August 2006 – Page 2 – My Thought Spot

I want my watch back!

I took my watch in to the repair shop on June 8 this year. It was for general cleaning prompted by the fact that I had them put a new battery in and it stopped working within a few days. They cleaned it and I got it back about a week later. A week after that it had some moisture in the crystal.

I took it back to them and they claimed that I had damaged the watch by dropping it or something. Some of the gears were bent. I may have dropped it. I cannot claim to be the most gentle person when it comes to watches. But, I have had this watch for 5 years or more and had never had any problems with it until they worked on it. I agreed to pay for any gears that needed to be replaced, but they would take care of the labor at no charge.

I went back a week later which is how long they said it would take. With the exception of the 2 weeks that I was out of town, I have been going back since the first of July each week to check on my watch. Each week I am assured that the part will come in and it will be ready the next week. It has not come in. I even went as far as to ask them to show me my watch just to make sure that it really did still exist. I got sufficient proof that my watch was still there. At least, all the individual parts that were shown to me looked like my watch.

Today I went back. The excuse now is that since everyone was on vacation in Mexico City, where the part is coming from, that delayed the shipping of the part. But “it will be here by the end of the week.” Do I believe them? It is getting very hard to.

Sadly, I really did drop and damage my other watch this last week. Do you think there is any chance I will be taking it to that repair shop?

I WANT MY WATCH BACK!

Running with the family

Maybe that is a bit of a stretch, but we did go out to the track together this morning. My son ran my warm up mile with me. We ran it in 12:55. Then I ran a 1.75 mile speed run. My goal was a 9:00 min/mile pace. That meant I needed to run each 400 meter leg at 2:15. I did pretty good with staying on pace.

2:04 <-- too fast 2:16 <-- perfect 2:17 <-- perfect 2:19 <-- pretty good 2:22 <-- still OK 2:15 <-- perfect 2:12 <-- to round out a perfect run This worked out to exactly 15:45 seconds. I was pumped. Then I did an easy .25 miles to cool down a bit before rejoining the family on a walk. My wife walked with the 2 year old, therefore did not get any aerobic walking in. On the other hand, she did get a good 30 minutes of walking in that she otherwise would not have gotten today.

Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can is a new site dedicated to racing bibs. Well, maybe not the bibs themselves, but the stories behind them. Terry, from the planet3rry blog, has set up this site so that runners can send pictures or scans of bibs or other items from a race along with the race reports. He started out thinking just race numbers, but has very quickly expanded his criteria to pictures of shoes or something else that may be significant to the runner as it pertains to the race.

Non runners may not find it that interesting, but I believe most runners like to read good race reports. Count me in. Also, look for some bibs and stories to be submitted by yours truly.

Underwater photos of whale sharks

Here are some photos from our whale shark trip. They are not very clear, but actually look much better than the printed originals. I used Picasa from Google Labs to clean them up. Click on them to see a larger version. Be sure to check out the original post that was posted August 16.

The first picture is his mouth. If you look under his mouth you can see a set of snorkeling fins. This can give you an idea of the size of the creature. Then there is a fin to the top right of the photo which gives you perspective again.

The water was very murky. I have been scuba diving where you could see well over 100 feet. Once I was in 120 feet of water and you could easily see the details of the bottom of the boat. The day these photos were taken the visibility was 20 feet or less. When you got far enough away from the fish to take a picture or even really see it from end to end the visibility would make it hard to even see that there was any animal there at all.

When I first jumped in the water I stuck my head in and looked for the shark. All I saw was mouth. A little disconcerting to say the least. The boat dumps you in at the front of the shark so that you can swim along with it. If you are not a strong swimmer, then you would miss the opportunity to see it. So getting out at the front, and therefore the mouth, you get a chance to see the whole fish.

Three days of rest. Helpful?

Great 7 mile run on Saturday. No running Sunday. Monday was a speed workout that was scrubbed because of driving to see the whale sharks. Tuesday was swimming with the whale sharks and driving home. So I had 3 days of rest from running.

Did it help my run this morning by being off? No. I did not do poorly today. In fact the run felt great, which to me is important, though the time of the run was a bit slow. Not too slow to be bummed. 53:16 was this week’s 5 miler and last week was 52:05. A difference of 14 seconds per mile slower. Last week I even walked a good bit of the last mile. I overdid it early on in the run I guess.

All that said, I do know that rest days help. Stringing 3 in a row is nice to do on occasion. Maybe the swimming and snorkeling I did affected me. I know the snorkeling gave me cramps in my calves. They were very sore last night, though I did not notice any soreness today.