I Live in Iowa: Week 233

If I were to describe this week in a word in my own head that word would be: depressing. "Why?" You ask. That is an excellent question. I have learned that reality and our perception of reality do not always line up, in fact sometimes they are downright conflicting. I think I found this week depressing because I've spent so much time traveling the last two weeks that I did not feel like I was really contributing to designing anything, which is my job. On top of that I have gotten all of the sleep I could use, and it began to affect my running. Also, the traveling I did this week was rather last minute and I suppose I went into it with a negative attitude. It went excellently, so again reality and my perception weren't exactly lining up. 

Monday and Tuesday I was in Milwaukee. Very interesting to see what I did. We were doing some testing, that went better than expected. I have learned when we are testing something that I want to be there to look at results when it is finished because if there is any issue, at all, I can help problem solve. There were no issues this time, which of course is a great thing.  However, travel began to wear on me and Tuesday I only ran three miles because I was tired.

Wednesday I went over to Waterloo for some drivetrain engineering training. The frustration I had was that I only found out about it Friday afternoon. Sure, give me less notice, and no agenda... Great start. However the actual training was really good. The hard part was watching 1/3 to 1/2 of the small class on their laptops or otherwise disengaged from the lesson. Here are interesting stories from experienced people and we're barely paying attention! The positive side was learning about a number of the innovations my company has had in the past that allowed certain machines to be possible, in particular a tractor that goes 30 mph. Unfortunately I didn't run Wednesday, because I was tired and felt a cold coming on. It may have been my first day off in 32 days, but because I was supposed to run, it feels bad not to.

Thursday and Friday I was in the office, which almost seems like vacation some days.  In fact! You could say I got a present Thursday and Friday! I won't go into details but two giant 8 x 10 foot boxes full of expensive steel assemblies from a potential supplier make for a lot of engineering fun!

I didn't get sick, in fact my runs went really well the end of the week. I did a monster workout Friday five intervals, a total of 5.46 miles in 32:12, within a ten mile run. Then Saturday morning, just 16 hours later I did 21 miles with a huge negative split. Both of those runs were made better by running on Friday with a few people from the local Loras college team and Saturday a couple people from the University of Dubuque. Running partners certainly make running better. In a way much of this year's training has been a struggle for me because I have had the least consistent training partners of any time the last five years. It's amazing how seriously one mile of company on a run makes the other nine miles feel easier.

Saturday I went out for sushi with a couple friends, nothing big, but always nice to do a little socializing. 

So the week ended really well. I was just really beat down in the middle of it, and I've learned that emotional waves usually don't change overnight but go up and down gradually. I mean, I have the best life in the world, and sometimes I just need to be reminded.