New Website Design

For a while now, I've wanted to change the homepage on my website. I like the one I have now, but it's just too bright and has too much going on. So on Sunday I decided to try to design something new. I worked for a while on a grey and orange minimalist theme, but it just never looked right. So I abandoned it and came up with this.

(click on the image to see it bigger)
It's not quite done yet, but my plan is to have something happen to the squares when you hover over them, and then that open area where it says science fair 2008 will do something special and display the full name of whatever you're hovering over.
As I said before it's still in the planning stages but I think it's a good start. It should have a much quicker page load time, and also will be easier to use.

Denver Half Marathon!

This is kind of late, but here is my recap of my running of the Denver Half Marathon.
It all started on the Thursday before the marathon when they sent me an email about how you personally needed to pick up your registration packet at the pre-marathon expo that was on Friday. So I talked to my dad and he said that I should just come up to work with him, golf for a couple of hours and then go over to the marathon expo with him. So I did that, golfing was alot of fun, especially since I hadn't golfed all summer. I did ok shooting a 96, which was pretty good considering the fact that I hadn't golfed all summer and that I didn't use my driver.
As a side note I had the camera with me and took an HDR picture of a pond on the course. Here is that picture: (I'll do a post on what HDR is soon)
Here's a bigger version http://www.flickr.com/photos/29602585@N08/2952332405/sizes/l/

So now back to the marathon, after I was done golfing we went to the Marathon Expo. I thought it was going to be kind of dumb, but it was really fun and got me psyched up for the race. I got there and picked up my registration packet, which had my race number, timing chip to put on my shoe, and the marathon t-shirt. We also got like 30 free Larabars, and other free stuff so that was fun.
Now on Saturday the anticipation really started building. Before a race your supposed to eat as many carbohydrates as you can so you'll have energy for the race. So since bread has alot of carbs in it, my mom made nice big sweet rolls, and other stuff high in carbs for me to eat. All in all on that saturday I ate 5 big sweet rolls, 3 big bowls of pasta, a bowl of granola, tons of water, and 5 larabars, a tuna sandwich, and some other stuff. Not quite as much as Michael Phelps but probably the most I've ever eaten :-). Throughout the day I just rested and got all my stuff ready. Then I went to bed around 11:00 to try and get a little bit of rest before I would wake up at 3:30.
So I woke up took a shower and put on all my running stuff. I wore my soccer warm up over it so that when it was cold outside in the morning while I waiting I would be warm. We got up there around 5:00, and looked around at the vendors preparing for the post marathon expo. It was pretty exciting looking around and getting ready to race. I went to the bathroom in one of there many porta-potties, tried the gatorade they were serving at the race stations, and then got in the area where the racers started. Here's a picture of me in the starting area:

This area was packed with all 10,000 runners all waiting to start. Then the starting gun went off and everybody was running! It took me 2 minutes to even cross the starting line because there were about 5,000 runners in front of me. Here's a pic of all the runners that were behind me in the beginning.

So finally when I crossed the finish line I was so excited. I had tons of fun running the first 5 miles but then started to get a little bit harder. It was still fun but as the miles went on it just continued to get harder. Eventually around mile 8 I started to get horrible stitches in my sides. They got so bad that it hurt incredibly bad to even breath in so I had to slow down a little bit. It was ok though since I went out a little bit fast I could go slow for a little bit and still make 2 hours. The race is kind of all a blur now until the last mile and a half. It was amazing my legs just felt numb and I just kept running, all the while I was worried about having enough energy to make it to the finish. During the last mile the thing that really kept me going was the silence. During the whole race there were always people cheering and it was pretty loud, but during the last mile there wasn't anybody because everyone was waiting at the finish. It's kind of surprising that the silence would keep me going, but it made me realize how close I was. Finally I made the turn to run the last tenth of a mile to the finish. It was amazing! I kept on passing people and was running as fast as I could. I finally looked up at the clock about 200 feet from the finish when I saw it at 1:59:59 and then it changed to 2 hours. I ran that last 200 feet and crossed the finish line of my first race. Here are pictures of the last couple feet. (You really have to see them up close to see me)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3248/2957351958_f2813e9b2c_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3236/2957357894_cfcf858702_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3031/2957361602_cc8f7ba3e0_b.jpg

I was excited after finishing, but disappointed that I didn't make it in under 2 hours. After getting my medal it hit me that I really did it in under two hours because it took me about 2 minutes to start. Eventually I found out that the little chip on my shoe that registers the actual time read 1:58:03 so I did it in under two hours! Here's a picture of me right after finishing

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3205/2957363240_0a39a10d72_b.jpg

I got my medal, got a free massage, ate a bagel, chips, and a banana, and tiredly walked around the marathon expo, and then went home having completed my first race, and first half marathon ever.

Half Marathon

Wow! I haven't updated this in a long time. Since the last time I've updated this I turned 16, finished working at Sky Sox, slept overnight on the sidewalk in front of a Sports Authority store (I'll tell that story later), and started school again. Also when I last posted I was planning on running a marathon in 2 days (September 23), but since my dad was running so much he hurt his knee. It ended up healing, but we had to delay our training. We're still going to try to run a marathon, but I'm probably going to run in the Denver Half Marathon. I'm excited to finally get to run a race. Here's a map of the course:

I ran a Half Marathon by accident

Since I was at the the Rebelution conference on Saturday, I had to wait till Sunday to do my long run. So at about six (not in the morning) I headed out for either a 10.1 mile run, or an eleven mile run. So I could drink while running I wore my dads fuel belt, Click here to see what a fuel belt is but the problem was that it would shake around a lot. After only about 100 ft. one of the water bottles fell off, and the lid broke. Then later since it shook around so much I drank two of the remaining water bottles and set it by the side of the road.

For the first two miles I forced myself to run 11:00 miles in order to save energy, this is way harder than it seems. It just feels like your running so slow in the beginning. This helped me so much during the run. Through the first 10 miles I kept on running too fast, at around 10 minute miles, or faster (My marathon pace is 10 minute miles, but I'm supposed to run about a minute to a minute and a half slower than my marathon pace). Since I was running so well I decided to turn right on pine cone road, so I could run 11 miles. Now heres how I ran my half marathon. After turning right on pine cone road I knew I was supposed to turn right on Herring. From there I was looking for Kirk road, but really I was supposed to go on Wildridge and then Kirk. So I kept on running straight until I hit Swan and knew I went too far. So I turned onto Swan, ran to Vollmer, and then headed home. So by this time I was starving since I hadn't eaten since lunch, but I was sooooo thirsty having drunk only a little water at the beginning. So my last two miles were kinda slow, but I still did ok. All in all I ran 13.18 miles, a little farther than a half marathon.

Heres my run, if you want to see it

Click here

Terrible Run!

Wow, today I was supposed to do my long run. So I went out running with my dad, on the same route that I went last Saturday. That route is nice because it has alot of options to come back home, you can run 3, 5, 7, 10.1, and 11 miles. So we started off, and everything was going great for me until the 5th mile. I wasn't very tired because for my long run I'm supposed to run like 30 to 90 seconds slower than my marathon pace, but then my legs just started feeling like jelly. They felt like this until the eighth mile when I just hit a wall. I couldn't run more than a tenth of a mile before I had to walk for a while. So overall I did 10.1 miles in 1:59:12, averaging 12 minutes per mile, I was pretty disappointed afterwards, but hopefully I'll do better next week.

I'm kinda worried about starting marathon training with only about 2 weeks of running before the training plan. Running experts say to have about 6 months of running before starting marathon training. Also I've been reading a bunch of stuff about how kids shouldn't run marathons. Oh well, I'm still going to try.

6.5 mile run

Wow, yesterday I went on an amazing run. I didn't do great, but where I ran was really fun. We have these woods behind our house, and there is a trail that goes through them. So I ran along that until I got to the place where there are some houses being built and then did a figure eight around and came back home. Like I said before, it wasn't my best run or anything, but it was really nice weather, it had just rained, and it was a beautiful place to run.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/108484

10.15 miles 1:50

Today me and my dad ran 10.15 miles, which is good for me considering that the farthest I've ever run before is 6. On Thursday I had a horrible speed workout, so this run really gave me a confidence boost. My dad said that for your long run you take your marathon pace, and go about 2 minutes slower per mile. The thought behind this is to just get your body used to more miles.

Also during the run I tried taking shorter steps so I could step with my right foot 90 times per minute. It was so much harder than I thought, I naturally do about 70 per minute so trying to do 90 was hard for me. The reason why 90 steps per minute is good, is because if you just start out doing small steps to stay with a slower pace, then it's easy to just move your legs farther apart to go faster