Crossing off the list, one win short, suck it
The weather this weekend was spectacular with temps in the low 60’s in the morning and highs in the low 80’s with low humidity later in the day. Getting to enjoy weather like this for most of the winter is exactly why I moved to Florida.
Ali was gone for the majority of the day at a meeting. That left me alone to do my thing and do it I did, all day long. I wanted to let the grass dry out so after doing the weeding and a few other things I loaded the dogs up in the van. We hit the recycling center to drop off an old UPS and some batteries, Home Depot to grab some weed n feed and pvc fittings for a sprinkler repair and finally Wal-mart.
At Wal-mart I grabbed supplies to do oil changes on the Camry and the Tacoma. I also had an unplanned purchase, a tiller attachment for the weed whacker. We have an old tiller that was given to us by the ex-neighbors years ago. The problem is whenever I want to use it I have to f around for 20-30 minutes to get it running. Plus, it takes up a decent chunk of shed real estate. With the attachment I can till when I need to without having to take up a lot of space or elbow grease to get it running.
When I got back I worked on fixing a leak in the sprinkler system. The leak was in a spot that I tried to fix before. I originally tried to fix it by splicing in a straight section of pipe a few months back but it was leaking around one of the joints. The problem with a straight splice when you have two ends of pipe that are already in the ground is that you can’t move much to get a tight fit into the connector.
This time I decided to put in a little C joint to fix the problem. Using this configuration allowed me to work the fix back and forth to ensure it is fully seated on the old pipe. I let the repair set for a day before applying pressure on Sunday. It was drip free which I was happy to see.
After the pipe repair I turned to the Tacoma oil change. Last time I did the oil change I used an extended life oil filter so I literally only had to change the oil this time around which was uneventful.
By this time it was mid-afternoon so I decided to hop on the mower and get busy. Ali came home while I was in the middle of the job. She offered to come out and mow so I could change the Camry oil which was nice. However I told her that I had to wait to do the Camry as to avoid getting bathed in boiling hot oil.
I told Ali she could just work on getting all of the leftover food from her conference organized and put away. We wound up with enough spare food for a week.
After I got done mowing the Camry had cooled enough to work on. I changed the oil and filter and reset the annoying MAINTENANCE REQUIRED message on the dashboard. Finally that wound up my labor for the day.
Saturday night we watched the Phillies game. Some no name guy all of a sudden became Babe Ruth and smacked two home runs off Halladay resulting in the Phillies losing a close game, 4-3. Damn it.
I originally had ideas on Sunday of tagging along with Ali and her girlfriends for their run. They had talked of doing 7 miles. Even though I had never run that far, the challenge of doing it sparked interest for me, just for the hell of it. Well Ali was lukewarm to me inviting myself to their girl party and let me know that my presence may be tolerated but not necessarily welcome. Um ok, I can take I hint.
So I decided to do my own thing Sunday morning. The plan was Ali would meet up with me at the waterpark after she was done running. I had her take the truck so I could ride my bike to the park and throw it in the back of the truck for the ride home.
Once again it was nice and cool Sunday morning, 61 degrees when I woke up. It was cool enough that I felt rather chilly for the first mile or two of the 16.25 mile bike ride until my body temp made up for the cool air. I kept a decent pace on the way to the park, a bit faster than the week before but not significantly so.
Once I arrived I started to prepare for my run. I still had it in my mind I wanted to do a 10k run.
A 10K run has always held significance in my mind as something I always had wanted to do but never accomplished. When I was younger my dad was a pretty consistent runner. I remember him running in a couple 10k races. For whatever reason once I reached adulthood I had always had the goal of equaling dad’s 10k run.
Over the years I got close. I used to do a run from our place in Wernersville to Robesonia and back. I always thought it was close to 10k distance but when I punched it into Google maps yesterday I found it was actually only a 5 mile run.
Years back Ali and I did a 5.75 mile run after work. I believe that was the closest I came to the actual 6.25 mile 10k distance. Because of my various knee problems over the years I had pretty much dismissed the idea of ever crossing a 10K run off my bucket list. Well yesterday I got to finally do it.
Over the past 3 or 4 years the farthest I have run was 4 miles and that was on a treadmill. The most I have done more recently has been a 5K. Doubling your distance on the spur of the moment is generally frowned upon in running circles. Oh well, I had it in my head to do it so unless I developed shooting knee pain I intended to do it.
The cool temps were just a perfect fit for my intentions. If I had the same idea and it was 90 degrees and humid the outcome would probably have been different.
I intentionally went out slow and steady since I was going to be going further than I ever had previously. I didn’t pay much attention to my gps watch during the run but when I did was tracking around a 10 minute mile pace, nothing fast compared to 8:30 pace I use on my 5k training runs but good enough.
The course I run around the outside of the park is almost exactly two miles. When I finished the first lap, I felt good. At that point I was pretty confident that I was going to be able to compete the full distance. At the end of lap two I felt a bit more tired but nowhere close to being ready to stop, especially with a lifetime goal staring at me and within reach.
I was wearing my Naples Triathlete Bike top for the run. It zippers down the front. Each lap the zipper got pulled down a little further to allow for more airflow. By lap three I probably looked like a cast member of Saturday Night Fever.
Even on the third lap around the park which was all beyond my recent running distance, I didn’t feel terrible. Perhaps it was the excitement of closing in on my first full 10K that helped subdue the fatigue. By the time I made the final turn towards the parking lot I could see that the Tacoma was in the parking lot meaning Ali had arrived.
To get to the full 6.25 mile distance I had to do a little extra loop in the parking lot. I picked a stop sign as my finish line and I accelerated towards it, still having a good amount in the tank from my reduced pace. I finished and did a little internal cheer, it took 30 years of intentions, but I FINALLY ran a 10K.
Ali came over and congratulated me. Before the attempt she had said she didn’t think it was a good idea for me to jump up so much in distance, which it wasn’t, but as my past history will show, if I get an idea in my head it is hard to get me off it. The other good news was I didn’t feel too worse for wear. The muscles in my hips felt pretty tired but my troublesome knees didn’t feel bad at all.
After re-hydrating we headed inside to swim. Christy and Michelle showed up to swim as well. I should have told them I would have preferred to swim alone. 🙂 I upped the game in my swimming as well, covering the same 1600 meter distance but doing it in two 800 meter blocks instead of four 400 meter segments. I did each 800 in just over 18 minutes which I was happy with.
We didn’t stick around the park long after we finished swimming, the Eagles played at 1. Needless to say I was pleased with my amount of physical exertion for the day. I was 9 miles on the bike short of an Olympic distance triathlon.
The Eagles smoked the Falcons. It was a big surprise to most people. Hell, the Fox pregame guys all picked the Falcons to win. Well the team came out and basically kicked the Falcons ass. All of those fly by night Eagle fans that deemed Kevin Kolb a failure after one half of football can suck it. He had a great game throwing for 300 yards with three touchdowns and leading the team with authority from start to finish. It was a great win. To add to the goodness both the Redskins and Cowboys lost yesterday.
The Phillies got back to their winning ways by beating the Giants last night. Unfortunately I was so exhausted I passed out around the 6th inning or so.