The Decemberists – “The Hazards of Love”

Today marks the release of the 5th full lenght release by one of my favorite bands The Decemberists.
Here’s an email I wrote to some of my music lovin’ buddies a few days ago with regard to the new album:

Understand, this opinion is totally biased as I consider myself a HUGE Decemberists fan: THIS ALBUM IS OFF THE CHARTS GOOD.

Now, before you pop it in the player/computer you must be prepared – I was not. If you’re expecting stand alone songs with sing along choruses, etc. you might be frustrated by this work of genius. It’s at once as daring as it is brilliant. My feel for it is that it’s a play/musical written by Colin Meloy and recorded as an album (I haven’t read such anywhere, but that’s the feeling I get). Each song runs together and shifts perspective between the male, female, and child characters. Bizarre and haunting.

As for how it sounds – wow…I hear this: Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Heartless Bastards, and of course classic Decemberists 1900 story telling. It rocks a little harder in spots than we’re used to, but it always quiets back down. There is a singular thread of a song that runs throughout the album…if you’ve seen a broadway musical then you know how they bring a song back throughout to keep the show tied together.

I’ll telling you, I laughed, teared up, got chills all over, and yelled “YES!!!!!” at the top of my lungs while driving because I was so thrilled with some of the moments on this “album”. When you get ready to listen to it, carve out enough time to listen to the whole thing all the way through or it might lose it’s effect. When track 15 hits, you’re gonna freak.

OH “The Hazards of Love”!!!!!!!!!!!

So now after reading actual reviews of the album, it turns out I was right in alot of ways. Very interesting stuff.

Quick training update: I’m plugging away at my training. I did a bike time trial last weekend and finally averaged over 20mph again. I’m prepping now to run a 15k (9 mile) trail race on the 28th.

HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY TO THE JOY OF MY LIFE ISABELLA HOPE NIKAZY (fyi, the others are “the joy of my life” too. too)!

MMJ EP

Apparently My Morning Jacket is releasing a live EP on “Record Store Day (April 18)” to indie record stores only. After the disaster that was their last LP I don’t care that much – unless the live stuff is older MMJ. I do, however, like this cover. Cool colors. Reminds me of some of the “Mule Day” shirts from Columbia, TN:

A Good Training day and a pic

Today was a decent training day…not too hard…not too easy. It helped that it was 75 degrees outside. I swam 2000 this morning as:
2 x 250
5 x 100
2 x 250
After my swim I spent some much needed time stretching. I stretched for around 30 minutes. Felt great.
During lunch I ran up “The Mountain” with Bruce. The mountain is a 9% grade for 1 mile – pretty tough. The entire run took 35 minutes with an average HR of 170. My hr pegged out at 188. I probably could have pushed it to 190 or more, but chose not to try. Not a bad effort for our first trip up the mountain of the season. We’ll do it every other week as a way to build strength and earn some “free speed”. Hill training is a great way to build the muscles that allow you to run fast without actually having to run fast during training (although we do alot of that too).
Here’s a pic of me and my lifelong friend Moebes (we’ve known each other since we were 10 – 25 years!) last week after Dave Ramsey’s certified counselor training. I have a pic from ‘92 of us that looks identical to this one except we’re wearing our wrestling team warmups instead.

Ouch

This has been a great, but looong week. We do Dave Ramsey Certified Counselor Training (I promote and fill it up) every 6 weeks. We have 55 people in town this week including my buddy Moebes. We go about 12 hours a day from Tuesday-Saturday; lots of stuff to teach people who are going to have the chance to change lives. I’ve tried to squeeze training in where I could this week. I knocked out 4000 yards in the pool between Monday and Tuesday. I’ve also gotten a couple of runs in. I did my first “mile repeats” of the season in today. I kept it conservative and did just 2 of them.
I did a warm up mile at 7:50. The first true “mile repeat” of the season clocked in at 6:15 into a pretty vicious headwind (in one direction at least). Not bad, but not where it will be by late spring. That wasn’t wide up, but rather the pace I think I could sustain for 5k or so. The second mile ended up being 6:35. My pacing isn’t great yet obviously. I should have done that first one in 6:20 or so and then the same for the second one. One thing is for sure….OUCH!!!!

Some new pics

Seems I’m spending alot of time apologizing for the lag between posts lately, but . . . sorry, I’ve been busy.

Chugging away at my training. I’m still swim focused right now and will likely shift over to a cycling focus in the next week or two before shifting to some run focus as summer approaches. I’m going to try to periodize my trianing by sport this year. This winter I’m training like a swimmer and cross training with some time on the bike and some run time. I’ll shift and start training like a cyclist with some cross training in the pool and on the run…and so forth until I shift to a more balanced training plan in the heat of the summer.
Here are some cute new pics of the kids:

Mama said knock you out!

the little Cherub looking as angelic as ever

Izzy enjoying the first and probably last snow fall of the year