Why I hate Facebook

Facebook: Hey! A friend wants to share a book with you! Click here to see!
Me: Uh, thanks... what's the book?
FB: Hang on, just sign up for this application!
Me: Huh? Ok, fine. [clicking Add] So what's the book?
FB: Wait, look at all of your friends who aren't using this application yet! Why don't you let me infect I mean, invite them to use it too!
Me: Um, no... [clicking Skip] so, think you could tell me what book that was?
FB: Hey, do you like any of these books?
Me: C'mon, quit it. [clicking Skip] Ok, so what was that book?
FB: Thanks! Hey, here are all the great features for this application!
Me: Alright, already! What was the fucking book?!
FB: [crickets]
Me: um, hello?
FB: [more crickets]
Me: Ok, this says recommendations, maybe you put it under there? [clicking Recommendations]
FB: Sorry, we do not have any recommendations for you.
Me: DELETED.

Fucking facebook.

barriers to productivity

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

This is one of the few downsides to working from home. I can feel myself getting carpal tunnel trying not to disturb him too much when I try to type around him.

On the other hand, it's 3:30pm and I'll probably head out for a run in less than an hour. (seeing as I couldn't motivate when I woke up at 6 this morning, and then ended up over-sleeping*.)

* Prolly got up around 10. Yeah, jetlag...

Um.... what?

"Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."
- Attorney General Michael Mukasey

I guess I'm going to need to look up the actual definition of "crime" now...

In other news, we're back from our trip to Kansas City (actually, Olathe) and Los Angeles, but posts will probably continue to be sparse given the whole work and training thing. Better to check up on twitter, flickr and facebook... (yes, facebook -- got sucked in, but still trying to lay low over there)

Glorious, glorious legroom

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

The travel gods were kind to us on our leg from K.C. to L.A.

Southwest has made some changes to their line-up policy and assigned actual line number positions. We were pretty deep into the first seating group, but I was still able to get the double row exit row seat, a much-welcomed improvement from the last trip to L.A. when I was stuck in a middle coach middle (on American with crappier seat pitch) in both directions.

It wasn't a full flight, so it probably would have been okay elsewhere on the plane, but I'm still grateful.

It's just kind of a bummer to have to fly into LAX. Unfortunately, the only flights that were available into Burbank at the right times had layovers and were almost $100 more expensive, and sometimes I'm just not willing to throw that much more money at a problem. (And the return leg on JetBlue -- thankfully out of Burbank -- cost us a lot more than I would have liked, so that figured into the equation as well.)

Context

I'm working from home right now.

This is generally a good thing -- easy commute, less distracting hallway chatter, comfortable surroundings (not over air-conditioned, or air-conditioned at all, really), no interrupts from coworkers or the boss.

Quite good, actually... if it weren't Saturday.

From seed

From seed
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

A few photos from the garden. These are all from plants that were grown from seeds that I'd harvested out of fruits that we either grew, received from the CSA or bought at the supermarket. There are notes on the image in my Flickr stream.

Kind of exciting, but maybe that's just me.

We've been getting some crazy rain the last couple of days. So far, it seems like the bed is draining well, so the plants seem happy enough.

Our "new" rain barrel is almost full even though we haven't actually fitted the gutter downspout over to it. (I guess there are some advantages to having old clogged gutters -- there's plenty of water that's just been dripping/pouring over the corner of the roof rather than going down the downspout.) We're probably going to look into getting another rain barrel at this point, but for the time being, our party buckets have doubled as water basins, and even they're full up and overflowing.

That's more like it

3 miles this morning. Average pace a little below 8:30 minute miles. Max heart rate somewhere around 169*.

It's still not where I'd like to be, but it felt a lot better than a week and a half ago. And it's progress.

* Within the first 1/2 mile, I checked the monitor and it read 176. Then 179. Then 181. I definitely didn't feel like I was working that hard so I tried adjusting the strap of the sensor and the reading shortly dropped down to 156. *phew* For the record, I don't think this had anything to do with the high reading from the last 3 mile run, and I really did feel like crap at the time.

square zero

Hey.

So, I've basically been sick for something like three out of the last four weeks. Sinusitis and bronchitis, according to the doctor. At a follow-up appointment last week, he now tells me that he thinks I have acid reflux (which is making my cough persist) and asthma. He's recommending that I start taking a daily dose of Prilosec and regular shots from a Albuterol inhaler.

Needless to say, this is news to me. Also needless to say, I'm not particularly happy with his diagnosis.

Since then, I've gone to the acupuncture clinic and have been trying to just rest and give my body a chance to recover. It's been a week, and I'm feeling like the cough is getting a little better, but I'm going to give the Prilosec a shot for a week, just to see whether it makes a difference or not. I'm not thrilled about being on a regular regimen of meds, but we'll see how it goes. My hope is that it will clear things up to allow my body to heal, and then I can go back to business as usual and let my body take care of itself.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that my marathon training got completely derailed. I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to get back on track and be ready to go by October, but things really aren't where I'd like them to be right now.

I figured it'd be a slow start, but my first run the Sunday before last wasn't promising. 3 miles. started at 8-1/2 minute miles, finished closer to 10 when my heart rate hit 176, which, for the record, is higher than when I was trying to test my max heart rate by doing 300m uphill sprints. Granted, it's been hot and humid, but I don't think it accounted for all of it. I've since played a little frisbee (and aggravated the hamstring) and had a disappointing "long and slow" 5.5 mile run, that was supposed to be more like 6.5 miles but was cut short because my knee started hurting after striding up a short uphill.

Bah.

It's worse than square one. It's square zero. A friend thinks that it's just residue from the sick, and when I'm *really* back at 100%, the endurance and stamina will come back with it. I have a few other friends who also think I should be able to get back on track.

Hope so. There is at least one guy who thinks I'm screwed (and believe it or not, it's not me), but I am ignoring him at this time.

So I'm clearly not going to be running the marathon for time. Which makes me wonder whether I should put Marine Corps Marathon back on the table for consideration. It's supposed to be kind of a clusterfuck because there are so many people, but if I'm not worried about trying to finish in 3:20:59, maybe it'll be more interesting than running one of the quieter races. It also has the benefit of giving me an extra 2 weeks for training, which is not the worst thing ever.

Hopefully they won't close open registration before I make a decision. Too bad it's already sold out.

Have I mentioned, bah?

UPDATE: just signed up for the Cape Cod Marathon. Just in case. Poking around, Long Beach is looking somewhat appealing except that I'm not all that excited to travel (cost, and time, and well, the stress of travel these days), even if it is near home base.

Fuck.

RIP George Carlin.

[we'll see how long that video lasts on YouTube.]

Thanks, man.

"We're number one, so you can just suck it"

Sorry folks. I'm only back to rant about Verizon.

I was already annoyed that their voicemail system seems to have gotten flakey recently (have you received a message indicator for a voicemail a week after the original message was left?) but the events over the last few days have me pretty ticked at this point

Ironically, I just upgraded our home service mere hours before this, and even during that process, I was getting myself incremental frustrated and angry.

We have FiOS internet. We've been pretty happy with it. We have a 20/5 plan, or 20Meg download, 5Meg upload plan for about $50.

Rather than burn minutes on her work cell to call clients, the SOOTTAD has been using our home phone which has an unlimited minutes plan with Vonage. (Whoo VONAGE! We <3 Vonage.) This was a reasonable solution until the clients started calling the house because they had the number from their caller ID. Clients calling the home number is unacceptable so we've started looking into picking up a second phone line. Enter Verizon FiOS that has been aggressively pushing their service bundles. (generally with somebody calling or stopping by the house at least once a week for as long as we've been living in this house.)

Anyway, Verizon suffers from the same problems as all the other providers (read Comcast and RCN) in that it is virtually impossible to find out how much the services cost short of signing up for the service or dealing with a customer service rep on the phone. So I ended up digging around online looking for prices through our Verizon account, only to discover that they had raised the price of our internet connection to $57.99.

Um, hey. That's not cool.

I eventually found an email (sent to an account I never wanted, and that I never check because it's been full of spam since day 1) that notified me of the change of price.

Lovely.

Seeing as I still hadn't found the fee structure for the bundled services, I called them up, so I could then ask them how SOL I was about the new price. Only to discover that I was actually going to be $65.99 because I hadn't signed a new contract.

Proof that we're a captive audience is reflected in the fact that 2 days later, I've actually signed up for a 1-year contract for Internet, Phone and Cable. Yes Cable. We're getting Cable TV, god help us, complete with HD DVR. We are so screwed. And not just by Verizon. It works out to a decent deal as a bundle, especially since we're getting an extra $5/month discount, effectively $50 for internet, $25 for phone and $50 for cable. We'll see how the year goes, and decided whether or not we want to ditch it. (especially if they decide to raise rates again.)

So fine, done is done.

Except that I just looked through my most recent Verizon Wireless bill, and was struck by the $14 charge for text messaging, which seemed like I lot since I only pay $0.10 a message.

Except that I don't. Apparently I missed it when they raised it to $0.20.

Except that I really missed the boat, because apparently they raised it to $0.15 over a year ago. I guess we were a little busy.

I can't help but feel like there's something illegal about raising your rates when you're under contract, but I'm not sure what I can do about it.

I'm going to have to figure something out. Hopefully things won't be too busy that it'll drop under the radar again.

Excuses

Well, it's clearly summer, even if it isn't official for another week or two. And I'm not talking about the mini heat wave we had last weekend, I'm talking about the density of our calendars.

The SOOTTAD and I are off to All-Bal weekend this afternoon. We've been talking about going ever since she went a couple of years ago, but we haven't had the chance because, well, it's summer and y'know, there always seems to be too much stuff going on.

This morning was actually the first time I'd gone for a run in over a week -- a little over 6 miles, decent pace for most of it.

I've pretty much fallen off the wagon since a had to go on a business trip in California almost a month ago. Hopefully, I'll finally get back into the swing of things, seeing as we've hit the 16-week mark before that marathon I'm supposed to be running in October, even though I still haven't actually figured out which one it's going to be*. I've even packed my running gear and a map of the area around the hotel in the hopes that I'll be able to run while we're in Ohio.

So yeah, off the wagon. We played this game a few weeks ago, returning from a wedding in NYC where we'd had WAAAAAYYYYYYY too much to drink and had painfully paid the price for it that morning and on the drive back home. It went something like this:

TALLASIANDUDE: The problem was, I didn't get any sleep the night before. If I'd actually gotten some sleep last night, I would have been fine.
SOOTTAD: No, the problem was, you kept drinking the bourbon out of my glass.
T: No, I think the problem was, when you stopped letting me drink out of your glass, I went and got another glass of my own...
T: And actually, maybe the problem was every time I ordered a bourbon and a glass of water, I kept getting the bourbon and not noticing that they weren't giving me the water. If I'd just had that water...
T: Well no. The problem was I shouldn't have had that cigar. That thing was totally giving me a false second wind so I didn't notice I was out of gas...

Stupid open bar**. The problem was that I drank too damn much and I totally didn't get enough rest, so my body basically shut down. Except that it couldn't because I'd been spending the evening poisoning it until 3 in the morning.

Anyhoo...

The game, as applied to my running (and by extension, blogging).

Precede each with "I would have run if I hadn't been (at/on/with) [a/the]..."

5/17-18 - Wedding in New Hampshire (got a run in before the ceremony)
5/19-21 - 3-day business trip in California, stuck at the airport hotel with no car and no time because of the meeting schedule.
5/22 - return flight to Boston, just in time for a frisbee game (ADDED BONUS: body clock reset to Pacific time)
5/23-26 - Boston Independence Exchange -- full dance weekend with friends visiting and late-night dancing running until 4AM. (I did get a run in on Memorial Day...)
5/23-26 - 4 clients (3 new). This is good (Yay, clients! Yay, covering rent!) but still time consuming.
(5/26 - Run 4.5mi)
5/27 - frisbee game
(5/29 - Run 6.3mi)
5/30 - client
5/30 - All-nighter finishing document for work. (1-1/2 hours of horizontal time) before...
5/31 - client, before...
5/31 - drive down to NYC for (previously described) wedding
6/1 - return to Boston hungover
(6/2 - Run 5.25mi) (OMG!)
6/3 - frisbee game
6/4 - 2 clients
6/6-8 - fly to Buffalo, drive to Fergus, Ontario for frisbee tournament, drive back to Buffalo, fly back to Boston
6/8 - install of the A/C unit in SOOTTAD's office
6/9 - install of the A/C unit in bedroom
6/10 - frisbee game
6/11 - client (2 clients canceled)

So yeah, a little busy. Gonna try to resync to the morning run schedule, especially after sweating out the tail end of the heat this past weekend. Which means I'll need to be careful this weekend and not stay up too late at the evening dances. Which is tricky, since that's where I'll probably get the most practice for the material I'll be learning in the workshops.

Oy, it never ends.

* I feel a bit like Goldilocks right now. Marine Corp is too big (described as a "clusterf*ck" by more than one friend. Cape Cod is too small. That probably rules out Mohawk-Hudson. So maybe Breakers in Rhode Island? Or maybe Steamtown, although both may be too much on the small side. *sigh*

** Awesome wedding/reception, though. Even if I was semi-zombified and had to nap under a table for part of it.

Sometimes you're the windshield...

Sometimes you're the windshield...
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

I'll try to update later.

Go Celtics!

Setback

Feeling Old & Crusty
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

So, I'm bagging the half-marathon tomorrow.

I've spent the last two weeks going back and forth over it.

Should I run?
I should run.
No, I shouldn't run.
Well, maybe I should run.
Should I run?
I should run.
No, I shouldn't run.

Ah, the circles. I grow dizzy. (Probably shouldn't run.)

At this point, it may be more my brain than my body, but either way, it's probably the right thing to do. Or rather, the decision to run it would probably be for all the wrong reasons.

Two weeks ago, I did the last scheduled long run before the race. The longest I've run since the last time I trained for this race 3 years ago. 15 miles. It wasn't too bad through the first 10*, but I got clobbered by a particularly nasty patch of annoyingly steep paths in Weston (alongside a more tamely graded road). I managed to recover a bit during some flatter sections, but I was pretty spent, and the last 2 miles were a real struggle. I probably should have stopped at that point and walked the rest of the way, but I was working on my "mental toughness." (This is also know as "being stupid.")

End of run. Spent. Crusty. (the photo doesn't do it justice -- there were lines of salts all down my face, around my eyes and in my hair.) Feeling old.

...and feeling broken.

My lower back on the left side, which actually turned out to be my upper butt once palpated (gluteus maximus attachment into the iliac crest) didn't feel so awesome after that. I skipped Sunday (although we did some work in the garden), and when it still bothered me during my frisbee game Monday night, I got a little concerned. The right hamstring thing that's been bothering me all year wasn't feeling so great either, so I put myself on the DL, hoping some time off would take care of things.

Things felt a bit better that Thursday -- I ran 3 miles and then went to practice. But the weekend "long run" (8 miles, which turned out to be only 7.5) didn't show much sign of improvement. The soreness persisted (started to notice it as early as mile 2), even with a new hydration pack.

Anyway, all this week, it was evaluation. How's it feeling today? Better? Worse? Hamstring? Ok. Gluts -- better... no, still the same. And on and on and on.

And then I looked into the start time of the race: 9am, registration at 7. No problem. And a quick check of the directions... and somehow I had forgotten that it was a 2 hour drive to the race.

Um, whoops?

I forgot that we stayed with a friend in Portsmouth, so we only had to drive half the distance. So now I had to get up even more wicked early, drive 2 hours, pick up my registration stuff, then run the race that I wasn't sure I was ready to run. That, or get a hotel room and deal with registrations, and check-ins and check-outs...

And then there was the threat of rain. It actually looks like it'll be pretty good racing conditions tomorrow, but looking at it earlier this week, it looked like a pretty good chance of rain along with the wind in the mid-40s at race time. And I remember being so cold from the rain and wind the last time I ran this race, that at the finish I couldn't untie my shoelace to get the timing chip off my shoe.

Yes, I'm psyching myself out.

I actually felt alright yesterday. People were asking about the race. I got some encouragement. I felt pretty good after my run and during the subsequent frisbee game last night.

I was still on the fence.

Until around 1:30am, when I still hadn't fallen asleep.

So no race tomorrow.

I'm still going to run tomorrow morning. But I'll do it around here, after a good night's sleep. Or after more sleep, at least. And we'll have some time to do some more work in the garden. I'll get a massage. Watch the Celtics game. Get ready for the Tri on Sunday. (I'm volunteering, giving post-race massages.)

And I'll heal up, and hopefully still be on track to run one of those marathons in October.

* part of that distance is sketchy, since there seems to be some sort of Lincoln Mystery Spot where the GPS gets all wonky. The GPS tells me one thing, but GoogleMaps and, more importantly, my feets tell me different. I'm not a great judge of pace, but I'm pretty confident that I can tell when I'm running sub 6-minute-miles and over 15-minute-miles, and I didn't hit either of those paces, irregardless of what that little piece of technology strapped to my wrist was telling me.

Time to figure out Plan B

Apparently, they've closed open registrations for the Chicago Marathon this fall.

Whoops.

Wasn't expecting that. Somehow, I thought I'd have a little more time to decide what I was going to do this fall, but I guess at least that decision has been made for me.

Just another indication that Chicago has it out for me. Maybe Chicago just thinks it's just being all friendly-like and playfully fucking with me.

Frankly, Mr. Ha-Ha Chicago, I don't need friends like that.

So maybe Cape Cod?

Hartford?

Marine Corp?

Long Beach?

Definitely passing on Bay State, but any other thoughts or suggestions? an MTI classmate I saw at a workshop last weekend mentioned a small marathon in upstate New York somewhere but I haven't been able to track down any details -- anyone out there have any leads or info?

UPDATE: The mystery marathon is the Steamtown Marathon near Scranton, PA.

Yay, Spring!

Yay, Spring
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

It seems like it's finally that time of year.

The seedlings were grown from seeds I collected from some of the tasty tomatoes we got from the CSA last summer. I think they were orange banana tomatoes, which actually sounds like I'm naming 3 fruits. We've had pretty good luck with stuff in the garden seeding in in the past, so hopefully these guys will do alright and will actually bear fruit.

Unfortunately, we didn't get our act together to sign up for the CSA in time this year, but we'll probably have our hands (and tummies) full with our own garden, not to mention overflow production from the SOOTTAD's parental homestead gardens. Kinda nice to actually have some time to plan for this stuff this year.

And as another comment on the weather, I've actually gone on my last 3 runs in shorts. (all afternoon runs, but still...)

Learning Experience

Today's lesson brought to you by Key Run Workout #2: a 5 mile tempo run at mid-tempo pace.

The lesson: apparently, I can't run 5 miles at a 7:30 pace. (a goal pace based on my half-marathon pace 3 years ago.)

It probably didn't help that I ran the first fast mile, well, too fast. After a 1 mile warm-up, the first tempo mile clocked in at 7:16. Whoops. I kept it in the ballpark (below 7:40) until about halfway through mile 4 when I hit another uphill section and just couldn't keep it up.

I could blame it on the fast start, the hills, the headwind, even fatigue from my "recovery workout." But really, I know I'm still being a little optimistic about what kind of condition I'm in. I'm testing the boundaries right now, basically just to make sure. This might also be considered "setting myself up for disappointment."

Another observation: my pace varies quite a bit moment-to-moment. The logs routinely present an uneven sine wave representing my speed -- a line littered with peaks and valleys. I suspect that it's in large part due to the lag of the GPS giving me a pace measurement and the ensuing hysteresis as I try to hit a specific pace. I'll have to try and not look at the watch so much and see how it goes.

Clearly, still a work in progress and always something new to try and figure out.

Book meme

I got tagged by Matt for the book meme. It's kind of silly, but I so seldom participate in these kinds of things, and out of respect for my friendship with Matt, I'll play along.

Here are the rules:

1. Find the book closest to you with at least 123 pages.
2. Turn to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Pass it on.

I'm warning you in advance that I'm breaking rule 5, but if people want to play along, feel free to be my guest.

The nearest book: Tcl and the Tk Toolkit by John K. Ousterhout

If any other completion code occurs, do simply reflects that exception back to its caller.

When do reflects an error upward, it uses the -errorinfo option to return to make sure that a proper stack trace is available after the error. If that option were omitted, a fresh stack trace would be generated starting with do's error return; the stack trace would not indicate where in body the error occurred.

That was, uh, interesting? Revealing, perhaps. That's what you get when you compute in your home office full of tech books. Unfortunately, the massage therapy books were on the other side of the bookshelf.

Perhaps, what this exercise was shooting for was the book I'm currently reading/referencing right now: Run Less, Run Faster, which I mentioned in my previous post. (and will likely mention in my next post.) In THAT book, we get:

This cycle must be carefully structured so that the overload does not exhaust or injure. The recovery must be sufficient to permit the next overload workout.

Finding the appropriate balance of overload and recovery is essential for improvement.

Why don't you just tell me the last junk reading you did? And maybe the last movie you watched? You know -- brain candy.

Reading: Flight 4 a collection of short comics by different artists. Beautiful, interesting, thoughtful, often funny and great for today's short attention span.
Watching: The Frighteners Actually, pretty darned good, if you asked me. Although I guess you didn't.

You do the best you can

Nu Shooz

In the last week, I've only gotten up once before 8AM, and that was yesterday (6:30, blargh) to take my car in for an oil change. You could almost count this morning because I did wake up for the alarm that was set for 4AM so the SOOTTAD could catch her rescheduled flight to Chicago after the one she was supposed to be on yesterday was canceled. But I didn't actually get up and I went back to sleep, mostly... took a while, and there was a little too much almost-awake-almost-asleep time.

On the plus side, I've still been getting my runs in, and have managed to either run or play disc (or both) every day since Friday. I just haven't been doing them at 7AM. In fact, the last AM run was Sunday. That may just be the way it's going to be. At least for now, before we start hitting the hot and humid summer days.

I'm on to the next training book, Run Less, Run Faster, which came highly recommended by a Tri friend of ours. The program is centered around what they call the "3plus2" plan which focuses on 3 key training runs with 2 days of cross-training. I like that the runs are focused and have specific goals (which they explain), and I thought the cross-training thing would be great, until I read the relevant chapter and discovered that ultimate pretty much didn't count because it continues to work (and stress) the same muscles I'm training for running. Worse, their suggested activities -- swimming and cycling (and deep water running?) -- really aren't part of my repertoire.

Nevertheless, I like their approach to the running workouts which stress quality over quantity (although yesterday's interval workout ended up being over 7 miles and took over an hour), so I'm trying to integrate their ideas into my training plan. I'll probably just take actual rest days or do easy recovery runs ("junk miles") which they do allow for (but do not recommend) in lieu of the proposed recovery activities.

Of course, it is spring, so I'm playing ultimate, hopefully within hamstring tolerances. I actually played yesterday after the track workout and it felt surprisingly, well, not bad. We'll see how it goes. I may end up adjusting the key training runs depending on how things are feeling.

So I'm going to try to crank up the intensity, focusing on the pace at specific distances. (Yesterday was 800m repeats around a 6:35 mile pace.) And today, after trying my best to sleep in a bit and catch a few extra Z's after the early wake-up call (I think I got up around 8:30), I did, in fact, suck it up and go to the gym after work and sat on a recumbent bike for 45 minutes.

For the record, it sucked. A little knee stress, my calves feel overworked, and my ass -- ow (geez, I gotta at least try a normal bike if I do it again) -- but I'm not sure how inclined I'm going to be to repeat that experience.

But, well, you know...

Listening to your body

I was exhausted last night.

Miraculously woke at 7AM yesterday morning, even after a late night (wine pairing dinner at Ten Tables -- dericious!) Went for a 7+ mile run (marginal -- right ankle has been feeling a bit wonky and it flared up around mile 4, and legs were feeling pretty heavy on the last mile), then to work. Client in the evening. A little work at the computer after dinner. And then I just hit the wall. Didn't even want to go downstairs for a snack.

That was at at a quarter of ten.

I guess I should have just gone to bed, but I ended up reading until 10:30 before killing the lights.

At midnight, I finally gave up and got up, had a drink, had a snack, did a little more reading and looked at some pictures (in an actual photo album, looking at my phases of long hair) and then finally back in bed around a quarter of one.

I really thought I was past this not falling asleep business. Oh well. It continues to be rough since getting back from Chicago.

Anyway, no surprise when I woke up "late" around 7:40am, still tired.

Options:

1. run the same 7+ mile route as the previous day for comparison purposes. Was I just having an off day? Was I running too fast? Would my foot start hurting at the same point? Would it hurt at all?
2. run something around 5 miles, maybe at a tempo pace. Y'know, try and work on that VO2max thing by training at my lactate threshold. And stuff.
3. run less than 4 miles (distance of onset of foot pain) as a recovery run, or simply training at a level where I was fairly confident I wouldn't exacerbate any existing injuries.
4. Skip the workout. Turn it into a rest day and get to the office relatively early.

The earliest I could probably start a run would be a bit after 8am. Then cooldown, stretching, a shower, and then the drive up to the office.

I still didn't get into the office much before 9. I'm not sure how that happens.

Still pretty beat today. I'm rationalizing that I only got about 6 hours of sleep last night, after probably getting less than 6 hours the night before. I know there are plenty of folks out there who are completely functional with that much sleep, but I've always needed closer to 9 hours for peak operating conditions.

And there's the stuff that I had gleaned from what little I'd already read in the book. Basically, train "opportunistically" and to your own body. It makes it ok for me to adjust for other activities and commitments. And most importantly, to adjust the training based on how my body is feeling. So I took the hint about the ankle not feeling so good, and probably not getting enough sleep and I ran (or rather, didn't run) with it.

And I think it was the right decision. More rest for the hamstring. (which I tweaked again playing pickup on Sunday.) The ankle is feeling a little better, or rather, I'm not feeling my ankle so much today. I think you're not supposed to notice the bones in you leg and foot when you're doing your everyday stuff, right?

So the plan is now to just do a short run tomorrow, maybe 3-4 miles and then do a long run Saturday, more than the 8.6 I ran last week, but almost certainly less than the 12 that's currently in the plan. I'm thinking 10, but we'll see how it feels.

On the down side, it was in the 30s this morning, although above freezing and sunny. Whereas tomorrow it's supposed to rain, possibly snow (?!) in the morning so it looks like I'll be hitting the gym tomorrow. (And as much as I hate the gym, it's probably good for me to do some hamstring strengthening exercises anyway.) Saturday, light rain all morning, and I just hope they're wrong. Or at least if it rains, it really is light rain.

Retroactive

I just got an email from AirTran advertising their "Foolishly low prices" if you purchase tickets by April 1.

Is that supposed to be funny?

I can almost rationalize it making sense in some sort of post-ironic reverse-polish-notation kind of way. To be honest, when I saw an email from AirTran, I kind of assumed that they were notifying me that they'd gone out of business or something.