August 2007 – Page 7 – My Thought Spot

Post-run necessities

Today I had a “Tempo Run” thrown into my training plan [PDF]. This basically is a 1 mile warm up at an easy pace. Then you run your required distance at “almost race pace” which is followed by a 1 mile cool down. I was supposed to do 3.5 miles today but had to cut it short due to an appointment and the fact that I woke up 1 hour late. Not sure what happened this morning for that to take place.

I ended up with a great pace for a 3 mile run. Just a bit faster than my workout called for. 9:07 per mile was the prescribed time and I ran it in 9:03.

When I got home I needed to do several things quickly. Since I only had 25 minutes to cool off, eat breakfast, take a shower and enjoy a cup of coffee (not necessarily in that order), I had to combine some of my activities.

Breakfast was ready for me when I walked in the door (my wife is awesome about that). Since said wife does not like sweat puddles under the table, I decided to take my food out to the back porch and eat it there. While consuming a wonderful omelet with a few veggies and avocados, I started eying the pool as a great place to cool off.

In no time I was in the pool enjoying breakfast and cooling off so that within an hour of my shower I should be able to stop sweating. I often will spend time in the pool after a run. I can’t say I am swimming since my daughter will insist on getting in. But if I tell her I am cleaning the pool, she is cool with that. And, I almost always do give it a good skimming.

I don’t know if the pool time really helps me get my core temp down since the water is not that cold. But, it certainly does not hurt.

The only thing I missed on the list of post-run necessities is a massage. But, I guess the necessity of that could be argued.

I have a plan

I am training for the Phedippidations World Wide Half coming up in October. I followed a training schedule last year and did fine with my training. I even accomplished what I set out to do. But, race day was a bit of a disappointment. I did not stick to my plan totally and ran a bit slower than expected. That will be fixed this year due to more experience.

But what I did not do last year was stick totally to the training plan that I had. I did the runs, but not at the speeds that I should have been doing them. I did not see an increase in speed, just in endurance. And, honestly, that is all I was looking for. As a new runner I was not looking to really improve in the speed and strength areas. I just needed to be able to cover the distance.

This year is different though. I am using the McMillan Running Calculator to determine my paces for my different runs. I am running my speed sessions much faster than I would have ever done before. My endurance at higher speeds is increasing. At this stage in my training my long runs are not very challenging, but I am trying not to push the distance too much so that I can really focus on my speed and tempo workouts during the week. I am doing a simple dumbbell workout on my off days.

I am really focusing on my training at this point. I have started a bit late on the intense training, but I am not going into it as a slacker. I have been getting some good long runs in and I have also tried to keep my weekday runs at a higher intensity.

Just 9 weeks until the half-marathon. I may actually run it a week later. I have a bunch of friends that I am trying to talk into running the 5K that weekend. If they will do it, then I will run a (very) easy 5K on the 13th and then the half on the next Saturday. If I run with my friends we will probably be running in the 12 to 15 minute per mile range.

Cool games

I did a little stumbling today and came across a website that had a really neat set of games. The one that StumbleUpon pointed me to was called Winterbells. You have to hop a bunny from one bell to another which gets you 10 points each. There are point doubling opportunities. As you go higher the bells get smaller.

There is a whole list of games. Some are really dumb and mindless. Some are pretty fun. I have only played a handful of them, but look forward to revisiting the site when I have 15 minutes to kill. The beauty of most of these games is that you can have a great time playing a game and it only takes 3 minutes or so.

Many of the colors are pastel and muted. That caused a problem on some of the games. There was not enough contrast to really see where you were supposed to be transporting the items.

Some of these games have been around since the turn of the century based on the copyrights on them.

Mold sniffing dogs

Here is something I wish I knew was available a few years back–mold sniffing dogs. We had a house get flooded and insurance would not pay. I ended up having to either replace all the drywall at my own expense or try to dry it out with the hopes that no mold would grow in the mean time. That is a big hope since we lived in Florida where the humidity is quite high.

I did not know that it was possible to have mold testing done. But there is a service that will send dogs into your home or business looking for mold. They are based in New Jersey. I did not find on their website what areas they service, but it is a cool thing to know that there are services like this available.

We ended up drying out our house as best we could and never had problems. That was 5 years ago and the current owners knew about the problem and have never mentioned anything about mold. I guess we got lucky.

[This is a sponsored post.]

New Electrical Boxes

Today a friend came over and helped me install two new main cutoff switches to my house. Or, maybe it was I who helped him. I at least knew where the tools were and did a fairly good job of keeping him supplied with the right tools at the right time.

I am not getting consistent power in my house. Particularly the upstairs. I have two boxes, one that controls downstairs and the other for upstairs. The old fuse boxes are old. The lever that you throw to cut off the power on one of them was mostly broken. The way you would have to cut the power was to reach in with a pair of pliers and pull the interrupter switch out manually. Not good.

We mounted the newer, smaller, boxes inside the old boxes. That gives them one more line of protection from the weather. And we did something novel. We actually grounded the new boxes. Now there is much less of a chance that you will kill yourself trying to cut the electricity to the house.

I have asked 3 different electricians on 4 occasions (one of them I asked twice) to come and replace these boxes. They never came back the next day to do the work. It only took 2 amateurs 3 hours to do the replacement, not including the almost 2 hours spent yesterday shopping for the items we needed. I am not sure why an electrician would not want to take on a job that should be easy money.

Now the next project is to run a ground wire to a couple of outlets so that I have some grounded ones for my computer equipment. That will be a nice change.

If there were only something we could do about the 190 Volts coming into the house. We should have 220 V. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. It just fluctuates. The electric company won’t do anything to investigate the problem until you get a certified electrician to write a report saying that the problem is them and not the house wiring. All 3 of my electricians said they would write the report when they came back to replace the boxes.

Still waiting.