Thursday, January 31, 2008

First Tempo Run, Last Day at Work, and a Funny Thing

First Tempo Run:

When I saw the forecast for rain this morning, I was really worried. I kicked myself for not running yesterday when I was scheduled to do it. But this morning there was no rain, and it was about 20 degrees warmer than yesterday morning, so in retrospect, I totally made the right decision!

Despite that, I felt like crap. I started running, and I just felt icky, slow, etc. I reminded myself that I was just wanting about 3.5 miles. I can do anything for 35ish minutes. First mile in 10-something (will retropost splits here tonight when I dl the data from the Garmin). Decided against doing a tempo since I felt so crappy. Then looked down a minute or two later and saw that I had dropped my pace into the low 9's. Fine, tempo it is. Dropped my pace further into the 8's. That was the goal of this, my first tempo run. Get an 8-something mile, and every time I look down at the pace, have it be less than 9. I succeeded. My heart and lungs sure felt it - I felt like I was back at C25K days, when running was really really hard (not just hard, like now)! The cool thing was that when I slowed down to recover-jog, I was actually running easily in the 9's, and it felt SLOW!!! So anyways, the third mile was 9-something, then .64 to home and off to work.

Last Day at Work:

I'm not leaving my company, just my department, but it feels like such a huge deal! I'm going to be doing something pretty much totally different in a totally different environment in a different location with totally different people and on a different schedule...

I'm strangely sad about leaving my current department, expecially given that I've been wanting to leave it pretty much as soon as I started. But they gave me a chance when I was fresh out of school with no pratical training, and for that I should be forever grateful to them. They also gave me the leeway to pursue varied projects that got me the exposure in the company that led to this new position, which is a promotion, baby! For that I am also grateful. And I've come to care about some of them in my own dysfunctional way.

With all that said, I'm so excited about my new job, and I can't wait to get started on Monday. I've got my Y membership all ready for the different schedule, I'm going to start with a swim focus since I haven't had access to a pool since August. I've got some of my stuff moved over to my new office. I'm nervous, but excited!

Funny Thing:

Last night I thought about this again, and felt the need to immortalize it. Last weekend after the 10K, Preston and I went over to his Dad's house. His step-mom's brother and parents were visiting from out of town. The brother (my step-uncle-in-law) said the funniest freaking thing.

The scene: my step-uncle-in-law is totally deaf, so he speaks with a sort of nasally toned voice with an impediment that is common for deaf people. He was hearing as a child, and has retained his Chicagoan accent on top of it. Now picture the guy, a little guy, hair in a ponytail, cut-off sleeved T-shirt, beer in hand. He was talking about how his son plays Warcraft too much - how he is addicted to the game.

"You know, they say that playing video games builds manual dexterity. But so does whacking off," here he made the universal hand gesture for jacking off, "and you don't see kids in their rooms doing that for 12 hours a day!!!"

That is all.

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