A Reason to Run

Hi. I’m Adam Specht and I am endeavoring on a mission I never thought possible for me. A week ago, my sister asked if I would run in a marathon with her in 2014. Without hesitation, I replied, “Yes. Of course.”

Just typing that, I’m a little shocked by that response.

Why?

I’m shocked because I’ve never run the distance of a marathon (~26.2 miles)…

I’m shocked because I’ve never run the distance of a 25K (~15.5 miles)…

I’m shocked because I’ve never run the distance of a 10K (~6.2 miles)…

Heck, I’ve never been in a race consisting of 5K (~3.1 miles).

How can I even think of running a marathon?

I won’t think about me…but I’ll do it, thinking about all the people I will be helping.

Here is my plan.

I am registered and will run in a 5K the first weekend of January.

I will register and run in a 10K in March.

I will register and run in a 25K in May.

I will register and run in a marathon in October.

This will be a four-race total of approximately 51 miles.

I will be raising money for the local Food Pantry here in Decorah, IA and the 500+ families it serves.

 http://www.firstlutherandecorah.org/?page_id=51

How is that going to happen?

I will be asking you, yes you, for a pledge for every mile I run in a race in 2014. Don't worry if you haven't heard from me yet. You will.

What does that mean?

It means that if you were to sponsor me at $0.50 a mile, you’ll have pledged a total of $25.50 to help the Food Pantry better serves those in need. If may not seem like much, but every bit helps.

What are your goals?

I plan on raising $2,500 with the help of 90 people.

Pledge Amount	Pledges	Amount Raised
$0.25	40	$510.00
$0.50	30	$765.00
$1.00	20	$1,020.00
$5.00	1	$255.00

Total

91

$2,550.00

I am positive that I can reach this goal and perhaps much further beyond.

I also will be accepting pledges and donations of any size.

Any checks for donation should be made out to Food Pantry at FLC and mailed to 604 W. Broadway St, Decorah IA, 52101.

Just make sure to let me know so I can thank you for the support.

Where am I at now?

I have finished my first week of training and have eight weeks until my first race since the 1-mile fitness test in high school.

Each step I take is a personal best.

I’m just starting and I want you to come along and be a part of this with me.

Let's help others. Contact me and pledge today.

Adam Specht

625 Center Street

Decorah, IA 52101

adam.p.specht@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/adam.specht.96

Good Morning Sunrise

Dear 5:00 a.m.

I know, I know. I've seen you for the past couple of weeks and I should have said, "Hello." I'm sorry. I'm also sorry for how long I've been away from you. You and I used to meet each other every day, head outside into a new morn and enjoy the surroundings. We'd great the sunrise together, let it bathe us in it brilliance.

But now?

Now...now I'm not waking to just see you. In fact, most days I'm awake before you even arrive. I'm sharing your time with someone else now. No more jogs together. No more runs together. I can't even get a few burpees or jumping jacks in with you. No, I sit in the darkness. Hushing...soothing...praying that a little boy can will get a few more hours of sleep. WHY WON"T hE GO bACK TO SLEEP? It works maybe once a week.

So, I know that we'll see each other in passing. I'll try to give you a little smile or a "Good Morning," but my time will not be ours. It will be his and mine. At least for now.

I'll see you when Daylight Savings Time ends.

Always,
Adam, The 5amDad

Alice the Camel

Wow. It's been nine months since I've blogged. Don't get me wrong, I've had lots of ideas to write about and share. I think what holds me back is that I'm a much more private person than I thought I would be. So, lots to write about in retrospect but for now I'll provide a little nugget from this evening.

I traveled to my brother-in-law's in Winona, MN to borrow an inflatable water slide. On the way there Evalyn and I were playing "I Spy." A few minutes in she made the game harder by saying, "I spy with my little eye something outside of the car and it is pretend and not real." After literally 15 minutes of me asking questions and guessing, she told me it was a unicorn named "Uni." So we continued playing this game...moving on to Pegasus, Centaurs, Cupids, Apollo, and Nyx. This in turn swung to glyptodons, sabre-toothed cats, mastodons,  the Columbian Mammoth, Woolly Rhinos, and ancient horses (she forgot the name, Dinohippus.) After the last one, we started singing (with her laughing) "Alice the Camel." Evalyn was singing the last line pretty loud on her own, "So ride, Alice, ride." The last verse went as follows...

Me: "Alice the camel has...no humps. Alice the camel has...no humps. Alice the camel has...no humps; so, Alice is a....(pause)"

E: "Western Camel that lived in North America until it migrated to the Mideast where it developed humps and evolved into the camel that we know today."

THAT is a lot better than, "horse."

A Father Worries.

Today, Evalyn traded her remaining Halloween candy for a comic book. I need not worry about it in the house any more. Let me explain.

Every parent worries about their children. From the moment we knew we were expecting, until my final breath, I'm certain it will be there. I worry about my children's friendships that are formed and the struggles they will go through with them. I worry about them finding partners in this world that will love and respect them the way they should. I worry about them figuring out their place in this world, knowing that it is a journey that they must make on their own, with me and Brooke only as a supporting cast.

These are mostly worries that I can only help in guidance and have no real control over. This will fully manifest itself in the coming months (and years) as we walk down a path of controlling my daughter's seizures caused by her Childhood Absence Epilepsy. Evalyn was diagnosed a little more than a year ago after a visit to a pediatric neurologist in La Crosse. In what now seems like a chasm in the lack of information given to us by both the doctor and his staff, we were asked, "Which drug would you like to start her on?" We were shocked. Many of these drugs efficacy sits around 50% in controlling seizures and had not been told anything about the drugs including side effects (which we knew from Brooke's access to scientific papers/studies), effectiveness, and what happens if it doesn't work (they up dosage and then move on to another drug). After a discussion with the neurologist, we walked out of his office angry and thinking time would also heal this. (He answered a question, "What if we don't treat it with drugs?" by saying, "She will most likely outgrow this by the time she is 10-12.")

Over the past year we have come to recognize Evalyn's seizures not just from seeing her physically (her eyebrow twitches) but also from her breathing pattern changing. One of the best way to describe Absence seizures is from Wikipedia (I honestly cannot believe I am quoting Wikipedia)...

"The hallmark of the absence seizures is abrupt and sudden onset impairment of consciousness, interruption of ongoing activities, a blank stare, possibly a brief upward rotation of the eyes. If the patient is speaking, speech is slowed or interrupted, if walking, he or she stands transfixed; if eating, the food will stop on his way to the mouth. Usually, the patient will be unresponsive when addressed. In some cases, attacks are aborted when the patient is called. The attack lasts from a few seconds to half a minute, and evaporates as rapidly as it commenced."

 I have seen all of these and slight variations of this. My worries for her become compounded now in many activities that she partakes in. She loves to climb and is damn good at it. As her (and our) best friends have pointed out, it is her skill. I would worry about her loosing her grip or footing on a Jumbo Mast Net (very little though as 1. she is good at it and 2. I'm a dad) but now I worry that she'll have a seizure in the middle of it or while swinging hanging upside down by her legs. Bike riding? It will take a lot of courage...on my part though, she lacks none. Swimming? Never without someone being with her. Is it a life of worry that my wife and I will carry until she (possibly) will "out-grow"
her seizures?

We hope not. Within a couple of weeks, we will be headed down a shared journey of a changed diet. Through two main studies, (one from University College London and the other Johns Hopkins), we see equal or better efficacy rates from use of the ketogenic diet, the Modified Atkins Diet, or the Low
Glycemic Index Treatment compared to the epileptic drugs. We do not know yet if this will work. We do know that it will not be easy and will demand a very disciplined child and parent. We understand that this is not just "going on a diet" or even making dietary changes for better health. There is no "cheat days." You do this and do this right or don't do it at all.

To make things easier, Brooke and I have decided to journey with Evalyn. We will be restricting our food carbohydrate intake as well to the levels recommended for us. Candy bars. Gone. Chips and crackers. Tossed. Milk (yes milk). To be replaced with whipping cream. Bread? 1 slice carries her daily carbohydrate limit. Fruit. Someday it will be added back in. We are talking eggs, bacon, low-carb vegetables, artificial sweeteners, vitamin and mineral supplements, and lots of water. We don't know if this will help or not but we sure hope so. Thanks to a recent article in the New York Times written by Fred Vogelstein, you can read what one family goes through with epilepsy and using diet (and drugs) to help control it. 

Evalyn seems to take all of this in stride (and even with some excitement at how much whipped cream and olives she'll get to eat, exclusively of course) that I can't imagine myself being able to do. Today, I am filled with lots of hope that this is the beginning of change in her life.

So...Today, Evalyn traded her remaining Halloween candy for a comic book. And I've never been prouder.

Why I'm a Democrat

I've been pondering this very statement for most of the past year. Thoughts peaked in August when a conservative friend of mine asked it directly and I have been trying to make a more coherent answer of it.

I remember my very first voting experience. It was 1988. I was nine years old. Our elementary school had a mock election between Ronald Reagan and Michal Dukakis. I don't remember who won, but I know that I cast a ballot for Dukakis. And why wouldn't I? Like most kids, I absorbed my parent's political associations. I have continued those associations over the years but for my own reasons and not my parent's. I have voted for members of multiple parties over the years. I voted for Jim Leach and still cannot believe he was swept out in the fallout of the latest Iraq Military Engagement. I voted for Sen. Grassley and cannot believe how he has changed over the years (or perhaps I'm more vested in ongoing politics). I also cannot look past many of the greatest achievements, in my mind's eye, over the past 100 years that Democratic representatives have been a part of. But my roots run deeper...

Although nearly 200 years old, I consider myself to have a political belief system that stems from the Democratic-Republican Party's ideals of democracy. One of the most important beliefs of this is at the core of republicanism (notice the small "r"). It asserts that people have unalienable rights that cannot be voted away by a majority of voters. (Forgive the poor notations...John Phillip Reid, Constitutional History of the American Revolution (2003)) Unalienable rights are those that endowed upon us and cannot be subject to any changes in law. Furthermore, I still believe in the fight of privilege, aristocracy (and now more likely plutocracy) and corruption within society and our government.

I'm not naive to think that these have been solely Democratic Party carrying banners. Hell, even when the party was formed in the 1820s and 1830s, the standard barer for the party employed and encouraged the use of the "spoils system." Party issues ebb and flow. Republicans used to be pro environment. Democrats where pro-slavery. I may not always be a member of the Democratic Party, but I am now as I can easily identify my own beliefs with those the party continues to put forward at their local, state, and national levels. I don't agree with everything the national party agrees with.

That said, here we go:

I believe that whenever the rights of any of our citizens are threatened, the rights of all are endangered. I think (and hope) that those in the Democratic Party take seriously the obligation to preserve, protect, and secure basic constitutional and civil rights. That we have a government that consistently and fairly serves and protects all people. I believe that government should assure equal access to opportunity and guarantee the unimpeded right to vote for all U.S. citizens.  I fear, much like Jefferson did, that unlimited expansion of commerce and industry would lead to the growth of a class of wage laborers who relied on others for income and sustenance. The workers would no longer be independent voters. Romney has urged business leaders to pressure their employees on how to vote. This is merely one example of many.

I believe that our military forces should be sufficient to defend our country from attack and should be deployed for that purpose only. Preemptive attacks by our military should not be an option, and any military action against another country should be preceded by a Congressional declaration of war. I vehemently disagree with President Obama's use of Drone Strikes in which a mere 2% of those killed are terrorists. An unchecked military is one of the greatest threats to our democratic-republican livelihoods. It is now a financial, job-creating behemoth. We all remember President Eisenhower's line of warning about the military industrial complex. But what many of us forget is the next line...

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."  -President Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation, 17 January, 1961.

I believe that the government needs to continue its stewardship of our land and resources. In so doing, the United States should be leading the world in new energy technologies. Oh, we are picking winners and losers now? The U.S. government always has and always will. That is the nature of government. The stewardship of land and resources has far more implications to many future generations than the dollar amount that I pay for a gallon of gasoline (which the U.S. cannot influence if we truly believe in the market).

I believe (and I cannot believe that this sort of statement even needs to be said) that women have the right of choice. No "qualifiers."

I believe in a progressive tax code that ensures people pay a fair share to their ability and regardless of income source. Every person has a right to food, shelter, health, employment, and education. It is unfortunate that not every person can obtain all of these things on their own doing but this is the world we live in. We are to aid and help our fellow citizens. As the majority of us cannot help each other on our own, I do believe it is our government's right to expect us to.

I am proud of the achievements that the U.S. government has made and passed on to its citizenry. These include, but are not limited to, NASA spin-off technologies (i.e. freeze drying, water purification, artificial limbs, transparent ceramics, solar power, etc...), major works projects (i.e. Interstate Highway System), and GPS.

I'm proud to be a member of a party that brought us the Civil Rights Act, fair labor standards, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Head Start, and OSHA. 

These are merely a few thoughts from the evening. I am a Democrat. Things change, but I don't seem them changing for a while.

"No society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation." Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1789.

Just Like Gene Kelly

My 4 year old daughter is currently in a dance class learning both ballet and tap. A couple of weeks ago she and my wife found The Nutcracker and Swan Lake online and enjoyed a few clips. Yesterday we scoured the internets for information about ballet.

• Did you know that ballet is a French word derived from the Italian root balleto? My daughter found it interesting that even though ballet originated in Italy during the 1400s ("600 years ago??? THAT'S almost the same time as the dinosaurs!"), we use a French word for the dance.

This brings us to today. After a week of no screen time (she lost it for spitting), the first thing we did was watch clips of Gene Kelly. We watched clips from Singing in the Rain, An American in Paris, Ont the Town, Anchors Away, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and I Like Myself. This was all for seeing someone tap dance. She loved every single one of them. And if you've never watched I Like Myself, she and I HIGHLY recommend it. It's amazing watching someone tap dance on roller skates. During this point the following conversation took place...

Me, "Man, there really isn't anyone any more that can sing and dance like Gene Kelly."
Brooke, "He was funny too."
Me, "That's right! I can't think of anyone that does all three." (10 seconds pass) "Oh wait. Justin Timberlake does all three."
Brooke, "Does he dance?"

Cooking Tips

I am, as you know, the homemaker in this household. I cook, bake, clean, do laundry, and basically get the household up and running and out the door every morning. If it were the 1950s, this would be me in pink.

In order to keep such a calm demeanor, I've found and followed a few kitchen tips over the past 4.5 years. I thought I'd share them with you. In no particular order

• For making Vegetable Stock: Have a gallon freezer bag at the ready and whenever you cook with the trinity of vegetables (carrots, celery, and onions), place the scraps and skins in the bag and stick it in the freezer. When the bag is full, place in stove pot (minus the bag of course), add enough water to cover and bring to a boil. No wasted veggies.
• Prep is king or queen. I don't do it near enough, but make sure you do as much as you can the night before or earlier in the day. Most lunches can be ready to go straight out the door in the morning and dinner is less stressful then (esp. with kiddos). Which leads us to...
• Have a plan for the week. Sit down 1 night of the week and figure out what will be consumed. It makes prep easier. It makes grocery shopping a cinch (no more bringing home what you don't REALLY need to eat). And in the end, again, brings less stress. But, things don't always go according to plan. So...
• Have a go to meal that is quick (30 minutes or less) and easy to do. Mine you ask?
• Breakfast: Cold cereal if you want it otherwise I still with Cottage Cheese, Fruit, and Walnuts.
• Lunch: Lunch meat sandwich with baby carrots/sweet peppers.
• Supper: Tofu Stir-fry. I make a soy-honey glaze for the tofu, use a frozen pepper stir-fry mix for the veggies, and ramen noodles. It takes about 25-30 minutes (with much of the time being spent on pressing the tofu).
• Pie weights: Don't use coins. Go buy some dried beans and make a tinfoil wrap with them.
• Quinoa: Want a little crunch to it? After rinsing (takes away the bitter taste), toast it in a frying pan on the stove with a little olive oil until the moisture has evaporated.
• Never try a new recipe with guests? I disagree. I love to experiment most often with food when I'm cooking for others.
• Get your kids in the kitchen with you as early as possible. No matter the age, there is something they can do. And don't forget...
• SAMPLE as you go. My daughter is a chronic "Tester" in the kitchen. I'm okay with it most of the time...until she tells me that she "Just neeeeeds to test what the brown sugar tastes like." I'm pretty sure it is the same as it was the last five times. Now get your fingers out of there.