23 is the new 25

(Yeah – this one takes some explaining. First, though: Dianna – five is the new three, not the new six, because I did feel that the last mile on Thursday was a little bit of a stretch. Five would have been a completely effortless effort. Six required a little bit of endurance pushing)

Ok. All Right. Now that we’ve got that out of the way – Two workouts to sum up. Saturday was yard day. Broke up some of the potholes in the driveway, slung around 60 lb bags of asphalt patch, blah, blah blah. Got a good nap in the hammock. Scratch that – got a decent nap in the hammock while Jacob played pirate in same.

Sunday morning, the boys were up, the wife was well rested, and there were two hours before we had to be out of the house for church. My soulmate and partner says “Hey, why don’t you go run?” Why not indeed?

Saturday – nice, but still a little chilly. Sunday was quite literally perfect. High 40’s/Low 50’s, sunny, little to no wind. So I decide to do the 5 mile loop from the house around to River Road. Headed uphill first – as I headed up the trail to the old school, Louis Armstrong and Ella were crooning, the sun was shining, and it hit me exactly how good life was. Cleared the top of the hill, made a little bit of a wrong turn and about a quarter mile detour, and headed down the hill towards the river. The sun was clear of the hills on the other side, and, no lie, there were robins singing.

No other real implications – more than 5 miles, about 40 minutes, give or take.

Other than the iPod, I’m taking a decidedly low-tech approach to running for a little while. Or at least until I recharge the batteries for the Forerunner. Seriously, though – I’ve been enjoying running without the continual feedback from my little GPS guided nursemaid. Maybe it’s spring, maybe it’s a complete rejection of the treadmill mentality, maybe it’s just yet another random flight.. whatever, it’s working. Last week was 21.4 miles total, which is the biggest in a while.

OK, on to the 23 being the new 25 – I’d picked up a new cassette (a SRAM PG 970 12-23) for the Cannondale (part of upgrading the old Trek to nine-speed).

It’s beautiful.

(which reminds me that I need to take and post more pictures)

Quite literally beautiful – all chrome and shiny plastic, all kind of bits cut away – even the teeth that attach to the spline are only square on the edge that transmits force to the axle – the backside is nicked off to save grams. Will grams help me out? Heck no – I’m still dealing in pounds off of my backside. In any case, I’ve been avoiding switching to the new cassette out of caution – my old cassette is a 12-25, meaning that the “granny gear”, i.e. the biggest cog in the back, has 25 teeth, and the new cassette only goes to 23 teeth – I’m losing two inches of chain leverage to make the rear wheel spin one revolution.

(this is the part where everyone but Warren, Christian, and Fixedgear say “Uh… yeah…” and start reaching for the button back to Bloglines)

Anyhoo, the last time I rode Newport, I ended up bailing out into the 25 tooth cog on a couple of the hills. This time – not so much. Not at all, in fact, and I managed to avoid the 23 tooth cog most of the ride.

All the way into the office today WGBH, the NPR station out of Boston, was pimping the Marathon and Patriot’s Day. Yep, folks in the Bay State get an extra holiday, and miss no opportunity to rub it in. I’d feel bad about it, but I spent eight years as a Federal Employee, and got more than my share of cheesy holidays. Plus, the folks up in MA do it right – a Marathon, an 11 AM Red Sox game that gets out just in time to cheer on the runners, and commemorations of revolution, democracy, and all of that stuff that the rest of us take for granted.

Me, I was into the office early to make sure I finished up some stuff for a client and to make an 8 AM meeting. Round lunchtime, I really thought about heading out for a short ride (wanted to get a day’s rest – my shins were twinging a little bit Sunday evening, likely from swinging an 8 lb sledge on Saturday), and thought “It’s just going to get windier…”

It did. Finished up in time to easily finish the 14 mile loop I’d done on the east side of the island a couple weeks back, so I headed out. And I felt good. When I got to the turn at the Middletown line, right before you get to First Beach, I checked the clock on my cell phone (no Forerunner, no computer – just legs, lungs, and 18 or so pounds of aluminum, steel, rubber, and leather) – Wow. I’d only been out for 30 minutes, and had only about 10 minutes back to the office. Hmmm. What to do?

Hey, I thought – why not loop the other side of the island and finish the day with about 26.2? It’s appropriate, right?

A brief gripe – The biggest threat to cyclists is not, as many would propose, automobiles. Nor is it, as others would counter, crappy road conditions. Automobiles are, for the most part, easily seen, observable, and even more closely tied to good pavement than cyclists. Crappy road conditions – Well, bikes were invented in the 1800s when roads were by definition, crappy, and were (on average) faster than cars until the 19-teens and ’20s. Crappy road conditions are a figment of riders’ imaginations. Or an indication that you’re riding in Northern France/Southern Belgium.

No, dear hearts, the biggest threat to riders is pedestrians. Not joggers/runners/other folks exercising. Like cars, folks out for their health are predictable, and usually worried about playing in traffic. Random pedestrians, however, are interested in shopping, snacking, talking on their cells, chatting with their companions, and only marginally aware of anything outside of a 3′ sphere. If it’s making engine noises, maybe they’ll pay attention; definitely if it’s making honking noises.

Bikes, as any dog will tell you, are completely unholy – they move silently, without any discernible means of locomotion. So pedestrians ignore them, much like people ignore anything that does not fit into their world view, such as UFOs, etc. And pedestrians are quite happy to stroll out into the middle of a street as soon as the last car in a cycle has passed, and remain there until the next batch of cars patches.

Downtown was near suicide – it’s school spring break for most schools in New England, and Newport is spectacular as the annual flowers begin to come out and temperatures moderate. It’s all right, though – commuting in Houston lead me to perfect the bike bail-out; the key is to lunge at the pole or ped you’re about to hit, grab on, and try to get your body beneath theirs to cushion their fall… Didn’t hit anyone this time, but it wasn’t for lack of opportunity. I did nicely use that stretch of road to recover from really pushing on the first part of the loop.

So I did the western side of the island. There was a pretty stiff breeze out of the southwest, but I used a little topography to my advantage. I cut through downtown and headed west on the north side of the island, past the old fort, using the island itself to create a lee. As I made the turn at the State Park at the western tip of the island to head east on Ocean Avenue, I battled the breeze up the hill, then swung left.

The Atlantic was brilliant blue on my right, and the sun and the wind caressed my back. Honest to god, I have never been so right with the cycling gods. My legs were turning circles, not mashing and pulling, breathing was regular, not panicked and painful, and there was only the slightest sound of chain clicking on teeth over rubber crunching sand. Over the rough patches of road somehow I was able to unweight not only my butt from the saddle, but also my wrists from the tape and my feet from the pedals – I swear, I was flying.

As I came back into Newport proper and rounded the corner onto Bellair/are? amongst the mansions of the Gilded Age, there was a car of Mass. tourists down for Spring Break (middleschoolers and their parents, not college) poking along, seeing the sites. I rode up behind, and was considering doing the jerk thing and whipping around them. The driver caught me in his rear-view, and started to accelerate away. I jumped, and drafted him most of the way up the road, loving every minute of maintaining what must have been better than 20 MPH, uphill.

Pulled back into the office parking lot after about 90 minutes in the saddle. Haven’t figured out mileage, but I’m pretty confident that 26 ish is a good number. There was a detour all the way out to Third Beach along roads that give the cobbles of Flanders a run for their money. The biggest difference this time was no fooling around with maps.

But WOW. What a ride. I finished strong – the last four corners featured voices screaming in my head “The American’s approaching the finish line after a long day in the saddle. The Sprinter’s teams have really put on the pressure, but Jankowski ought to be able to hold them off…” Yep, I rode it like I stole it. So nice.

The silly thing is that I’m really looking forward to getting another 20 running miles in this week, though.

Five is the new Three

One last tax rant – at least I’m not going to prison for failure to file. Plus, I’m done a whole 25 hours early.

What was surprising to me, though, was hearing at least two other folks who had waited until the absolute last minute to look at their taxes. Both with masters’ degrees or better. Makes me feel like that much more of an over-achiever

As far as five being the new three. Miles, that is. A couple of months ago, I passed the point where a run wasn’t worth doing if I wasn’t going to get in at least three miles. A three-miler was a nice, comfortable distance. I think I’m at the point where the 5 miler is my favorite run. Long enough to work out the kinks, break out in a good, deep-down sweat, and clear out the windpipe. Not too long, not to short.

I needed to run this afternoon. Work had been challenging but rewarding, finishing taxes loomed, and it was another crazy beautiful (if still slightly chilly) day. Not that I’m complaining. I overslept this morning and had to sprint to the office to get started at a reasonable hour. Worked all day, huffed down some leftover pizza for lunch (Pizza Hut’s Buffalo Chicken pie – next best thing if you can’t find a rock of crack), and was looking forward to working all night. So I threw on shorts and sneaks on my way out of the office, with thoughts of reacquainting myself with Jamestown after the winter.

Parked at the Soccer Field on the Island and headed north along East Shore Road. My goal was to run for about 50 minutes – 25 minutes out, turn around, and huff it back. I wasn’t going to push particularly hard, and the iPod helped – played a bunch of Sarah McLaughlin, kd lang, and Art Blakey to keep the heart rate down, and the pace what I thought was gentle. At 25 minutes, I had just rounded the turn onto North Main Road, and turned around at the corner of N. Main and Park. Decided to kick it a bit, and made it back to the car as the elapsed time hit 48:18, cutting 2 minutes off my out time (I was at 25:20 after waiting for the UPS guy to go by). Not so bad, I figured.

I still haven’t recharged the battery in the forerunner, but probably wouldn’t have used it this afternoon – I really get a kick out of seeing how low I can get each mile split. But I was kind of curious to see what 50 minutes would get me mileage-wise, so I drove the loop up to the north end of the island using old-school distance finding. And I was pleasantly surprised when my odometer ticked off 3 miles from the parking lot to my turn around. I knew I’d done a heavy five miler, but I didn’t realize quite how heavy. Let’s see – nine minute miles would be 54 minutes, 8 minute miles would be 48 minutes – so my “easy” run (and I really was trying to keep my breathing slow and steady) ended up being about an 8:20 pace… Crazy, huh?

And WHAT A DAY! I didn’t ride since it was pretty windy, but this section of Jamestown is great on windy days ’cause it’s all sorts of tree-lined. There must have been a dozen different types of daffodil along the road (My faves are the ones that are light yellow along the outside with a deep yellow or even orange cup in the center), and the forsythia (the yellow shrubbery) was starting to bloom – which means there should be early season caddis on a couple of the trout streams around here… (deep breath – only time to master one passtime and still see the family and stay employed… pshew… I could at least oil my reels and condition my line … deep breath…).

Then I get home, the baby is beaming, and Missy’s made a huge steaming pan of paella, with shrimps (no little octopi, though). Mmmmm, saffron…

I tell you, if I didn’t screw up my taxes, life is extremely good. Now to look into WordPress (the guy apologized, after all) and see if I can dork things up again…

D’oh

Summary of my personal life today: D’oh.

Summary of my running life today: Woo Hoo!

Personal: f’n taxes. Looks to be a wash between federal and a couple of states. Jon suggested H&R Block, but I’m stubborn. Besides, then it’d be some person bearing my wrath upon asking dumb questions instead of me yelling (silently; the boys are sleeping) at the monitor. It’s going somewhat better than normal – only one blue screen of death this year. BTW, remind me that I need to call Accounting tomorrow and get my withholding fiddled with.

Running: Great run. Did the same route as Monday, ‘cept by myself. Finished strong, but the forerunner lost power (haven’t charged it in a long while) about 2/3 of the way through. The iPod kept going strong, though. Day was chilly, but not so breezy. Oh, and it wasn’t quite the same route – I added the .4 miles out to the point and back. My splits were in the 8:15 range. So at least I’m getting noticeably faster. Legs felt good, etc.

At lunch, I swung by the Barnes and Noble. Thumbed through the Chi Running book – looks completely worthwhile. Maybe after I finish the book I’m reading and this.

Yep. Life is good. And I think I’ll avoid prison, at least for tax evasion. And I’ll spend Friday night on the porch catching up with everyone else’s runs. Or maybe Saturday.

Ruff

So the end of last week turned out to be a bust (sort of). No running, no cycling – Honest to God good excuses for all days, so I’m not going to get all weepy and introspective on you, at least not today. Saturday I’m not going to be defensive about blowing off, though right now for the life of me I can’t figure out why not. Sunday I probably should have run, but (1) We made it to church, early actually, and (2) I laid down lime and grass seed. Oh, yeah – my lovely wife took Saturday as a well-deserved Mental Health day, so I got to play daddy all day.

Sunday was a milestone in my oldest boy’s life. He turned 5 about a month ago, and for over a year, I’ve been pulling f’n teeth trying to get him to ride a sweet little BMX bike we picked up for him. He’s an overly cautious child (unlike the Baby, who is likely to end up stuck in a tree by the end of the summer – kid likes to climb and can already climb the slide, though he ends up going down headfirst unless someone’s there to set him straight) – takes after his Mother, which is not necessarily a bad thing considering my track record – and the little bit of wobbliness in a bike with training wheels scared the crap out of him.

Anyhow, I coaxed him onto the bike Sunday afternoon, dropped his brother in the jogging stroller, and headed up the street hoping to make something click. And click it did – Once we made it over a little hill by our house, I saw the light that sprockets and chains can bring, and the big anklebiter stopped riding the coaster break, and started to coast. Once I had to start jogging to keep up with him, the kid turned into a sadist, realizing “Hey, I can make daddy run!”. So the next half hour was intervals – he’d sprint on the flats and downhill, and I’d catch him and help him up the next hill. He was even starting to get into trying to grind up hills to keep me running, but he hasn’t figured out the whole standing on the pedals thing. Good times. Nate (the year old) got a kick out of it, too – not sure if it was the speed while the stroller was really cooking, or if it was just picking up on his big bro’s happiness, but he was giggling manically. Hmmm, possibly I should be scared of the baby. I should go ahead and log Sunday – it was a mile and a half, which is something.

We got the boy (Jake) some new sneaks, too, but he doesn’t need much encouragement to run.

Today was running with the “real” runners at the lab. 5 miles for me in about 41 minutes (not shabby for an overweight white boy), 5.4 for them in 40. The guys are great to run with – they’ll push, but would hang back if I asked. Instead, I pace with them until we approach the half-way point, then I drop off and head back to the beginning, trying to see if I can hold them off until we get back. Not sure what kind of run it is – I spend the first half at or above LT, and the second half slightly slower than “race pace”. It’s not quite a stress/recovery cycle like true intervals, it’s not entirely LSD (Long Slow Distance). But it’s good, since I get off my rump and push.

ran, ran, ran, ran, ran

Also known as “A Heartbreaking Tale of Relying on the Kindness of Others”

Monday, I’d written a post so breathtaking, so stunning, so mind-bogglingly beautiful that I seriously considered not posting it. It had pathos, it had descriptions so true to life that the woman walking behind me while I wrote it had to be broken out of her reverie with old-school smelling salts. I was contemplating the “Post Me” and “Delete” buttons with equal consideration after I heard our IT guy sobbing tears of enlightenment while reading it, and heard his computer’s overload pop when the screening software recognized for the wonder of modern literature that I had created.

As I recognized that the clouds were going to part and pass a heavenly chorus to touch the earth, and I was going to hear the angles sing, I decided that I had a moral obligation to share my enlightenment with the world. Anticipating the slew of book offers and speaking engagements about to be hurled my way, I grabbed a box into which to pack my personal effects as I knew I would not have a chance later. I ran a comb through my hair and chomped on a mint, then made sure my shoes were tied so I could outsprint the women who were sure to begin to throw themselves at me once the post went live.

With a deep breath, I hit “Post” on the Blogger interface.

“We’re sorry, but we’re experiencing technical difficulties. Our software engineers are working diligently to correct the problem.” Whaaaaa??? I wondered?

I hit the Back Arrow on Firefox to see if I could salvage the post, but all that remained was a blank page. “Nooooooooo!!!!!” I screamed.

For a heartbeat I considered attempting to reconstruct the post, to pass on my enlightenment to you, the unwashed masses. But the moment had passed. Truth and Beauty, only seconds ago framed on my laptop’s screen, had again passed into Reality. And my lunch hour (and a half counting actually eating) was past and a meeting awaited.

So I apologize. And I promise I will use pen and paper next time if my beloved iBook is not handy, with MacJournal fired up. (Seriously, MacJournal is quite possibly the best bit of software I’ve run across in a while – interfaces with MT, Blogger, WordPress and a bunch of others if you want, and works like a champ as standalone. PC’s may have a million applications, but the 10,000 for Macs are much higher quality). But don’t worry too much – my muse seems to have headed north; you can get most of the gist over at Brogan’s Blog.

As for me – I’m going to switch to WordPress or something similar (There’s a scandal brewing over the guy who runs WordPress’ page gaming Google to increase their AdSense revenue, which kind of bums me out – the Complete Running blogs are all beautiful, and the package looks easy to use) next week, once I’m done with taxes (not my fault, I’m waiting on the Navy to fix a bad W-2). I can’t bash Blogger too hard, after all, I got far more than I paid for from their free service. But, I’ve been meaning to learn some server-side stuff, and this seems to be a great way to do it.

Oh, yeah, RUNNING:

Re-focusing this week seems to be working. Monday I banged out 5 miles in 42 minutes (average of 8:22/mile), and felt good. I tried the whole “running on my toes” thing, but it felt like I was scraping the bottom of my shoes when my feet would touch down. It’s a good thing on the bike, since pushing forward at the top of the stroke is adding power, but in running my guess is that the little “Shhhhhsh” sound with each step is wasted energy that’d be better used to go faster/farther. So I fiddled around with my stride, easily avoiding striking my heels by virtue of a dull ache remaining in my right heel from my incident at the pool. List it as a good run.

Today, I scraped out 3.75 miles in about 32 minutes. Yesterday’s run took more out of me than I’d thought, plus, I really pushed the first two miles (15:05 for the two). I started out kind of sore from Monday, but running again today did wonders for stretching out the muscles. But it was beautiful, and there was NO WAY I was spending lunch indoors.

I’m still chasing the Runner’s High – somehow I haven’t found it the last couple of months, but I keep getting closer.

Oh, and I’m cycling tomorrow. A guy from one of the other contractors and I kept “meaning to” ride together all last year; this year, we’re not taking excuses.

Wow. I didn’t realize exactly how great things were going. The bluebird of happiness seems to have arrived with shorts weather. Hope y’all are doing as well (Don’t think CT is going to completely beat Texas out of me; besides, English is sorely lacking a second person plural pronoun, and y’all is much better than “youse guys” or just “you”. Try it.)

And no lie – go read (or re-read) Chris’s post on FOCUS. Chris, as always, rocks.

run, run, run, run, run

Looks to have paid off, baby. This weekend was drill again, and the bi-annual (semi-annual, I always get those confused; it’s the one that’s twice a year) PRT. Pushups and Situps were an improvement over last time, but nothing really worth writing home about.

The mile and a half run, however, was good. 10:30 – like I said, good, not great. 7 minute miles, which is not so bad. The part that shocked me, though, was that I finished fastest of the other guys running, two of whom are pretty quick. We were on the indoor track, so it was 11 and a half laps (12 times over the finish line). I did the first 9 with my iPod, which in hindsight may have been a mistake – think I could have broken 10 minutes if I were working both arms. Oh, and the bruised heel was acting up this morning, but it was pretty much minor. I think not running this week was actually a good thing…

Regardless, this was a better time than I’ve gotten in a long while. This running stuff might be working.

Blah.

Seriously, though – the super cross effort I’ve been doing for the last three weeks hasn’t been doing it for me, so I think I’m revising – I’m going back to the 20 miles/week base for a while, with random cycling/swimming thrown in. Need to focus, and bouncing around isn’t doing it for me.

So, the last three weeks didn’t happen. Or, they did, but they’re a lesson learned.

Chris’ challenge? I’ve been playing hoops again.

Good Friday

Great Friday, actually, after my earlier rant…

I’m doing taxes this week, so will not be commenting much. I will still be reading y’all’s stuff – it keeps me going.

Anyhoo, after griping here Friday morning, and raining on Chris’ parade, I got off my butt and decided to talke a long lunch Friday, said “Snot be darned”, and hied hither to the pool. 1700 meters, felt great.

Then, I drove over to the Copp Family Property town park, parked the car, and hopped on the bike. 14 miles @ 15 MPH average, 56 minutes. THEN I strapped on the sneakers and ran a quick three miles. OK, ran a quick first mile, then slogged through two more.

I dunno, I guess spring was in the air…

The swim was great. I have no idea what my swimming pace is. As far as how have I been working on form – I’ve been using two guiding principles: First, if you look at critters that swim, usually they do it without making much of a rucus at the air-water interface. I suppose there’s some stealth involved, but my biggest guess is that splashing is pretty darn inefficient. Some energy that could go to pushing a body through water must go to making sound and displacing water vigorously enough to break surface tension and arc the water through the air. The second is that the motion needs to feel, well, fluid. I’ve scanned a couple books on swimming, and those two principles seem to bear out.

The bike ride: 15 MPH – Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. I thought I could push out at least a 16 MPH ride. BUT, I was holding back a bit since I wanted to at least run a little bit, and I intentionally hit a couple of pretty long climbs. For a first real ride of the season, I’m not entirely upset.

The run was much better than I’d expected after swimming and cycling. Other than your core, the three sports do work drastically different muscle groups. First mile was in the 7:30 range, second in the 8:30, and last in the 9:30 range, so I was clearly fading fast.

Saturday and Sunday were both yard work and family days. I’d been late at the office a couple of nights last week, so rather than carving time for working out, the boys and I spent a bunch of time in the yard, on the swingset, laying down lime and fertilizer, and clearing brush.

So Close

Today was supposed to be a swim day. But, the base pool was closed, and I missed the morning session at the Y. Flexibility being the name of the game, I went and ran Bluff Point on my way home from work. And it was almost, but not quite, a good run. Which has me completely pumped for my next running day (Thursday – it’s a dual sport day, so I fully expect to die.). I have so missed the fabled runner’s high during the last couple weeks of difficulty.

There were moments during the run when I felt as if I could potentially nudge over the edge and into endorphin fueled-bliss, but I just couldn’t quite get there. My guess is that it’s the pseudo cold I’ve had since Sunday (probably because I didn’t wear a hat on Saturday’s ride) holding me back. The run in and of itself was pretty decent. The paths were all solid but not frozen hard, the temperature was tolerable without a jacket, and it wasn’t raining, though it was threatening.

While I haven’t investigated any of the funky running methods other than the bit I heard on NPR about Chi Running, I have been working a bunch more on smoothing out my form. Dianna talked about sucking in one’s butt today, and Mark’s going crazy with the stuff, but I’ve got the old trial and error (mostly error) working for me.

On Saturday while riding, I noticed that my pedaling style had completely and totally gone to crap over the winter. I was stomping each pedal stroke down into the bottom of the crank arc and jerking each one up into the top rather than pushing down, scraping the mud off at the bottom, pulling up, and kicking forward like I do when I’ve been riding for a while. While running today, I realized that I’d been doing much the same thing running lately – kicking out the front foot, striking with my heel and knee locked, then lurching up as my extended leg scribed an arc under my hips lifting a (decreasing but) sizeable mass up about 4 inches, then pushing off a little bit so I could get the next leg extended in front of me.

After one of my walk breaks today, I concentrated on smoothing out my stride. Rather than waiting for my foot to strike earth, I kept each stride consistent, pulling my foot back at the same point in each step regardless of the ground condition. I would then count on the earth reaching up to catch my foot and allow me to extend behind me and push off, at the same time I was beginning my stride, sure that the earth would catch my stride.

The other observation I had today came from watching a rabbit I’d scared (tell me you wouldn’t run, too, if you had a red-faced, puffing, semi-overweight white boy bearing down on you) take off into the bushes. Once she’d come up to speed, her “cruising” pace looked completely relaxed. Sure, there was extreme effort and power when her furry feet contacted the ground, but while she was airborne mid-stride, she was relaxed. Confident, I’m sure, that the ground would rise up to meet her feet.

By the last mile, I’d gotten closer to that spot at which running approximates flying. Like I said, I didn’t quite get there, but I was close.

There’s always next time.

New place to trail run

Since I’m working on salvaging the week, much like David insisted, I got my butt out of bed this morning and went to check out the Copp Family Property, a new-ish Town of Groton park. And I liked it.

From the street, it doesn’t look like much, just a 20 car gravel parking lot and a pretty nice wooden and gilt sign. But as a place to run, it is pretty good. I didn’t map it with the forerunner, but I was out for about 40 minutes and didn’t overlap much, and don’t think I took all the branches. The trails weren’t smooth or well graded, but they weren’t completely full of ruts either. I was happy.

Tomorrow’s the boy’s fifth birthday – my lovely wife is kind of worked up about having the party at our house. But I think it’ll be all right. We’re also going to my company’s annual party that evening, so sneaking out for a run or bike will be tough. But I will do it.

Speaking of the bike – I dropped my Ultegra wheels and my lovely wife’s hybrid wheels off at the shop to get trued. On the way back, I saw the sweeper trucks out beginning to pull the sand off of the road for the summer. I cannot wait to get back on the bike…

Finish strong

Sometimes, at least.

It’s beginning to look like this year’s first training cycle is going to finish on schedule, on track. Which is an accomplishment, in and of itself. I’ll be honest, it’s the first program I’ve finished. While I stuck with Galloway’s 26 week marathon prep longer pre-kid, I didn’t come close to finishing it. So I’ve got that going for me.

The last two days have kicked my butt mentally and physically. Mentally – yesterday, my mother-in-law was flying up to spend her spring break playing with her grandkids. Yippee. It was going to work out gang-busters: I’d be able to pick her up at the airport on my way home from work, no problem. So I had been planning on finishing up kind of early and getting in an afternoon run. Yep, I knew that there was a cold front expected to blow through, but how bad could it be?

Well, y’know on those bags of frozen veggies, how they’re always bragging about “flash-freezing”? Rhode Island did that Tuesday afternoon. It’d been high 30’s and rainy all day, but right about 4:15, the temperature dropped straight through to like 15 in the space of minutes. The roads were quite literally sheets of ice, and the wind picked up to well over 30 knots (and that’s being extremely conservative). So I bagged on runnning and had supper with a friend while waiting for news from Missy’s mom. Eventually her flight got through, and we left TF Green about midnight, and were home well after 1 AM.

This morning – slept in a bit, worked about a half day, and knocked out six, yep 6 miles on the trails in Arcadia State Park. Great run, but I’m beat. We left the kids with my wonderful mother-in-law (honestly, she’s great) and headed down to the monthly trivia night at the Harp and Hound, a 19th century pub downtown. Our team came in a strong second out of about 15 teams on the strength of a round of baby animal names (Guess there weren’t a whole lot of other folks in the place with small kids at home), but ended up getting screwed by a lack of knowledge of Oscar trivia.

The other demon I’ve been fighting is my iBook. It got bit by the dreaded logic board bug. Apple’s going to fix it, but I’ve been struggling to back up pictures, etc. I think it’s done, but the lesson learned is that if you’re going to encrypt everything on your hard drive, back it up in the clear. Stupid paranoia…

So sorry I haven’t made the rounds today. Might not until Friday or Saturday.