ATV 101

When we made the decision to winter in Southern Utah, we also made the decision to buy an ATV.  Why?  The Southern Utah area, including parts of Nevada and Arizona, boasts some of the most beautiful red rock desert terrain on the planet.  And what better way to experience it than from the back roads?

We found both the ATV and the trailer in Lehi, Utah.  We actually bought the trailer first – at Cabela’s.  Really.  It was quite by accident.  I had pulled up to pick Paul up at the door after our annual holiday shopping trip, and there it was.  Right in front of us.  The trailer we were looking for.  I have to tell the world what a great experience it was.  Selling a trailer involves more than just running the credit card; the trailer has to be titled.  They don’t sell a lot of them at Cabela’s, but even so, the customer service there was above and beyond.  They even helped us put the new ball on the trailer hitch and put the trailer hitch on the car. 

We found the ATV on KSL.com, offered by a family in Lehi.  It is a Yamaha Big Bear 350, and it already had the storage/passenger seat attached to the back rack.  I call it the Queen’s chair.  The bad news is that it’s manual transmission, but that sounds worse than it actually is.  It’s pretty easy to change gears.  The lever is operated with your left foot.  No clutch involved.

We brought it to Hurricane this past Monday.  That same day I walked over to the Willow Wind office and bought a laminated copy of the local ATV trails.  A fellow camper saw me walk out with the map, introduced himself, and just like that, we were hooked up with the ATV riders in the park. 

So far we’ve been on three rides and have had a wonderful time – well, mostly.  We’re learning from each ride.  Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

1.  ATV riding is a really dirty sport.  When you’re riding in open air on dirt roads, you’re going to get some of that dirt on your clothes, in your hair, and of course, on the ATV.

2.  Going downhill as a passenger is challenging.  Our ATV doesn’t have footrests for the queen.  Paul rigged some rope “stirrups” to help me brace myself.  We’ve tested these on minor slopes; still need to test on really steep downhills.

3.  Forty degrees is too cold to ride – even if the sun is shining.

4.  Willow Wind RV Park frowns upon washing your ATV at the dog wash.

More adventures to come!

The Baker’s Dozen Half Marathon

The postcard in the Howl-o-weenie Run was bright yellow, and in big red letters stated that this half marathon, relay and 5K would be held on December 12 in Hurricane, Utah.  The slogan, “Proudly exceeding the legal limit of racing fun.”  I was in. What better way to meet some fellow runners, I thought.

On researching the race, I had to think twice about running the half.  You see, the race involves four 3.25 mile loops, and at the end of each loop, each runner is required to eat a sweet snack.  Frankly, I didn’t think my digestive system could handle the intake requirements.  I signed up for the 5K.

Since I was only doing the 5K, and since the start line was only 1.5 miles from Willow Wind, I decided to run to the start line.  A good decision, since there were many racers and many cars in the parking lot and on the adjoining roads.  The racers gathered at the start line as the announcer reminded everyone of the rules of the race.

1. The race would not be timed.  This was not so much a race as a celebration of running.

2.  Each half marathon / relay runner must report to the “Sugar Shack” after each loop, eat a snack, and get their hands marked.

3.  Prizes would be awarded for best costume, best jump caught on camera, and most treats eaten.

And we were off. The weather was cold and crisp, but not nearly as cold as the weather app had led me to believe.  The racers spread out fairly quickly and I found myself running at a reasonable pace.  Twenty-seven minutes, 59 seconds later, I reached the Sugar Shack.  

They offered water, Dirty Doctor Pepper (hope there’s no trademark infringement going on there), and of course, several sweet treats.  There were doughnuts, cookies, and mini-pumpkin cheesecakes – not a protein bar in the mix.

It was fun!  Not racing against the clock, most of the racers lingered over the sweets, took photos, and chatted before starting their next lap. It was truly a celebration of running.

I didn’t stay for the prizes, but as I was running back to the park, I met one of the photographers.  “You’re going the wrong way,” she chided me.  I told her I was done; I had completed the 5K.  But I really felt a twinge of regret that I hadn’t done the half.  Next year – if we’re here – I’ll do the half, sweet treats and all.

Snowbird 101

We did it!  We moved our trailer to Willow Wind RV Park in beautiful Hurricane, Utah, and are now starting our first stint as official snowbirds.  Our plan, once the holiday season is behind us, is to spend the first week of each month in SLC and the next three weeks of the month in Hurricane.  There’s so much to do here – fishing, golfing, sightseeing, and of course, pollution-free running!

Many years ago we had friends living in St. George (just south of Hurricane) who would always lament the arrival of the snowbirds.  “Blue Hairs,” they would call them, or “FOPs” (OP stands for “old people”). Now that we’re the snowbirds descending on the southern Utah town, I have two things to say.  1)  My hair is not blue, and 2) I.  Am.  Not.  Old.  Amazing how young 59 really is once you’re there.

Willow Wind caters to snowbirds.  They have activities throughout the week, and there are two gathering areas with large propane fireplaces where we’ve been able to meet our fellow residents.  When we investigated staying here last spring, we were told to get our reservations in before the first of July.  Really?  Yep.  I made our reservation at the end of June and paid for our first month, with a plan to arrive on December 15.  Plans change, of course, and the staff at Willow Wind were very accommodating.  Our spot was available for us to arrive nearly a month early.

So now that we’ve started our third week of snowbirding, we’ve learned a few things.

1.  While very nice in the afternoons, Hurricane gets very cold in the mornings.  One of our first purchases when we arrived was an electric space heater.

2.  We’re paying our “newbie” dues this season in one of the less-desirable sites.  If we come back next winter, we’ll know which sites to ask for.

3.  It is challenging maintaining two households.  While there are some things that I don’t mind having duplicates of – mostly food items that we’ll use anyway – there are a few things I’ve discovered just have to be hauled back and forth each time we make the trip back to Salt Lake.  So far, all the toiletries, the vitamins, the running gear, and the recipe box travel back and forth with me.

I signed up for my first 5K in Hurricane – to be held December 12.  Where else can you run a 5K in the morning and play bingo in the afternoon?

Rules of the Roth

Question:  Can I take a distribution from a traditional IRA, have taxes withheld, and roll the remainder into a Roth IRA? 

According to the IRS rollover chart (left), it is legal to roll funds from a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, but the rollover must be included in income.  They want you to pay the taxes on it, one way or another.  But this still doesn’t explicitly state that I can have taxes withheld and put the balance of the rollover into the Roth IRA. 

I called Morgan Stanley, the holder of my traditional IRA.  I spoke to a nice man with a New York Accent named Sal.  He gave me the answer I was looking for.  Yes, I can roll over a portion of my traditional IRA to my Roth IRA, and yes, I can roll over the balance after taxes.  He told me I needed to start the paperwork at Scottrade (the holder of my Roth IRA) and that the paperwork would give me an option to specify taxes to be withheld.  He also told me that I would need a Medallion Signature Guarantee.  A what?

Per Wikipedia, “In the United States and Canada, a medallion signature guarantee is a special signature guarantee for the transfer of securities. It is a guarantee by the transferring financial institution that the signature is genuine and the financial institution accepts liability for any forgery. Signature guarantees protect shareholders by preventing unauthorized transfers and possible investor losses. They also limit the liability of the transfer agent who accepts the certificates.”  Makes sense. 

I found the Direct Conversion form at Scottrade.com, filled it out, and hand carried it to our Scottrade branch office.  Turns out I should have started at the Scottrade branch office in the first place. Troy, the consultant, explained to me that transferring a part of my traditional IRA from one brokerage firm to another could cause confusion with the IRS.  Yikes – we don’t want that.  He recommended I open a new account for the traditional IRA, and then do the partial rollover.  That way the entire transaction shows up on the same statement.  Again, this makes sense – even if it might appear self-serving on the part of Scottrade.

Done.  And by the way, the Medallion Signature Guarantee is on the bottom of the form Scottrade sent to Morgan Stanley.  Now we wait for the transfer to take place so I can do the partial rollover.  

Fifty-Nine-and-a-Half

Today I turned 59 ½.  For those of us who have been putting money aside in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and 401Ks, this is the magic age where we can start taking the money out without penalty! 

Just because I can doesn’t necessarily mean I should.  Or maybe it does.  The encouragement to put money into these tax-deferred accounts is all over the news and on the tips of the tongues of every financial adviser.  As I’ve followed financial news and read the doom-and-gloom predictions that so many of us baby-boomers won’t have enough to retire, I keep hearing “keep working and don’t take money out of these accounts.”

What is conspicuously missing in the financial planning realm is a plan to take the money out of IRAs.  I guess there hasn’t been enough demand for detailed planning on how we take tax-deferred money out, pay the taxes, and do something with the money.  I guess this is supposed to be the easy part. 

The IRS has thought it through.  We get 11 years – from ages 59 ½ to 70 ½ - to take the money out on our own schedules and on our own terms.  After that, we are forced to take Required Minimum Distributions from our IRAs/401Ks.  I don’t know about you, but I want to have a choice of when I take my money and when I pay taxes on it.  The clock is ticking…

We were also told when we started putting money in tax-deferred retirement accounts was that we’d likely be in a lower tax bracket by the time we start taking the money out.  This may be true for some, but for others – probably lots of others – it’s not true at all.  We’re not in a lower tax bracket.  Why would we even want to be in a lower tax bracket?  That means less money.  I think most of us, if we are really honest with ourselves, would prefer to stay in the same tax bracket as before we retired. 

So here’s the deal.  I want to start taking money out of my IRA/401K on an annual basis.  I don’t want to take out enough to put us in a higher tax bracket, and I don’t really need to use the money right now. 

For me, the solution lies in the deal the government gave us in 1997 – the Roth IRA.  Named after Senator William Roth, Jr. from Delaware and part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, the Roth IRA allows you to contribute after-tax money into an account where it grows tax-free.  There are limits on new money contributions, but anyone can convert traditional IRA money into Roth IRA money.  All we have to do is pay the taxes on it.  Oh, and report it to the IRS correctly.

I’ll be finding out how to do this in the next couple of days.  Keep tuned.

Lake Powell Half-Marathon

The name of every registeredrunner is on this poster.  Pretty cool.

The Lake Powell Half Marathon is in the books!  I took third place in my age division in what was by far the most beautiful race I’ve ever run. 

I was actually surprised that I placed, considering I set a new personal record – my slowest half-marathon ever.  That said, I felt better than I thought I would.  Between the KT Tape and the preemptive ibuprofen, my back felt OK and I ran at a pretty good clip for the first half of the race.  I got tired toward the end, though, and ended up walking a couple of tenths-of-miles at around mile 10.  I guess that was the 3 to 4 percent of fitness that I lost by taking a couple weeks off running while my back tried to heal.

The Lake Powell Half is part of the Vacation Races series, which hosts eight different courses at or near national parks.  In addition to Lake Powell, Vacation Races hosts half-marathons at Zion, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, Great Smoky Mountains, and Yosemite. 

One of the coolest things about Vacation Races is their commitment to the environment.  While the course had ample aid stations along the way, there was not a paper cup to be found.  The company actually provided reusable hydra pouches to the racers.  These are lightweight, easy to fill and use, and easy to store on your race belt.  I didn’t take mine with me because I had my Camelbak vest, but I wish I had.  It would have been nice to get an electrolyte drink at the finish line and there were no cups there, either.  There were plenty of trash cans at the aid stations and at the finish line.  Their goal is no trash on the course – ever – and according to their web site they come very close to meeting it on every race.

I was also impressed by the Lucid Images, the official race photographers. 

I’ve been in many races where the photo packages were quite expensive.   Lucid offered a deal where if you paid $20 up front you could get all your photos, no questions asked and no extra charge.  They took 16 photos of me, and while a couple caught me blinking, most of them turned out great.  And I get to keep them.  All of them!

Sue and I had a great time running and enjoying the beautiful scenery, and had an even better time after the race.  After our traditional post-race mimosas, we took our race bibs and medals down to the beach for a photo op in the lake.  We also went to the Carl Hayden Visitors Center in the hope of taking a tour of Glen Canyon Dam, but apparently we weren’t the only ones with that idea because the tours were all full.  So we did our own tour, slowly walking across the bridge that we had run between miles 6 and 7 and taking lots of photos.

By the way, Sue took first place in her age group, came in well ahead of everyone in the age group ahead of her, and beat me by a good six minutes.  You go, girl!

Next year we’re doing the Yellowstone Half.

Rants of an Injured Runner

I hate it when I get hurt and it interferes with my running!

While injuries to runners are not inevitable, it seems everyone I know who runs has been sidelined once or twice to recover from an injury.  According to an article in Runner’s World dated 2/3/2011, the top seven injuries to runners all involve the legs and feet, and about 40% of running injuries are knee injuries.

Never having been part of the in crowd, I tend to injure my back, specifically, my middle back.  Huh?  How does that happen?  I’m not really sure how it happens, but I’m sure that when it does happen I can really feel the pounding of running.  And it hurts.  And I hate it.

This time I felt it after my dress rehearsal for the Lake Powell Half Marathon.  When I tried running five days later it hadn’t gotten better.  So I stopped running.  For twelve days.  Ouch.  I followed my friend Sue’s advice and went to see the chiropractor.  He directed me to stop running entirely during treatment.  About a week later he gave me the green light to try running again, but encouraged me to start slowly and not to run too many miles.  I was still somewhat weak, he noted.

Every article I’ve read about returning to training after an injury concurs with the doctor’s advice.  Take it easy.  Build back gradually.  Don’t try to get right back into the schedule and/or mileage you were doing before you were injured.  

What?!?  I have a race in less than a week!  On Monday I ran two miles.  I still had some residual soreness but it was manageable.  So I checked the first aid aisles of my local grocery store to see if I could find some sort of brace or patch or something that would help minimize the soreness. 

I found KT Tape.  I read the instructions and watched the videos for proper use.  FYI – the videos are really well done and quite informative.

On Wednesday I ran 3.75 miles with the tape placed as directed for mid-back pain.  (It was supposed to be 3.1 but we got off course.  Oh, well.)  Again, I felt it but it was manageable.  I noted that I was feeling pain in an area I hadn’t taped.  Note to self:  need a piece of tape stretched across the bottom of the bra strap.  I tried it for a short run the next day.  It helped a little.  2^nd note to self:  One more piece of tape right above the pain area – taping for rib pain as directed in the KT Tape video.   At this point I’m going on faith that it will help.  Argghhh!

According to runnersconnect.net, “Even if you need to stop running for ten to fourteen days, the amount of fitness you lose is insignificant – as little as 3-4%.”  This is encouraging.  The downside of course, is that you do lose that 3-4%. 

Thankfully, I had already made the decision not to go for a new PR at the Lake Powell Half Marathon so I could enjoy the run and the scenery.  It may be more than 3-4% slower, but I’ll finish the race.