great commercials

These Lance commercials for Dick's Sporting Goods are great:

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Amalia's training

Amalia is in training to be either an astronaut or an acrobatic pilot. Part of the training is intense spin training to develop her sense of balance and strength.

another reason not to run...

Riding in Belgium

I was in Belgium for a week or so for a conference. I took my bike so I could do a few rides in one of the great areas of the world for riding. There are so many famous races in Belgium its hard to count. Most are one day classics. I was in Leuven and rode down into the Ardennes around Liege a couple of times. This hilly area is a lot like the area around Blacksburg. I went on a 90 and 95 mile ride. The first ride was great with great weather. The second ride was also great but I got dumped on three separate times. It wasn't too cold so getting met wasn't so bad. I rode up the Mur de Huy which is a famous climb from the Fleche Wallone. The climb is 1.3km and averages around 10% I think. There are sections above 20% which make it brutal. Some german guy wanted to race me to the top so I beat him. Another guy was there so we took pictures of each other. Good fun!

Amalia swimming

Lisa decided its time for Amalia to learn to swim so she signed her up for lessons. These are run on campus and really the teachers are students who don't seem to do much with the young kids but let the parents ease the kids into the water so the kids aren't scared. Lisa has been taking her swimming Tuesday and Thursday mornings and its been going well. Amalia seems comfortable in the water and has even dunked her head. 

We also took Amalia to the county pool yesterday and she had great fun on the slide. It was hot out so the pool was super crowded. Its sad how many american kids are fat but thats the subject of another post. 

another 5K

So last friday I did the Shawsville 5K for the 4th of July. This race was at 8am, almost exactly opposite the time of my last race. The good thing is that the temperature was a lot cooler during the morning race. So I got 7th place overall, won my age group, and did a 17:42. Thats about 50sec faster than a week ago in a race that was real similar in profile. Guess cooler weather is better. I was real happy with the time.