which is the real Romney? The one who vows to protect abortion rights, gay rights and gun control while running for Governor or Senator of a liberal state, or the one who vows to end abortion, prevent same sex marriage and joins the NRA while running for the Republican nomination? My guess is that he's probably closer to the latter, and that the former was more of a political bend for him.





To further make my point of the importance of youtube, Romney responded to this last video by quickly producing and posting one of his own:

Editorials

Here are three brief editorials while I wait for my computer at work to start functioning:
I was outraged to read in yesterday's Washington Post of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona testimony before Congress that multiple times during his four year tenure (2002-2006) he was silenced and muffled by Bush's politcal appointees from giving his scientificly based professional opinion on controversial public health issues like stem cell research. As I've written before, this is an issue that is grossly misunderstood by the public and greatly misrepresented by Pres. Bush and large portions of the right wing (I am proud that all the LDS Senators support stem cell research). As surgeon general Carmona felt he had a responsibility and opportunity to educate the public on the issue, but chunks of his speeches were cut by Bush's people and his appearances were controlled by the White House. He was even instructed to mention Pres. Bush's name at least 3 times per page during his speeches! Unfortunately politcal handling of the SG isn't brand new as former Surgeons General under Reagan and Clinton both testified to feeling they didn't have free professional reign, though they both said that nothing they experienced compares to what Bush is doing.

While I am on the subject of Bush infuriating me, can you believe his response to the Scooter Libby sentencing? The story goes that a year or two ago an illegal leak of someone's name occured and a NY Times reporter was put in jail for not revealing her sources (essentially protecting Bush's people as it turns out). Bush said that once he found out who the source was he would punish and fire that person and seemed supportive of criminal proceedings. Well, it turned out that at least one of those people (Karl Rove and CIA director Richard Armitage also had) was Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney, a HUGELY important person and very close to Bush. Bush backpedaled and didn't fire him or support criminal charges, though Libby was eventually charged with obstruction of justice (I'm fuzzy on the exact details but I think that's right). A jury convicted him and a judge sentenced him to 30 months in jail. An unbelievable story in its own right if it had ended there as Libby became the highest ranking official to be convicted of criminal charges since the early 80's, but it gets worse. Just before Libby was about start serving time (he already had a prison ID number), Bush "commuted" his sentence saying it was excessive for the crime and that the evidence at trial didn't warrant this. Unbelievable! It's true that he didn't outright "pardon" him, meaning forgive the crime and overturn the conviction, but he's unintentionally opened a legal can of worms by commuting him. This essentially means that he accepts the conviction but forgives Libby of his jail time, and as a result, every person who has been or will be convicted on similar charges will argue that they deserve the same punishment Libby got. This is outrageous. This from the President who speaks so strongly for "mandatory minimum" sentences because "activist judges" take the law into their own hands and weakly punish criminals. I find such blatant hypocrisy so frustrating. You'll also notice Harriet Miers in the above photo; remember her? On the same day as what might arguably be his biggest achievement as President (confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts), Bush nominated his personal White House Lawyer to the Supreme Court. That obviously bombed, and now apparently her testimony about the justice department firings has been subpeoned, and Bush has ordered her and another advisor Sara Taylor, not to testify. Unbelievable. That's a whole other long story I won't get into.

Finally, have your heard about the outrageous news from the Dept of Homeland Security about permanent residency applications? There are a set number of green cards they give out every year (except to spouses of US citizens, there is an unlimited number of those, THANK GOODNESS!) and earlier this year a bulletin went out saying that more applications would be accepted for people from India and a couple other places. People who had been waiting 9-10 years could finally apply! People canceled trips, rushed to be married, have relatives wait on line to get documents, hired lawyers in order to get everything together by the July 2nd deadline. On July 2nd, the very day that everyone had their applications in, Homeland Security announced that they had made a mistake and the quota was already filled and there were no more green cards available. Being in the middle of a huge immigration process myself (though with the guarantee that a green card is available for Sarah) I understand the unbelievable stress, anxiety and frustration the process brings, not to mention the large amounts of money that gets spent (we've easily spent more than $1200 so far and have a ways to go) and I am beyond outraged and ashamed at the department's actions. According to a Washington Post article, hundreds of people from India responded to this terrible disappointment with a protest worthy of Ghandi, sending boxes of flowers to the department headquarters. Apparently they've received hundreds and hundreds of boxes of flowers from angry protesters. What an admirable way to channel anger and frustration. I wonder if I could be capable such a response. I hope I don't have to find out!

2008 Health Care Debate

Kudos to the NY Times for this great summary

Here are some favorite versions of the US national anthem I found collected on Rolling Stone's website. I like these for being really good or really bad, you be the judge.



Phish singing before a NJ Nets basketball game. Pretty good, eh? I saw them do an a capella Stars Spangled Banner on July 4, 2000 in Camden, NJ (across the river from Philly).



Marvin Gaye before the 1983 NBA All-Star Game



Hillary in Iowa earlier this year



Remember Rosanne singing at the San Diego baseball game a decade or two ago?

Happy (pick a country and celebrate it) Day!!!

I of course am American and proud to celebrate the Forth of July, but I feel I've also picked up a countries over the years and am proud to celebrate them as well. It's interesting to me that Canada Day (July 1st) and Bastille Day (July 14th) are so close to our "national birthday." Yesterday was even Independence Day for Belarus (which is where this incredible picture comes from). Early July is just a good time to celebrate patriotism and have fireworks I guess. Here are some thoughts about my three countries:

July 1st - Happy CANADA Day!

Canadians celebrate their patriotism on July 1st, the anniversary of the coming together of the confederation, making Canada a self-governing country; ie, slightly more independent from Britain than before. At the time, the country only consisted of three provinces: Canada (what is now Ontario and Quebec), New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Another important date is July 1, 1982, when Canada gained even more independce from Britain. It's definitely its own country, a member of the G8, but when it's time for an election, it's the Queen's representative who does it. For a law to become final, it doesn't need signature by the Prime Minister, instead it needs "Royal Assent," a ceremony in which the Queen's representative literally nods her head from her "throne" in Parliament to approve the new legislation. I've personally attended such a ceremony and it's an ordeal loaded with tradition (and stuffiness).

July 14th - Happy Bastille Day!!

I don't claim France as my country, but I married one of their girls and root for their soccer team, so I owe it to them to learn about their national holiday which they actually call le Fete Nationale. It's celebrated to commemorate the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris in 1789 and one of the major events triggering the French Revolution and all that followed. Two interestnig tidbits about recent Bastille Day events: in 1998 the national soccer team won the World Cup on July 12, triggering what must have been a wild party. In 2002, shots were fired at then President Jacques Chirac, but he wasn't hit. I really don't know much else. I do love that photo of the Ave Champs de Mars though, the site of my 18km triumph in Paris.

July 4th - Happy Independence Day!!
Michael Gerson (a former GW Bush speechwriter, the one that wrote the phrase "axis of evil," and current Washington Post columnist) made a great point in today's paper. "It is typical of America that our great national day is not the celebration of a battle -- or, as in the case of France, the celebration of a riot. It is the celebration of a political act, embedded in a philosophic argument: that the rights of man are universal because they are rooted in the image of God." The spirit of the 4th of July reminds me a lot of the spirit of Thanksgiving, as I survey the "Lay of the Land," I realize I have a lot to be grateful for. Happy 4th.

FIFA Under 20 World Cup

The under 20 year old World Cup is in Canada this year and Sarah and I got to see two fantastic games here in Ottawa! The first part of the World Cup is the group phase where 24 teams are put into 6 groups of 4, each team playing the other 3 teams in their group 1 time. The best two teams from each group (and a couple 3rd place team) advance to a 16 team single elimination tournment. We saw all 4 teams of group E, first an exciting game between the Czech Republic and North Korea. Korea scored first, but the Czechs got two great goals in the second half and we thought they were going to win. But in the very last minute of play, the North Koreans were awarded a penalty shot and tied the game. Since it's not elimination games yet, and ties have an important impact on the standings, they don't play until someone wins.



The second game last night was Argentina vs Panama and it was easy to tell which country had more supporters! Check out this video I found on youtube made by a couple people who didn't seem to have planned on sitting in the Argentina section. I've got some of my own videos I'll post later.

T.L. Hamilton on the AP

My youngest step-sister Tiffany is a journalist for the Galveston Daily News in southeastern Texas. I can't remember exactly, but I think she's been there for about a year. In that time she's had many front page stories covering a wide range of issues and events. She recently had a story picked up by the Associated Press for the first time, and now it's been run by many papers throughout Texas, including the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle. She wrote about Mark Muhich, an artist who lived in SoHo in NYC but now lives in Texas, and creates his work using what most of us see as junk. The piece in the photos is entitled "9-11-01"

Have you seen these commercials for Gov. Bill Richardson's Presidential Campaign? He certainly does have an impressive resume and it is very significant that he's the first hispanic canidate with any shot, but his stock has dropped a little in my book lately. Perhaps he has to promise the moon because he's polling so low right now, but he says he can get universal health care legislation passed in his first year in office and do it without raising taxes. I'm pretty skeptical. All the other democrats, even those without any kind of plan out yet (which is everyone except Edwards and Obama) say it's going to take longer and will require at least repealing the Bush tax cuts. Richardson also says he would immediately withdraw troops and that no residual presence would be required in Iraq. This is a great thought, but also unrealistic. Joe Biden has taken a strong leadership role on this issue and he, as well as all the other canidates, admit that we'll have to maintain at least some kind of presence in Iraq for a long time, even in a support role after the bulk of the troops have left. All that being said, I think Richardson is a very strong leader with executive branch experience, international experience and no personal baggage (cough, cough, Hillary). I think he'd make a great choice for Vice Pres running mate.

Annecy was one of my very favorite places in France. Nestled along the mountains bordering Swiss, this resort town feels pretty close to paradise.


One of the biggest highlights of France for me was running 18km with l'Arc de Triomphe as my finish line. What an amazing feeling that was to run up the Champs-Elysee where I've seen the Tour de France finish on tv. This is a video taken from our car as we drove around l'arc de triomphe. This is the most insane roundabout in the world, something like 5 or 6 lanes without any lane markings! It's a total free for all as people can get off or on at 5 or 6 points off the circle.


Another favorite spot in France (obviously) was the Eiffel Tower. Isn't Sarah the most beautiful woman ever?

Final thoughts

Sarah and I are a week into our 5k/10k training and it's going really well. I'm really proud of her and feel very good pushing my limits. I am not worrying as much about distance this time around as I am about pushing myself to run distances I can comfortably do, ie, 3-5 miles, considerably faster than before. So far so good. I did a 5 mile run today with the middle three miles at a much quicker pace, running them in 26min. Compare that to the 31 min it usually took me during my half marathon training. I feel pretty good about that. One other final thought is that in total during my training, I ran 470km, 292.11miles, in 3,085 minutes, or just over 51 hours. That ends up being about 11 marathons, averaging around 4 hours 30 min per marathon. Not fast at all, but a good start, right?

Us in Paris

I love this picture of us in Paris

Race pictures

This is the ad for the 10k/5k run that Sarah and I have signed up for in Fayetteville, North Carolina on August 18th. We started training this week and feel really good (though I can really feel all the junk food I ate since the half marathon! Speaking of the half, check out my favorite pics from their official website where you can buy photos of me running if you like: me crossing the Alexandra Bridge (just before the 10k mark-can you tell by the smirk on my face that I saw the cameraman?), running down the canal (around the 12km mark I guess), looking at the jumbotron just before crossing the finish line (can you see the difference an extra 10k makes?) and crossing the line! The clock on the left is from the start of the full marathon (7:00am), while the one on the right was the time since the start of the half (around 8:30). Since it took 8 min to get to the starting line, my actual official time was 2:22:41.9, instead of the 2:30:24 seen in the photo. This is signficant since my goal was 2:30. Of course this is not fast at all. Out of 7,761 runners, I came in 6,125th place, meaning 80% ran faster than me, or that I ran faster than 20%. Out of 3,336 men, I came in 3066th, so 92% of the men ran faster times than me. Of the 361 men 25-29, I came in 343rd, in the bottom 5%. I actually enjoy these stats, as they reinforce to me that I wasn't competing with anyone but myself, and how glad I am that I didn't lose!

Ottawa Marathon

Check out this video following the leaders of the Ottawa Marathon 2 weeks ago. The half marathon course I ran along was mostly the same, except we didn't go as far south (out into the country).

Click here to see official photos of me running the race, including me crossing the finish line.

Positive direction in Iraq?

If you've been reading my blog over the years then you know I don't support Pres. Bush on most issues (though I have admired his recent courage on teaming up with democrat leaders to update the immigration laws despite taking a severe beating from republicans over it). Of course the issue that I disagree with most strongly about, to the point that I am very made and resentful of the price he's made our country pay, is the Iraq war. Imagine if the guy who won the popular vote in 2000, Al Gore, was President. Can you really imagine that this week would mark the death of our 3,500th soldier? No way. Even still, there have been a couple developments lately that give me hope that Bush might change directions. It's true that he vetoed congressional funding which including withdrawal timelines, but I'm not sure that was the right approach anyway. It's also true that when the Baker-Hamilton report came out last December he missed the opportunity of bi-partisan support for stepping down and changing direction by increasing troop levels by more than 20,000. But now that we're 5 months into his surge and most accounts show that it's not working, and he's got angry Republicans afraid of losing their seats in 2008 over this war, he'd be smart to find away to back out of this while saving some face. Which is why it has caught my attention that he's created a position nicknamed the "war czar," which will be a high level advisor who will focus solely on managing Iraq and Afghanistan and will report to him on a daily basis. Of course, isn't that the job of the Secretary of Defense or National Security Advisor? Pretty much, except they have a whole lot on their plate as well, and this person wouldn't have anything else. I also found it interesting that he's creating this position 4 years into the war and that as he put out feelers, everyone was turning him down. One of the most encouraging things I've heard from his White House is that he eventually nominated Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, a well respected military leader who is actually on record as opposing the troop surge. He essentially re-affirmed that position during his hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday and said it's clear that things are not going in the right direction and that if nothing changes, things will only get worse. The most remarkable thing about the hearing was hearing a Republican Senator quote an intelligence briefing which stated that our presence in Iraq is actually creating more members of Al-Qaeda than are being removed! The predictions I made 3-4 years ago are now so evident that leading Republicans are mentioning them! Anyway, the fact that Bush has nominated Lute as his point man on Iraq signals to me that he wants a change in direction and wants the political cover to make it possible. Bush can make the adjustments that need to be made and make it seem like he's trusting the advice of his military leader, rather than backing out or running away. The other encouraging sign is that at a recent press conference, Bush brought up the Baker-Hamilton report multiple times, perhaps signalling that he's ready to use that bi-partisan report as political cover as well. The next big opportunity to make a change will be in September as the current funding bill expires. I hope he does make changes, and it looks slightly possible he will, but then again, very little he does suprises me anymore.

Half Marathon - I did it!

I ran the Ottawa half marathon this morning! What a fantastic experience, I look forward to learning more from it as I ponder the ups and downs of the race, as well as the intensity of training from Feb 7th to May 27, running 5 days a week. Sarah and I were up at 6:50am, showered, had an egg for breakfast and were out the door around 7:40. We parked the car and got to city hall a little after eight. I originally planned on wearing a vest as it was a bit chillier than last week (it was 13 degrees, around 55 I think), but I ended up taking it off before the starting line. I also turned the hat around as it doesn't sit fully on my head and is therefore uncomfortable, but I like having something to catch the sweat or else my ears get so slippery my ipod's headphones don't stay in.

This is a photo Sarah took of the starting line after everyone had left. What a great feeling it was to start running up Elgin towards the sign, turning left in front of Parliament. My goal was to run the 21.1 km, or 13.3 miles in less than 2 hours 30 minutes, so I lined up towards the back of the group with a whole bunch of people expecting to run similar times. It helped to be grouped like this, as well to have experienced runners wearing bunny ears who would plan to run at a pace of 1:45, 2, 2:15, 2:30, 2:45 and 3 hours for example. If you wanted a specific time, all you had to do was stick with that group. I decided to start with the 2:30 group and see how I felt. In the madness of the crowd I ended up starting with the 2:45 group, which worked out well, because I was able to run comfortably, without tons of people passing me. I even gained a bit of confidence by passing some, and eventually even passed the 2:30 group. I was afraid that meant I was running too fast and would eventually lose energy, but my 3k, 4k and 5k times were all slower than I was training, so I was still running at a conservative pace.

I wasn't running super fast, but as I hit 7km at 45 min, I figured I was on pace to finish at around 2h 15 min and felt my confidence increase. As we neared 9km and were crossing the bridge back into Ottawa (from km#2 until #10 we ran on the Quebec side of the river, coming within minutes of my apt!) I realized we had done almost all the hills (none were that bad) and that I felt pretty good. We passed near city hall again and just after a water break and just before we started running along the canal I saw my beautiful wife in her bright yellow rain coat (did I mention it started raining around 5km?) It was another great boost to have a drink and see her cheer me on! In fact, that was one of my favorite parts of the experience, having thousands of people lining the road cheering and pushing us on, even though we were all strangers. Since our first names were written on our bibs, many people even cheered my by name, "keep going David, you're doing great!" It was great. Some girls had a sign which read "marathoners are hot," while another group held up a quote "pain is temporary, quitting is forever." I saw a 5 year old with a sign "you're my hero daddy," and Sarah saw a woman running with a tshirt dedicating the run to her recently deceased husband. On top of great emotion from the crowd I had some fun running and rain music on my ipod to keep me going. From "Born to Run" by Springsteen to "New York, New York" by Sinatra ("if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere) and some Grateful Dead ("Roll away the dew!" & "I sure don't know what I'm going for, but I'm going to for it for sure." & "Just a little bit harder, just a little bit more, just a little bit further than you've gone before" & "long distance runner, what you standing there for...")
We hit the canal after 10.5 km, so I knew we'd have 5 down and 5 back, with the turnaround near the 16km mark. I felt great running along the canal, so good that I still didn't feel like taking a break. As each distance passed I remembered when that distance was the longest run of my training and how hard it had been and was impressed by how strong I felt. I remembered dying in the heat of my 12k run in Toulouse, running 14k on this very course in freezing weather, and having to take many walking breaks during my 16k runs on the indoor track in the dome (see my earlier post). Amazingly, I didn't stop to walk and stretch until the 16k mark! (other than a few seconds at each water station every 3km). Of course the last little bit was the hardest, but when I drank water around 17k and asked myself what I had left physically and emotionally, I realized I only had 4k left to run, and I could do 4 no prob, so I threw my cup down and kept on. At the 18k mark I remembered running that same distance in Nice and again in Paris and how wonderful those runs felt emotionally, especially finishing in Paris by running up the Champs-Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe. In Nice I ran 18k in 2:03; in Paris I ran it in 2:07. Today it took exactly 2hours, I was feeling good, but I noticed I was slowing down and when a fave Phish song came on my ipod I was surprised I couldn't keep up with the beat. Even still, my time at 20k was 4 minutes faster than the 20k I ran 2 weeks ago. By far, the hardest part was the last 1.1km. By then the whole way was lined with people cheering us on, shouting and clapping and making us feel really special. I saw a sign saying I had 800 meters left, and while I knew I could make it without taking another break, my body was starting to ask why I wanted to! It felt like forever before seeing the 600m sign, then 400m and just as I was anxious to see another sign, I saw the finish line! What a great sight, and so I picked up the pace a little. As I neared I could see the people around me on the giant videoscreen and hear the announcer reading off the names of the people finishing. Right before crossing I heard him say "congratulations so and so, & so and so, and David Jones from Gatineau, you have finished the half marathon in 2 hours 22 minutes! Ahhhh, it felt good. There were so many people I couldn't find Sarah until we went back to our designated meeting place, but in the meantime I got my foil jacket, some orange slices and my medal. It was so nice to see Sarah again and tell her all about my experience.
We got home, showered, ate and went to church in the single's ward, since they meet at 2pm. When we got home, we ate some more (I was hungry!) and enjoyed a cake Sarah made to celebrate the occasion. What an amazing wife I have eh? I've lost 13 pounds since starting to train, so I felt alright eating a big bowl of ice cream with my dinner. Sarah and I are going to start training together soon to run a 10km by the end of the summer, so I can worry about what I eat then.