slow down...?

A few months ago I signed up for a Twitter account. I basically keep track of all my current events in the triathlon world through this. Also, I usually update what I'm doing or post an interesting article I've read recently. There is an application for Twitter that tracks the words you use most often, hours of the day you've posted comments, who you've responded to, ect. ect. I have sent out 455 tweets or updates on Twitter to date. Of those 455 tweets, the top 5 words I've typed are: work, swim, going, training, and time. In a tie for 6th and 7th place were the words run and bike! For the first few seconds I laughed and thought that it was funny. It's been sitting on my mind now for the past hour and I'm not sure I'm okay with this. Do these 5 words define me as a person? No, I don't think they do. However, the lifestyle that I live closely resembles those words I use most often. The common theme between those 5 words are Go, Go, and Go. I'm constantly on the go. I'm either working, or swimming, or training, or doing something for time. It's pretty clear that I'm out of balance. I'm investing all this time trying to stay busy. Am I taking the time to stop and appreciate what I've been given? This simple thing today has raised so many questions.

Take Back the Beep Campaign

Annoyed with the 15 second voice mail instructions you receive after you listen to the persons voice mail speech? Cell phone companies are making $620 million dollars off of these 15 second caller instructions! This is 2009, we don't need instructions to leave a voice mail! I'm already being redundant so just click the link below. It's worded better than I could write it!

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/the-mandatory-15-second-voicemail-instructions/#more-1313

Inspiration

NBC re aired the 2008 Ford Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii this past weekend. Kona is the place where the Ironman began. A 2.4 mile swim in the ocean with strong currents and waves, a 112 mile bike with wind gusts that can topple a biker over, and a marathon where the pavement can melt through the rubber on your shoes is no walk in the park. However, for the select few, it is the mecca for any triathlete on their quest to compete amongst the best in the world. I don't see how anyone could watch this event and not be inspired. Everyone at Kona has a story to tell. They all have a purpose. To see amputees, cancer survivors, armed forces, professionals, and those who are racing for the dreams of someone else, give every last ounce of energy humanly possible is an eye opening experience. These people are a living testament to determination and heart. The perseverance it takes to just train for an Ironman is astonishing. But for a lot of these people, the training pails in comparison to the personal struggles they've had to face. Hearing all their stories put life in perspective for me. These people didn't quit when they were told they wouldn't walk again. They didn't let obesity stand in their way. They pushed through years of chemo therapy to prove to themselves and the world that they aren't quitters. These people stood up to impossible odds and proved that you can really do anything you put your mind to. All my petty complaining is so pointless and I'm reminded that there are other people who have endured far more than I may endure in an entire life time. They inspire me to do the best I can with what I've been given and to have faith so strong that it can move mountains. This is the story of the father and son team who did Ironman together a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnrLv6z-mM

Ironman training update

I have 64 more days until I have to complete a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and a 13.1 mile run. It's no longer a question of "if" I can do this. I already train at these distances during my work week. More importantly, it's a question of "how fast" can I complete the 70.3 miles of pain. Last week I successfully logged 6,100 yards of swimming, 120 miles on the bike, and 20 miles of running. My main focus on the swim and bike has been distance and endurance while my running has been focused on speed. With September 27 rapidly approaching, I am feeling more confident about beating my estimated goal of 5 hours and 15 minutes. My outlook for this week: I am keeping my swim and bike distances the same as last week but increasing the miles I run from 20 to 35. I want to sustain the same work rate in swimming and biking while increasing my running miles. My brick work out, a long bike followed immediately by a run, will increase to a run that is 20% of my bike. Comparatively this will be closer to what I'll experience in the half Ironman. A 13.1 mile run is 23.39% of a 56 mile bike. I'd like to work up to this ratio so my training closely mirrors the fatigue I'll feel on race day. I think in the next 3 weeks I'll top out and begin to taper. Until then it's full steam ahead!

Moving a Pool Table

My bachelor pad has been lacking one imperative ingredient... a pool table! My room mate and I found a good deal on an 8 foot pool table on craigslist a few weeks ago. It was valued new at over $1500 and we talked the seller from $250 to $150. The seller warned us several times that it was extremely heavy and would take several strong men to move the pool table from their second floor to my house. Being the confident optimist, I was positive that a few guys could easily get this monster pool table home. Once I assembled my "army" of three men, we loaded up in my truck and headed over to get the pool table. **If this were a movie, the current scene would freeze and the narrator would walk in front of the camera to let the audience know something the actors didn't. It's this little bit of insight that keeps the viewer engrossed in the train wreck that's about to unfold.** So.... we get to the house and are greeted by the seller and his wife. They take us upstairs to their game room and we see this magnificent and gigantic pool table. Nobody really says anything at first. We walk circles around the pool table as if we're stalking our prey and sizing it up for dinner. Words need not be spoken. An occasional eye contact with the person across the table said it all. Everyone was thinking the same thing. What did we just get ourselves into!? The entire pool table had to be disassembled down to the nuts and bolts. Fortunately that was the easy part. Figuring out a way to successfully get the 800 pound slab of slate down the stairs and into my truck was the catch. We did not have enough man power to do this safely. The slab was so heavy that we couldn't pick it up in the horizontal direction it was on the pool table. Otherwise, the slab would buckle right down the middle. We had to carry it vertically down the stairs to avoid breaking the pool table in half! After 2 1/2 hours of brainstorming, dismantling, and narrowly escaping being crushed by an 800 pound slab of slate, the pool table was in the back of my truck and we were headed home. It only took about half the time to reassemble the pool table as it did to take it apart. Four hours later, two boxes of pizza, and one hundred times "i'm so sorry ya'll," the pool table was finally in it's new home! Moral to the story is: Do not ever buy a pool table unless you have professional movers to do it for you. The juice definitely was not worth the squeeze.

Shoes and Women

Yes, women love shoes but this has nothing to do with what is currently on my mind! Allow me to explain. Have you ever tried to be so careful not to make a mistake that you end up by making a complete mess of everything? If so then allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ryan Carter and I am the king of making messes. I keep envisioning a scene where the last thing you're told as you carry the cake to the table is, "whatever you do, don't drop it!" You focus so hard on not dropping the cake that you overlook some rather obvious signs that scream, you're going to drop it stupid! I've recently run into this situation and it's a lonely feeling to drop the cake. This reminds me of the lyrics in a 38 Special song from the early 1980's, "hold on loosely but don't let go, if you cling to tightly, you're gonna loose control." I remember as a kid we would usually get a new pair of shoes at the start of each new school year. I would be extremely diligent to keep the shoes as white as possible. I'd avoid puddles, wet areas, dirt, mud, and grass. I would try so hard to keep the shoes as spotless as possible. Even with the attention to detail I was giving the shoes, the inevitable would always happen. When I least expected it, a huge stain would seem to fall from the sky and land on my spotless shoes that I tried so hard to keep clean. I can still picture the look on my face and the feeling I felt each time this happened. You see, when I go shoe shopping, I am looking for the pair of shoes that personify Ryan Carter! And when I find those shoes, I am so proud of them because to me, they're perfect and I don't want anything to happen to them. Eventually they become scuffed and worn. However, even with their blemishes, I still think they're perfect. I've noticed that I've inadvertently treated some of my relationships like this. I know that I'm about to tie together shoe shopping and dating so I apologize for the predictability of where this will go. But seriously though, I'm picky about my shoes and women. So when I actually find a girl worth spending my time with, I'm really excited about living in those moments. And it should be exciting. It's like getting a new pair of shoes. However, I try really hard not to mess things up and I end up by doing exactly that. I dropped the cake. I held on too tightly and I lost control. That's usually where things end for me and it's rare that I recover fast enough to do anything about it. Therefore, the impression I've given is not accurate nor is it a predictor of how things will be in the future. I usually loosen up and let things move around more freely but it's difficult at first. If my relationships ever get past this stage, the wind is in my sails and things move along just fine. Overtime you'll have arguments, disagreements and the person you once thought of as perfect has a few annoying qualities! The shoes will get a few grass stains on them and their pretty white color vanishes but the feelings and reasons for choosing them still remain. I think this is an important aspect to keep in mind as your relationships progress and mature. Long story long, I drop a lot of cakes. Fortunately the local grocery store has an endless supply of cake mixes...and that keeps me looking forward and staying positive.

84 Days to Atomic Man Half IronMan

Distractions. My life has recently been filled with a lot of distractions. Between concerts, late nights, trips to the lake and relationships, I can't find a steady rhythm. It would help if I had someone to keep me accountable for my training but I'm the lone captain of this ship. Overall my training has been sub par. Sure, I train everyday but it hasn't been the quality workouts I've desired. This week I need to swim 6000 yards, bike 110 miles, and run 30 miles. It will be a major test of will and desire to pull out these numbers. My motivation is at an all time low and I'm having to fight back the urge to quit with all my might. I need a spark. Something or someone to light a fire under my ass and get me going again. For the past 6 moths I've got up at 5am to run, swam on my lunch breaks, and biked in all sorts of horrid weather conditions in the evenings, all by myself. My recent feelings toward training are a direct correlation with how everything else is going in my life. I don't really know what to do with anything- my job, career, relationships, future, and my seriousness towards Ironman events. I think the day in day out mental breakdowns in my training are getting to me. I need to regroup and get my head back on straight. I'll be more disappointed with a poor performance in my half ironman race in September knowing I didn't put everything I have into it. That should be motivation enough to keep me going.

Watch out for that....VAN!

I'll skip straight to the climax of the story.... I got hit by a van Friday morning on my run. And that's about where the story ends. After my bike ride I went for a 6 mile run and as I was rounding the back side of Lipscomb University, a green van pulled out of the parking lot and didn't see me crossing. I jumped at the last second, landed square in the middle of the hood and rolled to the other side where I rolled a few more times on the pavement. The lady driving the van just looked at me and drove off. She probably didn't have insurance and wasn't an American citizen. Somehow I got up with not scratches at all! I did get the last laugh however. My butt made a large crater on the front of her hood! It should be pooling up with water every time it rains! Now that I know what it feels like to get hit by a vehicle, I'm really not scared of getting hit again. I dare someone to actually. Go ahead, hit me, and then you can pay for me to get new truck, pay off my college debt and maybe even pay for my kids college one day. I just need to get hit by someone with a lot of money. Not an illegal alien. My desk at work has proved to be more lethal (skittle bump blog post)!

4th of July minus fireworks of any kind

It's been years since I could say I had a really fun 4th of July. As a kid growing up in Angleton, our family would meet several other families from church and watch fireworks from the parking lot of Academy in Lake Jackson. I can remember throwing around a football and probably driving our parents insane with all the running around. The only time we sat still was when the fireworks began to go off. I don't remember anything after the grand finale though. I'm sure it has something to do with expending so much energy in anticipation that when the show was over, I was out like a light. My parents were probably very grateful for this. In fact, somethings never change. I feel as though I am still like this today. I get so excited about a certain event or anything really, that when it's over I'm completely exhausted. This years 4th of July started off on a good note but ended rather anti climatic. Since I had Friday off from work, I went to the IMAX theatre to see Transformers 2 and then proceeded to play the guitar till really late. On Friday I went for a 30 mile bike ride followed by a 6 mile run. I rested for about an hour and met my friend for a cross fit training session. We jogged 2 miles down to the gym, did circuit weight training with 3 half mile jogs, and jogged 2 miles back home. Overall I ran 11.5 miles! Then I headed down to Tim's Ford Lake to spend time with a friends family and wakeboard. The family who owns this lake house is very nice. They make me feel like I'm family every time I go down there. My 4th of July weekend quickly became an early Thanksgiving my first night at the lake. We had Fajitas, grilled corn, queso, blackberry cobbler and ice cream, chocolate brownie pies, cup cakes, and all the lemonade your stomach could handle! After a good night sleep I woke up and did an open water swim for about 30 minutes. I know I didn't get a mile in because I was swimming rather slowly. New territory always makes me a little weary when I'm swimming in the middle of a lake with boats. Once I got back from my swim, breakfast was no different than dinner the night before. I felt like I was at Cracker Barrel! We went back out on the lake again and called it a day around mid afternoon. Once I got home I began to feel guilty for just sitting around. So I put on all my bike gear and started to head outside when the bottom opened up. Not wanting to mess with biking in the rain, I crawled back in bed and watched TV for a few hours. I was supposed to head downtown to a roof top party overlooking the fireworks area downtown. However, the rain was still coming down and the thought of having to navigate all the traffic and get rained on didn't sound appealing. However, a friend of mine convinced me that I was being a woman and this would be a big mistake on my part. So I took a shower, ironed out some clothes, got dressed, walked out the door only to turn right back around and go inside. I just wasn't feeling it this year. SO... I ordered a monster pizza from Domino's and watched tv alone in the dark. The weekend definitely had potential to be incredible but Saturday evening was the buzz kill that rained on my parade, literally! Even though sparks didn't fly and fireworks didn't explode on my Saturday night, I did make good use of my free time. I ate a lot of food, spent time with good friends and rested well. That in itself is pretty great in my opinion.

Honduras Mission Trip

I've been making a serious attempt at working on myself this year. 2008 was horrid and I never want to wake up again and wonder, why have I wasted another year?! I understand the importance of living the life of a servant but I don't understand the potential impact it can have on me. I work with Nashville Inner City Ministries and have seen first hand the unfortunate situations that these kids are raised in. Unfortunately, I have not seen the worst of how our world lives. Most kids would be grateful to have the lives that some poor people have here in America. That's how bad the standard of living is in some countries. About two months ago, I made the decision to go on my first mission trip outside of the U.S. This is a big step for me. In the past 8 months I've made the decision to stop making excuses for not living a purpose driven life. I will accompany the Harpeth Hills congregation to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. We will be building two houses and working with the children in the village. One area of concern is the current situation in Tegucigalpa. If you've been watching the news recently, the Honduran president was kidnapped and sent to Costa Rica. The new president has been appointed the power to lead while negations are being made to return the previous president back to power. The new leadership has begun approving constitutional changes that will start to turn Honduras into a military state, at least temporarily. If the new leadership proves itself to be too aggressive or if the Venezuelan leader (Hugo Chavez) makes good on his threat to forcibly place Zelaya back in power, we may have to make a serious adjustment to our plan. Please be praying about this situation and for all of the people caught up in it in Honduras.

Impulsive Decisions

A few weeks ago Southwest had a deal to celebrate their 35th year of being in business. To commemorate this day, they offered $35 dollar tickets to almost every Southwest destination. When I saw that I could fly from Nashville to Chicago for $35 dollars, a brilliant idea came to mind. Why don't I buy a ticket to see a day game at Wrigley field and fly back in the same day! Completely genius! After about 5 minutes of searching for a day game that would fit my schedule and the designated dates on Southwest, I had purchased 2 round trip tickets to Chicago and set a date for the game! I am flying to Chicago on July 30th to see the Houston Astros play the Chicago Cubs. Here's the dilemma... what team do I root for? I am from Houston, Texas and have always been an Astros fan. There's no dilemma in that statement but here's the kicker. There is a girl... it's been the root of all my problems since puberty! Kidding but half serious though! Back to my point, there is a girl that i've been interested in for sometime and things have progressed where I asked her to be my date for the game. She is also a huge Cubs fan and knows everything about them. As much as I'd love to root for the Astros, I wouldn't want to be heckled by all the Chicago fans (which I hear they can be rather fiesty!) and my date for the day (which I'm learning rather quickly that she can be pretty feisty!) Also, my dad is a St. Louis Cardinals fan. Not just a fan, a walking encyclopedia of Cardinal baseball facts. He can roll off every world series championship year without pausing, their starting line ups and other random facts about players. Evidently Cardinal fans and Cub fans hate each other. It's a rivalry that has been going on for decades. I'm sure my father knows why but I really don't. Adding to the excitement of this trip is one other detail that will potentially make this the best decision i've ever made. A lot of people dislike the fact that I am always getting in front row, free concert tickets, CMT events, music videos, and sporting events (yes I was just bragging). I don't know how or why it happens. It just does. I just happen to know a lot of important people! When I was at dinner before the Fleetwood Mac concert (tickets were free w/ VIP back stage passes!) the CEO of our company mentioned to me that he has contacts that could get me great seats to the Cubs game. I couldn't pass this opportunity up! These weren't just great seats, they're amazing seats. It's a private box on the 3rd base side behind the cubs dug out! My luck is beginning to be pretty awesome! I'm getting on a plane with no luggage at all, taking a girl who has never been to Wrigley and loves Cubs baseball that I like a lot, sitting in a private box for the game, and flying back to Nashville in the same day! Another epic trip in the works!