Running Chick

The freighter Herbert C. Jackson is spending a few days anchored out in Portage Lake until the big old November storm that’s hitting the Great Lakes passes. Josh and I took a drive out to Chassell and took a few photos after work today.

It was cold, rainy and really windy (check out the white caps on the waves) but I managed to get a few good shots which are over in the gallery.

Yay, telephoto lens!

The weather was looking awesome for Friday, so I took the afternoon off (yay, 35 days of vacation in the bank) to get my 9 miler in.

I actually thought about my nutrition and hydration needs a bit longer than 10 minutes before heading out the door, so I felt confident with one bottle of water, one bottle of water/Gatorade mix and a Gu.

I felt great until around mile 5, then things started to go downhill.  My legs didn’t feel like going anymore, and my brain didn’t feel like convincing them to go. I struggled through the last three miles, doing more walking than running, and when I was running, it was mostly shuffling. I was able to finish running, but I’m pretty sure it was only because my body knew it was all going to be over soon.

This same thing happened on my 8 miler the other week, so I’m pretty sure that’s my body telling me that I’m doing too much too soon. I tend to ignore my body most of the time, but in the spirit of trying new things, this time I decided to cut back a little.

Oh, and not to take credit for this idea all on my own, I was inspired by a few comments from my Facebook friends who, when I mentioned that I ran 8 miles, said (paraphrasing):

“Wow, eight miles already? That’s pretty quick!” and

“Eight miles! What are you training for?”

It occurred to me that I’m NOT TRAINING FOR ANYTHING HELLO and there’s not really any sane reason that I should be pushing myself so soon. It’s not like I’ve been injured for the past 16 months or anything. Duh.

Of course, my crazy insane multiple-times-over Ironman friend said “Good job, keep it up!”.  Yeah, I’m chosing to ignore her.

I’m going to take all of this week off and focus on yoga/pilates/strength training and then pick back up next week, but I’m going  to keep things short and sweet. I’ll keep it at 3-ish during the week and peak at maybe 5-6 on the weekends.

My miles for last week were 13 @ 10:35.

Last weekend, Josh and I worked radio for the Lake Superior Pro Rally. We were assigned two stages, 7 & 10.

Our pickup was 5:00 at the Kenton wayside on Forest Highway 16. Everybody working stage 7 met at the same time. Here we are checking in with our stage captain (in the blue jacket). I’ll refrain from making comments about how disorganized and frazzled she was.

We all head out to the stage to get laid out. Here are the cars in front of us.

And more cars behind us.

Kenton residents have put up some interesting Halloween displays. At least I think that’s for Halloween.

We hit the gravel on the way to the start of the stage. The dust would cause some issues with the drivers later on in the evening.

Here’s the start of the stage, workers were dropped off in order of job assignment, so these guys were ahead of us.

We get dropped off at our stage and the rest of the workers continue.

Rallymaster James and his little buddy.

Our position. We had to string up banner tape in front & behind the car so no spectators could get onto the stage. We were in position by 5:30.

By the time the cars got going, it was pretty dark. This was the only decent shot I could get, and it’s not really all that decent.

The cars entered the stage at one-minute intervals, but because of the dust, that changed to two-minute intervals for the final stage. Our job was to document the car numbers and times as they went by our position and report this information to Net Control at the beginning and end of the stage. Bonus, we had a really good spot for watching the cars zoom by.

By the time all was said & done, we rolled into the driveway at 2:30 with a bag of Taco Bell (Thank you, Taco Bell for staying open late) and a car full of dust. Fun times!

More pictures in the gallery.