My hockey team struggled through another game on Wednesday night as we took on the top team in the league.  We actually hung with them for two periods, but were pretty much destroyed toward the end of the game.  This marked the end of the regular season.  My team finished in tenth out of twelve teams.  The playoffs start on Saturday and it will be a long journey for us if we are fortunate enough to advance deep into the tournament.

Fortunately, bowling was a much better experience last night.  After missing last week, my team had climbed up into second place.  Last night we again played the first place team.  The night started off average for me with a 135, but then moved up to 149, and then back down to 126.  My average is 132, so I’m pretty much sticking to that, which is a huge improvement over last season.  Unfortunately our team only won the first of our three games.  I think that will be enough to send us back into third place.  We have just two weeks left in this short season.

This week in sports was pretty boring, especially since I will be skipping bowling tonight.  My parents flew into town earlier today and we will be spending the weekend with them.  That means no work tomorrow!

I did have hockey last night, and we nearly knocked off the second place team in the league.  We are in ninth of twelve teams, so it would have been a huge victory for our team.  We played right with our opponents for the first half of the game.  By the middle of the second and the beginning of the third, we were being outmatched pretty clearly.  We still managed to stick with them and when the final buzzer rang the score was 8-6.  We only had 26 shots, as opposed to their 42, so it wasn’t really as close as the score indicated.  Our goalie played pretty well, and the other team’s goalie wasn’t that great.  One guy on their team had three of their goals, and now has sixty-seven total goals this season.  That is a  ridiculous  number of goals for only twenty games played.  The next closest has only thirty-five goals.  We only have one more game before the playoffs start and it doesn’t look like we’ll move much in the standings, probably not at all.

I was able to enjoy another day on the slopes this past Saturday.  My friends (Rob and Ken) and I headed up early in the morning and decided to visit Keystone.  Even though we were on the road between 6:15 and 6:30, traffic was pretty bad.  So we opted for a close resort and made it to Keystone just after the lifts started turning at 8:30.  We all headed straight to the Outback and enjoyed some turns on the fresh powder, including a couple of hikes to the bowls for Rob and I.  The line quickly grew on the Outback lift, so we headed back toward the front of the resort and spent some time in the Windows, where we found even more powder stashes. It was a good day and I’m glad I was able to sneak out of the house for a few hours.

I forgot to bring my Garmin watch along.  However, Vail resorts has created this cool website this year that helps you track your vertical feet per day along with a season total.  Along with all of this, they have created pins that you can unlock by riding certain lifts or attending certain events, which adds some fun to the whole thing.  According to the EpicMix website I rode 17,526 vertical feet on Saturday. However I need to add to that some as we hiked four different times before starting our  descents.  EpicMix just has sensors at the bottom of each lift, so all it knows is what lifts you rode that day, and uses that information to make other calculations.

This week in sports was particularly good for me, and also for the Cincinnati Bearcat basketball team.  The Cats won on the road at Georgetown (#11) Wednesday night, which should help propel them into the March Madness tournament.  They have another game on Sunday against UConn that I hope to watch on ESPN3.  Speaking of UC, this years football schedule was released earlier today!

My hockey team also had a big win on Wednesday night, 4-2 over the Predators.  I scored the first goal of the game and overall played pretty well.  Only two game remain before a tournament of our own.  I hope we keep our momentum going strong.

Finally, last night at bowling was one of my best nights ever.  I started off with a 143, which I thought might have been my high score of this season, but I quickly trumped that with a 160 in the second game.  I topped it off with a 142, and my average should definitely go up from 126.  My team is in third place, which sounds good at first, but you have to remember there are only four teams this time around.  I think we will stay in third after last night even though we won 2 of the 3 games.

After taking nearly two months off from snowboarding, I made it back out on the slopes yesterday.   It has been hard for me to leave the house on the weekends if Trey isn’t coming with me.   But I finally decided that I had to put that aside  if I was going to spend any more days on the slopes.   Fortunately if I get up early enough and get out on the mountain right away, I can typically be back in the early to mid-afternoon, so the whole day is not lost.

Anyway, I headed up to Arapahoe Basin with my friends Ken and Rob, two guys that I have spent nearly all prior  days of this season with.   We decided to try A-Basin since it was a holiday weekend, and we hoped it would be the least crowded of the resorts on our passes.   This seemed to work in our favor as we never encountered  more than a five-minute  wait in lift lines.   We were able to get our ten runs in for the day by 12:30, including a couple of runs on the East Wall. This allowed me to be back at home by 2 so I could hang with Trey for the rest of the day.

For the second time this season, I took the Garmin  Forerunner 305 on the slopes with me.   The first time I had mixed results, mostly due to inadvertent  pressing of the stop button.   I had much more luck yesterday after placing the watch on top of as many as my layers as possible.   This way I could watch it closer and I was able to reduce  the accidental button pressing to only one occurence.   If I am even more careful in the future, I will be able to graph out my tracks even better.   Either way, yesterdays adventures can be seen below.

My hockey team had another thrilling overtime win this week.   We were playing against a team that is close in the standings, so this was a must win.   We dominated much of the game after having a slow start both in net and on offense.   The game eventually reached the end of regulation at a tie.   From there it was on to a shootout, best of three for each team.   However, the contest had to go much farther than three skaters from each side.   Our team actually went all the way through our roster before the guy who took our first shot managed to sneak in a goal on his second try.   This ended the game for a big victory.

I had another pretty good week at bowling too.   My average  starting  the night was 127, which I topped in the first two games with scores of 133 and 137.   The final  game was a little distracting after a neighboring league complained about some of the members in our league not following proper etiquette.   None of us will bowl at the same time as a neighboring lane, but apparently this league doesn’t want you to even grab your ball if they are in the process of bowling.   That seems a bit excessive, and it didn’t appear  that they have any fun in their league.   Anyway I ended the night with a 108.   I think my average should stay right around 127, which I am more than happy with.   On the flip side, my team is in last place and may remain  there this week.   Contrary  to what I wrote last week, we didn’t win any games since we had two substitutes bowling and the scores reported during play were not accurate.   Bummer!

My parents bought us a Garmin Forerunner 305 for Christmas this year.   I haven’t had too many opportunities to start using it yet, but I did finally get the heart rate monitor working for a run this afternoon.   The temperature was peaking in the upper 50’s so I headed outside for a nice four mile loop.   Once I made it back to my desk, I downloaded the data to my computer.   Below is a nice chart that graphs my speed and heart rate versus the grade percentage.

You can easily see how the heart rate line (red) quickly climbs toward 150 bpm and then hovers around the 170 bpm range between miles one through four. You can also see how my speed (blue) started off quick, averaging 7 mph for the first mile and half, and then falling down closer to 6 mph for the rest of the run. I stopped running after 4 miles since I was really feeling it and I was facing a rather large hill. This route appears to have much more elevation changes toward the end (yellow) so maybe it would be better to run it in reverse. I may try doing that as I hope to keep running at lunch a couple of times a week. And I really look forward to seeing what else the Forerunner can do and hopefully watch my times go down and my speeds go up.

My hockey team got smoked this week, 9-3.   The game started off close but by the middle of the third period the other team was clearly taking control.   There isn’t really much else worth mentioning.   So on to bowling we go.   I had an above average performance last night.   My average from last week was 118 and I manged to beat that in all three games.   The first game I scored 124.   I then followed that up with a 144, which is one of my top scores in both sessions of the league.   Finally I finished with a 139, another solid performance, especially with my 4-6-7 split pickup.   One of the ladies on the other team shouted out that she would buy me a beer if I picked it up, and I did.   I’ll see if she comes through next week with the beer.   My team won 2 of 3 games and could move up in the standings.   After the first week we were in third, but the second place team is only 1 point ahead of us.

I’m glad the Packers won the Super Bowl.   They were the team I was cheering for yesterday.   Obviously there is the rivalry between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, but there is also the new  River City Rivalry between the respective universities’ football teams.   Therefore it is hard for me to cheer for anything Pittsburgh related, and I think most people from Cincinnati would agree.   Plus I’ve actually worn a cheese head before.   In the middle of a 2,000 mile road trip  during spring break 2003, some friends and I found ourselves in Green Bay with little to do.   So we visited Lambeau Field and the gift shop inside, where the four of us donned cheese heads for a quick photo.   The funny thing is that my friend Liam (on far right) is a Steelers fan, so I definitely had to dig up this photo for him.

After losing in a shootout last week, my hockey team managed a victory in another overtime shootout game this week.   The game was Wednesday night, and since my family was still stuck in town, they all decided to come out for the game.   Kim brought along Trey for his first hockey game.   My team lead the way the entire game, though when regulation ended the score was tied at two.   The shootout started off slowly as neither team could score, but ended on our last shot when one of our players made a great move to beat the goalie easily.   We were in eighth place of twelve, but may move up to seventh after that big win.   I’m hoping we can climb into the top half of the league over the next few weeks.

Last night was the first night for another season of my work bowling league.   It started off pretty well for me, with a score of 115 in the first game.   This was above my average from last season, so I was happy.   And I followed it up with a solid 135.   This would be one of my better games in recent memory.   Finally I finished the night with a 105, which was still close to my average and above 100, so all in all it was  a great night.   My average now is over 118, which is 10 pins higher than last season.   I hope this will continue for the remainder of the eight week season.