Monday, November 24, 2014

I Live in Iowa: Week 179

Another finished week. Every finished week is a blessing. It's true. There are so many reasons that I should not have made it this far. I mean seriously, I am so blessed, I have so much to be thankful for. Okay, I won't get ahead of myself before a Thanksgiving post about many of the specific things I am thankful for this year. Suffice to say, I have my fair share of things to be thankful for this year.

Work was work. The good news is as we wind this particular project down on our end into the next stage the work load is fairly light. But, and of course there is a but, when there is something to work on, it's usually high priority, high visibility, should have been done three months ago, we messed this up sort of issue. Not exactly the kind of thing that is stress free at work.

More good news about work, as we find a number of small issues and fix them, we are preventing more serious issues from occurring later. It's pretty awesome to know that because I was there, and I measured that thing, and found it to be wrong, we'll get the problem corrected without any delay to the program or significant cost. It's interesting, 97% quality, sounds really good, but on a part by part basis, it's not good at all. If only 97% of the 7000+ parts in your car worked, there is a good chance you would not get to work on Monday.

Running was not good. It started out good with a couple 12 mile runs and some strides. I thought I was recovering from my long pace variation tempo really well, but a little knot, or dare I say it, stress reaction, is currently toying with my left leg and led to my taking an unplanned day off and running 2-4 miles the rest of the week. My high mileage week turned into 43 miles over six days. Not a good lead into a marathon. The upside is, if my body need recovery or cross-friction massage, or whatever, it's getting it. A number of runners have been the kind that trained awfully hard and only when they were forced to rest then ran great races. With less than two weeks to go until marathon day, another big workout isn't going to give me much anyway. The work has been done. The final result is all but trained for.

In college, or high school, going to a state or national competition is often paid for by the school and the  cost is neglected. Well, in the post-collegiate world, I spent $150 on registering for the race and another $450 on flying out to California for the California International Marathon. Then there will be the expenses for food while I am out there. I am staying with family friends, so I don't have to get a hotel, which is really nice. The thing is, it's expensive. Even if I could run five good marathons a year, I couldn't really afford to travel so far all the time. At least I couldn't if I wanted to save any money.

Really not much else happened. I ordered an iPhone 5S because my 4S is getting a little more buggy, crashing more often, and I don't like the new 6 and 6 Plus form factors, I am afraid my size small 28x28 pockets won't fit the new phones and it is slippery enough I will drop the thing.

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