Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all my faithful followers and blogging friends. I hope you all have a truly wonderful Christmas. I will be baking pies all day today; I'm going to work but only to drop off a gift for my one and only friend at work and then I'll sneak out. The business where I work always makes a huge deal out of Christmas Eve-I think it's because the powers that be feel guilty about making people work the day before Christmas so there's all sorts of goodies to eat, and the office where I work will order out for breakfast, and lots of gifts exchange hands from the managers to the clerks and so forth.

So the plan for today is a short visit to work, then a 6 mile run, then bake pumpkin pies while I watch a Christmas movie-probably It's a Wonderful Life, my favorite.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Monday, December 21, 2009

My Daughters Runs Marathons, Too!

I just had this conversation with a very nice lady at a Christmas party Saturday night. Several of the guests, close friends of mine, knew I ran the Las Vegas Marathon and while I was boring regaling them with the details of the race, this lady chimes in and tells me that her daughter runs marathons all the time. "That's wonderful", I replied; "Your daughter must be a very experienced runner". "Yes", she said. "She runs 3 or 4 every year". Wow, I think to myself-3 or 4 marathons a year? Most marathoners I know usually do only 1 a year; perhaps there are runners who can do 2 a year; but 3 or 4? The logistics of that astounded me. How do you train for that many marathons? How much time does this lady's daughter have between marathons to recuperate properly? Obviously, this required some investigation.

I asked this lady which races her daughter ran-were they the big races? She said her daughter ran mostly local races because she didn't like travelling too far from home by herself. That puzzled me-how many marathons can an area have in one year? Then it dawned on me what was happening here-I asked the lady "How far does your daughter run when she does her marathons?" She told me her daughter ran 13 mile marathons. I explained to her that her daughter ran half marathons, not full marathons, and that a full marathon was 26.2 miles.

This lady then explained to me that a marathon was any race over 10 miles and her daughter ran them all the time. She was very sure of herself and I got the impression that I would not be successful if I tried to argue with her about what constitutes a marathon, so I changed the subject to something more suitable, like the best recipe for lemon bars.

I wondered later that night about the daughter. If she was indeed running half marathons on a regular basis, then she really was an experienced runner. I wondered if the daughter knew her mother was telling people that she ran 13 mile marathons and that a marathon was anything over 10 miles. I would be mortified if my mother did that (hi Mom!). I have tried to educate my family about the ins and outs of running so that if they mention my running, they don't embarrass themselves with inaccurate bits of information like this woman.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Work Sucks.

Work just plain sucks. After my mini vacation in Las Vegas, and FINISHING MY FIRST MARATHON, I came back to work invigorated and ready to roll. That didn't last 2 weeks; I'm back to my old, mean, bitchy self at work. The problem is I have to share a desk with a co-worker and there is no good way to share a desk-my philosophy is that if there is work on the desk that needs to be done, I will do it. My desk sharing co-worker, however, believes that I should not touch "her" work and leave it for her to finish. This would usually not be a problem except that a lot of the work we do is time sensitive and needs to be addressed immediately. I just can't leave a contract untouched or a check unmailed when I know it has to go out now.

We worked out an ok system whereby I work Tuesday through Friday until 3:00 and my co-worker comes in all day Monday and at 4:00 the rest of the week; this way I don't even have to see her. Yesterday I went to work early to process payroll for the salesmen. I had been at my desk for about an hour when the co-worker shows up and tells me she planned on doing the payroll. Umm, ok, fine. You do it, co-worker. I'm going home. I just wish she had told me or left me a note or something-it could have saved me a trip in to town.

If this continues much longer I'll just quit. I don't need the job and working will cut into my running time when I go back to running full time next week.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Neglect

It seems I've been neglecting my little corner of the blogosphere; what with FINISHING MY FIRST MARATHON and going back to work and all, it's not as easy to get over here and post my brilliant observations. I will, however, be back soon with some absolutely wonderful posts about running and working; I already have some ideas I think you, faithful readers, will enjoy. Stay tuned for more!