5k with 1K, I like Pi, bogged down, bitten, unexpected spike

So Thursday was the club’s big holiday 5K, our biggest 5K of the year.  I knew it was going to be a mad house so I wanted to get on site extra early, not that it did me much good.  I was on site about 4:25 am but the equipment truck didn’t get there until closer to 5.  I made the use of my alone time dropping off my timing/registration equipment at their respective locations since the registration area, the start and finish line were in three different spots, each several hundred yards apart.

The night before I had sent out an email asking the board members to try to get there as early as possible and they answered the call.  We had many more bodies on site at 5AM than normal, we put them to good use.  We got the registration area up and ready to receive the roughly 1000 participants that were going to be converging shortly. As expected the parking lot became a beehive of humanity.

Ali and I were swamped with people signing up that morning, we had something like 120 entries to type in before the race.  Ali finished up the data entry as I hurried to the start line.  The starting line crowd extended down the street close to 100 yards, it was quite the scene.

Timing the race had a potentially big bump in the road.  While I was running the finish line Ali was also updating some of the participant information in the system which in theory, should have been ok.  While I was in the system checking a couple things I noticed I wasn’t seeing an average pace number for some of the finished runners.  I thought it was odd but printed out a stack of results to have someone post for me anyway.

Well as I looked more at the results I saw something was f’d up.  A bunch of the women were all showing the same finish time, oh geezus.  This is the sort of issue that crops up time to time and the kind of issue that can only be handled via experience.  Without dropping a bead of sweat I erased all of the results from the race and imported them via a secondary method, hoping it would correct the problem.  Luckily it did.

I could only assume that having the participant data modified while results were coming in caused the problem somehow so I had Ali stop the work.  The rest of the race the times flowed in normally.  All in all for being the largest 5K the club has ever put on, things went very smoothly.

I was both the first one on site and last one to leave as I recollected my equipment from it’s various collection points.  I didn’t mind at all, it gave me a moment to reflect on how cool it is that I witnessed the venue go from empty, to crushed with people, back to empty with hardly a hiccup.

Some guy was flying around his quad copter with a HD camera mounted to it during the race.  Check out the video he compiled here, it’s pretty cool.

I was quite pooped the rest of the 4th of July and didn’t even entertain dragging myself out to see any fireworks shows.  There were a few houses close by that provided mini-versions of pyrotechnics that was enough for me.

On Friday I fast forwarded my weekend chore list, trying to get everything done ahead of time.  Part of that list included my two headed grocery shopping at both Costco and Publix.  I took the SSR out for the errands to make them a lot more fun.

On Saturday morning I decided to go to do the normal club group run.  I wanted to try to do the 7 mile route, a distance I have not covered since I did the stupidly long 16 mile jaunt with Tracy several months ago.

When I walked out the door at 5:20 am I noticed my weather station showed an outdoor humidity level of 99.7%.  I felt every point of it during the run.  All in all, I held up ok to the longer distance run.  I ran it with Mitch, the club president, and Steve.  Luckily neither of them was looking to push pace as we averaged around a 9:20 mile which was plenty for me at that distance.

By the time the run was over my cotton shirt was absolutely drenched.  Thank goodness I have some water proof slip covers in the back of the SSR to accommodate such a situation.

Early Saturday afternoon Ali stopped out with the dogs.  She brought a bunch of empty bins with her.  The purpose of her visit was to collect various dinnerware/bakeware items that have remained at the house.  They stayed there because Alison didn’t have a place to keep them.  Since we set her up with the big Ikea shelving set that was no longer the case.

Ali had not been out to the house in a long time, at least a month, maybe even closer to two.  As we went through the house collecting various things for the bins there were various swells of emotion that rolled in, something that I think is unavoidable, regardless of how much time has passed since the separation.

We hung out with the dogs in the back yard for a bit during a break in the process and Nicki seemed quite content as she laid sprawled out on the carpet with mommy and daddy under the roof of where she spent that majority of her life. It made me smile but feel sad at the same time as I looked at her.

There were too many crates to all fit in Ali’s Volt so I threw the excess and the dogs in the van and went back to her place to help her unload.  Some of the crates had enough weight in them that she would have struggled hauling them up two flights of stairs.

The property has remained bogged down from excessive rain.  Despite the various bodies of water around the yard I tried to at least cut a small portion of the increasingly ratty looking grass, basically mowing the mound the house is built on.  I am hoping for a solid 2-3 rainless days so I can get out there to knock the rest down.

I saw a couple movies over the weekend.  The first one was Life of Pi, a movie I knew little about but had heard was quite good.  I knew it involved animals and little more.  Very early on I got a sense the movie was a Forrest Gump / Castaway hybrid although as things rolled along I realized the film had a personality all of it’s own.

I became very attached to Richard Parker, the tiger, despite his ornery ways and inclination to kill things.  Speaking of killing, there were several scenes of animals, albeit make believe CGI versions of animals, getting killed in ways that I found disturbing.   If you are an animal lover like I am you might want to have your finger close to the fast forward button for a few scenes.

All in all I found the movie touching, deep and meaningful.  It gets a very solid A in my book.  This appeared to be a film that would have been worth seeing the 3D version in theaters.

Last night I watched Jack Reacher on the Xbox, yet another Tom Cruise action film, a role that no one can dispute he excels at.  Despite seeing Tom in this sort of role again and again, I never seem to tire of it.  I enjoyed the film and was ok overlooking a few moments of absolute sillyness.  I’ll give it an A-.

Yesterday morning I went to a duathalon/triathlon but not as a participant.  My initial goal was to go there to talk to and shadow the guy that times their events, John from Endurance Sports Timing.  John and I are in contact a bunch since we both time races and use identical hardware and software to do it.  We often will compare notes, trying to help each other when needed. Cindy decided to sign up for the run/bike/run duathlon since I was going to be there anyway.

The race was staged by Elite Events a father/son team that started putting on events in our area couple years ago.  I had heard various things about their events, mostly negative but never had seen anything first hand.

It was interesting being on the sidelines of a race, observing the loosely controlled chaos instead of being in the middle of it.  I could see where some of the complaints about their events were coming from.  The race started late, there seemed to be inadequate race staff directing participants at key areas of the course and the race results were delayed and had a number of errors.

The registration and finish line area had no bathroom facilities at all.  If you had to relieve yourself you either went in the woods or walked around 3/4 of a mile to the other side of the park, a major f up.  You needed to have at least a couple port-o-potties out there.

On the plus side, the organizer has some good equipment to make the race come off as more professional with nicely branded signage and equipment.  They had a nice PA system with a wireless mic that allowed a lot of flexibility.  I can tell that they have good intentions but perhaps lack the manpower to address the needs to pull off all aspects of a race successfully.  Having races that combine duathalons and triathlons lends itself to scoring problems.  I think simpler would be far better in their case.

On a positive note, Cindy had a great race, winning the masters division, something she never did before.  For her efforts she received a personalized beer glass and a finisher medal.  Unfortunately she was one of the victims of the scoring problems and did not get announced as the masters winner.

During Sunday afternoon I headed outside for a prolonged outdoor workout session, my best outdoor session in months, despite the blazing sun and thick, muggy air.  I knocked out 100 pull ups, 100 push ups along with a number of other calisthenics training on both the bars and my set of rings.

During the workout we had to be very aware of fire ants.  Because of the wet ground they have been migrating closer to the house and it’s higher ground.

I decided to do my first set of push ups in the grass.  Prior to getting into the plank starting position I inspected the spots where my hands and feet were going to be, making sure they were ant free.

As I got to around rep 20 of 25 I started feeling burning on my stomach.  I ignored it and quickly pumped out the last 5 reps.  Well when I glanced down, my white shirt had a couple hundred ants on it and the burning on my abs grew rapidly.  I ripped off my shirt and start swatting and plucking the bastard ants from my mid-section.  I was quite thankful that the elastic band on my shorts was tight enough to discourage the ants from traveling south before chomping down on me.  The rest of the push up sets were performed on the dog deck for safety sake.

All in all I bet the outdoor workout was close to an hour.  I felt tired but accomplished at the same time.  The dip in the pool felt fantastic.

I got my electric bill in the mail.  It was much higher than I have become accustomed to, around $165.  When I looked at the average daily kilowatt usage it was something like 7 units higher per day than the same month last year, which didn’t make any sense, until I thought about it.

There are two possible explanations I can come up with.  Last week I noticed that one of the off stops on my timer for the pool pump had fallen off.  That means instead of running 3 hours a day it was running more like 14-15 hours a day.  I am not sure how long it was screwed up.  If it was for a couple weeks that would be a pretty solid explanation.

The other suspect is my AC system.  A few times I have noticed that the outdoor compressor is making an electrical buzzing/humming noise, a noise I don’t recall hearing before.  The AC system however seems to be functioning otherwise, the house is being kept cool overall.  What I am wondering is if the low speed/power part of the compressor is not working.  The low speed feature of the two speed compressor is a big energy saver, if that is screwed up I would imagine my electric usage could creep up considerably.

I am going to have someone come out to check it.