I woke up at 5:18. I got Maly up at 6 am. Today was supposed to be the first day of cross country practice.
Despite the heavy rain the coaches said they were still going to meet. I drove her all the way to her new high school. Both of our anxieties running high. I didn’t really have the opportunity to watch her meander through the heavy rain to the track. Other parents were behind me, dropping their children off as well.
Just as I was leaving the parking lot the bottom dropped out and it started pouring rain. I drove all the way home and was planning on commiserating by going on a run myself. That’s when she texted me to tell me that practice had been canceled.
Good first day of cross country, kiddo. At least we know how the mornings are going to be for a couple months.
I’ve been moping around all day and damn near cried two times already. It’s the last day of summer. I always get blue when it’s the last day of summer or last day of Christmas break. Even when I was a child. It has carried over well into adulthood. In fact, I think it gets worse the older I get.
The oldest child starts high school tomorrow. I can’t believe how fast time has flown. It seems like only last year she was starting middle school. And those three years blew by. High school is only four years. And she’s going to have to start thinking about if she wants to go to college, and if so, where. And how she’s going to get in.
I’m not making my situation any worse.
We got the girls all set-up on the Chromebooks and we did mock Zoom meetings to make sure they’re both prepared for the new pandemic school year.
The oldest child has her first in person cross country practice on Wednesday. And she’s probably going to suck because while she runs occasionally, she’ll only go out for a mile on a good day. And she’ll often walk some of that. Not that that’s bad. It’s better than most people, but I’m fearful that she’s going to show up to that first practice and get overwhelmed and discouraged. And I don’t want her to get discouraged and quit. I like to think she’s not like that, but part of me also thinks she’s only doing cross country for me and it’s not in her heart to do it.
And as I type this, the youngest child is out getting her hair cut. She’s getting 10-inches cut off. He long, gorgeous, thick red hair. I loved her long hair.
There are a hundred other things flying around inside my head right now.
It’s all the change. It’s the constant reminder that our time is finite.
It’s honestly felt like summer has been since mid-March. Almost six months of kind of taking it easy. The pandemic and world news has been stressful, but we’ve been together as a family, constantly. It doesn’t feel like we’ve done a whole lot, but I go back and look at photos and Facebook posts and YouTube videos, and we’ve done a lot. Together. So much that we’ve done together since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic.
I guess we’ll still be together, but we’ll be back on schedules and everything will change.
Change.
I think I’m afraid of the change. I think to be okay with it, I need to change.
Yesterday during my lunch break, Elise and I drove over to the bank and wired a large sum of money to Colonial Savings to pay off our home mortgage in full!
We bought our house in 2004 and made our payments at whatever interest rate we’d gotten locked into at the time. We refinanced for another 30 years in 2012 at a 4% rate, and we’ve continued to make our payments on time, and I’d throw a little bit at the principal each month. We were considering refinancing again at ~2.5% and doing the math to see if wanted to entertain a 15-year mortgage but, for some reason, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to pull the trigger.
I’d recently had a conversation with my good friend Eric. I told him I was a bit concerned with the current positive state of the stock market, specifically technology stocks. I asked if I should pull some out before a downturn. He said, “Yes, you should. Pull out enough to fund your next venture!”
“I don’t have a ‘next venture’ right now.”
“You don’t have a sell strategy either. Figure out what your sell strategy is and what your next venture is going to be.”
So I sat on that for a while. And I went to a lake house with my family and my sister’s family for a week. I’d work downstairs during the day and we’d take the girls on the boat in the evening. And I’d think about my sell strategy and next venture.
It was on the morning of Friday, August 21st that I came up with my sell strategy. It was one of those moments when I really wished my dad was still alive so I could ask him what he thought I should do. And then I remembered what a counselor told me 11 years ago. She said, “Josh, your dad had done everything that God needed for him to do here. He’s given you everything that you need. Now God needs him.”
Confident that Dad would agree, I went with my gut and decided my sell strategy was to sell enough shares to pay off our mortgage in full and be able to cover our capital gains tax.
Our investment portfolio over the course of a year
Over the next few days, I carefully analyzed our entire portfolio and picked the number of shares in each company that I would sell. On the morning of Tuesday, August 25th, I executed my sell strategy.
Worth noting here that I’m working with individual investments that I’ve managed in our brokerage account. Elise and I have no other debt beyond the mortgage. I feel that we make smart decisions with our money. We have retirement savings in the form of IRAs and a current 401(k) through my employer. We have a funded savings account. We have an emergency fund. I’ve always looked at our brokerage account as “play money.” I’ve maintained a philosophy that if I were to lose everything in our brokerage account, I must be okay with that. Three investment tenets that I’ve maintained are 1) invest in what you know and love 2) buy and hold and 3) reinvest dividends.
Ordinarily I would only look at my monthly statement so I could update my investment spreadsheet that shows our account value over time. It wasn’t until tech stocks, specifically Apple and Tesla started really increasing in value that I realized my play money was turning into real money. And while I must be okay with losing any of it, to wait for that to perhaps happen would be dumb.
I thought about a myriad of things we could do if I sold. We could reinvest in something more conservative, like ETFs. We thought about buying real estate. We thought about moving. I thought about land and boats and RVs.
I pitched the idea of owning our home, free and clear to Elise. I was a little nervous, only because I’d put so much thought and planning into it. There was part of me that was afraid she wouldn’t buy in. So I wrote down all my reasons why we should pay off our mortgage. What it really came down to was peace of mind. The #1 thing that stresses me out financially is our home. I worry about losing my job because I worry about how we’d pay the mortgage. Our mortgage is our largest monthly bill and our only debt.
If something were to happen to me, I worry about Elise and the girls and if they would be able to keep the house. I worry that Elise would have to sell it, uproot the family and endure the stress of having to find a new home, or move into an apartment, or burden family/friends.
I read and read and read and got all kinds of pros & cons and mixed messages about paying off your mortgage early or investing more to build wealth. I had to make it a simple decision, and again, that came down to peace of mind.
Elise agreed, and our “next venture” became being 100% debt free and owning our house. I requested a payoff statement from our mortgage lender and it was in my inbox the next day. It gave me the exact dollar amount to pay off our mortgage in full.
When you sell investments, there’s a thing called T+2. That’s how long the transaction takes to settle. T is for “transaction date” plus two (2) days. Immediately after I sold my shares, that cash was available in my brokerage account to reinvest if I wanted to. I didn’t want to reinvest. I wanted to cash out. The money became available for withdrawal first thing Thursday morning. I transferred the money to our credit union and it was there, waiting for us on Friday. I called our bank and our lender to have them help me fill out the wire transfer authorization form.
And so yesterday, Elise, Mara and I drove to the bank and shot our wire transfer request through the vacuum tube at our credit union. We were told to pull around to the front of the bank and our banker came out to have us review the document and provide final signature on the funds that would pay off our loan.
This morning I kept hitting refresh on our mortgage account, anxiously awaiting to see that $0 balance. It started to stress me out, so I decided to take a break and go for a run. When I came back, I hit refresh again to find those six beautiful words.
Your loan is Paid in Full.
“When you pay off your house and burn the mortgage, take off your shoes and walk through the backyard. The grass feels different under your feet. The borrower is slave to the lender is deeper than just a mathematical discussion. It frees you up in places you don’t even know you’re stressed in until you don’t have the stress anymore.”
I’ve been living in a state of fear for four months. The year started out wonderfully. I was healthy and strong. I ran a 2:56 marathon in January. I ran another relatively fast marathon in February. I ran a 50-mile trail race in northern Arizona in March. My marriage was as strong as ever. The children were happy and doing well in school an in their respective social lives. We were all healthy and happy.
Then COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic on March 11th. I’ve always been a pretty even-keeled and laid back kind of guy. I took the pandemic in my even-keeled way. I accepted it. To me it was somewhat of a challenge brought forth by the universe. I would adapt accordingly. The world would have to somehow adapt accordingly.
I put faith in our society and thought that this pandemic would be a significant road bump that we’d all get over eventually. I thought eventually would be over by now.
I put faith in our society to eradicate COVID-19. I’m always baffled by science, medicine and technology. I put faith in those experts to find a way to save us. Why haven’t they been able to save us yet?
I’m not as even-keeled as I was four months ago. I’m scared. I’m scared for the experts who are trying. I’m scared for other people and their unique situations. I can try to be empathetic, but I don’t know everyone’s situation. I see posts and comments on social media who are angry that schools reopening might be delayed. For us I think that’s a good thing. But we’re… okay. Other people and families aren’t. There are single parents who can’t work from home and/or can’t afford day care. And I could write and write and think and think of a million different situational permutations.
I’m scared that I could lose my job. I’m scared for my 14-year-old daughter who is supposed to start her freshman year in high school in 10 days. Is she going to miss out on important opportunities that will help her in the rest of her life? Like her high school transcript. Or being able to run cross country. Or exposure to teachers and new friends that will help forge her path into adulthood. I’m scared for my 8-year-old daughter who is in such a formative point in her education. Her mom and I aren’t educators and if our daughter doesn’t learn long division, does that mean she won’t have the same opportunities as others? I’m scared for our educators and the tough decisions that they’re having to make right now. I’m scared for people who have COVID-19, or have had it and we don’t know if there are any long-term effects. I’m scared for businesses that are struggling and those who’ve had to shutter. I’m scared for our economy. The world’s economy. I’m scared of my family or me getting sick.
I can be scared. I can sit with that and accept it. I think the key is acceptance. It’s not what I expected, but I have accept that I have no control. Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players;”
I went for a run late this morning and did a lot of thinking about a lot of nothing, which is usually the case when I’m running. Somewhere out there I thought, “Hey. Didn’t you start your first job out of college during the summer TWENTY YEARS AGO?!”
When I got home from that run, I took a shower and rummaged through the filing cabinet to find my offer letter. My first job was as a Multimedia Editor for VidBook.com (formerly LearnFree.com). Our tag was “Casual multimedia learning.” We were a website that published fun and casual educational content on topics like home improvement, travel, gardening, and fitness. These topics were organized into “channels,” and within those channels we had “vidbooks.” A vidbook was a microsite on a specific topic. The content was procured from licensed VHS tapes that we’d pay to have transcribed. Our editors would cull through the videos and transcriptions and edit the content down to digestible content for publishing on the web. Our editors would select still images and segments of video that were pertinent and corresponded to the copy we would publish.
As a multimedia editor, I was responsible for pulling the still images and video clips from the VHS tapes. Then I’d do some touch up work on the images, resize and add watermarks using Photoshop. I’d capture video from the VCR that was hooked up to my computer, edit using Premiere and then encode the video segments for Windows Media and Real Player. Then I’d build the actual vidbook microsite using Microsoft Frontpage. After getting comfortable in the role and proving myself, I started dabbling in Javascript and Flash to make our content more interactive.
Most of our revenue was from Gene’s (our president) bank account. He was a successful attorney and entrepreneur and had set aside some money to get this dot-com startup going and he paid the ~12 of us like clockwork every two weeks. He even bought us beer on Fridays. We’d close shop early and hang out together for a couple hours on Friday afternoons and drink beer, talk about work, plans, and all kinds of other things.
We tried to get revenue by selling ads on our website properties. Unfortunately it just never really worked out. We couldn’t get in the black. At the tail end of the dot-com bubble burst, we shuttered our doors too. I remember coming back from a late lunch and Julie, our office manager handed me a box when I walked in the front door.
“What’s this?”
“Pack your stuff. We’re closing.”
“Man! I loved this job. This really sucks.”
“I know. Hurry up, we’re all going to Baby A’s for margaritas”
So I went into Gene’s office, shook his hand, told him I was sorry that it didn’t work out, and thanked him for the opportunity.
Gene and I had lunch a few years ago. We agreed (again) that Vidbook.com was ahead of the times. There weren’t many publishers in 2000-2001 that were pushing a lot of new content and streaming videos. And advertisers weren’t really into what we were doing back then.
We had a lot of fun and I learned a lot at that job. When I accepted that job, I really thought I was going to be there for the long haul. I enjoyed what I did and I liked everyone that I worked with.
And a funny thing that I’ll never forget: since that was my first real professional job, I showed up for my first day dressed as a professional. I didn’t suit up, but I wore nice, pressed khakis, a button-down shirt and dress shoes. Everyone laughed at me when I walked in the door. My boss told me that there was no need to dress up to come to work there. I asked, “what should I wear?”
“Wear whatever you want. Just don’t come in stinky. We all have to work in this office together.”
The next day I walked in wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. My boss said, “That’s more like it!”
Last night, Mara took a spill in the living room and hit her forehead on the piano bench, which knocked her into next month. Now, Mara is almost 8-years-old, so she’s a big kid and has learned to take dings, scratches and cuts. But this was one of those falls that created a loud boom. And then there was a split second of silence as everyone tried to figure out what heavy thing fell off the wall and smashed onto the ground. And then Mara let loose one of those blood-curdling screams. That sound that every parent fears. The shriek of true pain and helplessness.
It took a lot of consoling, snuggling and ice to recover from this trauma. Mara’s okay. She has a lump on her forehead and had a bit of a headache last night. It was a very traumatic experience for everyone in the house. Especially for Mara. She was in a lot of pain.
Mara and I have been making beef jerky this week and I’ve been running the dehydrator in the garage to keep the house from smelling like smoked meat. I put a batch in the dehydrator yesterday evening, which meant I had to wake up at 2 a.m. to turn it off. I passed Mara’s room on my way to the garage and as I did, I heard Blue’s dog tags jingle.
She was asleep on the floor next to Mara, who was asleep in her bed.
Every night Blue sleeps on the floor next to Elise’s side of the bed. That’s her spot. It doesn’t change. Every single night, that’s where she sleeps. Always. Blue saw what happened to Mara last night. She left her usual dutiful post on the floor next to Elise to spend the night on guard for Mara. She knew Mara had hurt herself and wanted to make sure that she was okay through the night.
If you somehow found this, thinking it would be a blog post on how to run 50 miles, I’m sorry. I’m trying to figure that out myself. Instead, this is my post about my thoughts and goals for running my first 50-miler in Antelope Canyon this Saturday.
The furthest I’ve run is a 50k (~31+ miles). That was in Bandera in 2018. I signed up for Antelope Canyon on June 7th. I’d also signed up for the Mt. Hood Marathon, which happened on June 27th. I sprained my ankle on a rim-to-rim-to-rim adventure in the Grand Canyon on May 18th, so I had to drop out of the marathon. My goal at Mt. Hood was to run a Boston-qualifying marathon. I’d also signed up for the Houston Marathon on January 19th. My goal at Houston was to run a sub-3-hour marathon.
So I spent the back half of the summer rehabilitating my ankle. Fall rolled around and I PR’d at the Run for the Water 10-miler. And then I captained the Coast Busters in the Capital to Coast 223-mile relay for the last time. And then I dropped into training for Houston.
I hit my A goal and ran 2:56 at Houston. My only focus throughout the Fall was Houston. I never thought about Antelope Canyon. I told myself I could think about Antelope Canyon on January 20th. So, on January 20th, with a boost in confidence after having run a sub-3 marathon, I started thinking about how I’d train myself to run 50 miles in less than two months.
Exactly one week after the Houston Marathon it was my birthday. So Elise and I went out and ran part of the Austin Marathon course. Well, she rode her bike. I ran 21 miles. And then I jumped into marathon training again. I signed up for the Austin Marathon on February 16th. I figured if I ran two marathons within 4 weeks, that’d keep me fit.
My goal for Austin was to run a 3:15. That would be Boston-qualifier. I wound up running a 3:11 and had a blast. And I came away healthy and happy.
After the Austin Marathon, I just kind of jumped back into marathon training again, except I knew I had to turn it up to 11. I now had around 3 weeks to eek in some training for a 50-mile ultra trail race.
The week after the Austin Marathon I kind of took it easy, but run a 12-miler on Saturday and a 16-miler on Sunday.
The following week I ran some miles during the week. On Saturday I ran 10 hard miles of hill repeats, and then Abiram, Shawn and I ran the 26-mile Goodwater Trail that circumnavigates Lake Georgetown.
Now we’re just 6 days away from jumping on a plane and heading west so I can run the Antelope Canyon 50-miler. I feel really strong and confident fitness-wise. I’ve run three marathons in 6 weeks. I’ve kept a really strong base. I’ve run some strong and fast back-to-backs. I haven’t run much long, slow distance runs, but I’m confident that the hard and fast running will compensate. Honestly, what I’ve been stressing most about is my drop bag. I have no idea what to pack in a drop bag. I’m trying to imagine what I’ll want at mile 20-something, and then again at mile 30-something. And then possibly at mile 40-something. At this point, it’s just an exercise in learning. I’ve packed some Pringles, a few beef sticks, some salt tabs, some Spring Energy gels, a towel, some wet wipes, some anti-chafe goop, band-aids, a fresh shirt. I guess I’ll be okay. I was really stressed about my drop bag yesterday. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because I didn’t know where to start. I finally decided that less is more. If I try to bring everything that might save me, I’m opening up more opportunities to fail.
Fifty miles is a new distance for me. So, because of that, I don’t really have “goals” for this race. Instead I have plans. And those plans are based on experience from my one ultramarathon thus far. I think my plans can turn into goals along the way. So, here’s the plan:
Line up at the front. I don’t want to get stuck midpack amidst a bunch of selfie sticks and bloggers. I want to get to the slot canyons first and early so I can experience them without a crowd.
Make it to the next aid station.
Stay steady. I’ll slow down once I’m through the slot canyons but maintain an even clip. Walk when I have to, run when I need to. Drink and eat. Drink and eat.
20 miles I’ll get my drop bag. Eat and check-in with myself.
Make it to the next aid station.
Steady and strong. Drink and eat.
38 miles I’ll get my drop bag. Eat and check-in with myself.
The Houston Marathon was my A race this year. My initial goal with Houston was to run a sub-3-hour marathon. It’s one of those things that pops in your head as a runner. There’s always a number. Always a new goal to chase. Instead of just a sub-3, I pulled a 2 hour and 56-minute goal out of thin air. Might as well swing big, right?
Last year I also signed up for the Antelope Canyon 50-mile ultramarathon, which is coming up on March 14th. But Houston was my A race. I never thought about Antelope Canyon during my Houston training. I told myself there’d be plenty of time to think about Antelope after Houston. So, the Monday after running 2:56:45 in Houston, I started thinking about how to train myself to run 50 miles.
I only had 6 weeks to train, so there’s no time to really rest and recover. Four days after Houston I signed up for the Austin Marathon, which is on February 16th. That gave me a little shy of 4 weeks to jump back into training. Exactly one week after Houston and on my birthday, Elise and I drove downtown and I ran 21 miles of the Austin Marathon course with Elise beside me on her bike. Since then I’ve been following the last 4 weeks of my Houston training plan.
So far so good.
I decided to sign up for Austin for a myriad of reasons. I’d originally thought about jumping into the marathon because John was signed up for it and I was going to pace him the last half. He hurt his foot some weeks ago, so he had to drop out. Another reason is that running a marathon less than a month after running my A race marathon is probably going to keep in really good shape for Antelope Canyon. I don’t know if this is 100% true because I’ve never run 50 miles, but hey, I’m going with it. I know my fitness is there. I’ve trained myself to run 26 miles fast. Running 50 miles is going to take me a long time, so hopefully the discomfort adaptation translates to the longer distance and extra time on my feet.
Austin is supposed to be a training run, however, there’s an element of redemption that’s sitting just below the skin. Austin was the second marathon I ever ran back in 2017. I bonked hard in that marathon. I’d gotten injured at the 3M Half Marathon the month prior and I took nearly 2 weeks off from training to deal with a hip and knee issue. I wasn’t able to get in any long runs leading up to Austin, and that showed on race day. The frustrating part was that this was the final race in the series for the Austin Distance Challenge. I was fighting for 1st pace in our age division against Shawn. I didn’t really know Shawn at the time, and now he and I are thick as thieves. Shawn beat me in cumulative time by 25 minutes and it all came down to the marathon.
I stayed really steady for the first 17 miles and then the wheels started falling off. I hadn’t put in any distance runs during my training. The furthest I was able to muster leading up to the race was 17 miles, and that’s probably why I came unraveled at mile 17 on race day. My back was open and ready for that monkey to jump on it.
It was a slog for those last 9 miles. There was a lot of walking and a lot of convincing myself that I wasn’t a runner. Running is stupid and you’re not good at it. I ran a 3:52:51 in the 2017 Austin Marathon. I hated that race. I swore I’d never run Austin again. Stupid Austin Marathon.
I came in second in our age group behind Shawn in the distance challenge. A few days later, my spark was reignited. Shawn moved up to take first in the Masters Division, which bumped me to first in our age division.
In June of that year, Elise and few to Seattle and I ran a 3:05 marathon along the Snoqualmie River which qualified me for the Boston Marathon.
My race performance in Houston will get me into the 2021 Boston Marathon by a large margin. And while it wasn’t on my radar, that same performance will get me into the 2021 New York City Marathon as a time-qualifier.
But I have some unfinished business to take care of in my home town. Austin is supposed to be a training run for Antelope Canyon. But I’m going to swing big. The Austin Marathon is not an easy course. It’s hilly. But this time, I’m ready.
Goal A: 3:15 – Boston Qualifying time, even though I don’t need to Goal B: 3:19:59 – Sub-3:20 Goal C: 3:30 – I could hang with my newfound running friend, Lawrence Goal D: 3:50 – PR my previous Austin Marathon time
