This is just Crazy Amazing to me...

I was checking the results of the Door County Sprint Triathlon for Oldest Mini's times. I knew that he was 1st out of the water for his wave -- 34 and younger. I figured he might have been 1st in his age group -- which he was.

But the amazing thing to even his parents is that he was 6th overall in the swim out of 643 participants including the Elites!! That is just amazing to me. We know he is a good swimmer, but 6th overall in the sprint out of 643 -- that is incredible. He just turned 15! Of course, he has practiced his swim a total of 5 times since March when swimming ended -- just think what he could do if he actually practiced.

Now we just need RobbyB to give Oldest Mini some pointers to get him out of the water 1st next time.

Team BRAZO, not just a bunch of pretty faces...

Ok, I had to share this with the masses:

Oldest Mini's report card for the Freshman 3rd QTR:

SIX (6) -- A's
ONE (1) -- B

GPA -- 3.86

And that's with Swim / Track practice every night until 5:30 (plus morning swims). So, my IronMan schedule looks easy now.

Gotta like that...

Successful Swim Season...

Tonight, Oldest Mini had his High School Swim banquet at the High School. The swim coach gave a speech for each member of the team and had some great words about Oldest Mini. The coach said that Oldest Mini's season rocked, the coach was impressed that Oldest Mini had never swam in organized swimming, and stated that he was one of the hardest workers on the team.

Here are some of the accomplishments for the year:

• Oldest Mini ended up the season with the 5th all-time fastest 200yd free style time for a freshman.
• He ending up being selected the Freshman of the Year.
• He earned a Varsity Letter - the only Freshman to accomplish that!!

Add that to his awesome grades and he has had a great Freshman year...

Sectionals

On Saturday Oldest Mini participated in the Middleton Division 1 Swimming Sectionals. He was the only Freshman to participate for his team and swam the 200 and the 400 relay (with 3 Seniors). He, of course, did a great job and we could not have been more proud of him. Here he is a Freshman competing on a pretty big stage with some of the best swimmers in the state of Wisconsin. Madison Memorial, Madison West, and Middleton are probably some of the best teams in the state and all were at the Sectional.

Oldest Mini ended up with a season best time in his 200 and had a blast swimming the last event of the day with 3 Seniors that were swimming their last event of their high school swimming careers.

So, Oldest Mini ended up swimming Varsity for pretty much the entire seaon -- ended up the only Freshman on the team to swim Sectionals -- went snowboarding just about every weekend with his friends and ended up with a 3.71 GPA -- not a bad first Semester in High School -- AWESOME KID!!

We ALL have problems…

On the eve before 90% of the population put their New Year’s Resolutions into play for at least a couple of days, I thought I’d share Oldest Mini’s possible New Year’s Resolution.

See, Oldest Mini has grown about seven (7) inches in the last few months and now stands just a few inches below my height. But along with his height, his weight has not moved quite as fast. He ran cross country in the fall and now is in swimming. They swim 5 days a week for about 17 hours a week. His coach has been on him to EAT, EAT, EAT – hard to build those swim muscles without adding the calories. The problem is that unlike the rest of us (or at least most of us), he is growing up instead of OUT.

So, Oldest Mini’s New Year’s Resolution is most of the rest of the Populations dream resolution of – Eat then Eat some more and then a little more than that.

Based on that my New Year’s Resolution is to make more money to pay for the FOOD…

Wishing Everyone a Happy New Year’s

Swim Meet Report

Oldest Mini had a home swim meet tonight. He again did great -- getting his personal best times on each event. Here are the results:

200 Freestyle 2:22 (previous best 2:29)

500 Freestyle 6:22 (1st time at this distance)

50 Freestyle :29 (previous best :30)

To put the 500 Freestyle in to context for any non-swimmers out there -- My best time for a 500 Freestyle is around 11:00 -- of course, I'm a brick in the water.

Coach made a point to let me know how well he is doing -- so that was nice to hear.

Getting faster...

Proud Dad…

During my training for IronMan Wisconsin 2007 I spent many hours in the pool, many hours on the bike, and many hours running. I would train six (6) days a week from anywhere between seven (7) hours to twenty-two (22) hours per week. I would go on eight (8) hour bike rides, I would run 18 miles, and I would swim for almost two (2) hours on a workout. I did this for twelve (12) months without let up.

But I’m also semi-retired with a couple small businesses that I run from my house. My weeks are made up of working ten (10) to fifteen (15) hours per week. So, my IronMan training was just adding a few more hours to the week that was not filled with work items. This allowed me to workout when the rest of the family was at school or at work.

Part of the benefits of doing an IronMan was to show my kids that ANYTHING is possible. I’m nowhere near an “IronMan” even though I now have that title. I was never the best of athletes and I just crested the “over the hill” with my age. Prior to the IronMan I had commented on someone’s blog about what the IronMan meant to me.

Here is what I said:

*********************************************
IRONMAN:

To me it is not about the other competitors, it is not about my finish time, it is not about the number of people I pass or pass me. I WILL finish IronMan Wisconsin 2007, but that is not what it is all about. It is all about setting that "bar" high, doing the work, and then giving it my best "jump"!! That is what my Kids will learn from my experience and I'll always know that I KICKED ASS regardless of the results on September 9th!
*********************************************

So, that being said -- now I’m watching my 14 year old doing some amazing stuff. He decides to go out for his High School swim team, even though he has never competed in swimming and hasn’t been in swim lessons for years. He just doesn’t care – he just wants to be part of the team and do his best.

He has practice from 5:30AM until school starts, then he attends school until 3:30PM and then has practice until at least 5:30PM. Then he comes home and does his homework until 9:00PM. Never does he complain when he gets up at 5:00AM for his practice, he just gets his stuff ready and out the door he goes. But you want to know what the best part of all this is? He also is pretty close to a STRAIGHT--A student!!! Now, that rocks.

So one of my goals to have the kids “set that bar high”, doing the work, and then giving it your best “jump” – well, that seems to have come through.

Talking about a ROCK STAR – I think my son is!!

Youngest Mini's training progress...

Last night marked week eight(8) for Youngest Mini's treadmill training plan. Since October he has run on the treadmill 1.5 miles three(3) times a week. He spent a few nights riding the bike on the trainer and spent a night lifting weights with me.

Here is his training progress:



The 1.5 mile runs seem to be getting a bit easier each time he steps on the treadmill -- especially when Cartoons are on the TV...

Snow Day for the Mini's

Today was a snow day for the Mini's -- no school!! Of course, the Mini's favorite day of the year.

So, what does Team BRAZO do on a snow day -- well, we take the truck with the plow on the front and plow all the available snow into the middle of the front yard. We live on a flat piece of property, so we created our own snowboarding / sledding hill.

Remind me to pickup some grass seed -- I'm guessing I'll need some in the Spring...

So, here are some highlights from the day:

Swim Report...

Oldest Mini had a swim invitational on Friday night. Here are the results:

-- 200 yard freestyle 2:29 new PR (old PR was 2:31)

-- 50 yard freestyle 30.78 (1st leg of the 200 relay)


Very small spectator seating around the pool with many many parents and friends at the meet. We are very lucky in our community to have a new pool facility with seating in the upper floor above the swimming pool.

I guess it was our tax dollars well spent...

Swim Report…

Oldest Mini had a home swim meet tonight against a neighboring rival. Kind of like the Packers playing the Bears or Michigan against Ohio State, it is that kind of friendly rivalry. I did not grow up in this community so I don’t completely understand it, but during the x-country season they only cared about one thing at the Conference finals – beat the rival!!

Oldest Mini swam Varsity in his first meet. He swam the 200 yard free style in 2:43, the 100 yard free style in 1:07, and he also swam a 50 yard free style (31 seconds) in a 200 relay. He looked good and this time around he didn’t have his swim goggles come down off his eyes during the platform start, instead he looked smooth the whole time. He was pumped to get some Varsity “Points” for the much desired Varsity Letter.

His team ended up beating the rival 86 to 82, so the evening was a success. In order to celebrate the Victory, the team ran out into the snowstorm (4 to 6 inches) and rolled around in the snow – sounds like fun to me – NOT!

Swim meet tonight…

Tonight, Oldest Mini has his first “real” swim meet. The last meet was conference relays and not a full meet.

Oldest Mini has been swimming about 12 hours a week with practice every day after school and then 3 days a week for an 1 ½ before school. Right now there are about 15 kids on the team and most of those kids are seniors and juniors, so it’ll be interesting in a few years from now how many they have on the team – hopefully enough to field a team.

I find it interesting that a high school with around 1000+ kids only has 15 boys go out for swimming. The community has a program for the younger kids that compete in meets and that only has a few boys on the team, so not too many other boys coming through the system. I could understand if you didn’t have pool facilities, but our school district just built an awesome pool – in which I get to use to swim my laps!

So anyway, I’ll have a race report later. Off to the meet…

Race Report – Swim Meet

Tonight Oldest Mini Team BRAZO had his first swim meet as a freshman in high school. He has always been a good swimmer since his early days of what seemed like years and years of swim lessons. Because we love the water and have a cottage on a lake along with a number of boats, it has always been important to us that the kids become good swimmers. Even though he had many many lessons over the years, it probably has been at least 5 or 6 years since his last lesson.

We knew Oldest Mini Team BRAZO was a pretty fast swimmer ever since he came out of the water in 1st place in his wave during the Door County Sprint Triathlon (all ages), but he had never raced in a pool so it was going to be interesting to see what he could do. Just with-in the last week or so, he learned how to do flip turns and also how to do “platform” starts (or whatever they are called).

So, Mrs. Team BRAZO and myself were a bit interested in how his first race would go. Would he do like Dad on his flip turns and either totally miss the wall or get so close to the wall that the ankle gets pounded on the deck? Would he “belly flop” his platform starts just like I would envision doing them? We certainly didn’t care, but we hoped for the best for him.

Well, lets just say that “HE KICKED ASS”. He did a great platform start, looked very smooth and fast in the water, nailed all of his flip turns (you wouldn’t know that he just started) – he did GREAT!!

The only thing I have to say is – next year -- tri-athletes better beware – first out of the water with no training – he just might catch the wave in front of him next year…