Tag: commute

Slacker

Rambling On 53- Moving On

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

As long as I’ve had this blog, I’ve worked in the same location and commuted on the daily. In the beginning it didn’t effect my running. In later years, I am not so sure. I really could just be that lazy. 😛

Prior to that I had somehow managed to work within a mile or 2 of home since I was a teenager. Numerous things changed over the years but I managed keep a short drive throughout. I hated long drives, who would want to?

Then I earned a promotion and transferred 30 miles away. And those 30 miles took between 45 minutes to an hour. Yet, I didn’t hate it. Suddenly things didn’t seem so far away. My temper calmed down too. Hmmm. It helped that I worked with some truly awesome people over the years.

On Wednesday, I said goodbye to those people and that office. Goodbye to some great customers. Goodbye cute little beach town, thanks for making me like the ocean. So long, nice, mostly regular breezy temps. But that also means goodbye to filling my tank so often as gas prices average in the 4’s these days.

Hello to opportunity. Hello, new office with other great people. Hello to a much shorter drive. Hello promotion. 😀

Also hello to a much higher average daily temp.

Change is hard, but also good.

Run!, Slacker

Rambling On 2

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

The rain is back!  Which wouldn’t be so bad if it hadn’t come with some freaky fog this time.  There was one time last week where I was on the highway in a row of 4 cars and it was raining pretty hard .  All of us were keeping a respectable distance from each other.  Then the rain slowed and the fog rolled in.  Rolled in like a horror flick.   Ever seen that movie “The Mist”? Where the creatures come out of the fog and attack?   Soon enough all 4 cars were as close to each as we could get and still safely drive.  Do not break formation!  Break formation and you get eaten!    I could barely see the car in front of me let alone the car in front of it but they apparently decided they could not be the lead car anymore.  They pulled over, let the 3 of us pass and then got behind us.  Tag out!    It was a stressful but amusing commute.  😛

I want to do all the things!  They just announced that Alabama is going to be playing at a semi local concert venue and I have always wanted to see Alabama in concert.   Well, again.  I think I saw them when I was like 3 years old but I don’t remember.     It’s the same day as a race.  Eek!   And I want to run all the races!  But that means hotels and gas!  I should start buying a lottery ticket once a week.

I am trying to quit Diet Coke again.  Some days are great, some not so much.  I have cut way back though.   Now if only I could say that about pizza.  😛

I’ve officially lost count of how many times I’ve been fingerprinted.   Thanks to work, I’ve been fingerprinted every couple of years.  Today I was fingerprinted again but this time for the school district so I can chaperone an overnight tournament for my mom’s tennis team.

I am debating a 10k race this weekend.  Part of why I want to run it is because I think half of it will be on trails.   However part of my hesitation is because it is supposed to rain all week.   Trails = yay!  Mud bath = umm, not so much.  I admit I like dirt but not mud.  I can’t decide.

How has your week been?

Share something random!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Run!

Weekly Recap 1-Rain and Mudslides Oh My

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Why is that short work weeks seem so long?  Maybe it’s because we try to cram 5 days work into 4?     Maybe it’s just one of those questions that will never be answered.  😛

Last week saw a better training week which is surprising considering the skies are dumping water on us and I have a fierce desire to avoid the gym the first few weeks of the year.   Seriously, I know that CA is in a severe drought and that we desperately need water but we are not equipped to handle this much water at one time.   Downed trees, power outages,  highways are flooded, in fact as I type this I have no idea how I am getting to work on Monday.  My main way to work has been closed since Friday evening due to a massive landslide.  Considering I drove past 2 pretty large slides already last week and they didn’t shut the road for those, the fact that the road has been closed for 2+ days is kind of alarming.

But enough about mudslides- let’s get to the running!


Monday- 3 ish miles.  That ish makes me a little crazy.  My Garmin decided to go a little crazy and lose satellite for the first part of my run.  Like most runners, I know the first mile from my house very, very well.  My watch always beeps at one particular street sign.    It didn’t.  Grrr.  It took another 2 blocks.    It’s not like I was setting any speed records, I was feeling overly sluggish but the drop in data really aggravates the type A data nerd in me.

Tuesday/ Wednesday– Work was busy and the rain came.   I carried my running gear around with me just in case there was a break in the rain.

Thursday- 2.6 miles  There was a break in the rain so I changed after work and headed back home for a nice evening run.    One bonus about running in the dark is that I feel zero need to push the pace.  It’s one of the few times I can run easy and have it actually be easy both in feel and pace.     Throw in dodging puddles and piles of dirt and debris and it really keeps things easy.   The break in the rain was nice but dang that temp dropped fast.  Make up your mind weather!   I kept it short because my stomach chose to be an asshat on Thursday but I wouldn’t let it completely win.

Friday- Rest What else?  Luckily I worked the early shift at work because the mountain decided to come down about 30 minutes after I drove through.  Yikes!

Saturday- Rest  I celebrated a little too early about the no more Saturday work days.  It was off to work.  Closer location and only for a couple of hours but it was kind of funny how quickly it came about.    It was pouring rain outside all day, my stomach was still an asshat so I pushed my long run back a day.


Sunday- 7.1 miles There was a break in the rain mid-morning so I made a run for it.  I layered up in preparation of the rain in case I was caught in it.  I was overheating by mile 2.    The Buff came off in mile 3.  I used the wait at a traffic light during mile 4 to peel off my jacket.   The weird thing was the damn wind.  It was so windy it was pushing me backwards at times.  The wind tried to take my hat off more than once.   Damn near lost it when I was running over the freeway–never getting it back from there!     It was extremely windy but it was a warm wind.   My pace was a little erratic thanks to hills and the wind but overall it wasn’t that bad.   My 3/1’s kind of fell apart thanks to some of the hills though.  I need to work on that.    Not bad for my longest run in months but man I feel out of shape.

12.7 miles for the week.  Moving in the right direction at least!   Slowly.  😛   As for this week, the rain is still here so I am not sure how my week day runs may go.  Like I said, I’m not even sure how I’m getting to work.    As for the weekend, I am debating how crazy or stubborn I am but more on that later.

How was your week?

How is your weather?

 

 

 

 

Run!, Slacker

Silence Fell

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

It takes a lot to shut my brain up.   Usually only sleep and even then not so much.   I can never do just one thing at a time.  I usually like to have multiple things happening at once because focusing on one thing just seems silly.  My mother would tell you that’s how I avoid things.

Even running, my brain is never silent.  I run thinking all the while how hard it feels.  Or on good days, how easy it feels.  I think about my shoes or how my shorts fit.  Do I look funny in this outfit?  What am I going to eat for dinner?  Do I want to cheat or be good?  How can I talk about this run in a blog post?  Is it even worthy of that? Oh look, there’s that person who glares at me every time we pass each other.  What did I do?  How was work?  What more do I have to get done tomorrow, have things been going ok or do I need to make adjustments?  When’s that system upgrade happening again? I need to make sure we are ready.  How’s my pace? Am I running too slow or too fast?  And so on and so forth.  For all the miles, all the time.    I just can’t shut up.   🙂IMG_0106Thursday was kind of a funny day.  I had finally listened to my soreness from Firehouse and rested on Tuesday and Wednesday so I was looking forward to getting in a few miles after work.   I was feeling better but still sore- I think the trail re-aggravated my hamstring issue- so I was just aiming for an easy run as opposed to the speed work on the plan.   Previously mentioned system upgrade started that day and I was supposed to attend a business mixer after work but I just didn’t feel I had the capacity to mingle.  I was feeling very off, not cranky but not exactly sociable.   I decided to pass on the mixer and just run.   But I could not decide where to run.  I wasn’t feeling work town so I headed to the lake path.  However when I got there I just kept driving.  Ok, guess I wasn’t feeling that either.  I ended up at the river path and really wasn’t expecting much.  5 miles later, I was done.  IMG_0105I stretched out some and went home.  It wasn’t until later that it hit me, I hadn’t thought of a single thing during that run.   No work thoughts, no blog thoughts, no body thoughts, no life worries, not even any running thoughts, nothing.    I just ran.   And my brain was quiet and calm.  So quiet.

That’s not to say that I was unresponsive to my surroundings.    I remember nodding to everyone I passed.  I looked both ways before crossing each intersection and there were 10.  I dodged a praying mantis and then a stink bug about 20 yards later.   I recall wrinkling my nose and trying not to breathe deeply when the smell from the brewery hit me in the face.*  I saw that the guy driving the lifted Chevy was likely to blow through the cross walk but I wasn’t even mad when he did.    My earphones fell out of my ears but I just put them back in and kept running.  Normally these last few things would piss me off and linger for awhile.   I even changed my route and ran more on the trail than normal just because.  It wasn’t really a conscious decision, I just did it. IMG_0140It was nice to not think.   It really was.  How do I make that happen more often?  I don’t even know what prompted it this time.  🙂       I checked my splits the next day and was pretty pleased with what I saw.  Don’t give mile 4 too much credit, gravity was very helpful.  🙂

Now those annoyances- my headphones.  I recently purchased wireless ear buds because I was tired of getting tangled in my other ones.   The new ones are worse.  I cannot get them to stay in my ears at all.  I know I have odd ears but come on!   I have switched the little rubber pieces 3x.  Ugh.   *The smell- a local brewery is having a little problem so as a result there has been a yeasty stench wafting around town for the last month or so.   Sometimes it hits when you least expect it.   😦

How was your weekend?

Any headphone suggestions?

Ever run yourself silent?