More Baby Lauren pics

So yesterday I was finally able to download some photos from the camera. We are definitely in “survival mode” in the Cooper household, but having Grandma (Jess’s Mom) with us has been a huge help this first week. Grant has quickly adapted to the role of Big Brother and wants to help with “his baby”.

She’s here!

Lauren Grace Cooper

7 lbs 11 oz

Mom and Baby are doing great. I’ll post better pictures (not from my cell phone) next week. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers.

Off to have a baby!

So I may no be posting for a few days since we are headed to the hospital in the morning to have our second child. Expect lots of pictures next week.

New website, kind of like having a baby

So last night we launched a re-design of the PayDay One website (as a reminder PayDay One is a subsidiary of ThinkCash - PayDay One is our payday loan service and ThinkCash provides installment loans for emergency cash needs). This is the 7th time in my career that I have been part of a new website launch or re-design. In the past I have compared it to the birth of a child.

When I joined Blockbuster in 2003 I was basically the first external hire for the online team and brought in to help launch the business and run marketing. It took us 9 months to launch the website/service. I sent out a “friends & family” email for our beta launch asking people to try the service and give me their honest feedback. The subject line of my email was “Ben’s Baby” and I basically described in the email that I had poured my heart and soul into the business over the prior 9 months and felt like a parent - both proud and scared to let my “baby” out into the real world. Little did I realize that Jess and I would find out the next week that we were pregnant with Grant.

Now we have just launched a re-design of PayDay One after almost 9 months of work (from concepting, to design, coding, QA, etc.). I’m really pleased with the way it turned out and I think it really reflects the personality of the brand. The team has worked very hard on this for months and they deserve kudos.

You’ll notice that we prominently feature customer testimonials on the website. We spent a day shooting the testimonials and spent a lot of time with about 10+ customers. It is always nice to talk to our customers and hear their real world stories about how we had a positive impact on their lives and helped them with their emergency cash situations.  We work in an industry that gets a lot of negative publicity (some of it very deserving with the way our competitors operate) and to be honest, all the negative perceptions can really take-a-toll on you as an employee. So it is always fulfilling to talk with the customers that we help and have them literally thank us for helping them. I’ve tried to avoid “getting on my soap box” to defend our industry, but if you would like to become more educated on the industry, Kevin D has some great posts here, here, and here. I’m just really proud of the work we do and now I’m also proud of the website that is our “face” to the consumer . . . and as a side note, we’re having another baby in 10 days!

Another Big Announcement

So in September I made the Big Announcement that Jess was pregnant with our second child (due April 1). Well I am now proud to announce that it is going to be a little girl. Jess and I are very excited since a little girl completes our set

Grant is also very pumped. It’s funny, when we first told Grant that Jess was pregnant, we asked if he wanted a little brother or a little sister. In a very “Grant” way he said, “Hhhmm. . . I think I’ll take a little sister.” He’s a pretty smart cookie.

Maui Vacation Report

Jess and I had an unbelievable time in Maui last week. Granny June and Pop were nice enough to keep Grant for the week; therefore, Jess and I were able to go on vacation just the two of us (very important since Baby #2 is coming the first week of April).

We spent 7 nights at the Sheraton Maui Resort on Kaanapali Beach in West Maui. Maui truly is as gorgeous as everyone says. Beautiful water, mountains and perfect weather. We managed to pack a lot of fun and a lot of relaxing into the week. We did all the Maui vacation “must do’s”:

• The road to Hana
• Dinners in Lahaina
• Surfing (Ben, not Jess)
• Shopping/lunch in Paia
• Visit the Haleakala volcano (I went twice, once by bike and once by car)
• Lots of snorkeling
• Lots or reading books by the pool

All in all, a pretty perfect vacation. However, the best part was coming home to Grant. He gave Jess and I each a 5 minute hug when we got back (we got back at 5 a.m. on Thursday, so we were home when he woke up).

Off to Maui

So Jess and I are leaving tomorrow for vacation. We are heading to Maui for a week. This will be our last vacation before baby #2 arrives, so we are really looking forward to it. Expect lots of pictures when we get back.

Saturday’s UMCA 100 Mile Championship - a disaster . . . but still a good day

So Saturday was the UMCA 100 Mile Championships at the Texas Time Trials in Cleburne.  As a reminder, I have been training for this event for a while. That includes a first for me, putting clip-on aero bars on my road bike. I put the aero bars on my bike a couple weeks ago and have been training on them exclusively (in an attempt to get more comfortable in the aero position, get my muscles acclimate, etc.).

The week leading up to the event my legs only felt so-so. Additionally, riding in the aero position was causing lots of issues with my shoulder (I have a shoulder injury that prevents me from lifting weights, swimming, or doing any activity with my arms above my head). But I figured the short-term pain was worth the benefit for this one event.

I drove out to Cleburne on Saturday morning feeling good. The Texas Time Trials is a very cool event. They have several events going on at once: a 500-mile randonee with multiple start times and both solo and team categories, a 24-hour time trial, a 200-mile UMCA National Championship, and the 100-mile UMCA national championship time trial.  People set-up tents/mini-aid stations along the road, it’s almost like Woodstock for cyclists.

 

I realized very quickly that my chances of placing in the top 3 were slim as more and more riders showed up for my event, particularly some semi-pro triathletes with full aero set-ups (time trial bike, aero suit, helmets, etc.).  Also, there wasn’t really any place to warm-up, but I figured I could take it a little easy on the first lap to get my legs warm. My goal was to finish in under 5 hours. Since I would need to stop a couple times to change out my water bottles, I figured I needed to average about 21 mph on the road to hit my < 5 hour goal.

The race started fast, the triathletes hit the gas hard from the get-go. I tried to keep pace with the leaders without pushing myself to hard. The course was much hillier than I expected (about 1,ooo ft of climbing on each 20 mile loop) and it was very windy (mostly a strong crosswind). I had  decent pace on the first lap and finished in 56 minutes (about a 21 mph), so I was right where I needed to be. Then it started . . .

Soon into the second lap I got a flat tire. Luckily (or not) I have had some bad tire kharma recently (including a string of 4 flats in 6 days) so my tire changing skills are good right now. I was able to change my tire in a few minutes and was back on the road. I started to really push it in order to make up some time and everything fell apart. My knee started to hurt on the climbs and then several miles later my legs started cramping in a way that they never have before. My upper hamstrings started to knot up and it was difficult for me to generate any power to the pedals. I decided to keep going until mile 40 and hopefully it would get better where I could continue. By the time I got back to the start/finish at mile 40, I was done. When I got off my bike I could barely walk, it even hurt just to sit down. This was really dissapointing for me because I have never not finished a race/event.  Looking back I think it was the combination of a couple factors:

1. The aero bars. Should have put them on sooner or not used them at all. With the elevation changes on the course, I was constantly going from the aero position to hard climbing and back again.
2. Should have found some way to warm-up. Definitely pushed it too hard early without warming up.
3. Can’t make-up for bad luck. Once I got the flat, I should have called it a day and just considered it a 100 mile training ride instead of pushing so hard.

So you might think that after this I would have considered Saturday to be a pretty horrible day, not at all. The benefit to quiting at 40 miles is I was able to get home early enough to go with Jess and Grant to my nephew’s birthday party in Forney.  My sister’s family moved to Forney from Louisiana this summer and it’s nice to be able to see them on occassions like this without having to drive 7 hours (Forney is only an hour away).

My nephew, Jack, had his party at a fun jump complex. Grant had a blast (as you can see in the photo above with his cousin Hannah). I have to say that was one of the best afternoons I have had with Grant. He and I ran through the fun jump place for almost 2 hours non-stop, laughing, going down the slides and just being silly. He really is a funny kid with a great personality. So all-in-all, a pretty good day.
 

Big announcement

That’s right Jess and I are having another baby, which means Grant will soon be a big brother.  Our first pregnancy was very calculated and deliberate, this one was totally unexpected, but not unwelcome. Jess had a check-up today and everything is looking good, so I think it is more “real” for both of us now. The baby is due the first week of April, which means that Grant will be 3 years older than baby.

Kevin has already been giving me a hard time about the challenges of having two kids, i.e. less time for cycling, TV, etc. Luckily I have a pretty amazing and flexible wife when it comes to helping me balance family time with work and personal goals, but I know it’s going to be a challenge. I look at it this way, now I’ll have three people to cheer me on at the end of a race.