PLANET3RRY

Chance of FREAKY ASS RAIN 100%

It was in the mid 90s today with a feels like 98Fish and I know that this is nothing to get excited about it. Trust me, I’m sleeping as I type this. However, the guys at work love this stuff. So in the morning, I get the lowdown on the forecast for the day. Mid 90s, Chance of Rain 30%.

And that’s what it was like until 3pm when there was a sudden clap of thunder and it was still bright outside. For the rest of the afternoon, it was speculation on what was going to happen. The chart showed big red sploches on it, but it wasn’t cloudy.

Around 5pm, it got a little bit cloudier and the wind picked up. I left work and in 1/4 of a mile it was pouring rain.

And like the weather in East Tennessee, it can be pouring down raining at one place and dry just a few miles around

And just 1/4 mile away, it changes… again.

I stayed on the Interstate for quite a while. I wanted to go to the Kroger because there is a creek that gets Freaky Wild when it rains and so even though I didn’t have Stella, I wanted to get pictures or video. Just so happened that My Lovely and Talented Wife called and I went to Kroger on a dinner run. While I was in the store, the storm passed, but there was some lightening action going on when I came out.

After being that “Weird Guy filming in the Parking Lot” for a few minutes, I did get some lightening on digital.

Running these past two days has been expectantly nice. It’s great April December weather when the temperature on Monday was over 60F and today, we might even be able to break the high of 69F and we are fore casted to get to 74F. Nothing says Christmas in East Tennessee like shorts and 70 degree weather. Of course on Saturday it’s a Mixed Bag of Rain and Snow… what’s this world coming to?

So Monday I blasted through 4 miles of Tempo pace and today, I when through 5 miles of more Tempo. I expect that tomorrow, I will do some more Tempo, as my outpatient thing is on Thursday and I really won’t feel like running for a few days and even then, I will take a couple more days off. It could be a week off, but then again, I am not too worried. I have taken a week off DURING training before and be fine. I’m not really training for anything, so it’s a nice break.

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For those of you who were wondering where Gravity@1053′ has been, expect an update episode in the next few days about the future of Gravity@1053′. For those of you who don’t know, Gravity@1053′ is my podcast companion to Planet3rry, the Blog. With everything that has been going on, I just have not been able to put together anything. I have recorded some material, but now it’s out dated and since things are evening out somewhat, I think that I have a plan for the podcast.

It was another windy day despite having a huge weather front pass through our area last night. It is a little colder today, maybe a tad bit colder on the mild side. Or something like that… I was in a LS Coolmax shirt and shorts and was just fine!

Running today was actually okay. I just ran around campus, wandering a bit here and there. I ran where ever there were people, I guess so that it would motivate me to keep my pace up while I was trying to be leisurely. I ended up going somewhere close to 3 miles, but really am only counting 2.6. Why 2.6? I dunno… randomness I guess. I was distracted while I was running and stopped my watch, but from what I can gather, I was running a little more than an 8 minute mile. I think tomorrow I will run a full 5 miles and see how I am doing. That way, on Thursday I will do an easy 3 mile, swim Friday, rest Saturday and then up and running for the race on Sunday.

See what I did this morning? YAY! Fun! And now it is sore again. After all it was healing well and starting to look normal but now it's broken again. sigh!

Just when I was going to go get my hand modeling gig back!

Okay, I have procrastinated enough to put this post online. I looked at the empty Entry: box screen thinking about what I was going to put into the box. So why don't I just start typing perhaps I can regurgitate what is in my brain on here…

The forecast today was rain, cool around mid 40s.
The run today was in rain and about 44 degrees. Rock on Weather Dudes! Tomorrow the forecast has little snowflake icons in the small picture picture forecast. Thank goodness that tomorrow is a rest day in preparation for Autumnfest. The Weather Channel has the forecast for Thursday as Mostly Cloudy and the temperature around race time will be a balmy 38-40 degrees. Nice.

About today's run… since it was rather cold and rainy, I decided that I would minimize the amount of time that I would be out in the elements. I limited my run to 20 minutes, which should put me somewhere around the 2.5 mile mark if I ran 8:00 min miles. I also decided that I would stay on campus as well, as I would never be too far away to abort the run and head back to the aquatic center. I tried to protect myself from the rain by wearing a semi-impurvious jacket and went for the LS coolmax shirt instead of the LS cotton shirt. I also had my MP3 player setup to the 2nd and 3rd podcast of Runcast Weekly, as I have come up to date with the Phedippidations podcast. Oh, a side note, in Podcast #19, my description of Phedippidations is read at the close of the podcast… tres cool!

So, I was already for the wonderful scurry through the wet weather. I was surprised at the number of students that were out and about during my run, I am guessing that they are only getting to and from class and the number of students actually being leisurely was next to, or equaling nil. As with most all places in Knoxville, there are hills. “The hills are alive with the sound of… runner's breathing…” but the campus is no exception and in fact the annual Trideltathon is ran on campus among some of the less runner friendly hills. So, what that meant was about 1/2 through my run I was feeling the effects of Saturday's long run. What was I doing? Why was I running in this weather? Well, the reason is that I have come to realize that before any race where I need to perform well, I need to take 2 days, and 2 complete days, off mfor my best performance. Well, maybe I could get away with 36 hours, but I think that would be the minimum for optimal Terry performance. Also, if I didn't run today, I would go nuts in my mini taper that would case me to over analyze and basically self-sabbotage my performance on Thursday. Thanks to all the speedwork Monday following the lack of running weekends that I was able to see… I run faster on Monday after 2 days of rest than after only one… cool.

I only have an overall time of 19:23 seconds for 2.3 miles giving me a 8:26 pace per mile. For the perceived effort… I'm scared because it should have been faster, but I have two days to rest and get stronger.

I waited too long and now I have to run…sigh. Perhaps it has been the full moon that has been affecting me…. after all my wife likes to make fun of my uni-brow.

Upcoming Races:
11/24 Autumnfest 8k (Knoxville, TN), Goal time 37:30
12/04 Reindeer Run 5k (Maryville, TN), Goal time 21:55
01/28 Calhoun's 10 miler (Loudon, TN)
02/18 Strawplain's 1/2 marathon (Strawberry Plains, TN)
03/26 Covenant Health 2nd Annual Knoxville Marathon,Goal time 3:59:59
(indicates potential Personal Record for distance)

Today was just about perfect weather to go swimming. What a shame that the pump for the outdoor pool is still broken thus putting us indoors for today. I made a goal to swim 1200 meters on Tuesday and 800 or 1000 meters on Friday with going the full mile (1600 meters) once a month. I don't want to wear myself out, but want to have the benefits of Cross Training.

(oh, I ran out of time on this part of the blog entry more will have to come later)

I got this from Marathon Central about Fox Cities Marathon in northeast Wisconsin being closed 2-1/2 hours into the race. Like, they told runners to stop and take shelter due to lightening and bad weather, but not everyone got the message. It makes it worse that some of the runners did not hear the message and were able to finish and receive medals, finishing times, etc while the runners who did stop watched them as they were being transported to the Finish Line. Fox Cities should do some major gift giving for next year's race to counteract this bad publicity. Read the write up here.

Seems that Mother Nature has pulled off the gloves and are giving the US a couple black eyes. First there was Hurricane Katrina and now Hurricane Rita. Only Mother Nature would have the lady storms hit so hard (i.e. Camille)… I am woman, hear me ROAR. But what happens when they run out of names? Do they have alternates? Maybe just cycle over to the Cyclone names?

Here in Knoxville gas prices were 30 cents higher than yesterday. And under advice from Devaney, I went and got gas for the cars just on the safe side. The gas stations were busy but there were not long lines waiting to get to the pumps.

One of the blogs that I follow Off The Top of My Head cited that the Port Lavaca, Texas mayor was doing some drastic scare tactics (but really pre-cataloging) to get people to leave. But no matter what, you will always have those that will stay for whatever reason.

With Rita about to hit in the next day, did our Government learn enough from Katrina and be able to act accordingly? With the President's approval ratings at a very low spot, he needs to come out shining if Rita does major damage. As much as he took the responsibility for Katrina's faults, he can take responsibility for Rita's rights (if there are any).

So let's see what happens. I'll be glued to hear what Stephanie Abrams and Jim Cantore have to report about Rita and her imprint that she makes on America. She's already moved the UT vs LSU game to Monday night… can't wait for SportsTalk tonight to hear the people bitch about that… it's bad enough we have a quarterback “contoversy”.

it's in the low 60s at night and mid 80s during the day, what better conditions could you ask for when working out. My goodness!

Today was a swim day. A short swim day at that, I only went 800 meters. I was very happy that they had the pool in the 50 meter configuration which is the Olympic Standard. One it is easier to calculate mileage in your head and Two, you don't have to change directions (something I am bad at) as frequent. So, I ended up doing 16 laps for 800 meters for the day since I didn't think that I would have the stamina to swim much further after a 10 day or so hiatus from swimming. I wasn't too far off. I probably could have done another 200 meters without any problem, but I swam pretty hard the first 400 meters and was tired for the 400. I was able to complete the last 50 meters in 1:04, which would give me a 8:32 Trideltathon 400 meter time. My best time is a 9:23 back in 2002, so to cut off a minute would be excellent.

My legs were a little sore from yesterday's run but not in a bad way. I'll be running again tomorrow but not sure if I am going to run 4 or 5 yet. 5 is awfully nice if I could pull that off during the week.

Flurries are what we had today, basically all day with some sunshine mixed in there to melt the snow. Here are some pictures of what it looked like at its peak prettiness.

Don't bother to look for the cool thing that was supposed to happen today. It probably won't happen until friday, maybe saturday.

My computer is still scanning… going on day 14 tomorrow. sigh… to have a computer

For Lent I am giving up Chocolate. I have done this before and it sucks. Well, it is only bad that I choose not to eat it and that it is near Easter when all delicious varieties are available. I think I will have to hoard massive quantities of chocolates for after Easter. One reprieve is that there are guidelines for Lent, that Sundays are days in which you can have/do what you gave. I, personally, think that this is cheating, but in this instance, I might choose to partake of some cocoa bean derivatives on Sunday. I must eat the Cadbury Creme Eggs… I must eat the Cadbury Creme Eggs…

It's rainy today and the forecast is not looking better either, snow on Thursday. Good thing for me that a little rain doesn't bother me. I can handle a little rain here and there. Now give me a down pour and NO thunderstorms, that is depressing. Oh course, the snow is exciting, only for the fact that Eric hasn't played in snow yet. So, given that the snow is 2 days away, does not guarentee anything. It might snow, it might not, who the hell knows?

My computer is still scanning, and I am still at 79%, I have a couple hundred clusters to go through before it makes it to 80%, so it will take a while. There are no sales at CompUSA this week, so I can't go out and get a cheap hard drive to replace the piece of crap that I have right now. You do have to realize that even it completes the scan there is no guarantee that Windows will load. Also, I found out that the USB wireless adapter that I bought 1) doesn't work with Windows ME and 2) The rebate didn't have the correct postmark date.

I have the Math lab tonight from 6:30 to 9:30. So far, it has been busy each week and I can only imagine more of the same. At least the cool this is that I will have a spring break as well, but that is in March I believe.

I have been having a voracious appetite the past few days since my long run of 22.5 miles on Saturday. I am eternally hungry and have been eating WAY to many carbs and now weight 167lbs which means that I gained close to 4 pounds since Saturday. I do not know how much to contribute to muscle development, but still…

I will go running today for about an hour, in between work and the Math lab. It would have been nice if I had remembered my towel for the shower. I have a tiny towel that I can use, but it's like 1/2 the size of a regular towel. I guess something is better than nothing.