Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

I guess ye olde bodye decided this morning was for sleeping in rather than getting up and biking, as I slept through my alarm for about an hour. Whoops.

Recovery from the race has otherwise gone okay. The blister was gone yesterday, and the residual soreness in my right calf has tapered down to nothing this morning. Will do a short run tomorrow morning to stretch out the legs, then will be back to business for the half weekend after next.

Work was odd yesterday, there were only four of us in the main suite and one of those one never sees because she has an outside entrance to her office. The acting boss was sick as the proverbial dog and losing her voice, poor woman. I wonder what she’s going to sound like this morning.

Speaking of biking, it looks like Thursday’s ride, if it happens at all, will be on the trainer – going to be below freezing for the low. Brr! I realize it’s April in DC and these things happen, but man, I just want warmer weather to be here for good. Not blazing hot weather, but warmer.

1:45:39 chip time (heart rate monitor time). About 1:57 on the course time. AHR: 174; MHR: 185 (yeah, I burn high). 49-50 degrees out, light to no breeze, overcast.

Cool conditions. Ran into a few tri clubbers, both before the race, during, and after. We really need more cooler weather gear to wear, but that’s another story.

Forgot to lap time the miles as we went past them until mile 5 (0:52:06), and then there was no mile 7 marker. Sometime past mile 5 I felt like I had a rock in my shoe, so stopped twice (at about miles 6 and 7) to see what was up with it. Couldn’t find a thing. I suspect that somehow, no matter that the shoes have never done this, they were pinching the outside of my foot. Have a nascent blister developing, but no biggie.

Was running with two clubbers up until mile 5 when I hit that max heart rate and decided to pop back into the average range. I used to be able to run at 181/182 and that was about my threshold, but I think I’ve dropped back a bit to 179ish. Considering I’ve done no threshold training as yet this year, that’s not too surprising.

Was very glad I dumped the jacket at bag check as I heated up pretty well once we got running, and even more happy that I’d brought it afterward. The wind picked up a little while we were out, and being soaked in a cool breeze at 50 degrees out is pretty chilly.

Maintained a pretty steady 10:30 pace, which was great. I was expecting to come in closer to 2 hours for my finish for it based on my training runs, so I’m quite pleased with the chip time.

The cherry blossoms are at peak today, and they were absolutely gorgeous. Little fluffy white clouds of flowers attached to the trees. A good part of the early and late race are around the Potomac and the Tidal Basin, so we saw some great ones.

Happy to have finally run this race, which was shaping up as my nemesis after sports injuries kept me out the past two years. Was tons of fun, and great prep for the half marathon in two weeks!

I had decided not to run this morning, opting instead to sleep in. Nonetheless, 5 am rolled around and my brain engaged and I’ve been up since. Nothing like having work (which is what got the brain rolling – work stuff) intrude on perfectly good sleep time.

The good news is that since I had little else to do this morning I managed to find the source of a smell in my kitchen I’d not been able to identify – an onion had gone bad. Dees-gus-ting.

The work stuff is troubling. There are times when you don’t want to know all the facts, as that gives you plausible deniability. Unfortunately I’m too good at gaining confidences at work so I know too much now about certain situations. I see a lot of closed door discussions in my future, some good, some not so much so. And yes, this is the usual cryptic stuff, but such is life at the BGA.

Brr! It got cold again for this morning’s ride. Claimed it had dropped to 43 when I got home. Yuck. But, the cherry blossoms are just coming out, and are gorgeous. Also, saw a fox on the Potomac side of the Point. Big sucker, too. Very red, huge tail. Bet he loves the golfers.

Finally ordered myself a digital camera that arrived today. I’ve had a hand-me down one for a few years, but it’s been dropping pixels, so it was time to upgrade. Got one that’s relatively hardy, water and shock proof so I can drag it out biking. Still learning how to get it to work, of course, but so far so good. Need more memory for it so I can take more than 10 pics at the high resolution, but I have time for that. Looking forward to snapping photos.

Work’s starting to pick up some more of late, but so far I’m staying afloat. Several small things have popped up and I’m hoping those will get resolved in short order so I can get back to some larger projects, but one never knows at the BGA.

I’ve become one of those people. One of those sick, twisted, depraved individuals we all loathe so much. You know who I’m talking about: morning people.

I’ve been aware that I’ve been leaning that way. The signs were all there, going to bed early, feeling tired by 9, 9:30 in the evening, but I’d been trying to deny it. The revelation hit me full on this morning, though, when I was watching the sun rise over SW DC while running at Hains Point. I was remarking to myself how lovely the few brave cherry blossoms which have bloomed were in that morning sun and how sad it was that most people wouldn’t see something like this when it all came crashing down on my brain that I’d become one of them. One of us.

And you know what’s worse? I like it.

The other revelation this morning was that because I don’t run or bike with headphones on, if I’m out by myself I tend to write entries in my head but then never end up posting them. Either I get too busy when I get back inside or they end up disappearing from ye olde braine by the time I sit down to a computer. That’s a shame, some of them are quite fun.

11 miles on the Heart Rate Monitor, which means 10 in actuality. 1:53. Negative split, and the faster pace I kicked it to in the 2nd half is going to be doable for next week. Looks like a cold front is expected in next weekend, so the Cherry Blossom’s going to live up to its nickname of the ‘Chilly Bloosom,’ but at least we’re not losing an hour’s sleep just before the race (the one advantage to earlier DST?). So looking forward to finally running this race!

Managed to get up for the club bike ride again this morning, despite being up a touch too late the night before, and having a wee bit to drink while out with friends. The ride went well, despite being a tad cooler than Tuesday, and definitely more windy. The wind was coming up river, so each time we crossed down toward the Awakening it was like hitting a wall of wind when we came out of the trees down near the parking lot.

Long day today. Did finish up, I hope, a project which has been haunting us for several months now. Now I can move on to several other projects that have been on the back burner for far too long. At least they’re interesting ones that I feel like I can dig my legal teeth into. Payment for services we provide to the public (and the rates therefor), and the funds we receive for work we do for other federal and state entities and how that’s accounted for. We suspect some of our field offices have been playing fast and loose, so my accounting folks and I are digging down into the authorities there.

Boring to some (most), stock in trade for me.

Crashing early here tonight, up tomorrow for a run. Still on track for the races coming up, but watching it to make sure I’m careful about injuries. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Early start to the day. Up at 5:30 for a pre-dawn ride with the club. Did an hour, but got smoked early on. The mostly solo ride was good, nonetheless. Hains Point is very well lit, so was no trouble to be out there before the sun came up.

Got home, whipped up a meal for the crock pot, started the dish washer, got cleaned up, biked up to work.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it (and about ready to crash here at 8:30 – will just be up another hour, I think).

No smoke today from the neighbors. Hooray for small things. 😉 Dinner from the crock pot was wonderful. Hot food, no cooking in the evening. Perfect.

Getting rid of the old couch tomorrow evening, yay. Will try to run in the morning as well. Will be cooler than this morning, I think, but easier to run in that than bike.

Have now discovered this is a known issue (at least to the neighbors) because they’ve told me it’s p*t smoke and incense coming from the apartment directly below mine. Shitheads. Methinks we’ll have maintenance in there to ‘fix’ their air unit as well so it’s not spilling this crap into the walls.

I don’t care what you do in your home, until it affects me. Then you’re toast.

Been burning a candle tonight (safely) in the bedroom since I got home to help kill the incense smell. Hopefully they’re not home and won’t be up at all hours again. Evidently they come in and out. Management will get an earfull in the morning, especially if this is a known problem.

Was up at about 3 this morning because the pervasive odor of tobacco smoke had filled my bedroom. The air unit in there was the culprit, and the smell ended up driving me from the bedroom entirely (the air unit in the living room? no smell whatsoever). I’ve smelled a light odor like this from that unit before, but never this bad. It did eventually die down and I went to bed again around 5:30 or so, for another 2 hours. Not the way I want to be awakened, nor is it terribly conducive to being all that productive today.

Posted to the cult’s email list and it found that this has happened before in other units, and building maintenance can put some sealant around the pipes to prevent it from happening again. Thankfully they’re in the process of doing preventative maintenance on the units this week, but I’ve asked them to bump me up on the schedule and get that done sooner than the Thursday date they have for me.

Disgusting.