Fancy Ear

This post is all about our dog, Gladys.  I figured there weren't enough pet photos on the internet, and felt I needed to do something about that.  We named her "Gladys", which is obviously an old lady name, because we wanted a name that she could grow into and figured that name would continue to work better for her as she aged.

We don't know what kind of dog she is.  "A happy one", is how we usually answer when someone asks us that question.  She is a rescue dog.  Not in the crawling-through-rubble-to-find-you-after-an-earthquake sense, but in the we-adopted-her-from-ARF-when-she-was-a-puppy sense.  ARF stands for Animal Rescue Foundation, and it's one of many here in town.  They brought her to a local Petsmart one weekend, and we couldn't resist.

Anyway, she's amazing.  I am biased, of course, so I am including some picture of things at which, I feel, she truly excels.

Snooze #1

At least there was king cake.

I don't know about you (obviously), but I spent most of my morning learning about multi-beam sensors, echo sounders, velocity profiles (and how they relate to water salinity & temperature), pitch/roll/heading/heave compensation, the application of tidal predictions, point-cloud binning & tinning, total propagation of error, and how many cases of beer it might take to actually affect the draught of a vessel in the water (hypothetically, of course).
All that before lunch.
Apparently, I am now an expert.  ;)

Sure, my work gets dull and monotonous at times.  But I have to remind myself how amazing it is that a "simple" work meeting like this to discuss some field equipment can combine both astronomy/physics (lunar cycles and gravitational pull), and quantum physics (GPS timing, and wave refractions).

It was certainly more interesting than the "safety meeting" we had right after.

OK.  Lunch is over.  Back to work.

3 miles... make it 4. No, 5. And a parking tower.

There's a group of runners here that meet just about every Wednesday (and Sundays.... and some Saturdays.  Occasionally a Tuesday, as well).  Normally, I would join them, but other things came up, so I ran by myself on Tuesday, instead.
To be honest, it's not quite as fun running alone, but the weather had taken a slight dip into the "more favorable" temps, which was nice.  I was originally shooting for a quick 3 around the neighborhood.  Maybe 4 if I was feeling good.  I took off in a direction that led me away from my neighborhood, but with no real "route" in mind.  Hung out in the sub-8-min pace; felt really good.  Sometime during mile 2, I decided to head for a parking tower.  Got there right as I finished mile 2, so I took it as a good sign and drove straight in... and up.
I've noticed that my GPS doesn't do so well inside parking towers, so I tried to stay near the edges where it's more open.  Of course, this meant that I couldn't cut the corners.  :)
Apparently, this tower is 6 stories tall, because it went on forever.  Phew!  Tried to keep it near 8-min, but it was pretty steep.  Not sure about the accuracy, but I made it all the way up, and back down just as my watch crossed the next mile.  So, it's at least a mile then, right? (assuming the GPS cuts corners - which it does).
Well, if there's one thing about running a parking tower, it's that it feels So Good when you're done running it!  My next 2 miles were back under 8, and felt great.
Not bad for what was originally supposed to be an easy 3.  Guess someone had their Wheaties.

Let's just hope that can hold me until Saturday.

14 Miler

Phew!  Glad that's over.
Met up with a fellow runner at 6:30am.  We did a big loop around town, hitting a few of the known water-fountains that we know of.  Interesting tid-bit:  I don't know if this exists everywhere or not, but there are at least 3 (I'm sure more) houses here that have water fountains installed at or near their mailbox.  To be honest, I don't know the owners, or if they are runners themselves.  But these water fountains are well known to the local running community... and appreciated.
We wanted to keep the pace under 9min, and ended up with an 8:35 average.  Pleased with that, especially since we had a little warm front come through last night.  It was in the mid-sixties and very muggy.  Thick fog our entire run.

Now, of course, I can't stop eating.  :)

Watch Problems

OK,  I ran an easy 4 miles last night.  Quasi-tempo run.  First & last miles were right under 9min, and the two in the middle were under 8.  Didn't want to do too much, because I have 14 to do tomorrow morning.

My GPS watch, however, was not helping.  Recently, during the past few runs, it's popped up a little message about it running out of room to store data.  The message only lasts for a second, and it's difficult to read when, you know, I'm running.  I've been assuming that it's been deleting my oldest runs to make room for the current data, and just warning/informing me about it.

Apparently, that is not the case.
It's just been telling me that I need to go and manually remove my old data before it runs out of room to store my current stats.  That critical moment occurred last night at the end of mile #3.  My watch popped up a new message that said it was out of room, and it continued to display this and beep every 2 seconds.  I didn't want to stop during my last mile and try to figure out: A) How to delete old data, and B) What data I was ready to delete.  So, I just kept running.  And beeping.

It was kind of annoying.

Anyway, after I got home, I figured out how to clean up old stats.  It's tedious, but I made some room.  Will just need to keep on top of it from now on.

Wish me luck tomorrow!
-jr

Short Run

Ok.  I think I'm going to try putting my running log in here.
I know.  Not near as fascinating as dog sweaters made out of dog hair (see previous post), but I'm hoping it serves two purposes.

1) It will help me stay on track with my training.
2) It will give me some data to be able to look back on and see how (if?) I've progressed any.


If this is my last post, then we'll know it didn't work.

-jr