Haven’t done this in a little bit so I’ll make it a quickie just to get my feet wet.

Somewhere in early June, I got in a bit of a thing with my internet provider. I think it went something like this: I forgot to pay my broadband bill (which is also my cable provider) in April. The total for my internet and cable for a month was like, oh… $100. So that means the May bill comes and the total is for like $199 and something cents. It’s a pretty eye opening number. I never watch much TV so the cable part of it always sort of eats at me andwhen you put a couple of those months together it turns into a big bill. So the this one is due about the 23rd or 24th of May. I write out the check,  jam it into the envelope and aim to get it into the mailstream a week ahead of time. What I actually do is leave it sitting in the console of my truck and gradually bury it under unused BK napkins and golf scorecards. So it gets to be about Memorial Day weekend and I find it while rifling through the truck. Naturally nothing is going anywhere till the day after Memorial Day so that’s when I get it in the mail. This means it’s already late again. So I’m irritated at making myself pay another pittance of a late fee they will assess on the next bill but at least am secure in knowing I paid it. Somewhere around the 5th, 6th or 7th of June I crawl out of bed and to the computer to check my email. Up comes some screen saying I need to contact Comcast to upload something to my computer. I attempt to do this but am given a screen that tells me to please contact Comcast support at some telephone number. The person on the other end of the line tells me my account has been suspended for non-payment. I know snail mail can be slow, but I sent the MF’er out almost 2 weeks earlier so it ought to be there.  Of course for some reason they’d only suspended my internet service but were happily pumping the cable into my house. I don’t how that’s possible from the technical side but that’s what was going on. I wasn’t thrilled but the phone contact assured me she could turn the internet back on for me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered reading a terms of service agreement that said “should service be suspended, a $50 charge would be applied for resumption of service”.  It was then that I pulled the plug. I said fuck it, let’s just go ahead and put an end to the whole thing. Send somebody to unhook me and send me a final bill and we’ll call it a day. It got kind of silent on the other end. And then she says my final balance will be for $160 something and they’d send a bill saying that. So the man came and unhooked it all and then I got a check for $30 something in the mail as what was leftover after my original check had arrived (which must have damn near happened the day I cancelled the account). Anyway I went cold turkey on the ISP for about 7 weeks here at home. I have some limited web usage and can check email through my cell phone so I wasn’t completely isolated. And a short time ago I got a DSL line hooked up from the phone company. They actually had to come and hook me up as I haven’t had a home phone in years and the terminal on the back of the house needed to be updated. I think it had the Illinois Bell logo on it and that company hasn’t operated for several years either. Now I’m happily surfing the web and watching Netflix movies on my computer. I’ve even been doing a little running. I’ll get to that another time. Adios!

I stopped at County Market on the way home from work Friday morning. They had this ice cream by Prairie Farms called “Cows-Moo-Politan”. It’s chocolate ice cream, vanilla ice cream with little milk chocolate moo cows strewn throughout. I thought it sounded pretty good so I picked up a carton. Last night about 10 I was thinking I better go eat a big bunch of that stuff. So I opened the freezer door and it wasn’t there. What the fuck? I look at the counter and there it still sat. I’d put the cold stuff in the fridge but left the ice cream on the counter. It wasn’t running all over the counter because I’d had a stack of dish towels sitting on the counter right beside the fridge. They had pretty much soaked up all the ice cream. So what I had left was an unopened carton of ice cream with nothing but what were no doubt very sticky little milk chocolate cows inside. Bastards!

Shortly after my last post the old PC croaked. There’s a bunch of pictures on there I wasn’t smart enough to back up on CD so hopefully I’ll figure a way to extract them. I blew the dust off my even older one in the closet and booted it up to see what was the matter with it besides just being slow. It seemed to have some programs not functioning properly. Since there was no data or files on it I was a afraid of losing, I hit the old system restore option upon the next restart. Miraculously it all came to life. It was slow but it worked. I needed to run a CD with some startup software for my local broadband company on it and popped it in. The CD player didn’t work. Oh, yeah! Forgot aboput that one. Pulled an external CD player/recorder out of the closet, hooked it up and loaded it up. Voila, surfing the internet at not a terrible speed. It surfs pretty well but if you try to watch a video while an instant messenger is on it’s just a little too much for it to take. I did a quick perusal of memory warehouses to get the best deal I could find on a RAM chip upgrade. It said I could upgrade to 2Gs from the current 250mgs. Price wasn’t awful so count me in. I then headed for the  Twin Galaxies website to download a program for recording and reporting MAME video games scores. Yes, I’m one of those geeky middle age bastards that does that. I then went to search for zipped ROMS to play on my MAME player.
Somewhere during my searching I must have run across something bad. A little balloon comes out of the corner of the screen announcing something about an anti-spyware 2009 program detecting that there was potentially some malicious software inhabiting my computer. Uh-oh!
I suddenly realized that in my haste to get my ridiculous game playing up and running again, I hadn’t loaded any anti-virus program and in fact the notice I’d just gotten was itself spyware already attaching itself to things. So I go to Mcafee where I’ve got an account paid up til the fall and download the motherload of things hoping it wasn’t too late. This is where I find out how slow the computer really is. Once it’s finally done downloading I commence the running of the first scan. A quick scan. It takes forever because something already has it’s tentacles wrapped around me. That first quick scan shows 105 items of possibly nasty things. So we go on like this for a couple days. The antivirus is killing and quarantining things as fast as it can but the virus has it pretty good. My Windows XP is pretty much completely quarantined and non-functioning. I can surf the internet on it just fine but can’t save or run programs because everything else is infected and under house arrest. When it boots up it has no start page and the only way to navigate it is by hitting the ctrl+alt+delte keys, bringing up the task manager and telling it what I want to do. Once I get on the internet some really pitiful version of internet explorer opens and it cruises around pretty well. Now if I had a recovery disk for the thing I could clean it completely and reload it all, BUT, this was an H-P made when they just partitioned the hard drive and put it all on the same infected box. So… sucks to be me.

I bit the bullet and got a new tower from NewEgg. I had stopped into Best Buy and found a reasonably inexpensive replacement. I put it in a shopping cart and proceded to the cash registers. However, some little blue shirted guy told me I needed to go check it out at the Geek Squad desk because they could answer ALL my questions. I said I didn’t have any questions but just wanted to pay for it and get the hell out of there. He told me that was still where I needed to go. So ‘there’ is where I went. You all know where this is going. To the back of the line I go which doesn’t move for a minute, then 2, then 3. After the fifth minute I’m still in the same place and about 9th in line. FUCK THIS SHIT! I back my way back out of line as there is 3 more people behind me now, make sure I make eye contact with the little cocksucker that sent me there and said, “Now that’s just fucking asinine!” That will be the last tine I go through the doors at that place. I’m guessing the whole idea of sending you to a particlular line is to sell you some kind of service contract to go along with it. I don’t know if they think that because the Circuit City stores have all closed they have us by the shorthairs or what, but they can suck my fuckstick on that one.
Anyway, new tower is up and running. It has Windows Vista. I’m not thrilled with it but it’s better than nothing…maybe.
Still haven’t run. Went back to the Doc a 3rd time around the 9th. Throat was still sore. He seemed to think some red bumps on the back of my throat were consistent with sinus drainage. Prescribed some generic flo-nase to theoretically dry me up and relieve whatever was happening with the thoat. I’m still not right. I’m going to have to go back again I’m afraid.
In lighter news, a guy at work dropped his Ipod in the toilet stool at work as he was taking a sit. As he gingerly stood up in hopes of retrieving it, the auto-flush took over and whisked it away. I’m sure it wouldn’t have worked after the dousing anyway but it was funny seeing him come back out of the bathroom wearing  just his headphones unattached to anything.

That’s all I got.

Yours,

 the currently non-running man

The last time I was here I’d been on vacation and was coming off a really sweet cold and hadn’t been running. I went back to work for 1 day, got about 6 hours sleep and woke up to bright red eyes, green snot and my eyes glued shut with the green juice. That was a pretty spectacular one day regression. Fortunately I had the clarity of mind to save the image for you good people.

You’re welcome!

So a trip back to the doctor’s office the following day brought a battery of antibiotics for an infection. By Thursday I was almost human again and went back to work. Though I feel considerably better I still ain’t quite right. I still haven’t been for a run.

The innaugural Illinois Marathon is this weekend. I’d originally signed up for the half marathon. As it’s going to be run right here in my own community I wanted to do it for sure. As of right now my participation seems unlikely.

I’d also signed up for a 25K in Grand Rapids in early May. At this point my spring schedule has kind of been kicked right between testes. I’m a little disappointed.

Got back from the golf trip last Sunday evening. All plants were still alive. There must have been some thunderstorms while I was gone. The clocks were all showing different times. The lights were off over the little plants and apparently the only light they’d been getting for awhile was that of the south window I’d parked them in front of. They were all reaching across each other to get whatever light they could.

The running at the moment is shit. I hadn’t been out the entire week before I left for vacation. I consoled myself with the intention of putting in some good runs along Pensacola Beach ahead of my daily floggery. The weather the entire week was beautiful Sunny and 70s. A far cry from the monsoon that was last year’s golf trip. I did make it out for 5 miles on Monday. After that, nada.
Tuesday monrning I had the beginnings of a sore throat. I hoped maybe it was just some seasonal allergy manifesting itself in a little nighttime post nasal drip. That night before I went to bed I took a couple aspirin because I was having some body ache. When I crawled in bed I literally shook for several minutes with chills. It didn’t lessen the rest of the week. My voice was pretty much shot the whole time. I still trudged through 6 more rounds of golf Wed. thru Sat. Sunday I woke up with my eyes glued shut by whatever green gook was clogging my sinuses. They’ve been that way every morning since, though the gook appears to be clearing. The whites of my eyes were blood red that morning also. By the time I got home Sunday night, I was just flat done. Monday thru Wednesday were spent watching TV, movies or reading the internet through whichever eye was clear enough for me to see. I’d also been running a low grade fever the whole time. Finally I drug my ass into the doctor’s office Wed afternoon to see anybody willing to see me just to make sure there wasn’t something really wrong with me. He assured me he thought it was just a cold, but that some of the colds they’d been encountering the last couple years were sometimes taking 2 to 3 weeks to run their course. I also supposedly had a case of viral pink eye.
Today, Saturday, my eyes have whitened considerably. My head is still plugged, my throat is still sore but I feel better than last Saturday. I’d also had this past week off too and had hoped to get in some more of the running I hadn’t done the previous 2 weeks along with some chores and a little local golf. Didn’t happen. Vacation ends tomorrow. Have run once in the last 3 weeks. All that good running karma I’d accumulated in February is gone with the March winds.

after I railed about SBC Yahoo DSL’s poor customer support in the last entry, I should at least come back and add that they are now called AT&T and they use the Yahoo browser. I’m not sure what the deal is that company changing names constantly. I think when I used it, it was called SBC and I had a Yahoo email. When a friend of mine signed up with it about a year and a half or so ago, they gave him an email address at sbcglobal.net, now it’s att.net.
And when complications did arise in my self-installation, (and you knew they would), I was prompted by the setup to call a support number that was very much in service and was assisted by a woman who was absolutely excellent and very patient with somebody (me) who is not always very patient. So though they had me exasperated last week, this week they soothed my savage beast. And dear old Mom’s got a good connection which is what it was really all about anyway.
And on we go quickly to my latest little project. I’d started several plant seeds here in the last couple weeks so when the warm weather got here, I could really go out and lay one on that backyard. I’ve never messed with them much because I always take a spring golf trip and I knew there’d be a time in March or April when I wouldn’t be around to water them for 9 or 10 days and I didn’t want to leave the furnace going at full blast while I was gone.
So this year I thought, well… what if I get some of those little water pellets and mixed them in with the potting soil? And what if I spread them out on a table in a south facing room? And what if I set up some lights on a timer? And what if I put them in a small room that I can heat with a small heater on a thermostat and not heat the whole house while I was gone?
As I’m typing this a better question just came to me. Why don’t I just wait til I’m back from the trip to plant the seeds since there will still be 6 or 7 weeks left before our projected last frost anyway? Well maybe that’s what I’ll do next year because I’ve already got a few things in this year.
Anyway, I moved all the little plantings into my computer room last night before bed, which was like 4 or 5 hours ago. Some I had planted a couple weeks ago and some just a couple days ago. I’ve got 5 or 6 little plants that have broken the soil just since I went to sleep. And I mean sleep to me is a 3 hour nap, so that’s pretty amazing. I’ll flip a couple quick pics up here, zeroing in on the new life at the end.

I’m leaving tomorrow so hopefully they’ll all still be alive when I get back. If not, I’m out about $5 worth of seeds. Later!

and an add on for the C-girl

I’ve done nothing but eat, breathe and work here lately so I’ll throw out a few random things here to keep the grim reaper from casting her net over my blog again. A net no doubt made from a broomstick, wire hanger and an old pillow case.
Dear old Mom has been making do with dialup internet service and I finally got off my lazy ass and did something about it. Chased down a kind of a deal at SBC for basic DSL at $10 a month for the first year. If she likes it we can continue on for $20 a month after that, upgrade the speed or make a deal with her cable company. The cable company has some all inclusive thing for not too bad a price. I think I signed her up last Monday. The site said shipping would take 3-5 days. It wanted to start billing her for it in 2 days. It gave me the option to delay the start of the billing. When it said the kit would arrive in 3 to 5 days I always assume 5 days. I was going to be doing the self-installation on it and wouldn’t be able to do it til Monday the 9th.(yesterday, by the time I’m done typing) It allowed me to delay the the start of billing until the 9th. Cool! Piece of cake!
Though I was having the package sent to her address, because hey, it’s on her bill, it also gave me the option to have notifications sent to my email and cell phone so as not to bother her with it. She just turned 81, and though she’s still a pretty sharp old gal, her hearing is not too good and this sort of thing would all sound sort of greek to her even if she could hear it.
So they send me the confirmation email of the transaction and throw in an oh-by-the-way, you won’t be able to install the service until at least 8pm on the evening your account is activated. Which meant that I wasn’t going to be able to go over there Monday morning and do this, so it all just kind of blew up in my face.
Fuckers!
BUT, it did give me a phone number to call after 48 hours for answers to questions and help. I wanted to get the time moved up to Friday the 6th so maybe I could install it over the weekend. So after 48 hours I called the number, gave the computerized voice the number of the account I wanted to discuss (Mom’s) and the phone number I wanted all further interactions to take place at (mine) and waited for awhile to get a live human on the line. After the human takes Mom’s phone number again and mine again and my email, she comes to the conclusion that I need another number.
Fuckers!
So I call that number. It picks up on the first ring. A computerized voice tells me it is no longer in service and gives me another number to call.
Fuckers!
The number it gives me to call is the number I initially called.
Fuckers!
So I call the first number again and give them Mom’s number again and my number again and am given a few choices of which department I’d like to talk to. Obviously I pick another department. It tells me that all available personnel are now busy and my approximate waiting time will be 5 minutes. 35 minutes later a real live english speaking human male answers the phone. He takes down Mom’s number and my number and gets my email address. He listens to my plea of trying to alter the activation date again and though he is unable to help me, he thinks he knows a number that can. He gives me the number. It’s the same number I called him on.
Fuckers!
I tell him this and I can hear his gears grinding on the other end. He gives me another number for billing in my region. He says I’ll actually need Mom’s account number but that they should be able to take care of it. Cool!
I call Mom to get her account number. She’s not home. I try her again an hour later. Still not home and for some reason she doesn’t have her answering machine connected.
Goddammit!
I send her an email detailing the lay of the land and ask her to send me the info.
She calls a little later and gives me the info. She also says the UPS man has left a package with my name on it at the front door. The package had come in 2 days, not the 3 to 5. That means I could have actually installed it that evening if I hadn’t been so damned smart and changed the activation date.
Fuckers!
By this time the business hours are over for the day so I’ll have to call them Thursday when I crawl out of bed.
The time comes, I make the call, give them Mom’s number, give them my number, wait for a half hour. A very pleasant sounding woman takes Mom’s number again and my number again. Though she’s very courteous and patiently listens to my plea, she says there’s no way I can move my time up. She assures me there’s much more to the process than flipping a switch. I tell her I’m installing it and it will just be my computer talking to their’s. It’s not like they will have one person there devoted to my installation. It’s all to no avail. It won’t happen til Monday which means I’m not doing it til Tuesday.
Fuckers!
So I call Mom and give her the news. She doesn’t give a shit. When it happens, it happens. Old people got it all figured out. She does tell me that SBC has left a message on her machine telling her when the activation will take place. You know, the message they were supposed to leave on mine after I’d given them my number a bunch of times specifically for that purpose.
Fuckers!
Ok, this is all taking more words than I’d planned on so I’ll layout the rest of the notes in outline form.
Flip bathroom light switch Friday, no juice.
Check breaker, breaker is good.
pull switches to check possible overheating. Switches look good.
Call electrician. Electrician can’t come til first thing Monday. OK
Saturday rains all day. Decide it’s a good day to organize all the crap in my computer room. Run out to Meijer’s to pick up some cheap shelving and filing units. Am constantly dodging these people in motorized chairs. Since when did we have so many people that can’t fucking walk?
Stop at Fazoli’s drive-thru on way home because I’m too lazy to boil my own pasta water. Supposed to be trudging through a half marathon the following day. Pasta good!
Check nutrients on their website as I’m forking it in. 1000 calories and 4 times as much salt as a can of Campbell’s soup. Good God!!!
Next day comes and can see a lines of t-storms moving through area. Lightning scares the crap out of me. Run is held, I’m not there. Another doable one in Michigan the last weekend of the month. I’ll watch the weather and decide then.
Meantime, storm rolls through
Sounds like somebody is throwing rocks at the house.
Actually it’s 60 mph winds blowing pine cones off trees and hurling them at the house.
I get home from work Monday early AM. As a force of habit, I throw the light switch in the bathroom, the juice comes on. Everything works.
7AM brings the electrician.
He can’t get it to not work. Obviously something wrong. Hard to tell when the damn thing works.
Fuckers!
Going to install that DSL for Mom today.
Wish me luck.
insert smiley face here

Feb. 14, 2009

I’d been feeling some kind of sick coming on in the days preceding
the Charleston run. I felt a little better the morning of the run
and thought I’d successfully fought the thing off. However, I don’t
know if I sort of nuked my defense system with the hour and a half
of elevated pulse or if the bug had just finally decided it
was ready to get me, but it got me. By the following day I had the
sore throat, runny nose, generally feeling like crap thing that I’d
been able to avoid the entire winter. I knew it was too good to be
true when everybody at work and my family had endured a multitude of
colds and some version of the flu. A bunch of people at work had
colds they’d been dragging around with them for like 3 or 4 weeks.
Monday and Tuesday were the typical feeling like shit days. I did
get out for about a half hour run on Tuesday morning. My hope was
that a little exercise would sort of boost my immune system and my
adrenaline a little bit and kind of clean the bug from my system.
The Sunday it got me good I’d also stopped by the store and picked
up a bottle of Vitamin C and a bottle of Zinc as well. I’d been
taking them religiously and by Wednesday the crappy feeling was gone
and I was just left with the head congestion. Went for another
little run on Thursday, generally feeling better with each passing
day. By Saturday morning I was feeling pretty good. The nose was
still running but I’d at least been able to get a little sleep the
night before. In the middle of the week I’d been awaken several
times choking on my own snot and was a feeling a little sleep
deprived even though I knew I was getting better.
 
So off I went to Kennekuk Cove where the 2009 FatAss was being held.
Each loop of the lake trail is 7.1 miles. 1 loop earns a “Small
Ass”, 2 a “Medium Ass”, 3 a “Large Ass” and 4 loops garners you the
“Fat Ass”. Several people had made 4 loops of the lake that day
earning themselves a FatAss. There are no real rewards for this.
It’s just a club run and afterwards they have a party and carry on
and it’s just sort of a way for the trail runners to break up their
winter with something fun. In fact, if you don’t feel like running,
you can just show up for the party. It’s really all about the beer.
Each lap is supposed to be 7.1 miles. Last year I’d made one circuit
of the Lake Mingo trail after a 7 or 8 inch snowfall the night
before and earned myself a “Small Ass”. I found it pretty difficult
and wasn’t sure it was anything I needed to do again.
But a year went by and the memory of the previous year’s horror had
waned and here I was again. I’d secretly hoped I’d be able to make
it around twice this year and upgrade my ass. Since I’d been feeling
kind of poorly I’d resolved to myself during the week to just make
it around 1 lap, collect my commemorative sweatshirt, have a couple
of beers and live to run another day. That was my intention, but the
road to hell is paved with good intentions and sometimes I’m the guy
 driving the asphalt truck.

I got there a little later than most. I think you could get out on
the trails as early as 7. They wanted everybody done by 2pm so they
could have a drawing for some obnoxious door prizes and commence
with the real partying. I arrived at 10:30 and while I wasn’t the
last, I was damn close. As I entered the house hosting this shindig,
there was a table laid out with signup sheets. One for every size
ass. What they wanted you to do was sign up for the ass you were
going to attempt and then sign back in when you were done. I think
mostly they wanted to make sure everybody made it back in. There’s
no shortcut back from the trail since it goes around the lake and no
vehicle could come out and rescue you, so if you were still out
there and hurt, they needed to know of it while there was still
enough light to do something about it. So as I went to sign up for
the “Small”, I casually went to the “Medium” sheet and signed up.
For this I have no explanation. You’ve heard of someone’s eyes being
bigger than their stomach when it comes to a plate of food? Well,
this was surely going to be a case of my pants being much bigger
than my ass. I smiled and greeted the club president and then headed
back out the door to what lay ahead.
I strapped on my hydropack full of Gatorade and made my way to the
trail entrance. A couple of young, probably high school age boys
were sitting on a guardrail gathering their wits. They were looking
pretty damp and sloppy. I asked them if it was a little wet out
there. Without looking at each other and almost in unison they sang
back: “It’s muddy!!!”
After the snow had melted the weekend before, we’d had a couple of
days of pretty good rains. A light snow ealier that morning had sort
iced our cake. The temperature was just around freezing. I’d hoped
it would be in the low 20s so the terrain would have solidified
somehwat. Didn’t happen. What we were faced with was a about a third
of the course was covered in damp soft grass, another third bare but
passable dirt and rocks and the final third could best be described
as an absolute hog waller. Early on I was able to pick my way around
some of the soupier spots and remained relatively dry. Eventually I
got into some real slop which threatened to pull my shoes off. I
mean it was like a brown version of Theodor Geisel’s “Oobleck”. And
then water well over my ankles. I’d just about get enough water
stomped out of my shoes so that I wasn’t just swimming in them, and
then I’d be in over my ankles again. Thank god I didn’t wear the
shoe condoms or there’d have been nowhere for the water to escape
to. As the first loop neared it end, my pants were soaked and
muddied to the knees, my nose was running like Niagara Falls and I
was tired and generally uncomfortable. I’d come to grips with the
fact I was just going to head back in and accept another year with a
“small ass”. The last 500 yards of the to the finish were the best
surface of the course. It was along a grassy road that for a change
wasn’t splooshy. My mind wandered back to the year before and how
utterly exhausted I’d been just to get around once in the snow. I
compared it to how I felt now as approached the end. No comparison,
I was in much better shape this year. I was just being a pussy. The
first loop ended, I continued on.

I figured, just go get one more
mile and if it feels like too much I can always turn back. After the
first came the second and then the 3rd followed. Once I reached the
halfway point it was closer to continue forward than turn around.
The middle of the course was just as boggy and wet as the first
time. But now I knew if I got past the crap, the last little bit
would be smooth sailing. I did have to stop at one point and retie
my laces. All the water had stretched the strings and when I’d go in
over my ankle, my shoes were filling up with water and debris. I
kept my eyes forward and plugged along finishing the 2 loops in just
about 3 hours on the money. Slower than mud but much of the going
had been horrendous. The picture of the shoes and that little
YouTube vid I put in at the end of the entry a couple weeks back
were taken and done about 4 hours previous to the ‘running of the
butts’. What you see there are a fairly new pair of shoes with about
100 miles on them. This picture was taken later that afternoon, 14.2
miles later. The shoes will recover, those socks will never be the
same. My pants looked just about the same up to the knees.

 I am the Running Man, and this year, I have a “medium ass”.

Feb 7 2009

Where: Charleston,IL

Time: 10:00 am

Surface: asphalt

Weather:sunny, 50F, breeze out of the south at 5-10mph

I hadn’t been for an organized run since the “mooing bear” incident.
Actually there aren’t many scheduled for the middle of winter around
these parts. This particular run had taken place for the first time
last year. It was small, as not many people are dying to get out and
get after it in February. However, for the hardcore outdoorsy types
that can’t wait to get back outside, this was just the kind of thing
to help us get through to spring. I’d read some good things about this
course online and it seemed like a good way to find out if I’d made
any progress in January. The week preceding it was typical winter
weather. I’d been out for a couple 4 milers after work in the middle
of the week. Both mornings were 1 or 2 degrees with a wind chill well
into the minus somethings. As the sun was coming up on that Wednesday
morning I passed a tree in the park with a squirrel foraging in the
snow at it’s base. We made eye contact with each other and wondered to
ourselves why the other was stupid enough to be outside.

Suddenly, miraculously, a warm front rolled through Thursday ahead of
the Saturday morning race. By gun time Saturday most of the snow was
gone, the sun was out and temp was 50 and climbing. Man, what a feeling to be outside in shorts for the first time in months.
I stole a couple pics from the event’s website. One from last year and one
from this year to show typical winter and what we were blessed with in
2009. Somewhere in the back of that second pic you can see author’s
black cap. You’ll just have to take my word for the fact that he wore
shorts in February.

As I said the event was fairly small and as usual I took my place at
the back of the pack to stay out of the way of the serious runners.
There was a 10 and 5k also being run at separate 15 minute intervals
after the start of our run. After a quick loop around the block they
sent us out of town onto the country roads heading south. It was just
a glorious day! It didn’t matter what you were doing it was just great
to be outside. My only real goal was to perform a little better than
my last longer run at Alton. With all the walking I’d done at the end
of that run, it had taken me 1 hour 53 minutes to get through the 10
miles. With this being a similar distance, 9.3 miles I’d hope to knock
a little bit of time off my average mile. This was a much more
difficult course as it had some pretty good hills whereas the Alton
run was as flat as the Mississippi rolling alongside it. Anyway, I’d
averaged 11 minute, 20 second miles at Alton. With this being a more
difficult course, if I was able to average 10 minute 45 second miles I
was going to consider it to be progress. So my projected acceptable
time was 1:40.

The run was blissfully uneventful for the first 2.5 miles, where I
then encountered the first dog running loose. They must not see many
people running out there because I was great fun for him to chase. He
was little and noisy and gave up pretty easy. He did however alert a
boxer about half a mile up the road of my passing and the boxer came
out to meet me too. I knew I couldn’t outrun him and he had no
intention of letting me pass so I had kind of squared off with him
before his owner came out and dragged him back into the yard. I’m
pretty sure I could have taken him but it would’ve required way more
energy than I wanted to put into it. Once again on my way, it was
smooth sailing to the one and only aid station at just past 4 miles.
The aid station preceded a pretty steep hill which I chose to walk up
while sipping my drink. I seemed to be sucking air a little bit at
this point. At the crest I started running again, consciously taking
it a little easier since I knew I was a little gassed. There seemed to
be much more rolling terrain as this thing progressed. I jogged the
gradual slopes and walked the severe slopes. The leaders had
disappeared from my view somewhere in the first few blocks in town. In
fact everybody kind of ran off and left me. Now I was starting to see
some other folks kind of straining a little bit too. I picked off one
just past the aid station. Got a couple more just past 5 miles. One
more at about 6.5 and a last one at just less than 8. As I went past
the last guy he queried how much farther I thought we had. I was
guessing a mile and a half. As I passed him I crossed a bridge and
started the ascent of a big goddam hill. I’d been assessing this thing
since it came into view 5 minutes earlier. There were 4 or 5 people
on it and they were all walking. It was a mother. I jogged about
halfway up it and then broke down and wlaked. But I walked hard and
commenced with the running again as soon as I reached the top.
Homestretch now and nothing between me and the finish except about a
half mile and… another dog. This time a boston terrier. He was a pup
and meant no harm. He was just happy to see me. His owner was calling
for him but the dog had him on ignore. There was traffic coming up and
down the street so I actually stopped off the side of the road knowing
the dog would go with me just to get him out of traffic. I stayed with
him til his owner could get a handle on him. And then it was off to
the finish. By now the temp had risen to the upper 50s under beautiful
sunshine. I crossed the line at 1:37:21 for an avg. of about 10:28 per
mile. AND I actually felt pretty good.

So I got my goal in spite of doing several impersonations of the
‘dog whisperer’ along the way. I was reasonably pleased with myself
and really enjoyed the course. I’d like to do that one again next
year.

January is just a month to be survived if you’re trying to do anything outside. My only real running goal for this year was to try and be a little more active than last year. I don’t ask for much, and with my track record that’s a good thing. By my calculations I ran 15 times in January and averaged just about 4 miles a run. Not earth shattering, but if I can make it out in the worst month of the year, the rest is a piece of cake.

December’s ice storms gave way to January’s cold and snow which was consederably more pleasant to run in. It’s just so peaceful to go out for a run in the prelight hours with a fresh snow. Everything is so quiet. Just you and the sound of snow crunching beneath your sneakers. And it does seem to crunch once the temps are cold enough, like maybe 15 or less. That brings me to something else. Last winter I was taping the toes of my shoes once it got below 15 for a little more protection than the mesh of the shoes provided. That worked just fine but the tape wore off or needed to be pulled off when it got just a little bit warmer or it was too warm. Then of course I’d have to retape. It wasn’t a big deal. Just kind of a pain in the ass. Anyway it suddenly occured to me to just get a pair of those slipon rubber overshoes. They worked PERFECTLY! And they peel off easily when you don’t need them. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. They also keep your feet dry when you’re out in more than just an inch or 2 of snow as well. I’m the only one I’ve ever seen wearing them but that’s probably because they don’t look cool. I’m a function over form guy. They work and that’s all that counts.

I mentioned in the last post that I intended to get out of Virginia in my transcontinental cyber-journey this year. What I didn’t realize was that I had probably done it maybe a week prior but hadn’t been checking my progress. According to their map I’m now in Kentucky. It says I’m now 0.92 miles from Lookout, KY.

and I’ve only got about 7 more years to go…

Woo-hoo!!!

just a quick add on here for AWK’s question

and then again for the Cgirl. One shoe unprotected, the other condomized.