Happy 2nd Birthday Macen!!

Our little boy is celebrating his 2nd birthday today. It's hard to believe that much time has passed already. He had a good day playing with his new toys. He is a big Little People fan and it showed today as he ignored the workshop bench I have been yearning to give him for many, many months now and played with the newest Little People sets he got. And we may have a rockstar on our hands. We got him a guitar and he has jammed out a couple of times already. I think dad is going to get as much use out of it as Macen too.

We love you little guy! Thank you for a great 2 yrs!

A nice day

Here are some pics from a nice day we had last week. Macen liked learning to play hopscotch. And he learned to blow bubbles himself. He wanted to hold the bottle and wand and do it all on his own.

Feeding our children

This is how we feed all of our children...seriously! With the food issues Macen has, we've resorted to this. Kidding! After almost 2 yrs Macen is just now starting to get into the furry peoples food. He has started helping feed them so his interest in how they eat has peaked.

Happy Easter!

The Easter bunny hid eggs around the house for Macen to find when we woke up. And there were some eggs that had coins in them so Macen could add to his piggy bank savings.

After the egg hunt, Macen got to open the gift the Easter bunny left him. He got Magneatos and enjoyed playing with them until mom and dad started playing with them. When we would build something he would eagerly come over and destroy it. And then tell us to play again.

Apparently Macen likes ALL candy now. He was eating all kinds of things the day before and Easter day. And James kept feeding him chocolate...big pieces of chocolate. So this is what Macen looked like a good portion of the day. He got to the point where he was asking for more chocolate. And he was also running around the house in circles like a crazy man!

Shakespeare's MaxTrax Duathlon

OK this was the first "serious" multi-sport event I have participated in since 2004 and boy was I in for a shocker. As the title says this was a Duathlon, a run/bike/run format and not the swim/bike/run that I have been training for and that I have been participating in off and on since 1998 when a friend of mine convinced me to do a triathlon. My thinking going into this race was this should be pretty easy since it concentrates on my two strongest events, biking and running. This was anything but easy though.

I initially thought I would be able to do this race (2.5 mile run/15 mile bike/ 2.5 mile run) somewhere between 1hr30min and 1hr45min, thinking that I would actually be closer to the 1hr45. I had some outside thoughts that I might even be competitive in my age group. Well I actually forgot or underestimated two things here 1. How fast the athletes are who compete in multisport events and 2. How fast I would be. The guy who finished first overall was finishing as I was putting the bike away and getting ready for the second run. To make matters worse he was older than I was, so much for being competitive in my age group. On the good side though I did finish at 1hr31min24secs, much better than I thought I would. My time was good enough for 58th out of 116 men and 70th out of 162 total for the race. That's a solid top 50% and I'll take that any day after not racing seriously since 2000. There are some serious studs/studettes out there and if I want to beat them or be competitive I'm just going to have to work harder.

This was a good race and I may try to do it again next year depending on where the Army sends us next. It was a little interesting at the start when we started in a mass group on a road in the park ran across the grass and onto your typical paved park trail. It was a free for all as people sprinted to get in front before the choke point spread us out, I actually ran the first mile in 6:44 and can't remember the last time I ran one that fast. The bike was a good rolling hills route. I had a little trouble since the start was on a fast downhill and then there was a hard right turn and then up a hill. I took the turn too wide both laps and had difficulties shifting from my big ring to my small ring for the hill, something else to work on. The finish was up hill, which I didn't care much for, especially since I had trouble hitting my stride on the second run. I am used to running further after the bike portion so I really don't get into the groove after the bike until about mile 3

That's me with the Oakley's and the black stocking hat getting ready for the mass startTransition 1, Almost forgot the bike helmet.

That's me coasting in and getting ready to dismount the bike for Transition 2. Macen had Shantel a little distracted so she almost missed me.

That's me running out the gate after Transition 2. The girl in front of me and I played leapfrog throughout the whole bike ride. I beat her into the transition area but she's beating me out. Chalk up getting faster in transition to something else I need to work on.Making my move to go around around her. Unfortunately it only lasted until the turn around on the run. She finished 1 sec in front of me. I gotta get faster to keep the girls from beating me! :) Check out the full body spandex. Sexy!! Just think I've lost 35 pounds since this time last year.The uphill sprint to the finish. I'd also spent a lot of time leapfrogging the older guy in the day glo green shirt on the bike, but I held him off in the end. I just couldn't catch the girl.

One final note there were a couple of girls that I went to high school with who did this race. I hadn't seen either one of them in 17 years (since I missed my 10 year reunion due to the Army) and I did get a little chance to chat with both them before the race. I recognized both of them right away but I don't think they realized who I was until I told them my name.

Next up is the FT Leavenworth CGSC sprint triathlon on 2 May. This is the one that Mariah is going to do with me so look for the update on how that one goes.

FN LN Age DIV Overall DivPl SexPl Run1 T1 Bike T2 Run2 Time
James Scrogin 34 M3034 70 6/11 58/116 18:53 1:31 49:29 1:04 20:27 1:31:24

Egg Dipping

Macen colored eggs this afternoon and had lots of fun. It didn't take him long to figure out how to work the egg dipper. He loved pulling the eggs up out of the water and dropping them back in. And of course leaving a trail of colored water everywhere. He wasn't too impressed with using the wax crayon on the eggs though since he couldn't see anything coming from it.

I got a egg coloring kit that allowed you to squirt (or splatter paint) the eggs. So we tried it but it wasn't that great. Definitely too complicated for a little boy under 2 yrs old but he was more than willing to play in the "paint".

Easter Egg Hunt

Macen went on his first Easter egg hunt this past weekend. He couldn't wait to get started and had fun picking up eggs. He got about a dozen out of the the 7,000 they said was laid out. Not bad for a 1st timer considering it was a kid chaos zone! He did get some candy and we let him try the smarties which he enjoyed. The other candy was hard pieces he couldn't have them but that night he carried them around all evening and kept saying "I got candy!" He was so proud.

After the egg hunt and a trip to southern Kansas City, we headed to Crown Center. None of us had been before and we had heard about a restaurant there that delivers your food to you on a train. Macen is starting to like trains more and more so we thought he would enjoy it. We weren't too impressed with the shopping at Crown Center - maybe it's just not our taste but they seem to have alot of good restaurants. Or we were just so hungry that it all smelled so good. We found Fritz's Railroad Restaurant and had a good meal. You call in your own order via phone (Macen helped out with this part) and then a train runs across the top of the wall and drops your food that is in a plastic container onto a platform then lowered down to you. Macen loved the trains! He kept saying "Choo, Choo" everytime one came around. He wasn't too interested in eating since he had the overhead trains and trains across from us in a display running.

This is the container the food arrives in.

We completed our day with a stop at Sheridans for some frozen custard. In effort to boost Macen's calorie intake, we ordered him his own shake and it was huge! Way too big for such a little guy.

Brew to Brew 43.5 mile Kansas City to Lawrence Relay Run

BRRRRRRR!!!!!

Sunday was the Brew to Brew run and the above sentence describes the theme of the day. We didn't get the snow that I talked about last week but it was a miserable day to be out running, much less trying to run 43.5 miles. I was definitely glad to have some comrades for this madness.

Here's the scenario. A six man team starts running at the Boulevard Brewery in Kansas City and runs 43.5 miles, divided into 10 different legs approximately 4-5 miles each, finishing at the Free State Brewery in Lawrence. The run is a benefit for Cystic Fibrosis research.

Our six man team consisted of guys from my small group. We are all Majors or Lieutenant Commanders (Navy equivalent) which means we are all in our mid to late 30's and most of us are coming off an Iraq or Afghanistan deployment in the last 4 or 5 months. Only three of us are what I would call endurance guys, me and two other guys who occasionally run marathons, although we are all fairly fit, so we went into this with the expectations of; Hey let's run a little bit, drink some beer and support a good cause. By the time we were done though it had morphed into let's see if we can, stay warm, beat any other small groups that we could recognize, and finish this thing in under 6 hours (8:30 min a mile pace). Pretty much in that order of importance.

Here are some of the pictures that we took and I may add some more as I get them from the other guys who were taking pictures (Shantel and I are still having issues with our cameras and desktop computer)

The mass start of Fort Leavenworth teams and other teams that started at 9am. Only 43.5 miles left to go.

Jerry finishes Leg 1 and hands our Oscar the Grouch baton off to me for Leg 2, a 5.2 mile stretch along the Kansas River levee. It is just starting to rain and drizzle with the temp hovering around 38 degrees at this point. What fun!This is me about three-quarters of the way through Leg 2, the sweatshirt that I HAD NOT intended to run in , but had to because it was so cold, is starting to get extra heavy because of the drizzle and there's some guy who's been right on my tail for the last half mile and won't pass, really irking the heck out of me. Just to add a little more misery, I've got to go around the bend and then climb up all those big rocks they put on the side of embankments to keep them from eroding to get on the bridge to cross the river. Oh yeah I paid for this!OK, I'm finishing my 5.2 miles here, it's still drizzling, I'm soaked, the sunglasses are alternating between a thin coat of ice and fogging up so I've pushed them up to the top of my head and one of my earphones has fallen out, where's the dude I'm handing off to. What???? He's running away from me, this leg is only 2.5 miles, he should be running to me at this point!!! My time for 5.2 miles - 43 minutes and change - good for a 8:16 average, not too shabby.This is one of my teammates finishing up his leg about 40 minutes after I had finished my first leg. Sure glad that's him and not me. This guy drew the short straw without knowing it, having probably the worst weather while running this leg and then on his second leg he had to stop and wait 20 minutes for a rubber boat to take him across a creek, it was either take the boat or run a extra mile. I'm not sure which would have been better.

Here is the embankment down to the boat crossing. Imagine where the grass went after all the runners went down it to the get in the boat.

OK that's it for the pictures. By now you are probably wondering did we make our goals? Well with temps in the 30's and wind gusts that supposedly reached 50 mph we only stayed warm while in the car, we passed at least one other staff group and probably several others that we just don't know about. As of this writing no official results have been published. Yes we did beat the 6 hour mark helped in part on the last leg, which I ran, by those 50 mph wind gusts.

The start of the last leg was almost due south along another levee and the wind was blowing out of the north, the first mile of that leg I ran a 7:19, which was definitely wind assisted, unfortunately the rest of the leg was pretty much due west with a viscous cross wind. I did make it to the finish line at 5hrs 59min 59 secs. Mission accomplished! Not bad for a bunch of old guys on a really crappy weather day.

Next up is the Shakespeares MaxTrax Duathlon in Columbia, which is a 2.5 mile run, 14 mile bike, and then another 2.5 mile run. The weather is supposed to be much better this weekend. Let's hope the forecast stays that way.

March playdates

March was a busy month for Macen. He got to see Ava and Bayley for the first time since he was 1-2 months old. And he got kisses from Baylie. And his buddy Nik wanted to dump the balls instead of play in them.