Relaxed and Easy

A nice, relaxed morning--I felt good enough afterward to run across the street after getting off the bus on my way in to work this morning. The stiffness is beginning to go away, or at least to lessen. It doesn't take as long to get loosened up in the morning and it's not as tough getting out of bed. The walking appears to be helping a bit--I'm walking in the evenings and running in the mornings. It was a nice morning, temps in the high 20s-low 30s. I expect it to be into the 40s at 5am very soon.

I'm not looking forward to daylight time, since it's just starting to be light out before 6am. Starting Sunday it will get light an hour later.

Another beautiful day

It was another beautiful day this morning. No sun at 5:00 am, but a nice still morning. The temperature is still hovering in the low 30s at that hour, but during the day, it soars into the 50s. We're supposed to get rain this weekend, but the temps will be in the 50s and 60s.

I'm feeling less stiff in the morning, and it's easier to get started. Not that it's easy, by any stretch of the imagination--5am is a horrible time to exercise, but it's the only time of day I have available.

My wife just got a new job, and she'll be working 3-11 pm, Tuesday through Saturday, so our evenings will be shot, along with weekends. This week we will be rearranging our lives and our house to accomodate the new schedule. She was originally supposed to be on Sunday through Thursday, which would be much better for us, but there's a chance she'll be able to change her work schedule later.

Beautiful morning

It was a great morning today, the temps were in the low 30s, but the air was still.

My daughter made a banner for me, but in adding it to the page, we discovered that the layout with the banner requires a minimum resolution of 1280x720. We added it to the page at about 11:30 last night, so of course we're waiting until I get home tonight to make the necessary changes to make it appear properly on lower resolutions.

Oops.

I haven't entered the race this weekend, but I'm still planning on racing. I'll just have to pay the higher entry fee for the "late entry."

UPDATE

I believe I have fixed the formatting problem, but any resolution smaller than 1280x720 means that the sidebar extends off the page to the right. We'll work on straightening that out tonight.

Springtime is here

Great morning today! I went 4 miles in about 30 minutes and felt great the whole way. The temperature was around 48° when I started and is now 50°. I ran in shorts for the first time in a long time, and it felt great. I'm looking forward to the racing season.

Springtime is here

Spring might just be here. The temp was 39° when I started today, and was about 41° when I finished. It's rainy, but it's that misty kind of rain that keeps everything moist. The weather is supposed to be in the 40s allw eek, and possibly into the 50s.

Got out this morning (actually, it was almost noon--that's still morning, though) for a nice easy run. Between 7:30 and 8:00 pace the whole way. Felt pretty good--I avoided all of the major hills on the way and took it as easy as I could on the smaller hills. The downhills, I relaxed and took at an easy, but fast, clip.

Afterwards, I got Oed outside and we played soccer at the high school across the street. After playing soccer for a while, we walked around while I explained the field events to him. He had seen the shot and disc circles and wanted to know what they were for. He was particularly interested in the javelin.

Tomorrow, I plan to run the same route as today, but hopefully a little bit earlier in the day.

Sandy losing her job couldn't have come--well, I don't want to say it couldn't have come at a better time, because it's never a good thing, but at least we've got savings now. If it had happened when we were in Georgia, we would have been SOL. At the time we were "mortgage poor" and the flat housing market meant that we had almost no equity in the house. Now, even though we are renting, things look much better financially.

Is spring here?

The temperature was above freezing (33°) today, with no wind at all. It's supposed toget into the high 40s or 50s next week. I won't be holding my breath, though, since I've seen major snowstorms as late as early May.

Got out for a nice run early in the morning--started at 5am. I've re-measured most of my routes, and they should be more accurate now.

Snowy

Another snowy morning, with small, soft flakes blowing gently around. It was around 27° this morning, and quiet. Hardly any traffic, which is unusual in my area. A major highway, near an intersection called "Twelve Corners" usually gets traffic 24/7, but not this morning. 12 Corners was deserted this morning. The only sounds were the sound of my feet on the road and the quacking of the ducks on the creek. I discovered that one of my loops is approximately 0.2 miles short of what i thought it was. Have to adjust the loop to add a little distance. That shouldn't be too hard, though.


I had a "senior moment" this morning. I take a multivitamin every morning. After showering and shaving this morning, I couldn't remember whether I'd taken one today or not. I looked into the bathroom cup, and the bottom had some water, but for the life of me, I could not remember having taken the pill. Maybe I need a checklist on the bathroom wall.


This guy makes me feel slow. He manages to walk 10,000 meters in 38:44 on the track.


On the home front, my wife lost her job about a week ago. Well, technically, she didn't lose her job, since she's self-employed (Memo to self: "You're fired."), but her one and only customer doesn't have enough work to go around any more, and the employees get priority over the contractors. She's been looking for work, and may have a new job (employee status) soon. This comes hard on the heels of our new computer purchase. December 31 (2005 business expense), we bought a new computer for her to use for her job. Now, that job dries up.

Another chilly one.

It was another cool morning, temp around 23°, but almost no wind. Sunday was to be my scheduled rest day, and I had things set up to run yesterday morning, but I didn't get to bed until stupid o'clock, and when the alarm went off at insane o'clock, I just decided to go back to sleep. It was a good run this morning, I felt good, relaxed and loose.

The tightness has been my biggest problem. For some reason, it's been worse since I got back from SI. Maybe all the walking I did there(I didn't have a car, and lived roughly a mile from the nearest train station) kept my old legs limber. Maybe I should go back to walking more than a mile every day.

I'm signing up for the over-40 race on the 1st of April. I just printed out the entry blank yesterday, and got a laugh at the logo at the top of the form. It shows a football going through a tire swing as the letter "O".

Wintry morning

Without the snow. It was 29° when I started my run this morning. I, stupidly, left my gloves at home. It was so sunny that I decided to forego the gloves and hat. The hat was unnecessary, but my fingers regretted my decision to leave the gloves behind. I went another 3 miles today, finishing in just under 20:00. My stupid competitive urge kicked in on me, and every time I saw someone running, I picked up the pace without realizing it. Several times during my run, I found myself going much faster than I had wanted to. Maybe I should stick to the early morning (5am) runs until I'm ready for these faster paces.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

We're having a party at work today--I guess it's required when your staff (30 people) includes 3 O'Sullivans, 2 Garveys, 2 Kinsellas, a Byrne and a Mannion. It's pretty much expected by our customers that we'll have some sort of party in the office today.

I got out for an easy 3 miler this morning. I forgot to start my watch at the beginning of the run, but I passed a digital clock less than 100 feet from my starting point. My finishing point was more than half a mile away, though, so I had to estimate. Judging by the difference between my watch and the clock, a comfortable training pace for me is around 7:00-7:30 right now. This is the time to increase my distance, so I'll be gradually cranking that up, just a little bit at a time. I've either been injured or recovering from an injury for since last May (not that it always kept me from racing), and I don't want to cause any more injuries.

Icy.

The footing this morning was treacherous. Everything was coated in ice, and I slipped several times while I was out. Feeling pretty good, though--my AT is feeling good. Again, it was a little stiff when I got out of bed, but loosened up pretty quickly. The wind was not as bad as yesterday, but it was still a pretty strong breeze. My last half mile or so was straight into the wind. I'm pretty close to a range of hills (actually a terminal moraine) that blocks most of the wind, but today the wind was coming directly from the south (an unusual direction), so there was no hope of any shelter from the hills.

A little more snow is due over the weekend, then next week is supposed to be 30s and rainy. I'd rather have snow than cold rain.

Paybacks

Winter's not over. Not even close. This morning, the temp was only around 40°, but the wind was above 20 mph, with guste as high as 40. That means the weather is changing. We're getting a snowstorm over the next two days--it's currently in Michigan and heading our way. More snow later in the week.

Got out early this morning. A little stiff, but I warmed up, and before long I was comfortable and relaxed. The wind this morning produced a strange effect. I was running through a neighborhood built in the 1950s-60s, so the trees are younger and the houses farther apart. I expected to be fighting the wind the whole way, particularly since I was running on a nice straight road running through the area, and the wind should have been blowing straight down that road. As I ran down the street, I could hear wind chimes being blown around violently, while on the road, no wind was blowing.

I'm thinking about entering a race on April 1 which is limited to people over 40. A nice little 5k, with a small field might be just the thing.

I Guess Winter's Over

The temperature today was in the mid 60s for most of the day. I got out at around 4pm for a run and it was 62°. No more snow, ice or slush. Oh wait--next week we're supposed to get more snow. That's the beauty of Rochester weather. You literally never know what to expect.

We all went to the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Downtown Rochester today. My heritage is Irish (immigrant grandparents) and my wife's is English and French Canadian (immigrant mother).

An amusing story: Once many years ago, before children, we were in Toronto in a small restaurant, and I noticed my wife staring at some guy--discreetly, so nobody would notice--with a puzzled look on her face. She said "I know I've seen that face before, I just can't place it." I looked at the guy, and said "I know where you've seen it before--in the mirror." This guy could have been her twin brother separated at birth.

I didn't get into the race today--my AT wasn't really ready for it. I can't run a race slow and easy. I have to run it as a race. It'll be around mid-May, I think, when I race again.

You call this a winter?

It was 57° this morning at 5:00 AM! Why, I remember March of '99 when it was 7 below!

Anyway, I got out this morning for my longest run since I hurt my knee. I got out of bed, and my AT was tight and sore. I almost went back to bed, thinking "Another rest day and it'll be fine." then I thought "I can at least jog around the block." When I got out, my AT started to loosen up, I felt better and decided to lengthen the run a bit. I felt even better the farther I got and by the time I finished, I felt great. I was very careful to stretch after I finished, to keep from tightnening back up.

The St. Patrick's Day Race is tomorrow. I'm not ready for it. Electra's 8th grade english teacher will be racing tomorrow, though.

She's started running with me again in the evenings. I think she'd like to run cross-country, and maybe track.

Dark.

One of the darkest mornings I've run in a while. I couldn't really see the road at some points. There didn't seem to be a moon, and there were no clouds. Even the neighborhoods I ran through seemed to have shut off the streetlights. If it weren't for a few houses with lights on, I would have thought the power had gone out.

Part of my route this morning was along a main thoroughfare which is currently under construction (supposedly we have two seasons--winter and construction, but constuction season is actually 12 months long). I could barely see my feet (extremely dark along there)while I was running, so I had to take it very very slowly in order to avoid stepping in a hole or going off the road. The cars with the highbeams on didn't help matters, since after they passed, I was completely blind.

A friend who is a cyclist (he used to cycle the C&O Canal Trail regularly, before he bacame a father) has asked me to race in a duathlon with him. The running portion of the race is 5 miles (two 2.5 mile legs) so it's a very short race. The race comes up on May 13th, so I've got to get serious about it. The race is in Lewiston, and the cycling leg seems to run right along the Niagara River. The running legs appear to be around the Village of Lewiston.

We raced together for a few years (before I moved to Atlanta) at a small race in Batavia which put on a pretty good party after the race was over, but it seems that the race in Batavia is gone forever. Sorry to see it go.

Nice day

Got out for a couple easy miles this morning. Temp in the high 20s, rising to about 34°F by the time I finished. My Achilles started tightening up near the beginning, but by the tim I reached the mile point, it was nice and loose, and didn't give me any trouble after that. Hasn't given me any more trouble all day.

Oed and I walked up to the library and got a couple of books out. I had a couple of overdues (four, actually), so it cost me $6.00 to redeem myself.We had a nice walk there and back. He always surprises me--today he wanted to talk about fractions. So, after a nice little talk about thirds, fourths and fifths, we came home and read our books. Captain Underpants is very big with him right now, along with David MacAulay.

Another cold one

Another cold morning, all of the thermometers agree; is was 23°F outside this morning. No wind, though, a nice calm morning. The good thing is that I'm actually able to get out early in the morning without pain. Take it easy, don't push it, don't try to do too much too fast.

Racing is off the table for the month of March, at least. I'll be looking for short (5K) races in April.

I have been taken to task for leaving my glasses around the house. Not only that, but I occasionally lose my glasses. In my defense, I have been wearing glasses for all of three months, and had 45 years before htat in which I never wore glasses, so I'm just getting used to the idea of glasses.