The weather forecast shows a high of 40 on Sunday, with a chance of ice pellets and rain at 6 AM. That’s going to create some freezing ass conditions for the race. If it doesn’t get called off for weather, it’s going to take a lot of discipline to get out there and do it. Hopefully I drag myself out in Goretex clothes rather than stay wrapped up in my warm bed because, damn it, I’ve put in a lot of work for this day.
I broke my Powerbook :(
Feb 11th, 2006 by bwann
My Powerbook has faithfully been with me for nearly three years. Today is the final straw. While stepping over it on the way to the kitchen, I snag my toe across the LCD, forcing it back and breaking the hinge assembly out of the LCD. !@#!@$@#!
To summarize, here’s the lifeline of my Powerbook:
Apple says the new intelBookPro (a/k/a MacBookPro) won’t ship for “2 to 3 weeks.” I have no hesitation buying one today, right now, if I can find some place that has one. Time to check the Apple Store here.
Lots of running
Feb 8th, 2006 by bwann
Over the past six months, I’ve ran 185.35 miles.
Atomic tourists
Feb 5th, 2006 by bwann
During random Wikipedia browsing for detenators and nuclear weapon design, I ran across Bureau of Atomic Tourism. There’s groups of people that it’s their thing to visit bomb sites such as Trinity, and the assorted museums devoted to atomic weapons. I clearly need to go out to New Mexico to visit the Trinity site now. It’s certainly not one’s normal travel itinerary. I think it’d be rad to have a few photos of melted sand and radioactive signs in my collection.
Pictures of the experimental breeder reactors is a bit chilling to me. Here are these rusting industrial contraptions in the middle of some field not unlike some old oilfield equipment, but they aren’t just any old rusting contraption, they were radioactive and silently contaminated 1,500 acres around them. The Trinity site is still radioactive, but apparently being there for an hour is no worse than the amount of radiation you absorb on a long jet flight.
I’ve been completely exhausted this weekend. I’ve been on-call for two straight weeks with some long days at the office and it’s been slowly wearing me down. I was working Saturday morning (and already tired) and decided to not do my group long run. I wound up waking up at noon, sleeping close to 11 hours. I tried to go out and run, but after a tenth of a mile, I had a pounding headache. Finished walking a three mile loop and came back home.
When I do situps, I usually hold a 10 pound plate to my chest. I decided to buy a larger plate, thinking I had a 25 pounder, I bought a 35 pounder. I figured out my error when I got back home. Heh! I haven’t tried working with it yet, hopefully it doesn’t rip out my abdominals.
Today, I woke up at 8:30, watched a couple episodes of MacGyver then snoozed for another hour. Went to Mangia, totally lost my appetite and only finished off one slice of pizza. Shopping for new clothes at the mall was a failure. Banana Republic, Nordstroms, Dillards, ExpressMen, none of them had any pants in my size. That’s what I get for being long legged and skinny.
Rogue is offering a 5K/10K speed program starting after Freescale. I am really annoyed at how slow I am, hopefully this program can help me fix that. My goal for the summer is to run a 10K at an 8 or 9 minute/mile pace. I’d like to tackle a full marathon, but I don’t want it to be some > 5 hour ordeal. I’d like to finish one under 4:20. It’s interesting in that this summer I didn’t like running and had several instances where I thought any distance was a long shot. It was painful and really pounded me. After new shoes and regular workouts, the shin pains and achy joints silently went away. Now I enjoy long distance running although it usually takes me a few miles to get warmed up and get my head straight. After 5-6 miles, going 7 or 14 miles isn’t much more effort.
I’m debating my next trip. Preferably somewhere without flying, but I’m not completely opposed to that. I need to go out to west Texas and bag my first state highpoint. I suspect that’ll be a 4-day weekend project.
Finished 3M half-marathon!
Jan 29th, 2006 by bwann
I finished 3M this morning, I’m so happy!
Gun time: 2:41:52
Chip time: 2:37:22
Pace: 12:01/M
Placing: 2812 of 3001
1st 10k time: 1:13:03 (11:46/M pace)
Last 6M time: 1:24:18 (12:14/M pace)
At 5:30 this morning, it was a chilly 40 F. I was 75% sure it would be a warm morning so I wore my sleeveless jersey which turned out to be a good call afterwards despite having to give myself a hug to keep warm while waitiing around even with a 1 mile warmup run beforehand. The majority of the race was downhill, yet Rogue gave us a race plan of basically “please god don’t run too fast, save yourself until mile 11!” Even though I had the route profile, I wish I had brought it with me or driven the route because I was certain there would be “one last hill” to slog up at the end. Turns out there really wasn’t, so I ran on the conservative side. I had slurped down one too many gel packs, my stomach was beginning to feel like it could go downhill. By mile 13 my legs were lead, but I gave it all I had left and sprinted out the last tenth mile.
Along the route were some interesting music people. Up by 183, there was a guy playing an accordian. At the Mopac bridge, there was a guy in a kilt playing bagpipes. I think also on Mopac there was a group of jugglers. Somewhere on Burnet, there was a rock group on the sidewalk with drummer+electric guitars. Further down Burnet there was a 5 or 6 piece Mexican Mariachi band.
I said I’d be happy to break 2:30, I wasn’t too far off. My ankles were stiff and in pain, yet it felt amazingly good to finish. I promptly came home, filled the tub with water, dumped in my whole tray of ice from the freezer, and hopped in. Note to self, need more ice to really chill the water. I hear all the cool kids go wade around in the cold water at Barton Springs, I haven’t gotten that far yet.
I’m definately looking forward to Freescale.
Advent Children
Jan 28th, 2006 by bwann
I got my hands on Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children this morning. It’s such an awesome movie, it goes along nicely with my favorite game. It seems to have very fast action. The OST is pretty good, I wouldn’t mind owning it. I’m not sure somebody who hasn’t played and paid attention to FF VII will understand the movie. Tifa is such a hottie, moreso than Aeris. I don’t recall the Turks being such bumbling fools in the game, they provide the comedy relief now. I want to know how to be a baddass dressed in a white suit like Rufus. I liked how the shadow monsters were summoned, they were a streaking black shadow that formed up in smoke, spawning the monster.
In other news, 3M is tomorrow — I’m so excited! I got somebody to willingly cover my on-call for the morning, which is a big relief; I feared it would jepordize my participation.
Now to pick up my race packet and find me some neverending pancakes at IHOP or french toast.
Returned from SEA
Jan 24th, 2006 by bwann
Home. I got in a couple of hours ago, have been too lazy to unpack. I was afraid I was going to die flying into Denver. We got popped with some heavy turbulence, enough to make my cup on my tray dance around. It was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Yay, Seattle!
It’s chilly and wet here, which is a complete opposite of the 26 C, drought conditions in Austin. It’s great spending time with Alex and Victoria again. As soon as I got here, we spent some time running around down town. I thought Austin and Houston had a lot of food, they have nothing that even comes close to the Pike Place Market. All matter of fresh fish, crustaceans, meat, veggies, fruits, and other handmade sundries.
At the market, I was captivated by some metalwork for sale. This guy had made metal cutouts of an eagle, bears, and salmon, which in themselves aren’t that interesting. These pieces were highly polished, then he had used a torch to heat up parts of the metal to deform it with different shades of blue and black. This gave the salmon eyes, lateral lines, spots along the side, and gave the eagle feathers, facial features, and definition to its talons.
We went to a Japanese supermarket named Uwajimaya downtown. What Pike had for all around fresh food, Uwajimaya had all manner of Japanese food. Fresh fish, oysters, crabs, domestic brand foods? They had ’em. Weird cartoony hard candy, noodles, $3,000 Buddha cabinet, calligraphy sets, Mad Housewife wine, dehydrated minnows in a bag for snacking? They had those too.
I was totally lost while in Seattle. What I felt was North was totally wrong. I blame it on there not being any sun out to give me reference.
Maybe it’s the grass-is-greener thing, it seems like Seattle had a large number of young cute girls running around, moreso than Austin. I suspect most are either UW students, but not all UW students can afford to be running around Nordstrom’s.
Speaking of Nordstroms, in today’s tipping society where we tip for most anything down to the most trivial of tasks, why don’t we tip perfume wenches at the mall? It seems like that’s an unfilled tipping niche, tipping somebody for spraying perfume on you.
Saturday evening, I made pictures of the Space Needle, but avoided being touristy by going to the top. The $10 admission made me reconsider the idea. We met up with Tom, JP, Gwyn, Eric, and Irene over at Hale’s for dinner.
Sunday, we went out to Steven’s Pass. OMG snow! Snowboarding totally broke me. Alex took Tom and I up to the kiddie slope and showed us how things worked. My first goal was to go down a small slope diagonally and back. I busted my knees, elbows, hip, ass, shoulder in all sorts of ways falling down. We predicted I’d be riding goofy-foot, but after a couple of attempts, that wasn’t working and I switched over. Foot by foot I was making some progress. I was happy just to be able to balance on the board. After a while, my knees were the first to go. It became a great effort just to stand up after strapping into my bindings. I eventually learned to roll my ankles in at the same time I tried to stand up, which allowed me to bring my knees forward and down so I could get up that way.
Next was a lesson on the lifts and the first beginner run. By this time my right ankle was cramping and burning like a severe shin splint. I absolutely could not put any weight on it at all. Getting out of the bindings to stretch wasn’t helping. This presented an interesting problem in that I could only go left diagonally, and couldn’t return to the right because I couldn’t keep my weight on my right foot and spun out of control. Eventually I just lined up my board straight down the mountain and sped down… and fell a couple dozen times in a rapid manner. At least once I went tumbling down the hill sideways, my board windmilling along the way and kicking up a plume of powder. wheee!
After one run I called it quits for the night. I knew my ankle wasn’t going to get better, and with 3M just a week away, I did not want to force myself back up and mess myself up to the point I couldn’t run. Apparently Tom got the hang of things; him, Alex and Victoria were out on the slopes for a few more hours.
Dick’s burgers in Seattle is the most awesome burger place evar. “Deluxe” half pounders for $2.00, one-third pound cheeseburgers for $1.00, totally greasy fries and a nickel for ketchup. They are extremely fast, time to order until greasy goodness in hand was under a minute!
I will return to Seattle to solve snowboarding soon.
3M is near!
Jan 17th, 2006 by bwann
3M is approaching!
This message is generated as confirmation of your recent registration on Active.com. You have been successfully registered for the following: Registration: 3M Half Marathon & Relay Purchase Date: 01/17/06 Category: Individual Entry Event Date: 01/29/06 Name: Bryan Wann Registration: Freescale Austin Marathon & Half Marathon 2006 Purchase Date: 01/17/06 Category: Half Marathon Event Date: 02/19/06 Name: Bryan Wann
