I am now a complete suburbanite...

I finally broke down and bought a lawn mower. I had to... The grass/weeds in the front lawn were about waist high in spots. I bought this Toro. Let's see... What else... I'm still working out, running etc. I'm still too heavy. I'm trying to be more sensible in my weight loss. My big problem has been the "yo-yo" dieting. So, I'm down around 207 lbs now. Hopefully in a couple of weeks, if I stay the course, I'll be down to 204 lbs, and so on. Slow and steady is the key, or so they say. Right now, I kind of feel like I'm stalled out. I put on my uniform, full battle rattle, minus the k-pot, and a 55 lb ruck sack for a stroll with Dagmar. Dagmar's the new pup. We did 3.2 miles in 50 minutes. Not to shabby considering she had to stop to pee and sniff the many other dogs at the park every 1 to 2 minutes. We ran a lot to make up lost time. Oh... here's a cool picture of my cat Henrietta. I think Halloween is under control for a few years.

2005 Mountain Ranger Run

Well, I did it again for the third year in a row. I still can't run the entire thing due to those hills. I really need to work on my hill running and my ability to just gut it out. 9.3 miles x 210 lbs is a little too much. I have got to drop back under 190 lbs. My goal for next year is to knock off 15 minutes of my time from this year. As long as I train hard on hills it shouldn't be a problem. There are some hilly trails nearby. I need to hit those at least once a week. Oh yeah, I wore my high-speed trail running shoes and after about 6 miles my feet were killing me. I'm only going to wear them when it's really wet and if I'm only doing a few miles. I should have worn my regular running shoes. They fit just right. Oh yeah, right around mile 6, I tripped on a tree root and went down, but I came back up running. The heart rate jumped up quite a bit for about 30 seconds. I'll post some photos later of the Ranger Open House. It was pretty cool.