PLANET3RRY

That’s right… although I haven’t been blogging much lately with traveling and then a big ole “Hey, your Kid IS going to Kindergarten this year” Bomb being dropped. Oh, and our Resourceful and Reliable Au Pair went on vacation this week, because… we didn’t think The Elder would be in school this week…  But that is a different post for a different day because…

IT’S RACE WEEK

It’s Race Week and it’s time for another contest! Here are the Rules:

1) Leave a time you think I will complete the Event as a comment to this post.

Event: Scholar’s Run 5k website

2) You can enter as many times as you want, but only your most recent entry will be your official guess

3) This will be an Over/Under format, meaning that you time will count whether your time is over or under my official time

4) You can enter as long as Comments are allowed for this post, which is typically through Race at some point

Scholar’s Run 5k is run at 8 am on SATURDAY AUGUST 16th

5) The Official Time as reported at the event website will be the End-all-Be-all result. Should no result be posted, then my watch time will be used

Results for this Event are (eventually) posted at: Parks & Recreation

6) Winners will have to send me their postal address to gain their prize. Giving me their address subjects them to such things as world domination, Christmas Cards, and other random items (and sometimes embarrassing items) sent to their homes.

7) There are no restriction for past winners… Enter and Win and Enter Again.

All submissions must be made as a comment unless you are technical incompetent, then I will accept other forms of submission such as carrier pigeon, smoke signals, tea leafs, chicken bones, etc

9) Is my favorite number, so I wanted the Rules to go to 9, so, uh, have fun!

The Crap Prize for which you are competing is:

A Bag, a box of Tea and a pack of Gum

Stuff to help you in your guess:

Last Five 5k Times:

Reindeer Run Dec-2-2007 5 k 22:33
Spring Sprint Apr-12-2008 5 k 24:12
Ribbon Run Apr-19-2008 5 k 24:10
Run for the Deaf May-3-2008 5 k 23:27
Fireball Classic Jul-03-2008  5 k 26:23

Historic Scholar’s Run Times:
Scholar’s Run    Apr-24-1998    5 k 23:07
Scholar’s Run    Aug-28-1999    5 k 22:07
Scholar’s Run    Aug-26-2000    5 k 22:51
Scholar’s Run    Aug-25-2001    5 k 24:24
Scholar’s Run    Aug-24-2002    5 k 23:13
Scholar’s Run    Aug-23-2003    5 k 27:36
Scholar’s Run    Aug-21-2004    5 k 24:57
Scholar’s Run    Aug-20-2005    5 k 24:36
Scholar’s Run    Aug-19-2006    5 k 25:12
Scholar’s Run    Aug-18-2007    5 k 23:32

Well, the contest ended a little sooner than I would have liked. Wednesday’s huge Rally of the Finanacials blew past the Stop-Loss that I had placed to ensure the profits of the options. This sometimes happens, the Stock price triggers your stop-loss but by the time that your trade is done, it’s worth something different than your Stop-Loss.

This is what happened here. So, let’s take a peak at what happened and what Elijah gets as a results, shall we. WARNING: There will be Charts and Numbers, if these scare you, please hold the hand of the person next to you and keep your arms and legs in the ride at all time. Thank You, The Management.

On July 8th, I bought 3 Put Options for the Stock MTB, which is the M&T Bank. Don’t know anything about and really don’t care. This was not an investment for me, so pouring over the Fundamentals of the company wasn’t a priority… I just knew that Financial Companies like the banks sucked and this was a bank. So I got in.

Since the Stock Market is out to screw every investor, personally, this trade went horribly against me in the first couple of days. Like, my trade had lost 50% of it’s value. Now, instead of panicing, I knew that I needed to be patient. So I went to hospital to have ice water infused in my veins. Okay, that didn’t “really” happen, but I tried to stay Patient.

Monday Morning, My trade positions STUNK. I was at a $800 loss in the first hour of trading and I had a meeting to go to and so I couldn’t watch my trade die a slow and horrible death. It just so happened that our meeting was at our Financial Planner’s and so there was a big screen TV that I could see… however NONE of my trades were on the streaming ticker. But the Dow Jones just kept going lower and lower all day long.

During the meeting, MTB flashed up on the screen and it was 9 points down. I knew that was good! Just didn’t know how good.

When I got back to my desk and checked my trade, my MTB position was UP $2,000 overall! It had recovered the previous days’ losses and gained. This is one of the reasons why I chose this particular trade. It was already a winner, with the potential to move more.

As we know from the Sidebar, the Option was worth around $945 at one point and I could have cashed it in there. But I wasnt’ going to cut my winners short. I did want Elijah to get some cash though, so I set a Stop-Loss for $8. Meaning, when the Option price hit $8, an order to SELL would be initiated. It’s a safety gaurd but not full proof. Wednesday was a HUGE rally day for the Banks. If you were a day-trader, you were making money left and right on the movement of the banks… it was UP, UP and UP!

So, the price of the option hit $8… and it kept going. It didn’t sell until it was $6.80.

So, in 8 days… this one option worked its way around to end up earning 79%. Funny that I earned that OFF of a bank, even though interest rates IN the banks are so painfully small. I’d laugh to see what the 8days/79% would be annualized.

So what does Elijah get? He gets $300… and I get to give it to him from doing nothing other than letting my money work for me. I just wish the contest could have lasted longer. I did actually think about getting back into the trade on Friday (7-18) but the spread on the option (this affects my profit) was ridiculous. So, I’ll make my donation some time this week when I can transfer the money.

I’ll be writing up a Race Report soon, but I wanted to say that Pa-Pa (aka Pete) won the Guess My Time contest with his guess (by proxy) of 24:35.

My official Time was 26:31 finishing 404th out of 850 finishers. In my age group I was 39/75. It was not a good showing for me… think Expo just a shorter race.

But don’t fret, there should be another contest coming up this month!

OKay, so my multi crap prize contest disappeared faster than Dobby the Elf from Harry Potter. But guess what? Chicken Butt.

MY TIME!

It’s Race Week and it’s time for another contest! Here are the Rules:

1) Leave a time you think I will complete the Event as a comment to this post.

Event: Fireball 5k Road Race website

2) You can enter as many times as you want, but only your most recent entry will be your official guess

3) This will be an Over/Under format, meaning that you time will count whether your time is over or under my official time

4) You can enter as long as Comments are allowed for this post, which is typically through Race at some point

Fireball 5k is run at 9 pm on THURSDAY JULY 3rd

5) The Official Time as reported at the event website will be the End-all-Be-all result. Should no result be posted, then my watch time will be used

Results for this Event are (eventually) posted at: KTC.ORG

6) Winners will have to send me their postal address to gain their prize. Giving me their address subjects them to such things as world domination, Christmas Cards, and other random items (and sometimes embarrassing items) sent to their homes.

7) There are no restriction for past winners… Enter and Win and Enter Again.

All submissions must be made as a comment unless you are technical incompetent, then I will accept other forms of submission such as carrier pigeon, smoke signals, tea leafs, chicken bones, etc

9) Is my favorite number, so I wanted the Rules to go to 9, so, uh, have fun!

The Crap Prize for which you are competing is:

Some Book of Quotes that I can find at our local Used Bookstore

Stuff to help you in your guess:

Last Five 5k Times:

Scholar’s Run    Aug-18-2007    5 k    23:32
Reindeer Run    Dec-2-2007    5 k    22:33
Spring Sprint    Apr-12-2008    5 k    24:12
Ribbon Run        Apr-19-2008    5 k    24:10
Run for the Deaf    May-3-2008    5 k    23:27

Historic Fireball Times:

Fireball Classic    Jul-4-1998    5 k    23:35
Fireball Classic    Jul-3-1999    5 k    28:00
Fireball Classic    Jul-3-2000    5 k    23:30
Fireball Classic    Jul-3-2002    5 k    23:17
Fireball Classic    Jul-3-2003    5 k    23:39
Fireball Classic    Jul-3-2004    5 k    22:57

That’s right, it’s another edition of the World Renowned Contest called Guess My Time, Win Crap and do I have a load of crap prizes for you this week. Since this race is a Triathlon (event of swim, bike and run), BernieBob tell them what they can win:

“Thanks Terry! That’s right folks we have a load of crap prizes for you to win this week. You have not only one, two or three chances to win, you actually have FOUR chances to win. That’s right! Four Chances for some of the best crap prizes that you can win! Here’s how it’s going to work: There will be 4 official times reported: Swim Time, Bike Time, Run Time, Overall Time. You can Guess My Time for any or all of these disciplines

Crap Prizes that you can win:

Green Sling Backpack

A Book of Quotes

Bag of Clif Bloks and a Clif Shot

Mystery Prize Not Yet Determined

Discipline Distances:

Swim: 800 meters (1/2 mile)

Bike: 16 miles

Run: 4 miles

Entering your time will be the same as other Guess My Time contest. Respond with a comment to this email with your guess(es). I will leave comments open until some time on Sunday afternoon when I get back, official results should not be posted by then. I will post results as soon as I know which should be Monday. Time closest (over or under) to the official time is the winner, if there is a tie for some reason, I will use the Time Stamp as the tie breaker. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have a Battle Royale. Winners must surrender their mailing address to me, so that they can receive their prize. Addresses will be used for mail the prize, threat of Christmas Cards and world domination.

Previous contest winners can enter as well. If for some reason you enter in your time and you can’t sleep at night and want to change it, just put in a new time and it will negate the previous guess. Is that it? I think so…

Warning: Condition associated with Triathlons. Since you can’t instantaneously go from swimming in the river to riding your bike to running, there are things called Transitions (commonly referred to T1 and T2 in the biz). The people who manage this triathlon will use chip timing and BOTH transition times will probably be included in the bike time. So, if may be in your best interest to think of the Bike Time as T1&Bike&T2 time.

T1 - Shortly out of the water, you run over a timing mat. Run to your bike, get your shoes on, helmet on, get your bike, run to the bike exit, mount your bike and start riding.

T2 - You dismount your bike, run it to your spot, drop your helmet, run to the run start, cross over a timing mat.

ShirleyPerly - if you don’t happen to read this post before I close comments, I will use your time from the previous post as an overall time. I know that you are motivated by prizes, so I don’t want you to be left out!

ShirleyPerly

Shirley won with a time of 54:00 and my not-so-exciting 55:50 finish. Shirley has decided to take an alternative prize: Snapple Orangelicious Tea instead of the sling backpack. So congrat Shirley for winning crap the prize.

The race report will be forthcoming as well as an episode of Gravity@1053′.

The stars were not aligned for me at Expo 2008, more on that later, I did something I had never ever done in a road race before…

hat’s right! It’s time for ANOTHER contest for my upcoming race (Expo 10k). This will be one of those standard Guess My Time, Win Crap contest. Your entry (submitted only as a comment to this post) is your entry to guessing my official (from KTC website) time. I am going to take the time that is closest to my official time (either above or below) as the winner. If there are ties, the person who submitted their time first will get the Grand prize, the other people will win conciliation crap prizes. Winners who want their crap prizes must submit their mailing address to me on my quest to conquer the world send so that I can mail their crap prize (unless I already have it).

Since there is a delay in posting the results to the KTC website and I don’t think that I have a single reader in Knoxville who will be there on race day, you can post until sometime on Saturday (05-24-2008) when I will close the comments. So… if you can comment, you can guess.

And if you aren’t technically gifted to leave a comment, I might be gracious enough to accept a guess via the comment link at the top or a phone call (if you know my 1-900 #).

What kind of crap Prize will I win?

Does it really matter? Seriously… it doesn’t matter. Since you are twisting my virtual arm. It’s a bag. It’s green… Sling Backpack. I’ll post a picture of it, so you can bask in it’s awesomeness before you make your wager.

So what kind of time should I submit?

Well, a 10k is 6.2 miles. This is a new layout to this race for me, so I am not exactly sure the course will suit me, but I am running in Knoxville, my home turf. I can tell you right now that I doubt I will finish faster that 50:00 minutes and I won’t be slower than 1:00:00 (one hour). So there… figure the time out and comment below.

Historical 10k Data:

Rat Race Oct-7-2000 48:06
Expo May-26-2001 51:11
Run on the Bayou Mar-3-2002 50:03
Expo May-24-2003 52:01
Expo May-29-2004 51:53
Expo May-28-2005 50:02
Expo May-27-2006 55:21

if you need some more variables for your detailed calculus equation, you can check out my Buckeye Outdoor website that tracks my training:

Congratulations to I Run For My Life: Susan from Arkansas, she was the Winner-Winner from the weekend.

She had the winning guess for my Ribbon Run 5k on Saturday and then was a mere 3 seconds off from my Trideltathon time.

Susan wins the Official Planet3rry Sticky Pad as well as a special prize (yet to be determined) for winning both.

I had thought for sure that I would have beaten the guesses this weekend… but no such luck. Next Guess My Time contest will be for the Run for the Deaf 5k to be run on May 3rd.

That’s RIGGGHHHTTT! It’s time for another installment of the World Famous (believe it because I said so) Guess My Time Contest (that I stole from Marathon Greg). This week is a little difference because I have TWO races: Ribbon Run 5k and Trideltathon.

I’ve decided that I wasn’t going to have 2 contests… but I might give you TWO chances to win. Here’s the skinny: You can Guess My Time for either race or BOTH races. I’ll give you some statistics about the races below to help you make your Guess. The closest person to their respective finishing time will win. I’m not expecting a deluge of guesses based on last week’s contest, BUT should there be a tie of some sort, then I will come up with a great prize in addition to the one that I am about to describe (because I don’t have a picture).

Should you Guess the EXACT time, then I’ll add a BONUS gift because I can’t make this contest’s gift any cooler than it already is.

Guesses are to be made by leaving a comment to this post. Please keep it to this post because my bookkeeper is overworked and underpaid. I will put a link in the “usual” place in case you don’t want to guess now, but need a day to medidate.

Since, the races span two days, I will have to close comments on Saturday sometime. I don’t expect the Ribbon Run 5k results to post THAT day, but you never know.

So what crap-tastic price are you winning? Well, it’s a Planet3rry approved pad of Sticky Notes…. THAT’S right, from the presses of that Spam King, VistaPrint, a pad of highly fashionable sticky notes with “PLANET3RRY” emblazed on the top. Now, I didn’t have the funds to get the 24k embellishment, so it’s just paper.

******Information to use for your Guesses***************

Ribbon Run 5k - I have never run this race before, I don’t know what the course is going to be. I do know that it should be “rolling” hills around here… which to some translates to “Big Mofo Hills” to some. I am anticipating the course being easier than the Spring Sprint 5k from last week.

Although I have Never done this race here are some times of 5k pairings a week apart:

Love Your Library Mar-7-1998 5 k 24:12
Runnin’ O the Green Mar-14-1998 5 k 26:28

Ijams Nature Run Apr-11-1998 5 k 24:16
Dogwood Classic Apr-18-1998 5 k 24:35
Scholar’s Run Apr-24-1998 5 k 23:07

Greenways Apr-3-1999 5 k 25:29
Race for Ed Apr-10-1999 5 k 25:26

Gazebo Run Aug-21-1999 5 k 23:54
Scholar’s Run Aug-28-1999 5 k 22:07

Jingle Bell Jog Dec-4-1999 5 k 23:00
Jingle Bell Run Dec-11-1999 5 k 23:10

Reindeer Run Dec-7-2003 5 k 23:58
Jingle Bell Run Dec-13-2003 5 k 29:59

Trideltathon - This is a Sprint Triathlon that is run by the Delta Delta Delta (can I help ya, help ya, help ya?) sorority which goes to help East Tennessee Children’s Hospital (which has service both the boys). It’s a 400 meter (~1/4 mile) pool swim, 6 mile bike and a 3 mile run. I did this race for 7 years straight, often competing against my friend Gray, yeah… that’s Gray - Like the color. But in 2006, the streak ended and this is the first time that I have done it since 2005, when it was first race coming back from pneumonia.

So here’s the skinny on my Trideltathons:

May-3-1998
3.0 m 23:11
6 m-bike 22:16
400 m swim 14:28
Overall 59:55

May-2-1999
3.0 m 22:51
6 m-bike 2 01
400 m swim 11:05
Overall 53:57

Apr-2-2000
3.0 m 22:30
6 m-bike 20:51
400 m swim 10:26
Overall 53:48

Apr-29-2001
3.0 m 22:34
6 m-bike 19:37
400 m swim 10:06
Overall 52:17

Apr-28-2002
400 m swim 9:23
6 m-bike 22:33
3.0 m 23:56
Overall 55:51

Apr-26-2003
400 m swim 9:26
6 m-bike 24:20
3.0 m 28:28
Overall1:2:12

Apr-25-2004
400 m swim 9:57
6 m-bike 22:50
3.0 m 25:49
Overall 58:36

Apr-24-2005
3.0 m 22:56
6 m-bike 23:16
400 m swim 10:10
Overall 56:22

WE have a Wiener Winner to the 2008 Spring Sprint 5k Guess My Time contest.

The wiener winner with a SPOT ON time of 24:12 finishing time is:

HALLIE

of

The Wonderful World of Winners Wieners

Hallisicle wins the GOLD AMC movie pass because she hit my official time right on the head. Hallisicle just needs to provide her mailing address so that I can have countless credit card applications the tickets sent to her home.

Thank you for all those that played. There will be another contest going up TODAY, since it’s RACE WEEK and I have TWO races this coming up weekend!