Monday, August 25, 2008

Try a Trail #3 / barn paint

What exactly was I thinking by running a lot of slow miles? Certainly not a performance improvement, surely! It cost me another thirteen seconds per kilometer to go from racing the 6km trail race to the 12.28km race on Saturday. I have been running a very monochromatic training pallet and it shows up in racing times that don't get any faster.

I know this will be the result of running a lot of slow distances in training and still I expect my times to get better. What a maroon. I write tonight to remind myself that I set out to work on my endurance this summer and not my times. I feel better already. I have impossibly bad recall.

Endurance it is then. The next race is in three weeks. I'll eat my humble pie and continue to push my mileage. A six mile run is my normal distance now and that's far beyond what I was able to do last year. Gratitude is the attitude!

This race involved some dancing with the devil technically speaking. What am I thinking when I sign up for these things? Like it's going to be fun? Karen and Jackie were great company, but I couldn't stay with them after the half way mark. They are marathoners and I am not... yet.



Here's a link to an image of the whole crew while we were were all still mud free

On another note, I'm feeling completely polluted after painting the barn today. Wow is it red! Went through 40 liters of paint and didn't manage to get the fourth wall covered. Did I mention that the colour is red? The barn looks like someone went loopy with lipstick. I feel like a toxic waste dump. What nasty stuff paint is. On the upside, the sprayer I borrowed rocked the house in all the right ways. Wow was that fast. I was all done painting in well under two hours. If the guy had known to put the sprayer away with some mineral spirits in the lines, valve and pump after using the spray unit for latex paint, life would have been much easier. As it was, there was quite a bit of time spent reclaiming valves and such from the demons of rust before we could get underway.

Lots of family help showed up for the day and there was a lot of food, wine and song to be celebrated with after the work was done. Meite was home, Bonnie is finished work and Manon is sleeping in a tent full time these days. She's on a roll, that one. Went fishing with frogs and Joe this past week and came home educated in lots of new ways. Life in the slow lane. Booyah!

Micho brought an interesting friend out with another sprayer and he was a welcome addition to the games today. Vince is a specialized mechanic and we shared many common interests. Unfortunately his sprayer didn't get a chance to shine much, but the company was welcome and appreciated and his help and experience was second to none. As usual, my sister in law was all energy all the time and helped a dirty job go along much faster than it would have gone without her.

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