Training Log Archive: PG

So I downloaded my 305 track from Saturday. Haven't processed it through QR, that would require pulling out the old laptop, or getting QR working on the new one, and that's not going to happen tonight.

And it is quite amazing.

I didn't take any splits. If I understand correctly how things work, if the splits hap been uploaded to AP, then they are picked up when I download my track. But look where some of them are. Among the worst offenders are 4, 5, 8, 12, 15, 16, 19, 23, 26. All should be where the track changes direction.

I assume the WCOC controls are in serious need of synching?

C • synching 2

Not much time, so a quick outing on the treadmill. An easy flat mile (9:50) then two miles at 5 mph with the elevation at 5%, 6%, 7%, and 8% for the four half miles. Felt OK, but need to be at 12% to simulate the Mt. Washington average.

Ailments from yesterday -- especially sore ribs and a bruised knee from a crash just after losing my contact -- were all not so bad. Got lucky.

Interesting morning....

Having an early breakfast and the woman who had the night shift -- my mom needs 24-care -- came out of mom's bedroom and asked if she could talk to me. I didn't know what to expect but figured there was some sort of problem I was going to have to deal with. My guess was that it was going to be about how many hours of work she was getting each week (she currently works about 45-50, would like more).

But it had nothing to do with that, in fact had nothing to do with anything I might have imagined.

Could I give her a loan, or more precisely, an advance on her pay? And the amount she needed was $3,500. What I would call a big number in the circumstances.

The story is that she came to this country from Haiti, I don't know how long ago, and she has a sister still in Haiti. The sister is a teacher, or was a teacher, until the earthquake flattened the school. About a month ago there was a call from the sister, there was a chance she could get to the USA but needed 5K to make it happen. And then a call shortly thereafter that the plan had fallen apart.

But the sister had called again last night, same deal. And my employee wanted to help.

So what do I do? You want to help, you want to be a good boss, but that is a lot of money, roughly 5 weeks pay. Is it a scam? Will she just disappear and I'm left looking for a new employee with no notice?

I make it clear how unhappy I was with the request. I excused myself, thought about it for ten minutes, decided to offer at most 1K.

The conversation resumed. That was not enough, the 5K was needed by Wednesday. My employee has 1.5K saved but that is all. She also has a second job, says she will live off that while I take pretty much all her pay until I am paid back.

What if you say no, that you don't have it now.

I don't know, but I am afraid she will think that in her moment of need I would not help her. And that she will never forgive. And she is my only sibling.

Doesn't she have any money?

She lost her job in the earthquake. There is no work. And all her possessions, when they know you are leaving, nobody will pay much to buy them because they know you have to sell.

And I took another break to think. And to call up the agency I hired her through to inquire about her references when they took her on a year ago. And the references were good (except for a couple of employers who had a problem with hiring a person of color).

And to think some more, what is the right thing to do? And talk to Gail, just verbalizing thoughts often helps.

What to do?

And there was no way to put off the decision. I was already late leaving to drive back home and then to work. The money was supposedly need by Wednesday. Deferral was the same as denial.

You give to charity, often rather large organizations, where the results of a donation are usually impossible to see. And here was a case where there would be a direct impact on a life, or maybe two lives. If it was true. How do you know?

At some point you just have to decide that you trust someone or you don't. She has been a good worker for the two months I have known her.

I sat down and wrote out the check, plus a one-paragraph repayment schedule. Gave her the first, got her to sign the second. She was in tears, gave me a big hug. And I had to go.

On the drive home I was thinking I did the right thing, even though there is no way of knowing, at least for a while.

And also thinking, well, it makes all the sound and fury about GPS watches pretty trivial....

C • Loan 13

Event: WCOC Ansonia Nature Center
 

WCOC local meet at Ansonia, organized by Marie and Mike. Red course, 7.9 km, a good bit of climb.

Well, that was a lot better.

Cool day, upper 40s, rain overnight so the woods were wet, but not still raining. Certainly better for running than the hot weather a few days ago.

Plan for the day was to try to run like yesterday -- keep the heart rate under control, concentrate on running as smoothly as possible, no thrashing. Know when it's uphill enough to make walking a no-brainer. Mainly, just stay as relaxed as possible.

A short warm-up, didn't feel great and the legs were a little sore, so not optimistic the plan was possible.

But it fact it was. Really did well keeping my effort as unstressful as possible. And so ran a good bit more than I was in North Carolina in similar conditions (temperature and terrain).

So a very successful outing.

Splits (miles): 13:19, 12:03, 15:23, 13:10, 14:32, 3:49 (.33 mi). Third and fifth miles were hillier.

Oh, and the orienteering. No sweat, just followed my Garmin. Only mistakes were at 13, it took me to the wrong big boulder, and 19, too far right, but just punched the button and it corrected me very quickly. Sure is a handy tool. The only problem was that at the post-race gathering were a bunch of us Medicare and near-Medicare folks where chatting, I had to play really dumb when we were trying to figure out just how to use the Garmin to help get around the course faster.

And now of course I'm not posting my track because I left the downloading gizmo at home. Right. Obviously don't want to give away my secrets.

If the Rules Committee won't ban this stuff, then let's see what I can get away with. Isn't that why we do this? :-)

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It really was amusing watching a bunch of us OFs trying to figure out how to cheat with the thing....

And my orienteering was actually very good, just a couple of small mistakes, and that was despite losing my contact lens for distance vision on the way to #8 and everything being rather blurry thereafter. But this was mainly a day to just concentrate on the running. And a good result.

C • Contacts 7

Red - Splits

Cooler today (low 60s), definitely felt better, could manage to run at a relaxed pace. And the heart rate was recovering a bit too, plus 10 beats lower on average than yesterday. I really don't like hot weather.

And enough caught up on work to go play 4 holes of golf, first time out this season, not a disaster.... :-)

C • 4 1

Usual loop on the ridge. Good news is I finished, bad news is how hard it seemed.

Actually, the main thing I noticed was that my heart rate seems to do a good job of going up when I go uphill, but not such a good job of going back down when I go downhill. Just not recovering very quickly. Not sure if that's something new or not, though it certainly reflects how my running has felt recently. Rather crappy, that is. I suppose I should look back at data from a year or two ago and see if it was any different.

C • HR 4

Hot again, feels like June, so brought my bike along and had a nice ride. Not very relevant training but better than nothing. And doesn't take quite so long to cool back down afterwards.

Same as yesterday, just all slow. Hot again. This time I took a cold shower afterwards, so wasn't quite so unpleasantly overheated for the next hour or so.

And then just really wanted to take a nap....

C • Same as yesterday 3

Better than yesterday, I suppose, mainly because I headed out with more of a plan, and so even though it was hot and reasonably miserable, it was much easier mentally to do the workout.

Plan was just to run harder every other half mile after a warm-up, which given how far I was going meant just three of them. The first turned out to be gently uphill, the second down-flat-up, and the third up-flat-down. The last couple got the heart going pretty quickly. A bit distressing how slowly it then fell, but I guess that's a combination of conditioning and the hot weather (low 80s, full sun).

No falls, no dogs, no ailments.