General Jackassery

I’m sure it seems like all I post about lately is cycling, but I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that I’m still training for the Marathon in October and despite suffering some set backs due to injury, I have actually made up all of the ground that I lost and am now ahead of schedule.

A couple of weeks ago Sarah and I were in Nashville to visit her family and I decided I wanted to go for an 8 mile jog. It was supposed to be a recovery run so I planned on taking it nice and easy. However, I was also still recovering from the trip to the Blue-Ridge Parkway and I decided to let myself sleep as long as I needed to sleep. Unfortunately I woke-up about 10:00 and didn’t start my run until about 10:15. This in and of itself was stupid, but factor in the fact that I hadn’t had any carbs for the last two days, I only ate 5 grapes prior to the run and I didn’t bring anything to drink along with me and you have a recipe for disaster. Needless to say I bonk 4 miles in and I ended up walking the majority of the 3.5 miles back home. I took a short-cut home because I didn’t want to have to go over the hills I run on the way out. That bonk was probably a good thing because I’m still learning my body and now I realize that I’ve got to take fluids with me even on the shorter runs.

The next weekend I did a 12 mile run with the TNT group, we walked the first mile, but I ran the next 11 miles at about a 10 min/mile pace. That’s right where I wanted to be on a mostly flat course.

This past weekend we where in Nashville again and I needed to run only 10 miles because the TNT schedule does a long run and then a step back every other week. I knew that I was going to miss a long run in two weeks because of the record attempt, but I’m also not going to be able to make the group run next week so I wanted to do a slightly longer run than was on the schedule, then do a small step back this coming week.

So, I went on the U.S.A. Track and Field site and plotted out a course that was 14.7 miles around Sarah’s Parent’s house. Friday afternoon when we got up there I hopped on my bike and rode the course with a que sheet, stopping at every turn to note the mileage. When I got back that night I put it all in a spreadsheet and calculated the times that it should take to get to each turn. That way I could actually start slow and finish faster. By the time it was all said and done I had a nice que sheet that had me averaging about 10:46 / mile for 14.7 miles.

I got up a 5:00 on Saturday morning, started running at 5:40 and finished the run 1 minute ahead of what I had planned. I was pretty happy with that, I had planned my run well and executed my plan well. I plan on using that strategy for every long run I do from here on out. I think it will be really helpful to keep me on pace.

After the run was over I was tired, but I felt really good overall. Most important was the fact that I had no blisters or any last effects.

Now back to cycling. Since we’re getting really close to the next record attempt for the BRP, Rodney wanted to get a feel for what it would be like to ride during the “worst” hours of the night which are between 2:00 and 4:00 A.M. So on Sunday night after Sarah and I got home, I met Rodney at 11:30 and we went over to Redstone to ride. We started at 12:00 and rode until 4:00. We got 65.5 miles in in just under 4 hours. No problems staying awake, but it made for a hard day, the next day. Oh well, it was pretty nice to ride on a 4 lane road and be able to have your own lane with no vehicular traffic.

Anyway, long story short, everything is on track, now I just need more help with fundraising and I’ll be good to go!

Wow! I don’t think I’ve been this bored in quite a while! I’m really ready to head to Florida, I don’t even care if there’s a Hurricane on the way, I’m ready to get away from work for several days.

……what the most classic symptom of over-training is? I’ll give you a hint……..bahhhboooooooooom……..”I’m bleeding!” Heh! Now that’s funny stuff I don’t care who you are.

It’s been a pretty good week and it’s closing out with wonderful weather.

We’ve gotten the cabinets in the kitchen finished priming, the doors have two coats of paint on the outsides, so we have the inside remaining. The drawers have two coats of paint on them so they’re done, all we have to do is paint the cabinets themselves, the trim around the kitchen and hang the doors back up and the kitchen will be nearly complete. The walls technically need another coat of paint. I figure a good 8 hours of work would get the painting done, then a couple of hours to get the doors back up and I’m in b’ness!

All pets are doing well.

I’ve ridden 126 miles so far this week, played hockey twice and plan to ride another 30 tomorrow morning. REALLY slow tomorrow though. This will be Jackie’s first real ride. He’s been doing really well lately getting up and riding 12.5 miles a couple mornings per week. Now he needs to start adding a longer ride to that on the weekends and this will be his first. What sucks for him is that it’s a pretty tough course that I have laid out. I feel pretty sure that he’ll be able to make it, but I’m also pretty sure that he’ll be really damn tired when we’re done. I’m proud of the boy though!

I’m ditching Knology for TV. Keeping them for internet. Have DirecTV being installed a week from Monday. TIVO ooooohhhh yessssss, the precious!

That’s about it. I made it through a whole two full weeks in the office, and with the exception of going to hang with my peeps in Fla. I don’t plan on traveling for a couple more weeks! YAY!

That’s all!

27.25 miles at 17.21 MPH over very rolling terrain, 3 decent little climbs. Don’t know where it came from, probably won’t be able to do it again for a little while.

On a different note, I got an email from a girl that I went to high school with. Apparently, my class IS going to have a 10th reunion. I used to think that I wouldn’t be interested in going to something like that. I don’t know if it’s the idea of maybe going back to the Monterey area or actually seeing what some of those people have been up to but I think I’m going to try to get there. I looked at plane tickets from here to San Jose already and I can fly American round trip for about $225 so I may go.

We’ll see.

Maybe I’ll get home someday. Because there were some thunderstorms last night on the East Coast U.S. Air decided it would be prudent to cancel a crap-load of flights. My flight from here to Huntsville was among those flights canceled. I originally thought that I would get rebooked on a flight into Nashville and get Sarah to come up and get me, or rent a car and drive home, but they kept changing the departure time or the flight to Nashville (remeniscent of the flight I was on and the others I’d heard get canceled.) So I decided to rebook on the flight that leaves this morning and stay in a hotel last night. They ended up putting me up in a pretty nice hotel for a really good price. U.S. Air wouldn’t pay for the hotel since the cancellation was due to weather. That’s a load because there was no need to cancel all those flights.

Anyway, I guess I’ll be home sometime today, but some of the wet weather is still in the area. We’ll see how things go.

Okay, I’m dumb. I’ve screwed this post up three times now. For some reason I’ve been hitting the tab key followed by the backspace key and it’s wiping out my posts. Nothing wrong with the software only the operator.

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For some reason I’ve wanted to hear some Phil Collins lately. I have know idea what got me on the kick, but he’s one of the few artist that I really enjoy listening to that I didn’t have a CD of. So I remedied that problem this afternoon and sitting here listening to Genisis’ greatest hits album I’m reminded of so many things. It’s good music. It brings back good memories. Trips to the beach when I was a kid, spending summers on the lake at my grandparents house and just enjoying life.

Well, I got the kitchen and bathroom grouted last night. I couldn’t have gotten it done without Sarah and Jackie helping me. I also got a coat of tinted primer on the walls in the kitchen and I honestly think that it will only take one coat of paint to get the desired color. The primer I used is pretty awesome and since it was tinted I’m already on my way to the color I want. Surprisingly enough the primer covered the dark blue under the chair rail very well.

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I got tired of looking at the pictures and the large amounts of text from each post. Truth is I’d forgotten how to reference links and do all that stuff and I just haven’t had time to go back and look it up. Anyway, I have a slight gripe that I want to get off my chest and I’ll put it behind the “more” link so you don’t have to even see it if you don’t want to. It has to do with the canoe.

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Just Kidding! Well you know you have to pat yourself on the back sometimes! Anyway, check this out! Pay not attention to the condition of the counter tops in my kitchen. Needless to say I’ve been too busy to clean, and I’ve been living off of Dr. Pepper this weekend. This is my new kitchen floor. It’s not finished yet, but you get the idea. The Cabinets and walls will be painted this week and I’ll have quarter round down before Saturday as well. I’ll post pics of the finished product as soon as I can. For now, these are the teaser.

This This is the threshold that we made to go between the dinning room and kitchen and the office and kitchen.

and this is my little half bath.

Many thanks go to Jackie and Sarah for all their help, I think it’s all going to look really nice!