The Life of Pizza John

For the longest time, I have been making fun of my friends in North Carolina for actually having to drive to go climbing. After my trip out there, I still feel like they drive a lot, but there is some amazing climbing o ut there. Since I was only there for a short period of time, Scott made sure I got on a few of the classics. I just so happened to be traveling while the leaves where changing so it was a very beautiful trip. It sure was amazing to see all the colors. They don't have the magnificent Utah mountains in their backyards, but they definitely beat us on the colors this time of year. We have the mountains all year around whereas they only have the colors for a short period of time....we win! Friday we went to Moore's Wall in North Carolina. The rock was some quality metamo rphic quartzite. It felt great to the touch and it looked amazing! Scott put up Zoo View (5, 7+) a two pitch trad route with a fantastic view of the countryside. The first pitch was easy fu...

I am three weeks into training and everything is going great. I have been following a 20 week training plan I found posted on BeginnerTriathlete.com and it is really nice to have someone/something else to tell me what to do. Because of my work schedule and need to have somewhat of a social life, I have not been following the training plan to the 'T', but I have been pretty close. I also have closer to 29 weeks until Ironman St George (IMSG), so I figure I can go a little easier in the beginning and add a couple weeks to my build training. So far, my biggest week has been 8:45 of training where 1:15 was swimming, 4:45 was biking and 2:45 was running. I plan on bringing this number up quite a bit, but I need to build up to it. I am trying to focus each week on a different leg of the race so I can get some longer sessions in. At first I wasn't taking any rest days, but this last week I finally took a rest day and it felt great! The next day, I felt supercharged to get ...

Wow, was this thing fun! Jordan and I had a great weekend at Bear Valley. We met a ton of really fun people and had a great time during the race. We ended up finishing the race in 1:52. A lot of the time was spent waiting for Jordan, but overall he did pretty well. He needs to work on his high altitude training! The VFF's were excellent for this event. They were grippy when they needed to be, our feet didn't care when they got wet or muddy and for the most part, rocks did not enter the shoes. At one point, Jordan did get a small rock in his, so he just emptied his shoe while I watered a tree. I was so happy with how the VFF's worked for me, I will definitely wear them in any Tough Mudder event I do. If you decide to do one of these events in them, make sure you are well trained. I was a little sore a couple days afterward since I didn't train enough, but Jordan and I both had no problem finishing (then playing disc golf afterward where Jordan serio...

When I first saw someone walking in these shoes, I though to myself..."who would wear such ugly shoes?" Well I bought a pair so I guess I would! The idea for wearing these shoes came from my brother Jordan. He found this event called a Tough Mudder (www.toughmudder.com) and he convinced me to do it with him. We are doing the Northern California event at Bear Valley on October 9th as a Two-Person team named 'When Pigs Fly'. He thought these shoes would be great since we will be running through mud, water and doing obstacles. I agreed to the event and the shoes so there began my research on Vibram FiveFingers (VFF). Since I will be training (running) for the Tough Mudder in my VFF's, I will give you a background on my running. I started running in 7th grade because I wasn't good at any of the 'normal' sports. I wasn't really good at running either but I wanted to give it my best shot. I ran cross country all through Jr. High and High school. I was ne...