Stung

Augustathon is over, or at least chalked up as a not quite achieved goal.

I actually dropped it last night – really, really long day at work, and all I wanted after the kids were asleep last night was to be asleep too. So, I slept. Clear on through from 9 until 5:30, 8 and a half hours of bliss.

I’d intended to pick it up again today, maybe even see if I could leg out six miles to make up for yesterday’s slack. I got home even before supper was ready, got to enjoy some sunshine and green grass with the boys. Life was good.

We were shootin’ some hoops on the driveway, when, suddenly, we were surrounded by wasps. Turns out that some yellowjackets had built their home under the middle basketball hoop (We’ve got three – a 10 footer for me, a mobile 8 footer for Jake that one of the neighbors was giving away, and a tiny plastic hoop for Nate), and were making even more of an objection to our playing basketball than folks who knowingly buy homes in the flight path of an airport’s runway do to holiday air travel.

I got stung twice – once on the temple, and once on the left pinky. Luckily, neither of the boys got stung (again – both of them had gotten stung this week, but I hadn’t had a chance to find the nest). We zipped on down to the General Store, bought some heavy-duty Raid, and sprayed the nest.

After supper, as the sun was going down, I tipped over the hoop so I could make sure to saturate the nest. It’s huge. I took a picture, and will get it up on flickr this weekend. It’s really pretty cool – can’t wait to dig it out. I hadn’t realized that the wasps would burrow like that.

So, again, tonight, I don’t feel much like running. I don’t necessarily count this as a failure, though – I’ve been doing an install at work the last couple of days, and have been fetching this and moving that – very un-engineer like, but enjoyable. I’m most proud of having figured out how to get lumber out of Shipping and making a protector for our power cable so it doesn’t get crushed while it’s crossing the pier.

The remaining 9 days of Augustathon should be no sweat – I’ll be rested, and I think I can reach the 93 miles for the month that I would have if I’d done a straight 3 miles per day. My legs feel strong – no twinges from the PF at all.

So, thanks for the support, feel free to mock if necessary, and go read Jeff’s post on confidence. If anything, even an attempted Augustathon and a resolve to salvage makes me think that this has been a great month.