Jodi and I did the Viking Tri in Pleasant Grove on Saturday. Jodi did the whole thing by herself and her brother Josh did it as well. Jodi’s dad and I did it as a team, I ran and biked and he swam. The triathlon was at the Pleasant Grove Pool and it was a fundraiser for the Pleasant Grove High School Swim Team. It was a small triathlon, only 100 people registered and we are use to having about 800-1,000 triathletes at each triathlon that we’ve have been to before. It was also different than others that we have done because it was run, bike, swim instead of swim, bike run. It was also very cold that morning, and raining off and on. The run course was in a small park and the ground was muddy and mushy. This was the last tri of the year and Jodi and I are planning to train over the winter so that we can actually compete in triathlons next year instead of just finish them!

This past weekend was our triathlon. Jodi did the swimming which was 750 meters (0.47 miles) and I did the biking and running. The bike was a 20K (12.4 miles) and the run was a 5K (3.1 miles). It was a bit harder than I had expected, part of my problem was that I rented a bike and only rode it once before the race. The bike was very nice though! Jodi swam the distance in about 18 minutes, I biked in just under an hour and ran in about 37 minutes. I should have been able to do the run faster, but while biking I had a couple of cramps in my calves that I had to get rid of before I could run. Full results are available here. We placed 11th out of all of the relays and 4th in mixed relays.

We had some car trouble on our way to St. George and ended up having to get a new fuel pump. We drove the Blazer down and it died half a dozen times on the way there. It was able to start right back up after it shut off and we pulled over. That was an expensive repair that we weren’t expecting! One nice side effect that had as well is it fixed the gas gauge so now we know how much gas is actually in the tank! That hasn’t worked for a couple of years.

We also went to Tuacahn just outside of St. George and saw My Fair Lady. It was neat to go to an open-air play, they had horses, old cars and rain as props. We stayed at the Fairfield Inn in St. George and spent quite a bit of our time there in the pool. It was nice to get away for a couple of days and to hang out with everyone. Jodi’s older brother and his wife came and did the triathlon. Jodi’s parents and grandmother were there too. Two of Jodi’s cousins were there, J and Lins, Lins ran in the triathlon with two of her friends.

Jodi and I signed up at Gold’s Gym over the weekend. They were running a special on the radio lately about a 2 for 1 deal, two people could sign up for $18/month each. Gold’s Gym has some advantages that our gym doesn’t have, so we decided to go check out the deal and see what we thought. We currently go to Xcel and they only have 3 locations, Gold’s has 15 in the area I believe with locations world wide. Gold’s also has pools at several of their locations and bigger facilities too.

We went to the Van Winkle location Saturday afternoon which is the biggest Gold’s Gym in the country. It is a pretty nice place, very open and spacious with a lot of machines. They have a pool, raquetball courts and even a theater room with exercise machines! Even with all of this we didn’t want to pay more to go there than we already are at Xcel, and we have a pretty good deal there. So we talked to one of the reps at Gold’s and he signed us up. We had to work the numbers around a bit, but we are pretty happy with how things turned out. They have 2 levels basically, standard and VIP. If you are a VIP you get free racquetball and free child care (I asked if we could bring other people’s kids in since we don’t have our own, he said no). We ended up paying for a 2 year contract in the first 6 months, this gave us an additional free year and a free upgrade to the VIP status. So basically we’re paying a little over $15/month for each of us to have a 3 year contract with VIP status. It was a deal we decided was much better than we currently had with Xcel. Gold’s is also planning to build 5 more gyms in the area over the next 3 years while Xcel has no expansion plans that we know of.

Another exciting thing that happened this weekend was that we finally got our Nintendo Wii! It has taken a long time but we finally got one. A friend of ours, Jason, pre-ordered one several months ago but bought one online so that he could get it quicker. We didn’t really want to do an online deal because they were mostly all bundles (buy the Wii and a bunch of games and other stuff) and online ones also charged for shipping. We wanted a Wii, but not really enough to drop several hundred dollars to get one. So we waited, and Jason sold us his extra one that he had pre-ordered when it finally came in. It is a lot of fun, now we just need to find some sweet games.