December 2007 Archives

I've got to be up again in 5 hours, but here I still sit, messing around on the computer. Although I still have two days of vacation left in Corpus Christi, I'm not ready for the holidays to be over -- or really, I'm just not ready to go back to work!

I don't know what I was thinking when I bought my plane ticket. I leave at the absurd hour of 6:10 a.m. which means I've got to be up at 4:30. (Thank goodness the Charlotte airport is closer to my house than IAH is to Clear Lake!) With a short half hour layover in Houston, by the time I get to Corpus Christi it still won't even be 10:00 in the morning. It'll be nice to have the whole day there -- if I can stay awake.

Charlotte has been lovely. Katie and Joel apparently brought the weather with them from Seattle because it has been overcast and drizzly for much of my 10 days here, but that's my only real complaint. We have done tons of eating, shopping, talking, and Wii bowling. SO MUCH Wii bowling. I am now a Wii bowling pro, and so when I bowl my character gets to use a ball with shiny sparkly stars on it. Woo!

I haven't mentioned running lately because there hasn't been much to speak of. I tried to add a running log of my latest workouts via RunningAhead.com after seeing Jen put it on her site, but I wasn't able to get it working properly this afternoon -- it kept on messing up the rest of my sidebar.

I've done 4 runs plus a couple walks with my mom while here, but the hills have taken their toll more than usual. This afternoon I did 8 miles and by the last couple, I was walking every uphill section. I went back out on a 3+ mile walk with my mom just to put my total over 10 for the day, but I was discouraged. I'm going through the worst bout of motivational issues I've had in quite a while, and while I know I'll finish the Aramco Half Marathon without a problem in two weeks, it certainly won't be my best performance.

Next year... :)

My vacation in Charlotte continues. I have been here for more than a week, and yet the time has flown past. Two more days and I'm headed back to Texas, even if it will be another few days in Corpus Christi before I finally return to Houston.

Yesterday was the annual trek to Chapel Hill to spend the afternoon eating whatever interesting food my Aunt Nancy has cooked for us. That sounds like I mean interesting in a bad way, but I don't -- it's always yummy. Yesterday included potato soup, turkey, green bean casserole, and a tasty shrimp dip. Dessert was pear gingerbread cake and it was delicious! The only downer to the day is that I made the mistake of taking Benedryl on the drive up. My mom had brought it along because my aunt was cat-sitting, and since I'd been sneezing a lot already, I decided it couldn't hurt. Wrong. Quickly, I remembered the reason I never take Benedryl: it makes me tired and woozy. My head felt like it was in a fog for much of the afternoon, and I didn't really recover until I slept the whole way home to Charlotte.

This morning I was up early to have breakfast with my high school friends, followed by the "mother-daughter" lunch with my mom, sister, and their friends. I only ate an english muffin at breakfast, so I had plenty of room for a very yummy tuna steak salad for lunch.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the mall exchanging things that didn't fit or just didn't work, and I came away with a new pair of work pants, a sweater, a new brown purse -- and the not-related-to-Christmas item that I was fortunate enough to find in the Ann Taylor store: my bridesmaid dress for Karen's wedding in April. Sadly it was no longer on sale (or maybe I'm just remembering incorrectly that it was), but oh well. I have a dress, and it fits. Well, sort of. It fits in the hips, but the top is a size too big. Seriously, I am far too pear-shaped for this dress. The top needs to be taken in by at least an inch or more. Coincidentally, one of the salespeople in the store who we'd begun talking to about alterations heard me mention Houston. Turns out her grandmother lives in Houston, and she offered to call her grandmother to see if she could recommend a good place for alterations. Score! The two places are both over by the Galleria, but better than nothing.

Speaking of which, if anybody out there can recommend any additional places for alterations in the Houston area, let me know. I don't want to take the dress just anywhere, and I want to make sure it's done right.

After two years of spending Christmas with Katie on the west coast, the fact that she moved out to Seattle has a silver lining: it meant that she and Joel were both here for Christmas this year! As each year passes, I can't help but think that it is less and less likely that my family will continue to be together, all six of us, each Christmas and so I savor the times when we are.

It was a marvelous Christmas day here in Charlotte. The weather was a bit overcast, but it was sunny inside my house. Mom fixed a great breakfast and by 10:30 it was off to the living room for present opening! I got a lot of great gifts from my parents and siblings, including new shoes, multiple books, a photo, two calendars (one for work, one for home), and some clothes. I think I did a pretty good job on the gifting as well, since everyone seemed genuinely happy when they opened their gift from me.

We spent the afternoon playing Katie and Joel's Wii (which yes, they brought with them from Seattle just for the holidays) and taking a nice 4-mile walk with Mom. There were lots of people out and about, people walking in the park, admiring the Christmas lights, and watching kids ride on shiny new bikes. Tonight we went to the movies and saw National Treasure 2. I never saw the first one, but this one was entertaining.

I hope all my friends in blogger-land had a wonderful Christmas!

A Boston Red Sox hat that he forgot. That's all of Jose that I get to see for the next week after dropping him off at the airport this morning for a flight back to Houston that began a full day of travel for him. From Houston, he drove to Corpus Christi and now we're both with our own families. That's all well and good, except I miss him already.

Our three days in Charlotte were excellent. We flew in on Wednesday night and by Thursday morning, I'd pretty much forgotten that work exists. We went shopping with my Dad, saw a free screening of Juno with some of my high school friends, talked to my mom's kindergarten class about the space shuttle, took the family out to dinner, and then even cooked dinner from scratch last night for the family. Jose even got a mini-Christmas, since when we got here we noticed that my mom had added a "Jose" stocking to the mantle and filled it last night while we were cooking, and afterwards we went up the street to Caribou Coffee.

It was pretty much the best three days in a long, long time.

I am counting the hours until I'm done with work and get to head to Charlotte and start two glorious weeks of vacation. This month turned out to be really crazy, and I can't wait to relax.

I was a royal slacker over the weekend and didn't run. Last week was so busy that I really felt like I needed two days to recover! I couldn't drag myself outside! But I knew I needed a long run, so yesterday I left work a little early and got in 3 laps of the Gilruth trail before it got completely dark. One lap is 2.9 miles, so my total was 8.7 miles. I covered the distance in 1:35 and change for an average of a sliver under 11:00 per mile.

All in all, this was a really good run. I felt a little anxious about it, since I haven't run long in a while. I fell off the bandwagon after the Houston Half in October, and had only done one 10-miler in the weeks since that. I'm ok with it, and with the fact that I won't be setting a new PR in the half in January. What I can do is run a solid race and finish in the 2:20-2:25 time frame.

The first loop didn't go that well. My lower legs were tight and I was warm. I'd been cold all day, which led to my overdressing in a long sleeve shirt, capris, and gloves despite the fact that it was in the mid-50s. I was sweating pretty good by the end of the first mile. The gloves came off, but I was still warm. That got better once I got to the second half of the loop, where a brisk breeze was blowing right in my face. For the rest of the run, I was comfortable. The temperature was pretty much perfect.

After the first loop, I wasn't really looking forward to two more, but about a mile into the second loop, my legs had finally loosened up and I really got into a groove, just crusing along and listening to my music. I took a short (less than 1 minute) walk break at each mile and a couple times I was actually surprised to find myself another mile down the road. The cruise control continued on the third loop, and while I started to feel tired in the last couple miles, I was able to keep up my pace and even speed up a little.

Each loop was faster than the previous loop -- 32:02, 31:59, 31:11 -- and my fastest miles were from 5-8.

I know that a good run is no reason for me to continue slacking off, but it did make me feel ok about my current condition.

Every year I plan to send out Christmas cards, but I never actually get around to it. But this year is different! This year I designed a card, ordered some, and they arrived yesterday. Now my problem is not having some addresses! I have an address for most of my high school and college friends, but if you live in Houston I probably don't have it. So if you want a Christmas card from me, send your address to sarah-at-saroy-dot-net.

The last time I looked up, it was Wednesday morning. Suddenly, it's Friday afternoon! Don't get me wrong, Friday is great -- but where did my last three days go? And why do I feel so exhausted?

So let's see. Wednesday morning was an ascent sim to test out and work through some new procedures we are putting in place in light of the engine cutoff sensor problems that are currently preventing STS-122 from launching. I wondered if we really needed a whole sim to do that, but as it turns out, we did. It was good. It was intense. I learned interesting things. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon switching gears back to rendezvous mode after more than a week of concentrating solely on ascent.

I ran 5 miles on Wednesday night for my third day of running in a row. I rarely run more than two days in a row, so I was feeling pretty beat when I finished, however, I'd decided to run because I knew I wouldn't be able to run yesterday. At least on Wednesday the weather had finally started to cool down and all in all it was a pretty pleasant run. I took it easy and averaged a bit over 11:00 pace.

So yesterday. When the launch was cancelled, all of these sims suddenly popped back onto the schedule, including a rendezvous sim that was quickly pinpointed as my midpoint evaluation for the position I'm currently training for: rendezvous support. I hadn't been expecting this until January, since we were supposed to be flying a space shuttle right now -- but I was still ready to go. A midpoint is a chance to get official feedback on how you are performing as a flight controller and what areas you need to work on before you're ready to be certified. The sim was a bit slow, without any major failures, but I did well -- my biggest failure was prior to the start of the sim when I dropped a binder that landed on my coffee and I ended up with an entire peppermint mocha all over my console. The government buys the absolutely crappiest paper towels that are about 95% paper and only 5% towel; instead of absorbing liqud, they just sort of push it around. It took me 20 minutes to clean up. Thank goodness it was only a tall -- not a grande or venti!

Anyway, I got a "pass" grade from my group lead. A midpoint isn't really pass/fail, but by telling me I passed, they're saying I'm right on track. Woohoo! There are a few areas I need to work on, but all in all I'm feeling good. I am scheduled to work STS-124 in April as rendezvous, so with a good midpoint my belt, I'm still on schedule to get certified in time. Hurrah! I celebrated the successful evaluation with Mexican food and margaritas last night. The smell of the restaurant seeped into my jacket and this morning I kept getting whiffs of fajitas.

So today. Another ascent sim to yet again test our new procedures for the engine cutoff sensor failure case, which went well enough. I was going to go home early, but when I got back from lunch I had a voicemail from one of the software developers saying he was upstairs in the lab waiting for me to come do some software testing. What?? I sort of remembered there was a test scheduled for today, but I'm new to the testing process and I hadn't tagged up with the guy who has previously done all the testing. Ugh.

That about cover it. I'm gonna collapse for the weekend and do a whole lot of nothing.

I saw this real-time on NASA TV on Sunday morning. I'd glanced away from the TV for a minute, and almost yelped out loud when I turned back to the screen.

Giant spider' attacks space shuttle
Metro (U.K.)

When Nasa abruptly scrubbed the planned launch of the space shuttle Atlantis on Sunday, postponing any launch until January at the earliest, the official line blamed a recurring fault in the fuel sensors as the reason for the cancellation.

However, footage of that day - from Nasa's own cameras - reveals the real reason the launch has been delayed. It's because the shuttle has been attacked by a giant alien spider beast.

No Nasa spokesperson has yet commented on the massive intergalactic arachnid's attempt to eat Atlantis - but experts viewing the footage suggest that it is a clear indicator that the Earth is about to be plunged into an all-out space war with a race of 150ft-long demonic spiders who live on rocket fuel.

The spider attack lasted a little over a minute on December 9, as the shuttle stood helpless on the launchpad while the eldritch horror, vast beyond imagining, nibbled on it.

Then, in a display of supreme indifference and terrifying arrogance, the monster got bored and wandered off...

With the writer's strike still going on, I've been watching more cable TV and less of the networks. To be honest, I didn't really watch much on the networks to begin with (The Office, 30 Rock, and Scrubs are pretty much it), so it actually hasn't been too big of a change. The only people I really miss are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and they're not even on a major network.

There's much more interesting stuff on cable, and my top 3 channels are Discovery, HGTV, and Comedy Central. How's that for a spread? For the past few weeks I have been positively glued to the TV on Tuesday nights at 9:00 for Everest on the Discovery Channel. It follows a team of climbers trying to summit the world's tallest mountain; this is the second year of the show. The reality drama/documentary is positively heart-stopping. I know, I know, I could Tivo it and watch it later -- but I can't wait! I must watch it as soon as I can! Even with commercials!

I used to want to climb Everest, but while I would still love to be able to see the view from the top, the sane part of my mind has realized that I do not want to climb the mountain. It must be like running about 20 marathons back-to-back while breathing through a straw. No thank you. Yet I'm still fascinated by the people who do take on the challenge and the high risk of death simply to say they've stood on top of the world.

Back down here at sea level, I did another speedwork session tonight in the humid soup that is this weather. A 1-mile warmup followed by 6x400 with 2 minutes recovery, and a 1-mile cooldown. I had to do the recovery by time since the trail I ran on only has markings every quarter mile. To make do, I walked out for a minute and back for a minute before continuing to the next quarter mile mark. Prior to the workout, I thought about upping the number to 8x400, but by number 5 I was ready to collapse. I pushed through to finish my original goal of six and called that good enough. Each repeat was between 2:05 and 2:08 so I managed to stay pretty darn consistent. The 3rd one was the fastest, and the 5th one was the slowest.

After running in the soup, I cannot wait for cooler temperatures.

Dear Houston,

I get it. You like to screw with us. But it's December, ok? The month for Christmas? The beginning of winter? The solstice? All that stuff? Remember? It's not supposed to be this warm, or this humid. Save it for the summer, Houston, because we all know you love that oppressive summer weather. Why use it now? Why waste it on December? Last night when I went running it was 72 degrees. The dew point was also 72 degrees. You know what that means, right? Fog, and some of the nastiest humidity ever created. It sucked, and 3.4 miles hasn't seemed that hard in a long time. Everyone's got their holiday decorations up, but I'm having trouble getting in the mood because it just doesn't feel like December. I've been running my air conditioning all week, for pete's sake! So get over yourself and let us have some normal weather. After all, it's the holidays.

Love, Sarah

The shuttle launch managed to hold my weekend hostage even though we didn't up up actually launching. Disappointing, but it was the right decision. The problems with the engine cutoff sensors have to be figured out; they are just too important to keep on launching without fully understanding the issue. On the plus side, I now have plenty of things to work on this week, including two ascent sims and my rendezvous midpoint evaluation. On the minus side, the launch date is currently no earlier than January 2, and if that does indeed turn into the new launch date, I won't be going to Corpus Christi for New Years after all.

Such is life in the space program.

A lot of people compare the space to aviation, with understandable reasoning. Both involve flying, both involve getting up in the sky. Both involve fantastic machines. Both get you somewhere faster. Both defy gravity in their own way. Heck, I have two degrees that clump airplanes and spacecraft together to form one big field of study called aerospace. They seem similar, right? People are always saying that where we are in the space industry is where aviation was a hundred years ago. But I think comparing an airplane to a spaceship is like comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they're both round and they're both fruit, but that's about it. It's the same with airplanes and spacecraft.

A Cessna flies on what's basically a souped-up version of an automobile engine; larger planes use more complicated jet engines but can stay in the air if one fails. They fly fast compared to cars, but still usually under the speed of sound. They only go a few miles above earth. They use the air to generate lift. And maybe most importantly, they never leave the atmosphere, so they don't require extensive life support systems. Anybody can learn to fly one.

Spaceships require so much more. Engines that generate an order of magnitude more thrust than an airplane engine. Toxic chemicals kept a sub-zero temperatures. Life support systems to support long-term occupants, including air to breathe, a pressurized cabin, a toilet, and more food than just some soda and peanuts. Because remember -- astronauts go into space for a few days, not a few hours, and simply gliding down to where the air is thicker or the pressure is greater isn't an option. Spacecraft need heat-resistant materials to keep the vehicle intact, since it's going thousands of miles per hour faster than an airplane. Nobody can learn to fly the space shuttle during portions of its flight; it must be controlled by computer. The environment is hotter, colder, and emptier. The vehicle is faster and infinitely more complex.

We were pondering some of these issues over the weekend as Jose considered what will happen someday when a commercial spaceflight operation encounters similar problems. Will they scrub the launch for a month while a team of hundreds tackles all the nitty gritty details of the problem? Will they even have hundreds of people to tackle a problem? What kind of manpower will they have? Will they relent to the pressure of paying customers to launch despite potential issues?

NASA made the right decision to stand down for a month, but we have that luxury as a large public organization that answers to the population of an entire country. Will private companies act the same way when faced with similar problems? Because they will have problems.

Such is life in the space program.

Last night I went babysitting for the first time since I was about 16 years old.

Gavin and Jen both wanted to join Cari for a movie based on some book that I've never read (Golden Compass), so Jose and I looked after Carina for a few hours while they all went out. Carina went down for a short nap right as I got there, and woke up a half hour later. After I'd gotten her out of her crib and brought her back downstairs, I sat on the couch staring at her, not quite sure what to do with this little 6-month-old baby. Fortunately, that was when Jose showed up. There are enough little kids in his family that he's totally comfortable hanging out with babies, and Carina loved him.

After a bit it was time for dinner, which is where I finally got the hang of things. If there's a job to be done, I can handle that. She got her bottle and I fed her some applesauce that she was very excited about. After that, she finally started showing the telltale "I'm tired" sign -- rubbing her eyes -- that Jen had warned me about. Bedtime had arrived, so we took her upstairs to change her diaper and put her in her pajamas. As soon as Jose saw the poopy diaper, he disappeared. It was pretty funny. So I got her all ready for bed. Jen had told me I could sit in the rocking chair and read her a book to calm her down, but it wasn't necessary -- she was so tired that she was out within minutes of us putting her in her crib.

It turns out that Jose and I make a pretty good team when it comes to babies. This bodes well for the future.

It was fun. Carina is cute.

I have been reading this ESA blog over the past few days. ESA is the European Space Agency, and this shuttle mission is carrying their laboratory module Columbus to the space station. It's the first major science addition to the station since 2001, and it's really cool to see how excited the bloggers are about their module finally going up. Until now, the space station has really just been a joint US-Russian outpost with the occasional visiting European astronaut. But STS-122 will add the European lab, and the next two missions in February and April will add the Japanese components. The space station is finally becoming international in practice as well as in name. Pretty exciting.

I've been listening to the Mission Management Team meeting today as they try to reach a decision on whether to try to launch tomorrow and what additional troubleshooting needs to be done on the engine cutoff (ECO)sensors. Two of them failed yesterday, while two of them worked properly, which is halfway to a failed ECO system. I just listened to safety group present a chart that says that if we launch with a failed ECO system, the ARD is the ONLY control protecting against catastrophic engine failure due to fuel depletion. What is the ARD? It's the Abort Region Determinator. It's also the piece of software that is my sole responsibility during ascent. I am the ARD Support Officer. If we launched with a failed ECO system, I would be in charge of the only thing protecting us from potential disaster.

Holy. Freaking. Crap.

Fortunately they have decided that we will NOT launch with a failed ECO system.

I do hope they figure out the problem. For once, I'd like to work on a Saturday, because that means we'll be launching.

I was telling people yesterday about how I was about to have 3 on-time launches in a row. I was confident that we'd launch today because it's always weather that delays us, and the weather in Florida was looking absolutely beautiful. Alas, those finicky engine cut-off sensors decided to start acting up again, and the launch was scrubbed. Bummer, yet necessary. The sensors are there to make sure the main engines shut down safely before the fuel in the external tank is gone. It's like a gas gauge in your car. The only difference is that if your gas gauge fails and you run out of gas, your car just stops. If the shuttle runs out of gas, the high-speed turbines in the engines tear themselves apart and the whole back end of the shuttle goes boom. That would obviously be bad, and that's why we like to have at least 3 of the 4 sensors working properly for liftoff.

So, no launch today. I made cupcakes and everything, which are now sitting downstairs in the refrigerator along with the massive amounts of other food people brought in. We scrubbed late enough that no one got the notice before coming in for the ascent shift, food in tow.

I blew off the steam with a 5-mile run on the treadmill. I ran inside because I wanted to be able to watch the launch scrub press conference, which was supposed to be at 4:00. Then it was supposed to be at 4:30. By the time I finished my run (in a nice and comfy 57:00), it was supposed to be at 5:00. It didn't finally start until 6:30, at which point I was already home and showered and sitting on the couch in my pajamas.

And the news from the conference? No launch attempt tomorrow. We'll try on Saturday at the earliest.

Stupid sensors.

Last night as I walked from Gilruth through the parking lot out to the 800-meter trail that I like to use for speedwork, I passed a guy getting out of his yellow sportscar. He looked at me and as I passed, preoccupied with watching my Garmin search for satellites (even though the trail is marked and I really don't need the satellites), he said something. "It's too cold to be out here in shorts."

1) I wasn't wearing shorts, I was wearing a skirt, thankyouverymuch.
2) Why did this random guy feel the need to comment on my attire??

I found this odd. I think he had a gym bag, so I imagine he was heading to the gym. I guess some people only work out indoors. I didn't stop, just gave him a strange look and said "I'll be fine once I'm running." And I was. I always forget that what is perfect running to me is cold to others.

It was Tuesday, so I figured it was time for speedwork. Last week I did 2 1-mile repeats, so this week I decided to do 4x800 with 400 recovery (the recovery was ~150 walking and the rest slow jogging). I don't really have rhyme or reason for why I chose to do that, except that it sounded like a pretty good workout.

1-mile warmup - 11:49
800 run / 400 recovery - 4:33 / 3:44
800 run / 400 recovery - 4:29 / 3:55
800 run / 400 recovery - 4:28 / 3:40
800 run / 400 recovery - 4:24 / 3:50
1-mile cooldown - 11:34

Afterwards I had to head straight home to study for my final tonight in class. I'm not really worried, since I could get a 50 and still get an A in the class, but I'm a goody two shoes, brown noser, whatever you want to call it and I physically cannot not study. The thought of not studying makes me feel so guilty.

An article in the Chronicle today announced that Houston was ranked 21st on a list of the most walkable cities in the nation. Sounds great, right? But they only ranked the top 30 metropolitan areas, and much of Houston's "walkability" was actually found in Sugar Land, a large suburb well southwest of the city. Also:

Leinberger attaches one major caveat to his report: The survey did not take into account the size of each walkable place. For example, midtown Manhattan is given the same weight as Reston Town Center, a lifestyle center outside Washington, even though the latter has only a tiny fraction of the office and retail space, residential units, and hotel rooms of midtown.

This seems like a pretty worthless survey to me. It only took into account "walkable areas per capita" and didn't appear to factor in other issues like the availability of public transportation, the safety of various cities, etc. Some of the top 10 are pretty accurate -- I have visited DC, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and New York and have walked around or taken public transportation in each one. Any of those cities is orders of magnitude more walkable than Houston. It's laughable to me that Houston is even included on this list.

To me, a single good measurement of walkability would be to ask a resident: "Could you live here without car, or would not having a vehicle be a major obstacle?" In Houston, I can safely say not having a car would be a major problem. You would be limited in access to the few square miles around your home, so hopefully you could find a home near your job. If you lived downtown, you might have a little more access to other parts of the city via bus and metro, but that access would be limited. Many major roads have no sidewalk. There are few bike lanes.

Part of the "walkability" issue in Houston relates to the climate, and the fact that not many people look forward to walking around town in the middle of August when it's 90 degrees with 95% humidity. Another major issue is the size of the city; Houston covers far more physical area than many of the other cities on the list and thus presents more of a logistical problem. Yet the city has done little over the years to encourage residents to lose any small part of our dependence on cars. I live in Clear Lake, which is surrounded by suburbs yet is still part of Houston. The city line runs down NASA Road 1, and yet in this area there is no public transportation. You can catch the commuter bus that goes into downtown, but you can't catch a bus to get to, say, the grocery store.

In contrast, my sister and brother-in-law live south of Seattle and own a single car despite the fact that their job locations are tens of miles apart. Katie can walk from her house to the train station, take a half hour train ride into downtown Seattle, and get off within a half mile of her building (actually, more like 300 yards!). You can ride the bus in the immediate downtown area for free. You can take a bus across Lake Washington to the suburbs.

When I was at Stanford, I could bike from my on-campus apartment to the train station and ride the train into downtown San Francisco, where I then had access to buses that went all over the city. When Jose and I visited Boston in July, the T took us anywhere we wanted to go, and we never had to walk more than a half mile to get from the T stop to our final destination. Thousands if not millions of people live in New York without owning a car and never have a problem getting anywhere.

Walkable? Houston? Not really.

I am so. sore.

Yesterday I participated in the "Fit Challenge" at the Gilruth Center at work as part of a team that Debbie put together, and followed that up this morning with the Reindeer Run 5K. This race is one of my annual favorites, for many reasons. It's five minutes from my apartment, and the course runs through my favorite neighborhood in the area, past both Clear Lake and another pond, and through a small park. The weather is always good (though today was one of the warmest that I can remember; I know last year was pretty cold), and it's just a nice friendly neighborhood event. It draws 400-500 runners, including lots of kids thanks to tons of kid-friendly activities in addition to the Kid's K like crafts, a small train, a petting zoo, and Santa.

I woke up this morning sore in some unusual places thanks to yesterday's fit challenge. There were both individual and team activities, and on the individual front I ended up doing both the Strongest Woman competition and the Speed Aerobics competition. I had never done true bench presses before, and I had never done aerobics before, so I knew it'd be interesting at the least. In a truly bizarre twist, I ended up winning the strongest woman competition even though I never lift weights. The girls only had to bench press the bar without weights, but the bar itself weighed 45 pounds. I did 34 before my arms cried for mercy. There was only one other girl, and she did 32. I thought she was going to beat me soundly as she looked solid through about 28 reps, but she went downhill fast. Anyway, my arms are SO SORE today. Ouch.

Speed aerobics was also new. It involved a combination of stepping on and off a step (it was really step aerobics), kicks, knee raises, hamstring curls, and jumping jacks in various combinations to progressively faster music. I kept up ok, but sometimes got tripped up during the transitions from one step to another. Anyone who had done step aerobics before definitely had an advantage. This went on for half an hour, and by the end I was drenched in sweat, and today my calf muscles are quite sore.

After all that, I wasn't sure how the Reindeer Run would go this morning, but I was happy enough with my result. I finished in 32:24 (10:27 pace), which was right about what I expected -- however, it felt harder than I'd hoped. I started the race with Jason, Debbie, Melissa and Kelly, and while Jason and Debbie shot out ahead, I stayed with Melissa and Kelly for a while. We hit passed the mile 1 marker in 10:03 -- too fast for me! I can't maintain that pace for a whole 5K quite yet. We passed the mile 2 marker about 5 minutes later, so it was obvious that the sign was in the wrong spot (not to mention I'm very familiar with the course and know where mile 2 is). At that point I needed to catch my breath so I let them go ahead while I walked for about 30 seconds. That was probably a bad idea, because it led to walking a few other times before the finish. I passed the mile 3 marker with a half mile to go -- another marker horribly misplaced. No matter, I knew how much was left.

I gave the last couple tenths all I had. When I turned the final corner my watch read 31:00 and I really wanted to finish under 33:00. Did that with 30 seconds to spare. With the mile marker inaccuracy, I didn't get great splits. Mile 1 was 10:03, so math says that the remaining 2.1 miles were 22:21. I maintained close to 10:00 pace while running -- I just couldn't run that pace the whole way without a couple quick walk breaks. But I'm working on it.

Overall it was another good year at the Reindeer Run. I went back and looked at my Reindeer Run history, and it's sort of all over the map.

2002 - 31:40 (my PR at the time)
2003 - 29:18 (PR that stands to this day)
2004 - 30:34 (won a trophy for 3rd in my age group!)
2005 - 32:45 (it was warm that year -- about 75 degrees)
2006 - 35:00 (ran it with Jose)
2007 - 32:24