- Train into London on Saturday, then tubed it to St. Paul’s Cathedral, found a geocache at the top of the dome, lunch at a burger place next door and then tubed it to the Diana Memorial Playground or as the dudes call it, The Pirate Ship playground.
- Got tickets for the Reading vs Wolverhampton Wanderers football match for all of us. Got to the pitch early… walked in the gate… went to our seats. Got settled. Went to get food. Cash only. No ATM’s inside the building. Tried to get out… can’t get out until halftime. Went out a bit after halftime to get ice cream for the little dudes (only way to convince them to attend a game, promise ice cream). Vendors inside the stadium have no ice cream (????), walked outside… ice cream that was outside is now gone. I miss a goal. Walk back inside cursing England, watch rest of game. Home team scores in the 88th minute to tie, fun! Takes 1 hour to get out of the stadium, no fun. Pub on the way home. Beer. Find 2 geocaches (1,2) with the boys on a cool woodlands trail right next to the pub. All is good in the world.
- No long run this weekend because my left calf hurts, not sure what I did to it last week, probably need to incorporate stretching into the workouts.
- Fixed mindset vs Growth mindset | Derek Sivers
Quote: "People in a fixed mindset believe you either are or aren’t good at something, based on your inherent nature, because it’s just who you are. People in a growth mindset believe anyone can be good at anything, because your abilities are entirely due to your actions." Need to somehow get this through to the little dudes in my life.
(categories: life motivation thinking mindset change failure )
- Did a long drive out to Offa’s Dyke (nice little playground and trail for the kids by the visitors center but otherwise nothing to write home about) and Croft Castle (more of a manor but had a beautiful garden, a nice playground and some cool WWI outfits to try on) on Saturday.
- Took the boys geocaching around our house on Sunday, found our first five caches on a great 3.5 mile hike / walk we did right from the house. Have a profile now on geocaching.com. Looking forward to finding some caches on our trip to Iceland in a couple weeks. Bought a couple tracker bugs from Amazon that we’ll leave in Iceland.
- Long run for the week (training for half marathon distance) was 8.3 miles this afternoon in beautiful weather. Was really interesting to see my heart rate (which seems to be relatively high on the other runs I’ve done based on the 220 – your age thing I’ve read in various places) for the first 45 minutes staying WELL below what it usually is, first time I’ve felt like the training (which is easy run on Monday, tempo run on Wednesday, interval / hill run on Friday) has paid off. I’m still super slow, but that might have been the longest run I’ve ever done in my life. Doesn’t look like tapiriik is syncing stuff from Garmin back to Runkeeper. 🙁
- Got some great new books delivered by Amazon that I’m either super excited (Kinfolk, Good Strategy / Bad Strategy, The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play and Much More, The Outsiders: The New Outdoor Creativity) about or already halfway through (Closer to the Ground: An Outdoor Family’s Year on the Water, in the Woods and at the Table).
- Had a great trip into London to see the London Eye, the London Transport museum (great kid time killer in the city plus it’s close to …), an amazing burger from MEATmarket,
- Completed the first week of my half marathon training (was going to do a race but now the goal is just to get to 13 miles in 3 months) with a 4 miler early this morning. Also set up tapiriik to sync stuff between Runkeeper (which I’ve been using for years), Strava and Garmin Connect.
- A successful dinner of brussel sprouts (from the Toro Bravo cookbook we have back at home in the US, found online!), salmon (salmon was great, the rub was ok, won’t do it again) and baby potatoes (and mac’n’cheese for rugrats that don’t like good things).
- Built some Legos, played at the park and played soccer in the backyard with the dudes.
Now with 50% less caffeine!