Cold Weather Running


So with my vacation over, and New Years Resolutions to get to I started the new year off with a brisk cold weather run tonight. Terra often says that to be truly great at something requires you to do things others are unwilling to do. Tonight I feel I did one of those very things! IT WAS SO BLOODY COLD TONIGHT I WAS SURE MY EARS HAD FROZEN OFF! I am soooooooooooooo looking forward to Wednesday when I get to do it again!

Why am I doing this you ask? Well my friend Karen and I are in a bit of a bet. The prize for the winner has not been laid out yet, but the bet is as such. The person who finished the Capital City Half Marathon with the fastest time wins. I am letting Karen decide what the prize is, but she better pick SOMETHING soon or I am picking for her!

I loose enough bets to Terra I am not about to loose a bet to another girl!

34. A Failed Night of Gaming

This week I am up in Seattle all week covering for one of my project safety guys. The project we are on requires us to have an on site safety person at all times we have crews working. On Monday I was informed that my safety guy would be out sick all week, and that I needed to cover for him till he returned. This really is not a major issue, and I have done this before, but trying to hold down the safety responsibilities of a project, and do my own job remotely is always a challenge. So when quitting time came yesterday I was anxious to get home and get a good run in with Terra and our running group. Now for those of you not familiar with Washington State and its ONE highway, consider yourself blessed. I left Seattle at 4:00PM, and it took me an hour and a half to get home. The drive usually (without traffic) takes 45 minutes to an hour. Our running group meets at 5:45, and Terra had already left for the meet up. So with 15 minutes I raced into the house changed into my running clothes, and rushed back out to the car. Terra and I had talked a few minutes prior, and since we were both sure I was going to be late we had decided to meet at a different location since by the time I would arrive they would have already started their run. So I would be meeting them on the trail. When I got there I saw no sign of the group, and figured after a few minutes that they had gone a different route that day. So I still wanted to run so I took off on my own.

Now the area we run winds its way around Capitol Lake. I decided since Tuesdays are usually our speed training day that I was going to run around the lake as fast I could go. I have no idea how fast I was going, due to the rain I did not want to take my Iphone out with me and expose it to the weather, but I was booking it. By the time I got to the end of the trail I was VERY winded, but felt like I had done a good run. Thats when I looked up and saw our running group heading straight for me. All I could think of was CRAP! So we met up and I turned around and started running with them….for about 20 seconds. I continued running, but had spent most of my energy on my first lap, so after the afore mentioned 20 seconds I started to fall behind. I finished the second lap, but it was not my best run.

After our run Terra and I headed home and began discussing what we wanted to do that night. I suggested we invite our friends over for dinner and gaming on the PS3. This is a usual thing for us about once every 2-3 weeks. Usually we will have our friends Kai and Eve over for dinner, and then Kai, Eve, and Myself will try our best to advance our level on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. We like to play the Special Ops portion of the game which has a series of levels that one must complete on a certain difficulty to advance to the next level. Until last night the three of us have always made some sort of progress in that direction. As I have mentioned before its usually Kai, Eve, and myself, but last night Eve couldn’t make it. So Kai and I did our best to take on the game by our selves. We failed miserably! The game kicked our butts! After multiple attempts we could not make a single progression in the game. FInally we called it a night and turned the game off disappointed in our lack of success.

However we made up for it by watching the pilot episode of The Tick: Live Action Show. Kai had never seen the show, and I think he was scared for life after he had. But not to worry I promised him that I would make him watch the entire 13 episodes of the show.

14. A Long Night and Day

So last night I was helping a friend lay tile in her store. The store is open until nine and we cant start until at or near closing. So I headed out a little before 9 and got there to find a full crowd of people. Gabbie (my friend) was holding a card tournament, and it was running late. Even though the store was full Gabbie and I decided to get started. We stripped the laminate flooring, pulled up the the tar paper, and swept up. Now that the floor was prepped we mixed the mud and laid out our tile. Gabbie and I have a good system going. I pull the mud and she comes in after and lays the tile. We had just layed our first tile when we heard a strange noise come from the gaming area. One of Gabbies gamers was having a stroke. Gabbie and I jumped up and offered aid. Most of this was helping some of the gamers keep calm. Most had never seen someone have a seizure before and were a little frightened. After 15 minutes our seizure guy was still having trouble coming out of the fog so I called 911 and transferred care over to the guys who get paid. The got there in record time, and were very nice.

Once they left Gabbie and I still had a ton of tile to lay and had lost about an hour and a half prepping and dealing with our seizure friend. But we carried on and finished, more or less, around one in the morning. I say more or less because we had a bad batch of tiles that was to big so we could not finish the section. We also had a bag of mud that didn’t like me and did not want to mix right. It was VERY thick despite copious amounts of added water and mixing, and this made setting the tile hard. But even with set backs we got a good portion of the section laid.

Terra and I drifted off to sleep shortly after that. I say sleep, but thats not right. What I should say is Terra got to sleep. I got a nap. My alarm woke me at 4:30, and after hitting snooze two or three times I was out the door and on the way to work at 5:30. It was a long but full day.

As I drove home I remembered I needed to run today to stay current with my training. I can not even begin to describe how much my body screamed at me to NOT go running today. Terra and I have started running with a local group here on Tuesday and Saturdays. Today was their speed workout. Speed training was pretty much THE LAST thing my body wanted to do, but I got home threw on my workout clothes and hit the ground running. I did a total of 5.35 miles at or around a 10 minutes pace give a few seconds. I say at or around because I started my program and left it on and there were two sections where we as a group were just standing around waiting for others to get there. This standing around screwed up my recorded pace by a large amount. When the whole run was finished my program told me I was running an average of a 15 minute mile. This is far from accurate. Next time I will utilize the pause button.