I'm Here, No I Didn't Die

Happy Thursday Coot Fans. I apologize for going so long between posts as I know my musings are a much needed break for some of you. I'll try to provide a brief recap of what I've been up to in the last week, but I'll warn you it might include a little activity.

Since most of you couldn't give two shits about my running, I'll get that out of the way. At some level this blog serves as my own personal diary, so to be fair to me I have to include things you might find to be less than interesting. Sorry, if you don't like it write your own blog (and send me the url so I can talk smack about how boring your interests are). Woah, this sounds like Cranky Corner material. Back to the lighter stuff...

With my family out last weekend, I took Friday and Saturday off from running. As any addict knows, this was difficult for me to do. Finally, on Sunday morning I went out before everyone got up and kicked back 2/3 dozen miles or so. It was supposed to be about a 4-5 miler, but I forgot to take the 2 miles to the trail and 2 miles back into consideration when I planned it. A good run though.

Weekly total: 8 miles.

Monday morning I met up with CPG for a practice run of the Legendary Lake Run route. If you don't know (despite its legendary status), the LLR is a 6.7 mile (10+1K) loop around Pontoosuc Lake (hence the name). While 10+1 kilometers may not seem too bad to the average John Q. Layperson, those kilometers are jam packed with nasty hills. Then, just to further the punishment it ends on a hill. Fortunately they let us use the pool afterwards so that's the carrot they wave.

Weekly total: 14.7 miles.

Tuesday morning was a repeat of Monday's run, with the addition of two more people. Contrary to the 60 and muggy conditions we had on Monday, Tuesday was more like 80 and muggy. Mind you, this was at 6:30 in the morning.

Weekly total: 21.4 miles.

Wednesday was HOT and MUUUGGGGYYY. By racetime (Live on the Lake Race Series) it had cooled to about 90 degrees (F) and the humidity had dropped to roughly 98%. Ahhh, ideal race conditions ::insert sarcasm emoticon (sarcasmicon?)::. I had an alright run, slightly slower than last week but I was without CPG for motivation. Plus, as I have already mentioned, it was disgusting out. I did manage to beat this smug punk who kept looking at me like he was going to beat me. I know his type and knew he would burn himself out early then die on the hill. 1/3 of the way up the hill I was casually leaving him in the dust. Punk!

Afterwards, a fellow runner (and my racing arch nemesis) and I went for a quick cooldown run that accidentally covered the entire race route. Oops, so much for a cooldown. It was slower than race pace, but still. So instead of a 3.7 mile race in the heat, I had a 1.25 mile warmup (forgot to mention that), 3.7 mile race and 3.7 mile cooldown in the heat. I even had to break down at the end and take off my shirt as the sweat was making it stick, which was chafing my right nipple. OOOWWWW! If you know me personally, you know I don't like taking my shirt off in public (and never while running), so that should tell you how bad the chafing was. I expected bleeding.

Week total: 31.05 (we'll call it 31) miles.

Tonight is the Thursday Night Run, a casual 5-miler in the woods. This time I'm going to take it easy, I swear. Last week I was about to pass the eff out; I won't be doing that again. After tonight, I'm going to take two days of rest before Sunday's Legendary Lake Run.

And by rest I mean I'm going to get out for a 20+ mile bike ride and kayak a few times. I gotta stay on top of my game, yo.

So, other than that I've been pretty much busy with work and so on. The hardware Lead Engineer on one of my projects is out with some sort of illness for the next couple of months, and I've been appointed as his temporary replacement. This means they get the work of a Lead and a Peon for the cost of a Peon. And for that I get "experience". Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Nobody has said anything, but I have to imagine this will at least look good come raise time next year. And I've got my fingers crossed about getting promoted to the level I'm already working at (sorry about ending that with a preposition). I was told at my performance review in April that I'm basically a Principal Engineer minus the project leadership experience. Ahem, I'm now doing that so get out your checkbook.

The visit from the family went off very well, with the following hitches:

• I couldn't afford the new bed for my parents so they had to use the futon (which my mother loves anyway)


• The futon had been peed on by my very sick cat last summer, so they had to use the air mattress


• The air mattress deflated in about 45 minutes so they had to sleep on the couch and recliner (my dad sleeps in a recliner every night anyway due to his multiple ailments)


• My sister kept jacking up her foot on some mystery nail in the threshold between the hallway and the bathroom


• My dad cut the HELL out of his foot on that same nail. The head of the nail cut his foot, not the point of it


• I didn't have time to make the chicken salad for dinner Friday, so we had to suffer with homemade crabcakes


• We kept getting dealt crap hands in Euchre, but kept on a-smiling.

So, there you have it Coot fanerinos. I'll try to get back into posting regularly, but most days I'm busy until late at night, then I shower up and crash. You'll have to be patient for a little while.

Over and Out,
Old Coot