Running, swimming, biking, sweating

I had an unplanned 4 day weekend, let’s see how much of it I can remember.

Last week we had a bunch of heavy rain that left our property a soggy mess. I didn’t want all the grass to become jungle-like so I decided to at least mow the high area around the house. In addition to that I was buzzing around the house trying to get all of the chores done so my Sunday would be free for tri-training and football.

Saturday night we were invited over by our ex-neighbor to his new house.  We missed the official house warming a few weeks back because Ali was in PA.  As a bonus they were fine with us bringing our dogs along too since they used to dogsit Nicki in the past.

Their house is EXTREMELY cool.  From the front it looks like a tiny little place, it isn’t very wide at all.  This was due to it being built on a narrow 75 foot wide lot.  However the house is very, very long, it is built like a stretched out rectangle.  It is also a courtyard layout which I never had seen first hand before, it is simply fantastic.

When you go into the front doors you immediately enter the courtyard that has a small pool.  To your left is a built in guest house with everything a guest would need to live comfortably.  As you walk past the pool you come into the doors for the main living area.

We immediately got the tour of the place.  It’s just great.  The place was decorated perfectly, everything matched, everything flowed, it felt like you were in a model home.  We weren’t surprised since that was the way the house next to us was as well when Rick lived there.

The dogs loved the big layout as well.  They had fun playing with our friend’s dog Zoe.  Zoe was Nicki’s first ever dog friend.  Even though they see each other very rarely anymore they both instantly remember the other.

We had a very enjoyable evening drinking, eating way too much and talking.  It was good to catch up.

Sunday morning Ali and planned on doing a simulation tri.  Instead of doing a bike/run/swim we wanted to do the real order of events, swim/bike/run.  We wanted to do the full distance we would do in the race and try to do quick transitions as well. The one negative was the pool doesn’t open until 10 am so that means we would be pushing the bike and run back deeper into the heat of the day, oh well.

So we pulled up to the water park and used our newly acquired year long family pass to get in.  We saw our friends Michelle, Taylor and their two boys as we were getting ready to go in. We didn’t waste much time until we were in the pool.

After doing a 50 meter warm up we were off and swimming.  I had my gps watch timing the session.  We did the sprint tri distance of 400 meters.  I swam steady, trying to make sure to not go too fast and gas.  I was psyched when I stopped the watch after 16 laps at 8:40, a full two minutes less than my other timed 400 effort.  My swimming style leaves a lot to be desired but it at least allows me to breathe without feeling air starved.  My gorilla length arms make up for my poor form as I was able to put distance between both Ali and Michelle who were swimming as well.

I started getting dried off and ready to scoot back out to the truck to start the bike segment.  Ali and I hopped on our bikes and were off.

For the bike, in addition to my Garmin GPS, I utilized a cool app on my Iphone called iMapmyRide.  It utilizes the built in GPS to track every detail of your ride and seamlessly upload it to their site. It’s pretty damn cool.

We did the bike at Ali’s pace, we are trying to get her more comfortable with going faster.  She did better than last week and she averaged between 15-16mph for the 13 mile ride.

When we got back I took a big drink, threw on my running sneakers and took off.  For the 5k I ran my own pace and let Ali run hers.  It was late morning by this time and it was hot as hell.  The stifling humidity made every step of the run not fun at all.  I kept a decent pace, faster than last week’s effort and finished the 5K in 28 minutes and change.  My total exercise time, not counting transitions was something like 1:25, not bad considering in a race my bike pace would be up another 3 or 4 mph.

I was exhausted at the end.  I was so overheated.  I tried to walk around for a bit but soon just sat under a tree waiting for Ali to finish.  When she came up to the truck she was dying of thirst and asked if I could go get her a cold water from the vending machine, the water we brought was either gone or hot from being in the bed of the truck.

I reached in my pocket for the spare truck key and felt nothing.  The panic grew as I patted down the other pocket and felt NOTHING.  You have to be kidding me, tell me I lost the damn key.

I instantly had nightmares running through my head of retracing our bike AND running route to look for the f’ing key.  I figured I should retrace my steps backwards so I went over to where I was sitting on the grass, not expecting to see anything.  What a relief, the key was laying there, major crisis averted.  I will NOT just leave the key in my pocket again.

Ali and I were both pleased with our session.  We also were both thoroughly spent.  As soon as we went back inside the water park we headed for the pool to get our elevated body temperatures down.  It felt GREAT.

This was the 4th weekend in a row that we had been to the water park.  We enjoyed relaxing af5ter the 90 minutes of exertion.  We took a few laps around the lazy river, ate lunch and hung out.  Between 2 and 3 we packed up and headed out, the Eagles home opener was scheduled to kick off at 4.

Before the game I quickly moved stuff around in the garage to accommodate the work on the AC.  I had to move the fridge to the other side and also take down a shelf that was right in front of the air handler.

So Ali and I settled in front of the TV for the big Eagles game.  This was a big deal, for the first time in over a decade that Donovan McNabb was not going to be at the controls.  The general consensus was Kolb has great potential so we were excited to see how his first game as the starting QB would be.  Well needless to say, we weren’t impressed.

The Eagles offense went absolutely nowhere with Kolb behind center.  He forced a number of throws, several of which could have been easily intercepted.  He took a whack during the second quarter that they later deemed was a concussion.  All of a sudden Mike Vick was the QB.

I didn’t have much hope for the game.  The Eagles D was starting to get dominated by the Packers and with Vick behind center I didn’t expect much.  Well Vick at least made a game out of it between scrambling for 100 + yards and connecting on some passes down the stretch.  The Eagles were actually in position to tie the game before failing on a 4th and 1.

I didn’t find a whole lot in the game that made me think anything above a .500 record this year is likely.  The defense was ok for awhile but eventually gave up yards in chunks.  The offense was a disjointed mess.  Special teams were very poor as well.

The game made me regret investing so heavily in the Eagles for my fantasy team.  Kolb, my starting QB got me a nice and tidy zero points. Who knows what the season holds.  Regardless, I will watch and cheer them on.

I also watched the Redskins/Cowboys game with interest.  Like most Eagle fans we were curious how Donovan would do with his new team.  It was a good outcome in that regard.  McNabb was average at best in his performance but the hated Cowboys went down in flames 13-7.

All weekend I was dealing with technical issues related to relocating my web content to new servers.  I had to contact IX Webhosting support at least a half dozen times for assistance.  To their credit, all of the support staff I dealt with did a nice job in getting me back up and running although it took a bit longer than I hoped.  At this point all of my content is up and running on new hardware.  I have a few remaining bugs to squash but nothing major.

I took off Monday so I could be around for the AC install. The plan was I would be there Monday and Ali could be home Tuesday.  I was told that by the end of day one the new unit should be up and running and then on day two the new duct work would be completed.

The installers showed up on time and got busy.  Once the AC was turned off it started getting warm in the house, slowly at first but accelerating as the afternoon sun beat down on the roof.  I was sweating my ass off inside.  At their climax the temps inside reached 90 degrees.

I battled the heat via three pool sessions and sitting in the office under the ceiling fan running at high speed.  Even so I was soaked through my shirt.

Mid-afternoon I got the bad news from the installers.  They new unit would not be up and running until Tuesday.  They had to do so much prep work to fix the various problems created by the original installation that it put them behind schedule.

I called and gave Ali the news that we wouldn’t have AC in the house.  Luckily I had a contingency plan. In the smaller shed I still had the small room unit air conditioner I bought 5 years ago on ebay.  It was still in the box, never used.

I lugged the unit up to our bedroom and “installed” it.  Our windows are much wider than conventional windows so in order to completely fill in the gaps I used cushions from our outside table and chair set.  Yea it looked pretty trashy but it worked.

I was impressed at the sheer size of the new equipment. Both the outside compressor and the air handler were much larger than the equipment they replaced.  The compressor has to be at least five feet tall.  It sure looked like it was up to the task of cooling our house.

Luckily the room unit AC was able to do a good job of cooling our bedroom.  Ali and were able to at least sleep in comfort.  When I opened the door to go back out into the main living area on Tuesday it felt like I was walking into a steam room.

I called my boss and asked to take Tuesday off as well.  I wanted to be around in case something major came up.

The crew showed up earlier on Tuesday.  Their plan was to get up in the attic and get the new vents put in before the attic got insanely warm.  Ali and I could hear them crawling around in the attic for much of the morning, I did not envy them in the least.

Mid-afternoon they were finally ready to turn the system on.  They hit the switch and everything worked, thank goodness.  The system seemed to work quite well, dropping the temps in the house 8 degrees in 90 minutes while removing the excessive humidity that made it so uncomfortable.  We got a new high tech thermostat that I thought was cool.  It’s touch screen and even has an exterior temperature reading.

The installers are back again today to finish up.  They are adding a second small return to the system, installing a couple more new ducts and replacing all of the air registers in the house from the cheap stamped variety to fully adjustable models.

It was quite an expensive home improvement but one that we hope will pay for itself over the life of the system.