Terry's 2nd Deadwood Half Marathon

Ever since we both ran in a marathon relay in October 2015, Terry has been motivated to run more competitively. He's naturally gifted so it makes sense. In June of 2016 Terry, Jazmin, Emma, and I ran in the Deadwood Half Marathon. Terry trained kind of casually, roughly following what his Nike Run app suggested. He did the same in October 2016 for the Crazy Horse Half Marathon but had hopes to top his June time. However, he ended up being so darn consistent that he only was like one second faster overall! He was a little frustrated and decided to up his training. I got him a training book (Hal Higdon's Half Marathon Training) for Christmas that he discovered in Runners Magazine and he took great pains all spring, since March 12, to complete the advanced training plan. He was incredibly disciplined! He was up early nearly every single day, running sprints at the track, running from an hour on the weekends to eventually two hours! Finally the big day came on Sunday June 4, 2017 to put all of his training to the test. 

We did not want to stay at a hotel again this year so we spent the night at Terry's folks and they watched the kids and took them to church the next morning. Jazmin also wanted to race again (her third with Terry) but didn't train as religiously as Terry. He was slightly manic, recording all of his training details like three times. Ha ha.

Jazmin met us at the ranch at 6:15am and I drove them up to the race drop off near Dumont. 

I was a little nervous about being able to find Terry on the race course since I had never driven it before and it's more complicated than the Crazy Horse race. I had plenty of time to examine the various maps and I figured it out. I stopped at the first available place (Rochford Ridge Trail?) only a mile or two down the trail and found him!

Lookin good hon!

I took some video with my phone at the same time I was taking pictures. I'm so talented. ;)

The next turnoff was just off Englewood Road. 

After this I had a little more difficulty. I turned off the highway to the Sugarloaf Trailhead but discovered that was wrong. Another dude helped me and we turned off on Kirk Road. I stopped right at that intersection because the trail crossed the road. However, the race course had diverted and I had to drive further down Kirk to find the correct place. I had to a wait a little longer this time. It was pretty though.

I love this trail!

Finally he along. I could tell he was wearing out with several more miles to go. It was so much warmer than last year, right from the start. Last year we were quite cold but not so this year. I took off my jacket at this point. Hot hot hot and it was only like 9am.

Video from the Kirk trail.

I took the chance and continued down Kirk Road to Deadwood. It paid off. Terry ran along that road right into the city. I took this from the road. He was so fast he was blurry! ;)

Poor guy checking his watch.

I went a short distance ahead and waited. I remember starting to get very hot at this point last year but it was nothing compared to that day.

This group kept together pretty well the whole time.

He kept up with them.

Another short way down Kirk I stopped again.

I remember hearing one of the other guys talking about how hot it was. Poor racers.

Very little shade from here.

I raced through town, afraid he would beat me to the finish line, parked at Taco John's where I probably shouldn't have, and ran to the line. I didn't have to wait more than a few minutes before he crossed.

How exhausted does he look...?!

...Not as exhausted as he looked in real time! I have watched this video over and over on my phone because it makes me laugh and giggle. For days afterward I'd watch at quiet moments and Terry would just roll his eyes. He has been trained to never ever just stop running, but to continue to jog to let his heart rate come down more gradually. But he sort of stumbled along as he was jogging and the guy handing out medals said, "All right Terry. Good job...You can stop now," as if trying to get him to stop running since he looked a little delirious. Good advice. He needed to quit!

From there, I followed him around as he cooled down. He drank the cold water they gave him, poured half of it over his head, and mumbled about how tired he was. He was stumbling along literally just like a drunk guy! I was actually scared he was going to pass out and sort of positioned myself to catch him if he did. He wouldn't stop moving but he couldn't walk straight. It was scary! The heat had done him in. 

Finally he grabbed some watermelon and went over to the little patch of grass in the shade and stopped. He just collapsed in the grass. 

He didn't have much too much to say but when we heard them announce an Erika had just finished he said it was the one we know. So I ran over there and it was indeed her, the woman the kids poop scoop for. She finished not many minutes after Terry and looked just amazing! Clearly the heat didn't bother her as much as some others.

I went back to Terry and he had his legs propped up on the little tree as is his custom to drain the blood out of them. He started telling me about how difficult it had been to keep going and finish. He compared it to the night before when we had been watching a show about a couple who were trapped in a blizzard and wouldn't let themselves fall asleep so they wouldn't freeze to death. They kept saying to each other "Stay awake," and Terry kept telling himself the exact same thing. He wanted to pass out while running! Yikes!

Done and done.

I went and got him some chocolate milk which revived him a bit and he started examining his pace numbers, etc.

Chocolate milk never tastes so good.

Holding up his race stats.

Guys, my husband is so fast! He ran 13.1 miles in an hour and 32 minutes with a pace of 6:59!!! He would say his adjusted average pace according to his bib timer was 7:04. He ended up 34th place out of thousands of people and was fifth in his age group. His goal was to be third in his age group so he was bummed he didn't get that. He also wanted to finish in 1:31 but he was so darn close!

He stood up and was finally ready for a selfie and some more food.

Picture time.

This year's Deadwood half was a lot harder than last year's because of the heat. Still, he knocked about ten seconds off his pace and at that speed, that is very difficult to do.

The traditional dead picture. Ha!

The stats.

We waited around for Jazmin for a while. We couldn't remember what she was wearing so we were checking in Terry's phone for the selfies he took at the start. There she is!

Looking good!

So close!

Go go go! Kinda sad I wasn't with her, but not really. Ha! I was actually totally fine to have not raced and trained this year. My knee can't take more than four or five miles before the IT band starts killing me.

All done and so happy about it! Her family came up to congratulate her and then we all left. She actually rode back with us to the ranch to fetch her Jeep. That was when I experienced the bad brakes and rotors on the van for myself - so shaky!!

That evening I made pizza for family movie night and Terry broke his pop fast with a Mexi-Coke. He hadn't drank any since he started training.

A delicious reward.

A Coke goes so perfectly with pizza! Good job my honey! 

Evie's (and Noah's) haircut

On June 1, Evie had her long awaited haircut. She really wanted to chop it off short again since it had grown out since last year. I'm always a little hesitant to do it, but she is just so darn sure. She hates brushing her hair. She says it takes "forever" to brush it but in reality it takes like a minute. It is probably true that I make her brush her hair more often when it is long because it gets SO tangly SO quickly. Maybe it will thicken up as she gets older...but right now it's just so incredibly fine - see how the wind blows the tiny little strands everywhere?

In small group, little Norah got an adorable little bob with bangs and we loved it so much we wanted it cut just like hers. It's a little different. We were both a little shocked at the change, but it's grown on us and grown literally. He he he, I'm so funny. It's a great change and she loves it! Daddy misses her hair a little but he's not picky like that.

More layers this year. It moves very nicely and is a breeze to brush.

I cut Noah's hair as well and will cut the boys hair before our trip. He's a new kid with the haircut! 

vans - out with the old, in with the new!!

Terry and I have been discussing what vehicle to take on our two week trip to Utah and California for some time, months in fact. At first we were going to take the Envoy but after our drive to Sylvan Lake at the beginning of May I really did not want to take it. It's huge but has absolutely no room for luggage or anything at all besides bodies, is difficult for the kids to get in and out of, is uncomfortable, and guzzles gas. 

Our next option was the old 2001 gold van, but ever since my and Terry's dad both discouraged this, I was unfavorable, as were the kids. Plus I had been feeling less happy with the van ever since I crushed the passengers door in March, a derpy moment if there ever was one, but mostly because I couldn't use the passenger window. Anyway, the dads did not think it was a good idea to take a van with nearly 200,000 miles on a 3,300 mile trip. The kids overheard this and were afraid it would die on us, which is precisely what the dads said.

So the third option was a new vehicle. But then we worried that something new could be just as unreliable as our old van since we didn't know its history. Either way, we could conceivably be left in the lurch, and when we have our entire trip planned out by where we're staying every night and we've already made those payments, that would be bad. But we decided to go ahead and start looking at vans, something that we had actually done a couple times in the last few years since our van is getting older. We've had it since 2008 and it was a miracle van - it popped up right after I had my first van mishap in Gburg (I'm starting to see a pattern here, geesh) for extremely cheap. 

Anyway, the first van we found after praying about it seemed like a God send. It was a red 2008 Town and Country with swivel seats and two DVD players and was just all pimped out. However, the guy didn't even have the title since he had just bought it! We told him to let us know when he got the title and kept looking since Jerry had a car salesman connection who assured us he could find something even better for less money. We bit. He never did find us anything. We found a couple Honda vans East River that I was hoping to look at during our Minnesota trip, but it didn't work out. 

By this time, shopping for vans was consuming all our time and stressing us out. We started to want to just be content with what we had and so we kind of let the matter rest, thinking we'd probably just end up taking the old gold van, which I recently started calling Goldenrod ("Hurry up Goldenrod! You're gonna be a permanent resident!" HAHAHAHAHA! Anyone? Anyone? Han Solo to C3PO in Empire Strikes Back as they're leaving the cave!)

On Friday morning, June 2, after his light pre-race jog and breakfast, Terry was lazily scrolling through Craigslist and saw this ad:

We were immediately interested because of the price, the low miles, and because you simple NEVER see Siennas for that price. Terry texted the guy right away and he still had it. We went to an orthodontic appointment for Noah mid-morning and texted back and fourth about it. When we returned home they talked on the phone and it just seemed like such a great deal that we pulled the trigger and went for it. Did I mention the van was five hours away in Sioux Falls? Yeeeaaahhh. I made Terry lunch and a snack and he jumped in the Malibu for a drive! Oh, and the only reason this worked was because we had some students returning from a senior trip in Minnesota at that exact time and one of them, Jazmin, was willing to be dropped off and wait in Sioux Falls with her grandparents in order drive the Malibu home for Terry. Perfect!

Another Han Solo quote kept coming to mind because the whole thing it was such a whirlwind. Ha ha ha! One minute we were going to have a nice relaxing day together after a busy week and the next Terry was gone for the rest of the day and evening.

The kids were majorly disappointed Terry had to be gone for his whole day off. It was a bummer but it seemed worth it. We had a quiet afternoon at home and I read some Harry Potter to the kids. Ezra was bored so I told him to go up to his room. I didn't even notice that he actually did. An hour later when the kids were in quiet time and I couldn't find Ezra, I finally found him passed out in his bed. Awww!

I was keeping tabs on Terry to let Jazmin know his progress. I happened to look at precisely the moment he was crossing the Missouri River. I sent him this screenshot and then received one from him at the same time...

He took a picture at the exact same time that I took one of him! How cool is that?!

Right around dinner time he Facetimed me when he was driving away in the new van. In hindsight it probably would've been better for him to pay attention to the van before being distracted by me and the kids because it made kind of a whining noise at low speeds that he didn't notice until gassing up in Mitchell (Seth says it's nothing). But we were just so excited and glad that daddy was on the way home again. 

Poor Terry and Jazmin didn't roll up until like 11:30 that night and both of them were just exhausted. I took a quick look over the van and was a bit surprised by the flaws that we couldn't see in the pictures. Terry had five hours to examine everything and wasn't as excited as when he had left. The next morning the kids were happy though!

Very happy.

The leather seats were quite a bit more worn than we thought. This was partially fixed by washing and conditioning the leather. The thing with this van was that it needed cleaned up in a bad way. Either the last owners were too busy to do that (they definitely were since the sale took place so quickly, in fact they only had time to take the car seats out!) or they weren't the kind of people that kept things very tidy. The van was down right dirty and sort of skeezy! On June 5, the second day of Terry's sabbatical, we got to work completely deep cleaning and detailing this van. 

This center console was filthy but was a neat design because it opens in two places or can be removed entirely. I took the entire thing out and scrubbed away at all the soda stains that had dog fur stuck in them. So gross! I also scrubbed and hosed off the whole console in the grass. It's spotless now. Plus I got the years of filth cleaned up right next to the console. You can imagine how gross it was since pop had been spilled down there. And actually, I think pop had been spilled throughout the entire van! There are dark stains under every seat! I vacuumed like three times and discovered that yes, this van originally came from Florida because there was much sand in the carpet. Then I put all the seats down or folded them back and washed the carpet. Then I scrubbed the carpet. Then I vacuumed it again. Terry and the kids scrubbed all of the really nice custom fit rubber rugs. Those were also pretty stained but cleaned up nicely. I washed the windows. I washed the seats. I cleaned every vent. I went through many, many of gallons of soapy water that quickly became mud like. We conditioned every leather surface and the front seats more than once. I spent like six or seven hours deep cleaning this van, was bent over the entire day, and had to visit the chiropractor the next day. But after I detailed it, we felt SO much better about the van. No longer did it seem so gross and we liked it more, sort of like how we were hoping we'd like it in the beginning.

The drivers seat was even more worn.

We are thrilled to have back windows that actually go down!!

Another flaw was that the sunroof cover would not go back! The sunroof itself would but not the cover. We discovered this was due to the after market DVD player installation. There was a bolt that prevented the cover from retracting. The evening of the fifth was spent washing the outside of the van and fixing those bolts. Now it all works.

The after market DVD players is huge, and even better, it works!

Every window but one has these built in screens attached. Super cool. But oh man, when I cleaned this van out, the seat belts were the nastiest things. No joke, they were all brown instead of silver. Again, I think it was pop stains, kid usage, and not taking care of your van. My soapy water became the most soiled because of all seven seat belts that I immersed and scrubbed. People live in their vans nowadays and never clean them out. Another reason not to be so busy - your life gets filthy.

A "love tap" made by the previous owner's wife. She sounds like me. Ha! We bought a matching paint colored pen and are going to see if we can cover up some of those scratches. Plus, the passengers doors are kind of scuffed up, like kid's bikes scratched it or maybe other car doors. 

Rewind to Saturday June 3rd. We drove the new van up to Spearfish and then Deadwood to pick up Terry's race bib and then to the ranch where we stayed for the night so Terry's dad could see the van. We tested the DVD player on the way up there and it works perfect. Oh, but man, that day driving in the hills with the braking, we discovered that the brakes and rotors were bad! The van was shaking so badly! Last week and this week was spent fixing the brakes and rotors with Seth. They also replaced the air and cabin filters that were dirty. New oil, filter, wipers, two tires on the front and one new rim to replace the one they discovered was bent. And perhaps the biggest repair was to the drivers door. Some welds inside the door had come loose (a factory default) and the door popped majorly bad when opening - it sounded like it was going to break right off. But they bolted the welds and it works perfectly now! But overall, this van was a lot more work than we were hoping!! Still, it has low miles and is a Toyota so it's reliable and will hold its value better. 

Man, this is a long post. But the good news is that we sold Goldenrod this week! It went to an older couple out of Martin who really needed it. That made us feel good about letting it go. Our new van is totally ready for our trip and we replenished some of the cash we used to buy it. 

Good bye faithful Goldenrod van!