Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Tuesday Night - Pow Pow

Cooterinos, I'm hollering at you one more 'gain and let me tell you, things are looking up for The Coot. Grab a glass of milk and some cookies, plunk down in your favorite easy chair and let me spin you a yarn.


The Painting Project

It's been a long, nasty battle against the funkiness that was my spare bedroom. I've been looking at it in it's Kilz Primer White anti-splendor for so long that I didn't realize how bad it really was. What's funny is that this was the first room I touched a paintbrush to before I even closed on the house. Almost 6 years later I'm finally taking that God awful flat white(ish) room and making it into something I might enjoy looking at. And enjoy it I will.

As of tonight, I have the ceiling and walls painted, the trim scraped (it had some FUNK on it), nails from the old shoe molding pulled, holes - from where I nailed the window trim back up after replacing the windows - filled, and all of the trim primed with good oil based primer. Sherwin Williams makes some nice paint, but the shit doesn't come cheap.

Last night I got into a groove and got the trim all prepped, then started in on priming it. On the last bit I had, just one window from completion, I found I was getting sloppy. I stuck the brush in a plastic bag, covered the pail and called it a night. When I looked at the clock I realized I had been working on that room for damn near 4.5 hours. No wonder. Midnight is well past my weekday bedtime.

Tonight I finished up that last window (God bless you oil paint for not getting funky like latex), put all of the outlet covers and switch plates back on, cleaned up the primer/brush/pail and called it quits. I thought about getting into the last step - painting the trim with real paint - but decided by the time I was all cleaned up then set up for that it would be late again. It'll have to wait a few more days.


The Speed 'Stache

Tonight was Track Night, and I put the Speed 'Stache to work. I'm starting to think I can't blame donating blood anymore, but maybe the blame lies in staying up late last night and breathing paint fumes all evening. Wherever the fault should lie, I still wasn't able to run quite at the level I'd like.

This week was 4x1 Mile, meaning 4 intervals lasting 1 mile each with recovery in between. I tend to do 1/4 mile recovery because that's one lap on the track. Don't forget the warm up and cool down. Tonight ended up somewhere in the vicinity of 7.5 miles, about par for speed night.

As usual the first lap was my fastest, and as I settled into an appropriate pace I found myself fairly consistent. That was nice, but I was consistently slow.

Hmm, maybe it was the people who just had to walk 5 abreast on the track, almost forcing us off into the grass, or the gobs of other people who insisted on taking the inside lanes even though they're out there for fitness, not time. You can't get a good feel for consistency when you're constantly changing lanes. Yeah, that's my excuse. I wished there was an appropriate way to ask the people not to use the inside lanes if they're walking and talking, but it's a public track so I bit my tongue.

One of the good things I noticed tonight was that my severe long run the other day did not seem to have any ill effects on tonight. I was a bit sore at the beginning, but that faded away within a lap or two. In fact, once I got into the third interval I was in the zone.

Lastly, I usually end the final lap before my cooldown with an all out 100m kick to the finish line. Tonight I decided to take it a step further and start my kick at the 200m line. When I crossed the finish line I was huffing, puffing, and on the hairy edge of booting. If a mosquito had farted on me I would have lost my lunch, but I eventually got over it and the the post-run euphoria hit. I think 200m will be my new thing.


That's it, it's bed time. Sorry Ab, still no 'stache picture. Maybe when I finish painting the spare bedroom and take pictures of that I'll getcha something. Suffice it to say that it's killer.


Over and Out,
Old Coot

1 comment:

Abbey said...

Hey, whatever. I'll just keep it tucked in my imagination for now.

"Something inside of me just said 'Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him.' and I just took off." -Pre