Subtle, huh? Yep, my natal anniversary, the 47th such anniversary celebration. I've long said that as long as I get to keep counting birthdays, it's all good. I still believe that. I share my birthday with Venus Williams and Barry Manilow, which is a strange combo. Phil Mickelson's birthday was yesterday, Paul McCartney's is tomorrow, so in a three day span, it's a good crop of Geminis.
On this occasion, as we all do, I've ruminated upon what I have and have not accomplished, how I've lived my life to date, the friends I've made, lost, or have kept, and the ways in which I've been a good or bad father, husband, son and brother. Yeah, it's weighty stuff, but what else is a birthday good for? You don't want to sit around and ponder all that sort of thing every day, do you?
On balance, I've done okay, I think. I treasure the friends that I still hold close while regretting some of those with whom I've failed to maintain close ties. Relations with family are always a confusing thing, and I've not always done as well as I should in that regard, but I don't think any bridges have been permanently burned. Score that one as a passing grade. Accomplishments? Well, maybe not quite what we all had in mind at the occasion of my high school graduation (or upon college graduation, for that matter), but I'm proud of most of what I've done since then. I have a great nuclear family, I get to spend good times with the kids, and I haven't driven Mary Anne too crazy...yet. :-) I might be in the best physical shape in my life, so that's a good thing, too. I have a chance to be around for a long time.
As Todd Snider once sang, "I think I'm an allright guy," and I think that's about the best description of my self-evaluation. This year, I think I'll work on all those problem areas, and maybe I can give myself an improved grade next year. I might even be able to slay the dragon of procrastination for good...or should I wait until July for that project? :-)
Runnin' The Skyway, Barton Skyway
This morning, I got to use my birthday/Father's Day gift, the Garmin Forerunner 305. All charged up and set up last night, I couldn't wait to try it out on today's roundtrip journey from Porter Middle School, including the hilly terrain on and around Barton Skyway. For the first time in a long time, I'd also have HR data to mess around with later, so that'll be interesting (to me). It purports to have vastly improved reception capabilities, so I shouldn't have the anomalies that the Garmin 201 occasionally tosses at me. The verdict? You'll just have to wait... :-)
I spent some time yesterday setting up all the screens and settings on the Garmin to suit me, and got it all charged up. Mary Anne gave me the watch yesterday afternoon so that I could use it for the first time on my actual birthday for this long hilly run. It didn't take too terribly long to get ready for use, but I thought about some of the screens and made some changes after my initial setup. My main screen has the instant HR, time of the run, and total distance. Then, I've got a screen with all the average numbers...Avg HR for the workout, Avg Pace for the run, and accuracy of the GPS satellites. The last screen has lap pace, lap time, lap distance, and time of day. That covers most stuff I might be curious about during a workout. It'll be fun to have all kinds of numbers to analyze. The geek in me comes out, eh?
We met down south at Porter Middle School this morning for a rolling course, the route north mostly downhill trending to the Trail at Town Lake, then a brief stay on the trail over to Mopac and back on the south side of the lake, then up Barton Hills Road past Wilke, including a loop at the end of Barton Hills, then across on Barton Skyway and its two nasty climbs, finishing back on Lamar and on to Porter MS to finish. First half is pretty nice, and then it gets challenging for the second half. The weather was, surprisingly, rainy. It seems like weeks since we had rain, and it was refreshing to have it today, with certain exceptions. It was raining hard as we waited to get started, and we ended up huddling under a building entrance while everyone gathered together. Finally, it was time to go, and we wandered out into the drizzle for the morning's festivities. By then, the rain had largely stopped, so we had a super humid start to the run.
Gilbert told us to run this one a little easier, since it was hilly. I don't think anyone heard that, judging from how briskly we started. Once we headed out, I found myself at the back of the pack, cruising along and letting myself warm up. By the time we got to the first water stop, just short of 3 miles, I had bunched up with Amy, Emily, Leslie, Brad and Jan. Rich was running way ahead, and Brian was up there somewhere, too. A pretty quick stop, and we were off again. Gilbert was doing the rolling water stop trick, and with some encouragement, we crossed Barton Springs Road and then went across Town Lake at the Pfluger bridge. Brad and Jan dropped back at that point, and the rest of us picked up the pace just a little once we hit the trail. We had to make our way through a big stream of water near Austin High School, so one of my shoes got full of water there. The other one was pretty wet, too, but so be it.
Another quick water stop at Mopac, and we crossed back over Town Lake, heading into the hills. We added Richard and two new guys at this point, Michael and someone else. I met Michael later in the run. We made our way under Barton Springs Road on the new path and bridge, and popped up eventually on Barton Hills Road. Now, the hilly stuff would start. I picked it up through this stretch a little bit, or at least picked up my effort. When we passed Wilke, by the way, I think we all got a cold chill thinking of that evil workout location. That house at the top of Wilke looms way above the tree line. Soon enough, we were at the last water/powerade stop with Gilbert. The rain had started falling again by now, which was a relief after the extreme mugginess that we had dealt with to that point. I took my GU there, just for fun, and we dropped into the loop at the top of Barton Hills Road.
I guess I started picking it up even more here, because I soon found myself running alone, slightly behind Frank, Anne and Marcy. We saw most of the other runners as they looped around, including Rich and Alex, who seemed to be having a good time. The rain really pelted down as we went around the loop, and we even got some weird cool gusts of wind as the sky totally blackened. The water was pouring down the streets, and by now, our shoes (and everything else) got totally soaked. Oh, well. The rain and cooler air actually helped me a little by cooling me down a bit. During the loop, I laughed out loud to myself about how silly it must seem to people outside the running group for us to be out in weather like this. And they would be right! I pushed up that last hill getting out of the loop, and turned for home on Barton Skyway. There's two nasty hills on that piece of road, and by the second hill, I had caught up to Frank's group, which was a surprise. I was feeling pretty strong, so as we crossed Lamar, I picked it up a little more, and it was strange to find myself ahead of Frank's peeps on a long run. I guess they just weren't feeling it today. I know how that goes.
Cruising back down Lamar, I ended up running the very last bit of the run with Michael (that's where I met him by name). The rain had slackened a little by then, but my shoes must have doubled in weight by the end of the run. Slosh, slosh, slosh.
The rest of the troops came in pretty quickly after that, and most of us did striders on the middle school track. Those didn't even suck today, so I suppose that means good things. Gilbert drove by and told me not to bother with the stretching session today, since the weather was so bad. Okey dokey. As we chatted a bit on the track, Frank suggested a birthday pancake fest at Kerbey Lane, and that sounded like a fantastic idea! I changed clothes in the truck to get out of the wet stuff, and that made a huge improvement in my attitude.
Breakfast was fabulous! Brian, Jan and Brad joined Frank and me, and we had a grand time chatting away and attempting to finish the enormous portions of breakfast goodies. They were nice enough to treat me, as a birthday happy, and that was both unexpected and appreciated.
It was a great start to a birthday, and I can only hope that the rest of the day is as fun.
The numbers: 9:12, 8:43, 8:57 (water stop), 8:58, .5 at 8:39 (water stop), 9:04, 9:21 (hills!), .8 at 9:01 (water stop/GU), 8:37, 8:27, 8:23 (fast finish on rolling hills). 10.2 miles. Overall, 9:13 pace including water stops, 8:51 pure running pace. Once I got home, I found that the Garmin worked flawlessly under very tough GPS conditions. No weird anomalies on the route or data points, and I noticed it even correctly tracked the spiral ramp on the Pfluger footbridge and the path under Mopac. That was very impressive. The software shows the correlation between HR, elevation changes, and pace, which went about like you'd expect, but it's still cool to have that information. Considering that I've moved up from the very first Forerunner as an early adopter to this unit in one step, I shouldn't be so surprised, but it's refreshing to be able to simply look at the data instead of having to meticulously adjust bad GPS points after the fact.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment