Falling Back

I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning trying to get motivated for a long run. I'm planning on running the Tecumsah Trail Marathon in about four weeks and I really haven't trained for it (this is becomming a theme for me!). I ran about 20 miles four weeks ago and it felt pretty good. I've been running minimal mileage since then. I'm up an hour earlier then usual because the time changed last night. We move our clocks an hour back and stay one hour different than most of Indiana and Michigan but the same as Chicago. What that means to runners and bikers is that afternoon workouts will be ending after dark. Many bikers have put their bikes up by now anyway. There's a chance of snow in the weather forecast this week.

Our high school cross country season ended a week ago. I always feel a little down afterward. Our team made their goal of running in the state meet-this year for the seventh time in a row. We return all but one runner in our top twelve so our future looks promising. Every year, I struggle to manage my time between cross country and my regular job as a counselor. I'm constantly rushing from work to practice or from practice to work. I suppose I should feel relieved that I can give this lifestyle up for awhile but I don't.

My bike commute miles have been lower the last couple of months, mostly becasue I need the car to get back and forth from work to practice. I have been averaging 2-3 days per week. I've also been doing some modest mileage on the weekends.

I watched a little of the web cast of the Men's Olympic Marathon Trials that was held yesterday in Central Park. I've run that loop a couple of times. That's a tough marathon and an imprerssive time by the winner. By the way I was saddened to learn of the death of one runner, Ryan Shay.


I guess I need to get in gear if I'm going to do this run. We're heading for the dark season.

Where have I been?

Time flies sometimes, doesn't it? Seems like yesterday I was mourning the end of the Tour de France, and now it's a few days from the beginning of Autumn.

I had 319.2 biking miles in August. I was gone for a week at cross country camp so no riding. I'll update my yearly mileage in another post (I may just wait until the end of September now).

I bought a replacement computer on Ebay, a Dell Demension 8200 series computer for $62.00. I think it was a pretty good deal although the cost of upgrading the RAM memory is a little steep because the memory modules must be installed in pairs. I'm hoping to add this computer to the new wireless network I have at home. The primary reason I went with a used desktop is when I went to Best Buy to purchase a cable to attach my printer to my lap top, the cost was $36.00! At that point I figured for a few more bucks a could buy a used computer to connect the printer via the serial cable I already had and network it to the laptop. I'm still waiting for the Dell to arrive in the mail.

I got my yearly late summer, allergy-driven, cold about a week and a half ago. As usual it began with bronchitis-like symptoms. It started after I tried to set a personal best for the bike ride home from work a couple of Thursdays ago because I had a crazy strong tail wind. That night I couldn't sleep because I had this familiar "post nasel drip" (a nice way of saying that crap was clogging my throat!). I tried to ignor my sickness for a couple of days, hoping it would just disappear on it's own, but that didn't work. I eventually took a day to just sleep and read in bed all day. I did get a good ways into the sixth Harry Potter book. I finished it yesterday and am ready for the last book now. I'm almost back to noraml except I'm still coughing more than is normal for me.

We're in the heart of the high school cross country season now. Our team Chesterton High School is ranked in the top 20 in the state so far. Our traditional goal is to qualify to compete in the state meet that is held at the end of October. We're cautiously optimistic about our chances. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I'm the assistant coach.

That's where I've been!

Computer Woes

I know just enough about the inner workings of computers to be dangerous. My desk top computer has been crashing fairly often, but while I was gone to camp it got a lot worse. It never recovered from the video Cathy tried to view on the MSNBC site. After trying a variety of online fixes, I'd decided to re-format the hard drive and start over. Thing is, the computer is crashing every time I try to reinstall Windows XP! Maybe it's a hardware thing? I've been surfing the net for cheap motherboards. I suppose I could just wave the white flag and trash the thing. It seems like a waste of good (?) parts. There will undoubtedly be more to this story.

Off to Camp

I'm off to cross country camp at
Tippecanoe State Park this week. As this is at least the 8th year for me to attend camp, it's become a harbinger of the end of summer and the slide towards winter. Thanks to the Windy City Biker for reminding me of this crazy biker guy! Check out the Ice Ice video for some winter fun!

Local Impact of our Unquenchable Thirst for Oil

It looks like our love of the car will trump common sense in "The Region." British Petroleum (BP) gets to dump more pollutants into the lake for the sake of increasing their refining capacity at their Whiting plant. The best they can do is to assure everyone that they've complied with existing laws. If that's true, maybe the laws need re-examination. Indiana officials seem content to inform us it could be worse and that it will create jobs (the article says 80). Here's the link.

July Bike Miles

Did an 80 miler this month on July 22nd. My longest ride in awhile. It helped boost my July miles. A also had a Sunday 50 miler this month. Steve says I should just improve on my last month's mileage by a mile or two-kind of like the East German weight lifters used to do-so I can break last month's mark every month. I think I may be tapped out unless I cut back on my run miles. With cross country gearing up I doubt it.

July miles=588
2007 miles=2374.4
Miles since June 2006=5313.4

21 commute days. The running store is now closed on Sunday so I don't have quite as many commute opportunities.

Rally Cap

It worked! Yeah, I'm a sorry Cubs fan!