Running With Jack

I decided to take Friday off from work and celebrate the 4th of July by indulging in one of my other hobbies, namely doing a woodworking project. So as my German neighbors were bustling off to work, I headed to the local Home Depot equalivalent and picked up building materials. We have a couple nice office tables in our home office but were in dire need of storage – not any longer! On Friday I build some modular shelving units that now house our computer monitors, printers and office stuff. While I was at it I also built a small stand for my wife’s PC. The three units and stand turned out pretty good, my wife is pleased and we have a bit of order in at least one room…I’ll post a picture tonight for the curious.

I spent the better part of Saturday going through everything in the office and filing or throwing out the piles that seemed to have accumulated from our busy lives. After lunch my wife worked a bit on her pile and I went for a 20K run.

The temperature was climbing to the mid-eighties (°F) and the sun was blazing as I slipped out and started my loop. My next couple races this month could very likely be hot ones, so I decided to do some heat training, i.e. I ran on unshaded, asphalt bike paths in the middle of the mid-day heat. I maintained an average 5:45/km (9:15/mi.) pace for the 20 kilometers, which was a bit slower than I wanted, but to be expected with the 50-mile race only a week ago. Actually it took me 10-15 minutes to get the soreness worked out of my muscles, that a result of the unfamiliar movements from the work the day before.

On Sunday was the annual 5/10K Asparagus Run and street fest put on by my running club and our mother sports club the TSV Graben. I worked at one of the water points and later helped clean up after the race. Turnout was rather poor this year, probably due to a large number of festivals on the same weekend, plus the warm and humid weather. In any case it was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed doing something with my club other than running. It’s also very rewarding to work a race and give a little encouragement back rather than receive it.

This week I am starting a new training cycle for the Karlsruhe (Baden) marathon in September. This cycle will be a little different as I am going to try to run only 3-4 days per week as compared to the 4-5 that I have been during. The reason I am doing this is my wife and I both are expecting a couple busy months at work, so I have to make some more time available for domestic chores at home.