Post
by Bob S. » February 8th, 2008, 1:45 am
I have been procrastinating about this for a week and a half, dithering about whether or not I should send out a boring personal account. I finally decided to go ahead. Those who are bored can just close it and go on to the next message.
I got back 11 days ago, late Sunday afternoon, 7 pounds heavier, a few hundred dollars less in the bank account, and almost 700 miles more on the odometer of my mini-pickup. I hoped at the time that the weight increase was due — at least in part — to water retention as a result of eating a lot of overly salted restaurant food. Within a day or so I lost a couple of those pounds, so that was probably the case. I have since lost another 3 or 4 pounds, so I am more or less back to normal.
The drives:
I left home in the mid morning of Tuesday the 22nd, had a cold, windy snack/pit stop at the US 395 rest area at Coso Junction and a truck refueling stop at Mojave, another cold, windy stop and the beginning of a rain storm that stayed with me until I was past the hills and dropping down into the San Fernando Valley, arriving at the south Motel 6 in Long Beach in late afternoon. The total time including short stops was about 5 1/2 hours. The return home on Sunday the 27th was the mirror image of the trip to the coast — same timing, same stops, and the same weather pattern, but just in reverse.
Shopping:
Going from this remote area to the SoCal metropolis, I felt like a kid in a candy store.
TJs, not just one, but a half dozen or more.
A couple of Ikeas to choose from.
At least three REIs.
Several Home Depots.
A couple of Apple Stores.
A conveniently located Target.
A discount clothing place less than a half block from the motel.
Also, the motel is about a mile and a half walk from LBRA (1.8 miles by the street route) and I was told by one of the members that there are about 80 restaurants within in 2 miles of the boathouse. That’s probably more than Inyo and Mono counties combined.
Weather:
Three heavy, heavy rainstorms while I was there. Those were in addition to the storms on the drives out and back. It was sunny and clear on both days that I did time trials, a useless 1K on Thursday and the actual 2K race on Saturday. But before the races were over in the late afternoon, the sky had gone leaden with a promise of a storm Saturday night.
Traffic:
Yuck. I always get culture shock about the time I get over Soledad Pass and start the descent into the basin. The heavy rainstorms did not help, but back home in Big Pine, my wife had to put up with snow. At least I did not encounter that, but I was concerned that it might have been a problem going back over Soledad pass at around 3200 ft. The midweek storms had a snow level below that, but it warmed up later and it was just rain when I went back.
Internet:
A nearby Kinko’s would let me online for about 10 bucks an hour. No thanks. I had my laptop with me and Motel 6 had fliers advertising a WiFi card at $2.99 for 24 hours, which didn’t sound too bad. I was only a few minutes walk from the Cal State Long Beach campus, so I went over there to check out the facilities of their large library. It turned out that they offered free guest privileges for one hour a day. With a couple of hundred new HPs in an auditorium size room, there was no waiting, so I took advantage of it. There were a couple of problems, like my unfamiliarity with Windows and some system restrictions on opening attachments, so I wasn’t sure that I had accomplished my missions. I ended up getting a WiFi card at Motel 6 and found out that the messages had gone out O.K. and that I could open the attachments on my own computer. The next morning, I still had time left to use the WiFi and on the third morning, I used the free hour at CSULB. On Saturday, I felt that I didn’t have the time to go there and back before the races, so I bought a second WiFi card, figuring on using it again early Sunday before I left for home. That was fine for Saturday, but I overslept Sunday morning and had timed out on the card. No problem — I had stumbled across a hot spot a couple of days before, so I drove there, got on the net for free, and got my fix (downloading the daily air pollution maps).
Time trials and races.
In an effort to try to improve my nonathlon score and push Ergonaut to do his marathon, I counted on improving my 1K and 2K times while I had the opportunity to do them at sea level. Accordingly, I did a 1K on Thursday, after a 10’ wakeup and the Eddie Fletcher warm up. I did the E.F. warm up at considerably faster paces than called for, but I figured that at sea level it would probably be O.K. On the 1K, I didn’t really check to see what pace I should be pushing for, but about half way through, I realized that I had been at too fast a pace and was fading rapidly. I was doing 100m splits. The first four were at 2:00, 1:56.5, 1:56.5, and 1:56.5. After that it started to climb and by the 9th split had ballooned to 2:08.4. I finished with a feeble 2:04.5 “kick,” for a final time of 4:00.6 a long way off from my SB of 3:56.8. I think that the problem was a combination of a warm up that was too intense and of going at too fast a pace from 100 – 500 meters.
The 2K went much better. My old SB was 8:22.2. The HWT qualifying time was 8:20.0 and I did 8:11.0, so it was successful on those counts, but a long way from what I had been doing a year ago.
As for the nonathlon, it is a dead issue. The 1K was obviously a flop and the 2K, although a big improvement for the season, was still my lowest nonathlon score, so it is still the one that is dropped, thus no change whatsoever in the nonathlon score. My only chance now for improvement is to try to repeat my three low score middle distance trials, 5K, 6K, and 30.’ At this point I don’t have the motivation to do it. I was tempted to try to redo the 1K on Sunday morning before I drove home, but I overslept that morning and didn’t want to waste any more time. The one attempt that I made at home to improve the 1K time was worse than the trial at Long Beach.
Bob S.
I'm going to have to try to chase that down before the end of the month.
