My brother Troy was supposed to run the race with me but he didn’t train and decided to sell his entry, which my friend at work Allison decided to buy. Leading up to the race my main goal was to run it in under 2 hours. The only problem I usually have is that I start a race too fast and then burn out well before the finish. I started searching the web to find out more about negative splits. Last year when I ran the St. George some people were talking about negative splits and I didn’t exactly know what that meant. So my search began…

Negative splits means that you start the race at a slower pace and then finish at a faster pace in order to finish at an overall average to meet your goal finish time. For example, I wanted to finish the race in 1:55, and at that pace the average per mile pace would be 8:47/mile. But I knew if I started out that fast I would bonk before the finish. During my web search, I found this ghetto site that actually has a very handing tool to figure out what negative splits you – http://www.users.on.net/~klima/rkcalc_home.htm. Read the instructions, they tell you to use a negative number (i.e. -40 seconds) to obtain a negative splits. For example this was the formula I planned to do for the race:

Friday night my family and I drove up to Ogden to pick up the packet and then to Huntsville. My sister was kind enough to have the kids stay over night there while Angela and I stayed at the Valley House Inn, a great little bed and breakfast in Huntsville. It was nice staying up there because we could sleep in until 6 a.m. rather than 4:30 a.m. to catch the shuttle down in Ogden.

It was so hard to hold back when the race began especially since there were tons of people passing me, but I did my best to hold my pace back at around 9:10 or 9:20 for the first few miles. The first 2 miles go around the north west side of Pineview with a gradual climb and the drops down Ogden canyon. The spring scenery was amazing, and the lake was so picturesque. My friend Allison was moving faster and I finally lost site of her blond hair bobbing along ahead of me. Now that we started down the canyon I tried to maintain a 8:38 pace but it fluctuated a lot, but I was moving faster and my legs felt warm and loose. My shin didn’t hurt and everything was feeling good.

At mile 8 I came up to Allison and in her words on Facebook, “That PUNK Tyler Toone edged up on me at mile 8, smiled a sly one, and tossed me to the curb.” Of course she hardly trained for the race with just a handful of runs, so it’s impressive she ended up finishing just seconds over 2 hours.

It was so fun running through the Ogden dinosaur park. There was intermittent shade and the trail ran along side the raging Ogden river. Then we emerged onto the road around Washington blvd and then made a straight shot south on Wall to the finish. I felt strong all the way to the finish and realized after that my last complete mile I average 8:31, which for me was great.

The Ogden half marathon is one of my favorite races I have participated in, and I think next year I may do the full marathon.

They are loaded with features and the material is absolutely amazing. According to Pearl Izumi’s website here are the specs:

The Infinity LD Short features a full Minerale™ liner which dries 50% faster than regular performance polyesters. The lightweight outer shell has a longer inseam and secure external pockets.

• ELITE Transfer fabric is lightweight and provides superior moisture transfer
• Smooth front panel with elasticized sides and back with stretch draw cord for superior comfort and fit
• Two hook and loop and two zippered pockets
• Fully-integrated Float liner uses Transfer fabric with Minerale™ which provides optimal moisture transfer, faster dry time and odor absorption
• 7″ inseam [size medium]
• Reflective elements for low-light visibility

I have logged approximately 10 or more runs in these shorts and they feel awesome, I need to get another pair or possibly two.

Here’s a pic from my run a few weeks ago along the Bonneville shoreline trail, sporting the PI Infinity shorts.

Friday April 8, Glen Gunnell and I drove to Moab in snowy and inclement weather to camp and race in the Amasa Back Trail Race 6.5 and 9.5 mile race on Saturday April 9 (Glen and I opted for the 9.5). Glen suggested camping in the heart of BLM land  about 10 miles before Moab. As we drove several miles on a dirt road in the 4-door sedan I wondered if we’d ever get there. However, once we arrived at Glen’s special spot and saw how secluded we were at the base of a large rock outcropping I was immediately grateful to be in such beautiful country. Here are some pics and watch the video for a short clip of the camp site.

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My Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS results: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/78221577

We woke up at 6 a.m. to get to the Amasa Back starting line up Kane Creek Road. I’ll be honest, I was a little worried about how well the race was organized because it was so small and the information on the website was not very thorough. However, the small relaxed setting of all the racers was so fun. The best was when Chris, the race coordinator drew a line in the dirt with his foot and said “this is the starting line.” Then he counted down and we were off.

The first mile follows the Kane Creek dirt road and the pace was fast. We then dropped down a steep climb and crossed over a small stream, no need to get wet thank goodness. Looking up I felt my heart sink when I saw this enormous and very intimidating climb that stood before us. This massive climb was just under 2 miles long and had an approximate elevation climb of 700 feet. With mixed slick rock, loose rock and sand, and small ledges to leap up I was way above my red-zone, my heart felt like it was going to explode. I’m glad I didn’t have the heart rate strap on it would have freaked me out too much.

The next mile was a gradual downhill that opened to one of the most amazing vistas I have ever seen – this alone made the whole race worth it, but it kept getting better. At 4.35 miles there was the only aid station with Cytomax, water and gels. I downed a small amount of Cytomax, not a big fan. I was carrying my hand-held water bottle with some elete in it, and that was keeping me going. The next mile was another difficult climb up to the maximum elevation of 4,892. The trail was marked with pink flags but I found myself following a guy in Vibram FiveFingers and luckily these two awesome ladies yelled out to me as I veered off the trail that I was going the wrong direction and the other guy and I turned back.

I ended up running the rest of the 4 mile decent with Holly (also from my hometown of Huntsville Utah) girl and Katie. My legs were screaming at me on the decent, but having some great company took my mind off the pain and it was really enjoyable. The last vista at the top of the decent was absolutely amazing (see end clip on video). There was some very steep technical sections of the decent that I can’t imagine tackling on the mountain bike.

At mile 9.35 we met the river crossing where we had a 12 foot wide section of ice cold water we had to cross. The icy water felt great on the legs. We then wound our way up a hill under a large cliff overhang (where I banged my head – ouch!) and lastly up a ridiculously steep embankment to the finish line.

My total time was 1:45:39 which I was very happy with considering this being my first trail race and I am nursing my IT band and a shin splint back to proper form. The experience was fantastic, and I truly look forward to doing more trail races. It was a blast doing the race with my good friend Glen Gunnell he is the one that inspired this whole event – thanks Glen (check out his blog on his take of the race). We ended up getting a way cool tech shirt and a neat finishing medal with “Amasa Run” and a hieroglyphic cut into the metal.

This was one of the most impressive and amazing races I have done. This 9.5 miles of steep and exposed terrain was physically tasking but spiritually and emotionally rewarding and ranks well up in my list of races I highly recommend. This is a race you must try.

Here are some photos at the finish line:

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Gear and supplements used in race:

• Some brand new Pearl Izumi Infinity running short – love these shorts. I can’t wait to run in them again.
• Inov-8 295 trail shoes – the sticky rubber was excellent on this terrain
• Ultimate Direction hand-held water bottle
• Elete electrolyte drops in the water – this is a must for me now in all my races and training.
• Garmin Forerunner 305

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending a presentation by Jeffrey Spencer, MA, DC at the Salt Lake Running Company. The topic evolved around his new book “Become Your Own Champion” and how to become a consistent performer athletically.

Here are a few gems he presented:

Winning isn’t an accident.

Only once in a creation

Born to win, not whine

Adaptive Fitness Readiness – A state of mind body spirit readiness to peak perform anyplace anytime in any circumstance.

Super-adaptor – master traits
Stability, adaptability, mobility

The champions golden rule:
“Do the homework and the test is easy”

The Amateurs Mistake:
DON’T DRIVE ON EMPTY
Fill your tank before it’s empty

We need to fill up our tanks daily so our Functional Reserve doesn’t run out and we get sick or injured.

Align Your Wheels – the 90% rule. The champion realizes the need to take recovery time. We need to beleive that perfection isn’t necessary in order for us to perform at our peak. We need to give ourselves the courtesy of recovery.

Self-care
Start with the fundamental basics first before going to any complex supplements.

Hold onto your power

Don’t empower the little things outside of us that we think is making the difference. We have to learn to do what we need to do for ourselves by ourselves. We are in control of the situation, and step up to make things happen.

Focus on the finish not the cliff

You’re Not Your Bad Day

Overall I was very impressed with his presentation, and the philosophy of becoming our own champion. I may never achieve the fitness level of the elete athletes, but what’s stopping me from doing everything in my power to get as close as I can? Taking it even further, this same philosophy should illustrate itself in all aspects of our life. We should all do everything we can to become champion parents, friends, employees, and citizens. It all begins with choice.

My first experience with Elete was in August 2010 during the Bear Lake Brawl, where I competed in the Olympic distance triathlon. As part of my set up in the transition area I had a hand-held water bottle from Ultimate Direction filled with ice cold water and Elete ready for the run. Granted the run is only a 10k, but I have formed a habit of constantly fueling and hydrating my body no matter how far the run or ride is.

Well due to an insane storm and some other unfortunate events for the Brawl coordinator (most of his volunteers didn’t show up), there was only one sparsely supplied aid station on the run. Fortunately  I had the water bottle with Elete and as the temperature began to rise I saw several runners bent over from cramps and dehydration. I had no cramping and I felt my energy surge all the way to very end of the race and I finished with one of my best 10k times to that point.

My second and even more profound experience with Elete was last October 2010 during the St. George marathon. I honestly believe that Elete played a major role in my completing the marathon, especially since it was the hottest race in the entire STG history. Using the same water bottle I mentioned above, I had stored a small bottle of Elete and at almost every aid station I would ask the volunteers to fill up the bottle with water and I’d pour in some Elete. To say I drank a lot of water that is an understatement, but it made all the difference and I was able to finish my first marathon, untrained, and only having ran a maximum of 8 miles before in my life.

I now use Elete in almost all of my training and races. Some people have mentioned an odd tasted with Elete, but I personally don’t mind it one bit, especially when it is mixed with ice water.

A few sources for Elete info:

http://www.eletewater.com/
http://ashwinearl.blogspot.com/2005/07/preliminary-review-elete-electrolyte.html
http://www.jeffkerkove.net/2005/05/i-have-secret.html

For kicks, try taking this quiz on About.com to test your knowledge about sweat and hydration.

Any how, check out his blog, it seriously rocks! –> DC Rainmaker

P.S. He also has tons of cool giveaways like this one here for a Garmin 310xt - don’t miss it.

Short video about my experience wearing the Vibram Five-fingers in Kauai, Hawaii – man I love these shoes!

Here’s a list of everything I did in my Five-fingers in Kauai:

1. Hiking, in the mud most of the time because of the rain. My feet weren’t tired even after a long 5 mile hike along the Napali coast, and the next day they weren’t sore at all.
2. Snorkeling, they worked great in place of snorkel booties.
3. Swimming, and hanging out on the beach.
4. Yoga, these babies grip to everything and they fit like a glove.
5. Surfing – okay I know this may sound crazy, but I truly believe the five-fingers helped me surf – I got up the first try no less.

If you are looking for ideas on New Year resolutions, I would say you ought to add “buying a pair of five-fingers” to that list, you will not regret it.

Happy New Year!

My goal in 2008 was to do two triathlons, and after my first sprint triathlon in St. George, Utah I knew I needed to find a way to improve my swim. Here is a picture of me in my first triathlon plowing my way like a barge through the swim, which gratefully was in a pool because I don’t think I would have made it in open water (notice how high out of the water my head is).

As I talked around someone recommended I look into Terry Laughlin’s book “Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, Easier.” I quickly got a copy of the book and started to practice the techniques.

Reading Total Immersion I realized that I was going about my swim training all wrong. My routine swim training consisted of lap after lap of grueling, inefficient strokes just to get in the distance. The book taught some simple drills and proposes spending the majority of time working drills rather than hammering out laps. The book does a great job of showing and explaining the techniques and drills, but it was still hard for me to conceptualize what I needed to be doing. A friend let me borrow Laughlin’s DVD of the book and seeing in action the drills and techniques completely changed my swimming experience.

One of the things I noticed first that I needed to improve was keeping my body streamlined in the water. As I show in the picture of me above, my head is way out of the water and that is causing the rest of my body to sink thus causing a ton of drag. It took a lot of practice but eventually I learned how to keep my head down and cut through the water as shown in this video.

By the end of my hour long training sessions I didn’t feel exhausted and I was able to increase my distance. Granted there are several things I still need to improve such as keeping my legs tighter and having a better kick, and extending longer in my strokes. Everyone talks about swimming being more technique versus muscle and physical strength, but until you experience this firsthand it’s hard to understand. With increased efficiency, my swimming distance has increased, my speed has increased, and most importantly I enjoy swimming much more than before. I finish my workouts refreshed rather than dizzy and drained.

Based on Laughlin’s book and DVD, now when I go swimming I try to keep my focus narrowed on a few drills and techniques rather than trying to figure them all out in one session. Once you have mastered one of the techniques, move on to the next one, but I recommend reviewing and repeating them periodically. If I were to summarize the main tips that truly transformed my swimming experience I would have to include the following four suggestions:

1. Swim downhill. Look directly at the bottom and “press the buoy” which entails leaning on your chest as you swim.
2. Lengthen your stroke. On each stroke, extend your arm out by reaching out as far as you can under the water before you pull your arm back to complete the stroke.
3. Be a yacht, not a barge. Picture a barge plowing it’s way through the water, heavy and very slow…now picture a yacht, slicing through the water with amazing speed and efficiency. In conjunction with swimming downhill, by rolling on to your side as your arm is extending through the water you will experience decreased drag and increased speed.
4. Kicking. In the DVD Freestyle: Made Easy – A Total Immersion there is a kicking drill that helps improve strength and efficiency. I am still working on this one, but the more I practice the better it has become.

One thing that greatly helped in my preparation for my triathlon was to swim as much as possible in open water. I spent an entire week on vacation in Bear Lake where I swam almost every day in both calm and rough water. I was soon able to easily complete a mile distance in time for the Bear Lake Brawl Triathlon where I competed in the Olympic distance. My swim time was 33:34 which put in the middle of the pack in my age group, but most importantly I enjoyed every minute of it and I felt great coming out of the water.

Recommended reading and Total Immersion resources:

• Tim Ferris, one of my favorite authors and bloggers writes about his experience with Total Immersion Swimming
• Ontri.com has tons of good triathlon resources, this is just one of those gems: “Is the swim your weakest link in triathlons?”
• Total Immersion Facebook Page

Current Swim Gear and Resources – the great thing about swimming is that you don’t need a whole lot of gear to do it:

• DVD: Freestyle: Made Easy – A Total Immersion
• Speedo Vanquisher Goggles – great goggles that won’t break the bank
• Garmin 305. For open water swimming, I have used DC Rainmaker’s swim cap/Ziploc bag technique, and it works great to track the distance.
• QuintanRoo full body wetsuit

Next on my wish list:

• DVD: Outside the Box: A Total Immersion Program for Success in Open Water
• Book: Triathlon Swimming Made Easy: The Total Immersion way for anyone to master open water swimming
• Gear: Waterproof headphone gear from http://www.h2oaudio.com/

Then last weekend, I went to St George to help a friend at a booth (www.gelout.com) for the St George Marathon expo. It was awesome talking to people about fitness and running, etc and promoting my friends anti-inflammatory products. The energy was intoxicating! Many of the people asked if I was running and I jokingly said “I wish.” Near the end of the evening Angela’s distant cousins came by and recognized me and we began talking about the race the next morning. Ryan mentioned that they had an extra race entry that I could use if they could get it from the race coordinators. Generally it’s very difficult to get the race packet if the real person is not present.

So I said, “I’ll do it if you can get the race packet,” but I truly did not think they would be able to get it. 20 minutes later he came back with the plastic bag and handed it to me. Yikes! I was shocked, and yet somewhere deep inside of me something said “DO IT!” Adrenaline rushed through me as I got the details of the race start time and what I should expect. I cruised around to a few of the booths to get GU’s, electrolyte drops, compression socks (these are amazing by the way), and other things that I would need for the race.Now I had never run more than 8 miles in my entire life, but I felt confident because of all the biking and cardio exercise I had done this year.

Well 3:30am came very quickly and we headed up on the bus to the starting line to mingle with some 7000 people in the dark for a few hours before the gunshot. Right before we started I linked up with a guy names Paul, he is a Jeff Galloway pacer who has done 9 marathons. We started out running 3 minutes and walking 1 minute. We made it to the 13 mile mark and I thought, “this is it, this is a half marathon, piece of cake!” He said I’d hit a wall at 16 or 18 miles, and even though my legs were achy, I felt amazing there too. We changed to a 2min/1min interval to save the legs because the heat was getting to us. At mile 23 Paul had to slow way way down and I told Paul that if I didn’t keep going at that pace the pain in the legs might become to much to bear.

I ended up finishing the 26.2 miles in 5 hrs 21 minutes, on my own two feet and with a smile on my face. The feeling of crossing that line was absolutely awesome! I believe, an unshakable Positive Mental Attitude helped me finish the marathon. True I didn’t set any record, but I finished, and I truly enjoyed every moment along the way. I was laughing and soaking in every moment all along the 26.2 miles. At the beginning of the race I told myself that I need to do everything in my power to stay completely positive during the entire race. I didn’t want to complain or whine about the pain because by focusing on it I felt it would make it much harder to complete.

This was one of the most amazing and crazy experiences of my life, and I am so glad I had the chance to run the St. George Marathon. A year or more ago if someone would have asked me if I would run a marathon, I would have said no. However, having now completed one, without any marathon specific training it has gotten me real excited to train and race in future marathons. I will most definitely do the St George Marathon again and hopefully I can beat my time. One thing that Paul taught me while running was to follow these 3 rules:

1. Finish
2. Finish strong
3. Finish with a smile

That’s exactly what I did, though my legs would argue they didn’t finish so strong. My cardio and fitness level felt amazing, and I glad to have done so much training and other races during the year.

Here is a list of things that helped me complete the race:

• Jeff Galloway‘s run/walk interval running – this is the bomb! I has helped make me a runner.
• Gel-out, the MSM gel that I applied during and after the race to recover and reduce the pain and inflammation.
• CEP Compression Sleeves, this was actually my first time running with these, and they helped a ton to reduce the calf and leg pain.
• Elete electrolyte drops – this helped me stay hydrated.
• Many, many thanks to the hundreds of volunteers who throughout the race delivered refreshments and massaged the legs with Bio-Freeze and Icy-Hot to help relieve the pain.

Each school will be set up to use the same Joomla template, but the style, design, and branding will match the school colors and logo. By design this will help make the brand look and feel of the district consistent and user friendly to the employees and patrons within we serve in the district. It will also help streamline the support and maintenance of the site.

Training Structure
1) I had a majority of elementary schools on one day, and the secondary schools on another day in order to accommodate with the space in the computer lab at the district office.
2) Trainings were 2 hours long and were held after school because there are mix teachers, principals, and volunteers fulfilling the role of web master for that school.
3) I spent the first portion of the training demonstrating that training contents, and then the rest of the time is used for them to practice doing it, and ask questions if they don’t fully understand.

I learned a lot during the first two trainings, and mainly that “less is more” when it comes to training Joomla to a large group of people. I tried to fit too much content into the first training with the Elementary schools, and therefore caused some confusion as they tried to grasp the concepts I was teaching.

I want to be completely honest…the biggest hurdle I ran into with the first training was talking to them about Categories in Joomla. By default Joomla’s page content (Articles) is organized into Sections and Categories – there are no nested categories. This being the case, I decided to implement a great Joomla extension called K2, by JoomlaWorks, which allows for nested categories, and many many more features which I felt would be beneficial.

Week 1:

• Site planning – this went very well having the trainees write on paper the menu structure for their site.
• Menu creation. Once the students finished writing down a basic site map I showed them how to create their menu system. One of the best things I like about building the menus in Joomla is the copy feature because it allows quick building of the menu without having to build all the content first. I felt like this approach worked better for me versus (what some sources recommend) creating all the content first and then the menu. Now with the menu(s) built, the students could easily change which Item, or other content the menu pointed to and it provided instant gratification for the student. Much of the content could be copied and pasted straight over from their old site.
• K2 Categories – LESSON LEARNED: Information overload … I feel it was a mistake to introduce K2 categories at this point, because many of the trainees got confused that they needed the categories to match the menu structure. The best practice I feel at an early stage in Joomla training, would be to set up one, yes one, Master Category, and set all K2 Items to inherit those parameter settings. Then as they get familiar with the content structure and dynamic capabilities of Joomla they can start expanding and utilizing the categories in K2 to organize the site’s content.

Week 2:

• Creating K2 Items
• Using the JCE WYSIWYG editor – This component is a must-have for any Joomla site, and with the latest version of K2 there is a JCE plugin to allow hyper-linking directly to K2 Items.
• Adding images and text wrapping inside the K2 items

Week 3:

• School calendars using the JEvents – LESSON LEARNED: Not all schools are made alike…Almost all of our Elementary schools use primarily Macs, and there’s a mix of PCs and Mac usage in the Secondary schools. The first training with the Elementary schools, I mentioned the idea of using iCalX, a free service that a principal showed me to publish an iCal publicly. This seemed to me a perfect solution, that is until I had the Secondary schools and half were on the Macs and the other half on PCs. So I went to one of our IT guys and he took 2 days researching and testing different solutions to find a way to integrate the calendaring into the Exchange server. What we ended up is a dedicated calendar VM that is extended out as a public folder so users can access it via Entourage and Outlook – a great cross-platform solution. So far this solution is proving to be very efficient for the schools to maintain a school calendar. Furthermore, I have taken this idea to the District main website, and set up the District calendar and a few lunch calendars that the Nutrition department will update and therefore allow the schools to automatically pull in the calendar feed onto their own sites. Ultimately what we’ll end up with is each school will never have to update their page with the lunch menu because it will be pulled down from the District calendars.

Week 4:

• Document management – using DocMan component. Primarily I just trained them how to use DocLink to attach a downloadable document inside the K2 Item. I highly recommend using the newest version of Docman because it runs on Joomla 1.5 without requiring the Legacy mode plugin to be enabled.
• (LESSON LEARNED) However, in a few subsequent 1-on-1 trainings, I learned it makes sense for certain periodic type of content (i.e. Community Council minutes, PTA Newsletters, etc) to set up structured DocMan categories and based on those category IDs point the menu item to that specific DocMan category ID to display a chronological list of documents.

Now that the trainings are over, I am setting up 1-on-1 training sessions to help each school specifically in setting up and maintaining their school websites. Although the large group trainings were not entirely in vain, it was challenging at times to keep everyone on the same page. The main benefit from the large groups trainings, is that now when I say go to K2, or DocMan, the person knows where to go. Throughout the trainings I have been compiling a list of video tutorials on the techniques and features we are using within the Joomla installs.

Now with more dynamic websites running on the Joomla content management system, the use of RSS feeds, and social media (Twitter, etc) the schools within Canyons School District can now easily maintain and deliver up-to-date content.