The whole time leading up to your birthday your mom and I were saying, “How has it only been a year?” That’s not only because you have completely consumed our lives since you were born, but also because it’s hard for us to imagine our lives without you now. You certainly keep us on our toes!
It’s been so fun watching you grow from a little big-headed potato to a walking, thinking little boy! You are so much fun and have your own personality now. Mom thinks that you are a caring sweet boy, though I’m not sure. Time will tell. You are definitely a very active little boy though! For the last couple of months you have been crawling everywhere trying to rip down lamps, unplug outlets, eat the dirt out of flower pots, pull trash out of the trash can, and just causing a bunch of chaos. At this point we have to change your diaper while you are standing because you refuse to stay still long enough. Even then, you still start running around with your diaper off. I think you have some adventurousness in you. Mom calls you an “inspector.” You seem to love stopping and looking at things. You stare at cool chandeliers, carry around interesting leaves, and just check out what’s going on.
I remember the first couple of nights trying to rock tiny little you to bed. You were so little! And now, all of a sudden, you’re a big 1-year-old! I still get to rock you to sleep every once in a while when Mom lets me, but where does the time go! I love you little buddy!
You’ve changed our lives since you’ve been born and changed so much yourself. I cannot wait to see how much you change in the next year! We are so so blessed to be your parents and we love you so much, Gideon!!! Happy 1st birthday!
Life changes quick! Emily and I knew we didn’t want to be in Arizona forever, but having a child really accelerated that decision. After some foiled plans for jobs closer to Michigan we just decided to do it anyways and figure out everything once we were there. We weren’t in any immediate rush but we figured we could start looking. He made that decision around January. So we started having family look at houses for us. Three houses in and our second offer turned out to be the winner and truly we were both thrilled to be moving sooner than we anticipated. We were especially excited to get out before the brutal Arizona summer.
It’s funny because the house we ended buying is one that we looked at really early in our search and decided we didn’t like it and then we moved on after disregarding it. It dropped $20k in price and we came back around on it and decided it was worth a look. After glowing reviews from my parents and brother and sister-in-law we decided to put in offer and they accepted!
On May 2nd, my dad and I hit the road with my dad driving Emily’s car and me driving a 16′ box truck towing a trailer with my truck on it and my motorcycle in the bed of truck. Emily hopped on a plane with my mom and Gideon and then got to the house same day. My dad and I crushed the over 2,000 mile trip in 2.5 days of driving getting to the house on the May 4th. Thanks to my brother we had the entire box truck unloaded that same night!
Emily and I really aggressively unpacked and got everything situated. Some Facebook Marketplace deals were involved including a trip to pick up a 7 foot tall house plant! I have to give a lot of credit to Emily because she had this vision of what our living room could look like before we even stepped foot in the house. We had the couch and a bunch of other furniture bought based on this vision and somehow it all worked out. We also lucked out by having the absolute nicest previous owners. They gave us a bunch of great deals on furniture and a TV they left for us which was super helpful. We were so incredibly blessed through the whole buying and moving in process to have such an amazing family supporting us.
Now after spending close to 6 months in the house it is everything we dreamed it would be. I’ve really enjoyed staring out the big living room windows watching the storms and wind shake the willow tree branches. Also we got to see a bunch of neat wild life from the living room too including multiple deer (some bucks), turkeys, rabbits, and a fox. We love the yard, we love the neighborhood, and we love that it’s ours! God has blessed us so much more than we deserve!
Emily was pregnant and I was about to be on three months of paternity leave. My normal hobby of jiu jitsu was pretty rigid with class times and a commute. Who knows when Emily and the baby will need support or more importantly when the baby will finally sleep and I can get out for a minute? Coincidently a coworker convinced me and another coworker to run the Mesa Marathon. The timing lined up well with the paternity leave and running was as flexible as working out could be. Gideon goes to sleep—I step out on a run and am running as soon as I shut the door.
I started my 18 weeks of training using the Hanson Marathon Method beginner marathon training plan as my guide. Over 18 weeks running six days a week I peaked with a couple 16 mile runs and dialed in my nutrition plan. I ran a marathon 10 years prior when I was 19 and my in-race nutrition plan was something that I really overlooked and it cost me. This time I trained with the energy gels the race was going to provide on race day. I figured out how often I needed them and practiced consuming them while running.
I stayed at one of the coworkers apartments closer to Mesa and we woke up at 3am to get to the race start. They actually bussed us up to the start line which was at the top of a mountain overlooking the valley. The Mesa marathon is about as easy as a marathon can get because the majority of it is downhill. I took advantage and cruised the first 3 miles with I think of those mile splits being under 7 minutes. Then miles 4 and 5 were uphill so I took it easy up those. I settled into an about 7:45/mi split up until mile 13. I had a bit of a bathroom situation, but I was fortunate to be near and aid station with a porta potty. I lost about a minute but I kept my pride. I got back moving and fell in with a goal 3:25 finish time pace group, but up ahead of me I saw an Army buddy.
I saw this Army buddy up on the starting point and talked to him, but he’s a huge jacked guy so I definitely didn’t expect to see him doing that well. We ran with each for a couple miles up until mile 20. After mile 20 I picked up the pace and headed for a strong finish. I had negative splits (faster mile splits than my first 6 miles) for the rest of the race and my last two miles were under 7 minute miles! I ran about the perfect race according to my ability level and exceeded my goal of a 3:30 finish. Instead I finished under 3:20!
I was a complete zombie after hobbled to talk to the coworker who invited me to the race who actually backed out but still came to support us. Then I saw my aunt, uncle, parents, and Emily and Gideon! We went out to IHOP and I ate whatever I wanted after that. It was just a good day. I was happy with my effort and I was blessed to have to many people supporting me. God is good!
Baker to Vegas Law Enforcement Relay
I recognize not many people probably read my blog, but this is the first time I am disclosing that I worked for Border Patrol. I’m only disclosing it now that I have quit and moved back to Michigan to be closer to family. With that said, I might post some interesting stories about my time roaming the desert and climbing mountains. However, since this is a post about running I’m going to talk about the Baker to Vegas Challenge Cup Relay. It’s a 120-mile, 20-stage road race for law enforcement agencies that runs annually (since 1985) from Baker, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada. A bunch of different agencies and departments from LAPD to FBI run in the race and I was part of a Border Patrol team. This year’s race took place on March 28-29th.
I kind of got volun-told to do the race since they didn’t have enough agents, but I was coming off the recent marathon so it wasn’t something I needed a lot of convincing for. The harder part is now balancing outside obligations with being a dad. Instead of going up to Vegas for the weekend like most participants I drove up the same day getting to Vegas at 4:30pm. I was tentatively supposed to run my leg sometimes in the evening if we were running according to our projected paces. I got conned into the longest leg—a 10.7 mile leg. I met up with my running group (3 runners). Since the race goes all the way through the night there are shifts of running groups getting shuttled to the different legs in a van throughout the day and night.
What was supposed to be an evening run turned into running my leg around 2am. It was pretty cool to be running in a light up vest with a follow vehicle behind for support and to see the same for the other 270 teams who competed. As I ran along this desert highway somewhere outside of Vegas you could see the string of runners around every curve of the road and up every hill. It was good motivation to try and catch the flashing lights ahead of you to pass another team, but I ended up getting passed about five times and I passed another five teams myself so I kept us about even with where we had started. I managed to do 10.7 mile leg with a 7:28/mi average pace. I was very happy with that. The last two miles were painful since they were pretty much uphill. My watch said after the fact that it was about 900ft of elevation gain so that was a good pace for that!
Once every runner on our team in my group was done we got back in the van and shuttled back. By the time I got back to the hotel and showered it was about 5:30am. I woke up at 9:30am when one of my teammates on a later leg came back in. I decided to skip the team breakfast after finding out it was $54!! So I drove home arriving around 4pm and got to hang out with Gideon and Emily.
Crazy to think in a 30 hour period I drove 6.5 hours to Vegas, ran 10.7 miles in the middle of the night, slept for 4 hours and then drove the 6.5 hours back. All in all I got to run in this really cool 120 mile relay race with a rich history and go to rub shoulders with over 270 different law enforcement teams including a team from Germany. Heck of an experience! God is good!
