Sunday Round-Up

I got back from Tennessee yesterday.  We'd gone down to visit my mother for the week, and I'll be honest, it feels good to be back.  I love my mother, but she's not always the easiest person to be around, and although this last week was pretty good, it was still a LOT of work--mental, physical, emotional--just to be down there.  She's got a bad back, bad knees, bad shoulders, and half a lung missing from having had lung cancer.  And now she's got bladder cancer, and while I'm in high hopes that they'll be able to do something about it without major surgery, it's still very much an open question.  

My mother is a walking medical cautionary tale.  Take care of your body, or it will turn on you before you know it.

Anyway, Mom had three dogs, but we brought one back with us--Dixie, her 9-year-old chocolate Labrador.  Well, that is to say that I brought her back.  I rented a car and drove 16 hours back from Tennessee with Dixie in the back seat.  Needless to say, the kids are ecstatic about having Dixie in the house.  Personally, I'm just glad I'm not still stuck on the road again today.

Sally's out this morning running the Fairfield Half-Marathon.  Well, she's about to start running it, at any rate.  She's super-nervous.  She left the bottles for her Fuel Belt here and called a few minutes ago in a panic about it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't take them out to her because one of our kids is asleep upstairs.  I mean, I'm not too worried because I know that they have A LOT of water stations out on the course, but still...  She needs to calm down and get herself under control if she's going to have the kind of race she wants.  I told her to take her first mile slow and easy and then work it out from there.  Meanwhile, Hannah and Emma and I have to go meet her at the finish in about an hour or so, and between now and then, I need to feed the kids--and unpack my travel bag.

On my own workout front, I swam a lot this week--because they have a GREAT pool in my mother's hometown--but I'm in high hopes of getting either a run or a little run/bike brick in this afternoon.  After being on the road for the last two days, I feel like I need to get my own head right, too.  Sally's not the only neurotic one in the family.

Over at Sellswords, the party has finally entered the capstone adventure for the Heroic Tier.  They're on a ship, trying to recover the infamous (wholly invented!) Iron Crown of a Shadows from a shipwreck off the southern coast of the Moonshae Isles.  Right now, they're fighting a group of dragonborn privateers, and after that, they'll have to dive the wreck, fight the monsters underwater, and recover the crown itself.  And then there might be some more pirates...

If you're wondering, the Crown is a kind of minor navigation focus.  With it, you can move yourself and others freely back and forth from the Shadowfell, although initially I'll probably restrict that power, making it mechanically similar to the ritual Shadow Crossing.  However, with the Crown and another piece that I've not invented yet, they'll be able to navigate freely around the Planes in their ship using the Shadowfell as an intermediary destination for free planar travel.  

I also want to make their ship fly eventually.  I think I might have them fight an ancient dragon and then use a homebrew ritual to attach the dragon's disembodied wings and spirit to their ship's hull, making a kind of grisly, flapping airship.

BTW, I greatly enjoyed yesterday's World Cup Game vs. Ghana, but what's up with the slow starts and the late goal?  Ugh.

And finally, yes, the post rate around here has slowed dramatically.  Life's been getting in the way lately.  I've been trying to post something once a week, but you know, it's tough.  But hey, I'm still here, and this is still my life.  I appreciate your comments on this blog, trust me.  At least that lets me know someone's reading my ramblings.

Pat Griskus Olympic Triathlon Race Report

I did the Pat Griskus Olympic Triathlon last weekend.  It's the Northeastern Regional Championships, and it was TOUGH.  Last week was a difficult week, and I didn't feel like I had my best stuff during the race, and it showed.  

The swim was a little over a mile, which was fine, but I came out at 27 minutes, which is slow. I swam easy, but I didn't mean to swim quite that easy. 

T-1 was about 2 minutes, no big deal.  I wore my new tri shorts for this race and put on a biking jersey at T-1, which got a couple of comments in the vein of, "Hey, that's a cool idea."  Yes it was.  I ended up needing the pockets. 

The bike course was TOUGH. Very, very hilly course. Flat for six miles, then climb for NINE, and then down a bit, and then back up for maybe another mile, mile and a half. 23 miles in damned near 90 minutes (1:22, 16.8 mph avg). Not fast at all. I usually average closer to 18 mph.  I mean, it was a tough ride--easily the hardest I've ever done--but still, I'd like to be at least a little faster than that.  Plus, I lost one of my water bottles on a bump at about Mile 5, leaving me with one bottle until bottle pick-up at Mile 15, and I was damned lucky that they had a bottle pick-up in this race because you usually don't see that in an Oly. 

The run was okay--55:49, about 9 minutes/mile. Not a horrible 10k time for me at the end of a race, but it's certainly not fast or anything.  I'd like to be able to run about 8:30/mile at the end of a race, but I need to put more miles on my legs.  My pulled groin from earlier in the season really kept my run training from being what it should have been.

Total was 2:49:27. I was 224/402 Overall, 23/36 Age Group.  Middle of the Pack.

I mean it's good that I did the race and ran it smart, kept my head, and finished strong. On the other hand, I've swum MUCH faster miles, I usually average over 18 mph on the bike, and I'd like to run closer to 50 minutes (8:30/mile). So don't know how much of that is due to a hard course and how much was due to the crap from last week, but this definitely wasn't the best race I've ever had.

Let me say this: I'm happy I did it, but there's a lot of room for improvement.

My next race is a Sprint in July. After that, there's the Litchfield Hills Olympic, which is at least on a course I've ridden. There's one tough climb at the end of the bike, but only the one. It should be a better race--I hope.

Senior Engineer?

So I got a new job at the end of last week.  I interviewed a couple of weeks ago, and then on Friday my company's HR department called to let me know that I'd gotten the position.  I am now a Senior Engineer--a thing which is only really interesting because I was a European History major back at West Point.  Granted, they force you to take all the engineering prereq's at USMA along with a 5-course engineering sequence, but still... Senior Engineer?  I still find it kind of shocking, even now, after I've been working as an engineer of one typeor another for ten full years.

And then, too, I had a dream last night that I decided to re-up with the Army.  For whatever reason, I was concerned that Sally hadn't ever gotten a chance to experience Army life, so we re-joined, hoping to go someplace in the South.  Or Hawaii.  Weird huh?  Trust me, it was.