THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

What’s a brick, you might ask? Well, I mean most people know what a brick is but how does that relate to a triathlon? Fear not gentle readers, I will let you know.

A brick is just doing two workouts back to back – most commonly biking and running (though I have also done running then swimming). Nobody knows for sure why it’s called a brick – it just is. Wikipedia has the following as claims for origin

• A partial anagram of Bike-Run.
• It may simply be a descriptive term for how your legs feel for the first part of the run.
• Another is credited to Mark Sisson and Scott Zagarino (1988), who associated the term brick with the idea of “Just another brick in the wall”… as noted in a song by the group “Pink Floyd”.
• Another association of this term has been claimed to originate from a New Zealand athlete by the name of Matt Brick.

Uh huh Matt Brick – you just go on thinking that…. I’m so sure.

Anyway with my triathlon coming up in 2 weeks, it’s time to do some serious preparation. I have been wanting to get out and do some biking and running outside since that’s much different than a treadmill / exercise bike. And since the triathlon is not ON a treadmill or exercise bike, it seemed prudent. Weather cooperated nicely and away I went.

I opted to just do a 3.05 mile course around my house and do 4 laps of it. That was about 12.2 miles which is about 1/2 mile short of the bike course but close enough. My lap times were: 12:38:33, 12:39:69, 12:54:56, and 13:24:07 for a total time of 51:37:45. Felt pretty good. That’s an average speed of about 14.2 mph which would put me at about 54:15 for my bike course. If I am to achieve my goal of 1:30:00, I really need to get that bike time down to about 50 minutes, which would be about 15.4 mph.

As I rode, I thought about the differences between this route and the race route. One thing I will have in my favor is that there will be less turning and slowing down to check for cars and such. I was not sure about hills. On the one hand, the hills on the Oxford course seemed like they were steeper and/or longer, but on the other hand, every hill I went on (Greenbriar from Miami, Homart from Thomas to Jethve, Sanoma from Osceola to Iuka) I had to go on 4 times! Of course I got to fly down that sweet downhill (25 mph+) on Thomas 4 times too….

The run was hard but satisfying in that I was able to run the whole way. One thing that I thought helped me was that physically the transition between biking and running is very difficult (the aforementioned way that your legs feel after biking). I think that this helped me to keep my pace slow. I just did 2 laps around my block which is 1.62 miles, or a little less than 1/2 my 5K race course. My 2 lap times were 6:58:33 and 6:31:16 for an overall time of 13:29:49, or a pace of an 8:20 mile.

An 8:20 mile is a 5K pace of 25:53 which would be sweet. I wanted to stop and walk several times but kept going. One thing I’ll definitely have to my advantage is that the course I ran today has a few nice hills in it, where the Miami course is fairly flat. Of course I have to run it almost twice as far….

They got the drywall (mostly) on to the new house. I went by this morning and snapped some pics. They did most of the rest of the drywalling today and I guess will be back on Tuesday to finish off the exterior walls. So…. good times!

Here’s the view from the kitchen, looking out to the new family room. To the left are the stairs going up (and the stairs going down are just to its left, off camera). You can also see the mud room back there. The 2 wood 2x4s are coming down eventually. The 2 drywalled columns just to the right of the stairs we’re going to drywall into one column since they are so close together.

And here’s the opposite view from the edge of the family room, looking back into the kitchen. Sure makes the kitchen seem a lot bigger! Again, all those wood 2x4s will be taken down, and that track lighting will be replaced with canned lighting similar to the ones you can see in the ceiling of the family room in the first picture.

They’ve installed the bathtub upstairs. They were going to install the other one but it was damaged so we have to take it back to Lowe’s and exchange it.

Here’s the view from the family room looking into the mud room and out the back door. The archway is to match the several archways that are in the existing house.

Still looking at a May move-in (hopefully!)

Well then since we all seem to be so enamored with talking about toilets, let me offer up some rules for everyone.

The Toilet Rules

The toilet is not a toy.

Toilet paper is not a toy.

After I use the bathroom I get 3 squares of toilet paper.

I count the squares: 1-2-3.

I tear off only 3 squares of toilet paper.

I wipe myself.

If I am still dirty, I can count 3 more squares of toilet paper.

I count the squares: 1-2-3.

I tear off the 3 squares of toilet paper again.

I wipe myself some more.

I am clean.

I do not play with the toilet paper.

I flush the toilet one time.

I do not put a lot toilet paper in the toilet.

Helpful information, wouldn’t you agree? No reason for sharing at all… Nobody in our house dumped an entire double roll of toilet paper in the toilet. Nope, nobody at all. Though if somebody DID do such a thing, I bet it was one of those “wants the seat down” type people…..

The mistake I made was trying to plunge it before reaching in to try to de-clog. Carolyn informed me of this after the fact. Why yes, this isn’t the first or even close to the first time such a thing has happened.

Luckily we are borrowing a wet-dry vacuum from a friend (originally for our basement cleanout). Came in very handy today. The trick was not to just suck all the water out but instead to shove the vacuum end all the way as far as it would reach BEFORE turning it on. It took a few tries but eventually we sucked that TP all the way out.

Oh and in case you were wondering, basement grime mixed with toilet paper is VERY disgusting…

So here’s something that annoys me and I thought I’d write something about it to see if this is widely shared, or if I’m just easily annoyed.

Let me set the scene – 2 people are in a hallway talking to each other. Each one is on an opposite wall of the hallway, so between them they are taking up the entire hallway, forcing people to walk between them in order to walk down the hall. Now this, in and of itself, I don’t necessarily have a problem with. It’s annoying yes, but there have been times that I have done this. And of course anything that I have ever done could not POSSIBLY be annoying.

No, what I find incredibly annoying is the fact that it appears to be socially acceptable and mandated that the person who is just walking down the hall, minding his or her own business, is “supposed to” say “Excuse me”. Why should THEY have to beg the pah-don of the blowhards that are taking up the entire hallway?

So I was trying to think of a way that we can discourage this behavior. I already walk right through them without excusing myself. Even if there’s a tiny amount of room on one side of one person, I just barge right down the middle – your rude behavior is not making me have to try and squeeze myself through the very edge of the hallway. I thought maybe a dirty look, but that seems like it’s not quite enough. Another thought I had was to “accidentally” throw a shoulder into one of the participants, but that seems to go too far the other way.

So the solution I have come up with (and I think it’s a good one) is that the new socially accepted rule is that as you walk through the rudyheads, you say “Excuse you”. It’s just subtle enough, and because it’s so close to what people will be expecting to hear (“Excuse me”), you could probably even get away with it. They’d be left thinking (if they even hear it) something along the lines of “Did I just hear that right? Nahh”

So what do you think, loyal reader(s)? Shall we do it? Let’s take back the world, one hallway interaction at a time!!!