If you can't beat it......

Join it!
The cold that is. Certainly don't interpret this as a complaint because the weather we've had the past few days has been awesome, but it still gets pretty darn chilly at night. I've been itching to ride my bike here lately, so I decided to commute to work today on my bike! It was cold, around 30 when I left for the whopping 4 mile commute, but I was sick of letting the cold weather dictate my riding so I packed my backpack and off I went. Glad I did, was a nice ride here and should be a nice ride back. Hopefully I can do more commuting.

Had a great birthday "weekend". Took Friday off, was actually a pretty nice winter weather day in the low 40's. Lauren got a long run in and I met up with my brother and got a nice 50 miler in. We went to the Promenade that night for a fun family dinner at Red Robin and did some walking around outside. Saturday we went down to the Franklin Institute in Philly and the kids had a BLAST! They can't wait to go down again... On Sunday, I got a nice long run in on the mountain bike trails on South Mountain at Lehigh U, then Sunday PM we headed down to my mom's for a surpise.....she was watching the kids and sending us to dinner and a Jars of Clay concert!! It was great to have a nice dinner with Lauren and enjoy the concert in a small theatre in Sellersville, very cool....Thanks Mom!

New Ride

So, one of the thing I wanted to do over the winter was build myself a bike. I used to love messing around with my motorcycles back in the MX days, so why not build one? I began to accumulate parts and eventually I had everything I needed, EXCEPT for a frame! So the search began. I didn't have anything particular in mind but was leaning toward building up a pit bike for cyclocross. Wasn't finding to much and one day my brother (who was looking for his first TT bike for multisport) called me about the Scott Plasma. Turns out he had a connection at ScottUSA, so I said "while you're asking, see if they have a frameset they'll sell"! Well, no frameset but they offered basically 50% off a full bike!! Who could say no to that (thanks Honey). Good thing my birthday is Friday!! So no "full build" for me this winter or so I thought. I all my parts over the weekend (luckily, thanks to www.beginnertriathlete.com) and basically paid it off. The bike arrived today from Scott in a million pieces....SO I DO GET TO DO A BUILD!! I'll keep you posted!

Speaking of bikes, we have a big new cyclist in the family! Over the weekend Autumn learned how to ride a 2-wheeler w/out training wheels in our basement. She's flying now and she loves to race me around the "circle" we have in the basement.

And speaking of racing, this weekend Lauren's dad, brother (Robbie) and brother in law (Mike) and I went go kart racing at this cool indoor facility in Allentown. Basically racing the clock in a 6.5 horsepower go kart. Everyone really picked it up by the time we were done. www.lehighvalleygrandprix.com

Lauren and I started training. She's training to pace the half marathon in Tampa and I'm training to pace the full marathon. Should be a nice warm (hopefully) break to Floriday in the dark cold winter. The training is a great start to Boston training since we're both doing Boston in April. My "work" has begun with speed and tempo session in the dark, cold and sometimes snow....just a blast!! Also changing things around and doing the REV3 Half Ironman in CT in June. It looks like an awesome event held right at the Quassy amusement park. Not too far from home, it should be a great little get away weekend for the family. The kids will love the amusement park. www.rev3tri.com It'll be a big team event for Trakkers and we'll be sporting the awesome tracking devices for family and friends to track me at home! And a thanks to Trakkers for the sweet hat and visors, the pink ones weren't in my posession for long when Lauren took them over!! The team is awesome so far and they're putting some great sponsors together, very exciting.