I did it, the 2011 La Jolla Half Marathon, and it’s finally over, and I just want to debrief here on the blog to share this journey, and remind myself what I did if I decide to do something this crazy again

So, in order to keep our Cockalier Spaniel, Pumpkin, in shape, I started running her in the mornings around our neighborhood just over 3 years ago. What started as a few miles a week turned into going out with her 3 or 4 times a week on courses between 5 and 7 miles. And as I’ve already blogged in other posts, she’s the 2010 Puppy Love 5K champion, and 2011 3rd place finisher, even though she shaved over 4 minutes off her 5K time.
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No Comments / Apr 17.11 / Porfirio, apps / by Porfirio

So this last Sunday, we attended the 2nd annual Puppy Love 5K, a benefit for the Helen Woodward Animal Center. If you don’t remember, Pumpkin took first place last year, with a time of 24:22. We found out that last year that there around 100 entrants. Well, this year, there were over 600 entries, including lots more dogs of all shapes and sizes.

Pumpkin was a good sport as usual, just happy to be outside with us, and opposed to last year’s rain, this year was cool and sunny. We were able to get a spot at the front of the pack, and after the start, we found ourselves in the lead pack of about 10 runners or so. Two or three started to break even further away almost immediately.

At about the the halfway mark, some of the leaders started slowing down; some of the four-leggers even had to drop for a bathroom break! We moved around them and found ourselves in the top 4.

In the last stretch to the finish line, we overtook number 3, but I could see that 1 and 2 had left us all in the dust (see the video here). Even though final place was 3rd for us, we were really happy to find out our time was 21:11, which is 3:11 faster than last year!

I was spent, but Pumpkin had enough energy to spare for some agility jumps, tunnels and hoops while we waited for awards.

I’m really proud of her, and we’re also thankful to our supporters, who raised $300 for the animal center, which according to the website, made Pumpkin the top 5 fundraiser

Thanks to Laetitia for taking the pictures and video!

No Comments / Feb 16.11 / Photos, Pumpkin, Video / by Porfirio

So, through the course of doing some heavy social marketing at work, I stumbled across a twitter account with the most awesome background image: a little spaniel balancing yogurt cups on her head with a spoon in her mouth balancing a golf ball. I immediately turned my attention to Google image search to discover that the star of the photo was Cindy the balancing spaniel, and was featured in an article two years ago. Here we are, a week later, and we decided to finally let Pumpkin have a go, since Cindy was 8 years old at the time of the photo, and I’m sure this doc needs a puppy to pass the torch along to – Pumpkin is certainly up to the task, right? So, today’s first exercise consisted of something “simple” – balancing a mini tennis ball in the crook of the nose. We’ll let you be the judge, on a scale of 1 to 10, please

2 Comments / Feb 23.10 / Photos, Pumpkin / by Porfirio

So Pumpkin pulled it off… she won the Puppy Love 5K! Most of the race there were a few runners ahead of us running without dogs, and on the last stretch, we caught up to the leader and used him to draft the head wind, but then I could hear some dog tags gaining on us, so I passed the leader and found a runner in good shape with an Australian shepherd on our heels, so we turned it up to pull it through in the end (as shown in the video). There was a little confusion at the awards, because my tag had smudged in the rain, and when they asked me for my info, they recorded my smudged tag as first (Porsio Landers) and my new tag (Porfirio Landeros) as 2nd… the real 2nd place didn’t get recorded, so they bumped up Nathan from 3rd to 2nd and bumped up 4th to 3rd. So, in the photo, we posed with Pumpkin the middle

Anyway, it was really fun to run with her and a lot of other dogs and people. It was good for her to be around all the activity and still able to do tricks and obey commands, even if only for a couple moments. She even charmed the news weatherman with some of her sit-up-and-beg while he reported her results on KUSI live, and people loved my Puma-style Pumpkin shirt (thanks Laetitia). So, the video and all the pictures are up, and I’m hoping we can find a similar event, since Pumpkin keeps me running almost every morning!

1 Comment / Feb 08.10 / Photos, Pumpkin, Video / by Porfirio

So I was just telling AJ and Laetitia that I would love to enter a run or marathon or something where I could do it with Pumpkin, since we go running in the mornings during the week. Well, Laetitia found something just in the nick of time – The Puppy Love run, which is a 5K benefit for the Helen Woodward Animal Center. I got very excited, since it’s next Saturday, and we run 5K in the mornings anyway, so we’re ready to go. So, as part of the registration, they set us up with a donation page:
Team Pumpkin for the 2010 Puppy Love Run

If you want to help the animals here, then here’s your chance to do it through TEAM PUMPKIN! Hopefully, we’ll get lots of pictures and stuff, and at the very least, set a baseline time for us to try to beat next year

1 Comment / Jan 30.10 / Pumpkin / by Porfirio

I’m letting everyone I know about this awesome iPhone/Touch app called Lose It! (iTunes link). I’ve been using it for almost a year now to count calories, carbs, and track exercise and weigh ins, and it’s worked great. Most of last year, I kept really tight to the program and lost 13 lbs while still eating the foods we normally eat, including restaurants and fast food. It was a great motivator for exercise, which Pumpkin also appreciated since I take her along on the morning jogs.

Anyway, Lose It! now supports adding friends so you can track and encourage each other (website), so if anyone downloads the app and wants to get serious, you can add me as porfitron(at)yahoo.com.

I started off this Sunday with a goal to trim of 7 lbs by early February, so anyone else is welcome to hop on the bandwagon.

1 Comment / Jan 05.10 / apps, iPhone, tech / by Porfirio

Francoise made one of my Christmas wishes come true, by getting me a Stylophone Beatbox. Today, I showed it off to Al and Ryan, and Al brought over his classic Stylophone for a spontaneous jam session with Ryan on the beats. I captured the moment on my Flip Video MinoHD (gift from Laetita), and re-muxed the video to MKV so I could share it in all its HD glory through the DivX Plus Web Player… ENJOY!

1 Comment / Jan 04.10 / Video, Work, tech / by Porfirio

Laetitia and I are taking care of Newton and Kepler, which means Pumpkin gets to spend time with her brothers out at the Boulder Knolls Observatory.

As you can see, they are very excited to see Laetitia in the morning:

Video was captured on the Flip MinoHD, and then muxed to MKV/H.264/AAC for streaming through the DivX Plus Web Player.

Every time we take Pumpkin home after seeing them, she is completely wiped out… wiggling her tail around them must be exhausting!

2 Comments / Dec 30.09 / Pumpkin, Video / by Porfirio

I’m on a roll posting videos today… Attached is video from our trip to Christmas Card Lane in Rancho Peñasquitos. We took Pumpkin, too, of course.

This video has two audio tracks: track one (AAC) is the sound that was captured by the camera, and track two (MP3) is some Holiday music. After you click play, you can switch tracks by clicking the icon in the lower right of the DivX Plus Web Player (or by right-click), and switch them under “Audio tracks”. Also, don’t forget you can display in full screen. This video is an H.264/MKV video from an HD source, which is why I was able to stream it through the DivX Plus Web Player.

Sorry for the shaky camera work, but I was walking, filming, and trying to enjoy at the same time.

1 Comment / Dec 27.09 / Laetitia, Pumpkin, Video / by Porfirio

I was pleasantly surprised this Christmas with an awesome present from Laetitia – a Flip MinoHD! I have an iPhone 3GS, which can take video, but it’s no where near the quality I’ve been wanting. Pumpkin is quite the performer, and there have been far too many occasions where we’ve wished we had a camera on us and missed out on some spontaneous awesomeness. So, attached is a sample video:

The format by default is H.264/MP4, but I remuxed the file to MKV, so I could post it using the DivX Plus Web Player, which supports H.264/AAC/MKV – remuxing only takes seconds and doesn’t affect the video quality at all, so this should be a fair assessment of the quality you’ll get from the Flip MinoHD if you’re thinking of getting one.

Meanwhile, Pumpkin, Laetitia and I say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

1 Comment / Dec 27.09 / Laetitia, Pumpkin, Video, tech / by Porfirio