Spent Friday and Saturday limping around with periods of icing, wrapping and elevating my left knee.  Yesterday and today the soreness is quite a bit less and I’m not limping anymore really. I have more mobility than I did since I tweaked it.

I pretty sure I didn’t damage anything serious  like an ACL or something because there was never a moment where I tweaked my knee in weird direction and there was no audible pop. The consensus is bad running form,  so now I’m reading Chi Running to help me correct my form. Personally I don’t think I’m going to be doing any running for a while, I’d much rather ride my bike which I can’t quite do right now either because of my knee.

The plan for this week was a hard upper body workout tomorrow and hopefully be able to do a long easy mtb ride on Wed. Just found out tomorrows WOD is “Eva” off the main CrossFit site.

Eva WOD = 5 Rounds for Time… 800 Meter Run, 2 Pood Kettlebell Swing (30 Reps) and 30 Pull-Ups.

I’ll have to substitute an 800 Meter Row instead of the run and by tomorrow I should be able to do the KB swings but I’ll have to go a lot lighter.

Getting hurt really sucks.  The upside is I spent the weekend building shelves, organizing things better out in our storage spaces since we have no garage and playing with the kids.

This winter and spring we’ve been busy working in the yard pretty much every weekend / any chance we get when it’s not raining. Carrie got our existing garden bed prepped and planted a few months ago and we’re about to pick our first fruits… swiss chard, lettuce and broccoli.

We reclaimed a large space in the back corner of the yard and converted it to more garden space. The area was laiden with black berries… what a chore cutting those back and digging out all the roots.

Carrie has planted raspberries and blue berries, a fruit tree and most of our summer vetetables are in the ground already… cucumbers, tomatoes, water melons, snap peas. This weekend we are going to finish up by planting the squash, zucchinis and some more peppers.

Now I said adventures in urban farming because we’re not just gardening anymore… now we’re raising backyard chickens also.

It took me several weekends but it turned out way better than I had ever expected… our chicken coop. We managed to build a chicken coop for under $30.00 using or should I say reusing old lumber that I’ve found along the way. And now we are raising 5 chickens and will have our own fresh eggs sometime in August or September.

If you are really interested in learning more or keeping up with our urban farming adventures you  should check out enviro, green living, sustainable living blog – http://www.litegreenliving.com

It’s quite common to feel really tired and run down the first couple of weeks while your body adjusts to this change in eating. I haven’t felt tired or weak really.. the first day was murder because I was constantly hungry and could never satisfy it. It’s gotten better each day.. but I’m still hungry.

I’m about to do to workout.. the first real workout since I started eating paleo so I guess I’ll find out how my body is adjusting after 3.5 days.

If you’re curious and want to learn a bit about the Paleo Diet check out this video…. Paleo In A Nutshell.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A tree limb fell next door and took out the garage and part of the kitchen…

That was our old house and that garage is where I spent 75% of my time because my office was out there.

Carrie is entering the Blue Lake Triathlon.. which is a a sprint triathlon consisting of 1/2 mile swim,  12 mile bike ride,  and a 5k run.  Carrie’s race is in June.

I just started training for the Fat Fifty Five Endurance Race. It’s a 55 mile mountain bike race with 8000′ of climbing. Coming into the new year I had my sights  set on the Cascade Cream Puff (110 miles, 16K feet of climbing), but with work going off the hook and 3 kids under  5, it became apparent very quickly that I just wouldn’t have the time to prepare for a race of that magnitude.  When the Fat Fifty Five came up I jumped on it. I’m also sponsoring the race by providing website hosting and Wordpress CMS  support. My race is in September.

I’m in my second week of training and right now the goal is miles on the legs and lots of climbing.  I haven’t ridden 50 miles in one shot in over 10 years since I was a courier in Chicago. And I might  have only done that a handful of times at best in my 6 month career.  What I do remember is that it took me almost 2 months to get my legs in that kind of shape.

My plan is to start posting weekly training logs to help me keep track of times, distances and elevations etc. Stay Tuned!

My hope is to find a sitter for the kids for an hour or so later on this morning so Carrie and I can go for a trail run. If not I might just need to put a couple of the little ones in the double jogger and go for a run in Amazon park.

Back to my coffee and a Tinker Bell puzzle with Jaden.

So what the hell have I been doing for the last several months? Well there’s work which is very busy right now.  The kids which keep is extremely busy. And somehow between working and maintaining the children, Carrie and I find time to work 3-4 days a week.

Jaden is now riding a bike without training wheels. Nathanael wants to be Jedi Master Cowboy Woody. Annie is hitting her terrible 2’s about 8 months early. We had to remove the kitchen chairs from the house because she drags them everywhere to climb up to something she shouldn’t have.

We’re looking forward to spring as the rain is getting a little old… although it’s been a pretty mild winter up here in Eugene. I thought it is was rather funny a few weeks ago when California was getting pummeled by snow and rain… it was sunny and warm up here.  The downside is right now the Cascades are hurting for snow it seems so it could be a pretty long and lousy fire season.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This animated video says it all. Anyone for Tea?

I got to get out and ride some single track on my single speed. I even got to ride a trail with my wife this past Sunday. We drove over to Brice Creek, which is about 50 minutes or so from the house… about 25 miles or so east of Cottage Grove, OR in the Umpqua National Forest. What a beautiful canyon. Lush dark green forest with a canopy of old grove Douglas Fir.

Something i’ve been wanting to do is mess around with some video editing with mountain bike footage. Being the cheap skate and not wanting to drop the coin on a helmet cam,  I created a quick, cheap and simple mount for my Sony Cool Pix digital camera to shoot some video of our ride up Brice Creek. Once we got home I started messing around with Microsoft Movie Maker and published a quick video with music in under an hour.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Being the camera was mountained on my handle bars… its pretty shaky at some points…. especially when I started going fast.

Later on we bought a Maya Wrap when Jaden was a year and half.  When our second child (Nathanael) was born he caught RSV and spent 11 days in San Francisco Childrens Hospital… the Maya Wrap was my savior.. I wore Jaden (29mos)  all over SF.  We still have the Maya and use it daily with Annie (our third). I like the Maya at night when putting her to sleep because I can easily sit in the recliner and let her sleep in the sling.

But our latest and probably my favorite is our new ERGO Baby Carrier. Annie has been sick these last few days and the ERGO has been great because she likes to sleep upright due to nasal congestion.  The other night Carrie had the ERGO in the car and I had wear Annie in the Maya Wrap for a long time and it really started to strain my neck and shoulder.

The moral of this post is that there are some cool baby carriers that even dads will like, that aren’t girly and that are very comfortable.