Miscellaneous ramblings:
- I feel like I'm in a rut with really mundane office work. Spent many hours recently on a lengthy annual report submission of compliance of Sarbanes-Oxley controls, with references out to four places (e.g., 15f.2.4.1), and got it returned to me for reworking. What am I doing? It was as if I had forgotten to include a cover page with my TPS report (Office Space reference).
- Midway through a recent meeting where about ten of us were delving into some inane minutae of management fees and what methodology we should use to calculate, an e-mail came across from the head of our division stating that the wife of one of our colleagues had just passed away today at age 53 from cancer. An SVP reached out to me in a chat immediately and said that she feels none of these project details matter anymore. Bingo.
- I received a video call from HR this week that started out with "Jeff, I'm afraid we have some bad news for you.". Sounds ominous! No, I didn't get let go, but it turns out I'm a victim of identity theft and someone filed a fraudulent unemployment claim with the state using my name and info. What a pain to file state police reports, put freezes on your credit, etc. Apparently RI unemployment fraud is sharply up recently, as for compassionate reasons, the RI Dept of Labor changed their unemployment process during COVID to immediately pay out unemployment funds once a claimant submits a request, instead of waiting for their employer (former employer) to confirm, so there's a much higher chance of scumbag fraudulent claimants receiving money. I hope the illegitimate claimant on my account was at least forced to submit a cover page with his/her claim.
- For the third time in two months, a graduate of my high school class has died. We had 318 in my graduating class, so the percentage isn't huge, but what's going on? I'm in my mid-50s, not mid-80s. Life is short indeed.
Monday: 6
Snowshoe run in 5" of new powder! After last week's debacle of getting the car stuck in an unplowed DEM dirt road, I needed to be smarter about where to park. Ended up parking on street at the end of a plowed road (Fern Drive) just before the gate going into Woody Hill. This worked well. Our entire run was all virgin snow; tough going but beautiful!
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| Just gorgeous out in Woody Hill today! |
Tuesday: 3 snowshoe hike
Yesterday was 18° at start and today was 21°, so I dressed the same. But yesterday I felt fine and today I just got so cold out there. My toes and fingertips were just frozen the whole time. What gives? Ah yes, yesterday I ran and I today I walked at a very easy pace, and with a group of ten, there were a number of stops as well. What a difference. I enjoyed my time out there with the Land Trust, but I sure learned a lesson of dressing not only for the weather, but also for the activity. Makes complete sense, but it didn't dawn on me until after. I felt cold for most of the rest of the day.
Wednesday: 5
Avondale Preserve late afternoon with Brady. Mix of roads and hardpack snow trails.
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| Uh-oh. This isn't looking good. |
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| Fortunately, some tactical surgery, with crude implements of a bowsaw and shovel, gave him a new lease on life and kept him going for the rest of the week plus. |
Thursday: 6
Another snowshoe run in Woody Hill. This time parked at Bradford Citizens Club and ran in. Just another gorgeous morning out there in the solitude of the woods.
Friday: 1 walk
Lost my window for running with stupid work stuff, and then lost interest. Took a post-work walk with Brady and Jana in Avondale Farm Preserve. On the plus side, it's still light out until about 5:20pm.
Saturday: 7 run, 3 hike
With a lot of snow still on the ground, especially on the trails in the woods, for more than two weeks now, it was time to resume the Border Patrol Challenge. My last BPC was just over two weeks ago in the snow at Tillinghast, and my last BPC run on bare ground was three weeks ago at Tri Town Preserve. Obviously my times are going to be much slower in the snow, but as I mentioned in last week's blog, I'm also running out of time with 6 weekends remaining to get 9 challenges completed.
So which course should I run, knowing what I know will be a slower comparative time to others running it on dry ground? Mathematically the longer courses would make sense, as their formulas (using exponentiation) penalize runners-up less than the points separation on the shorter courses. Example:
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| Very little points spread on the long courses. |
I probably overthink these things, as the obvious flip side to Tippecansett today is having to run 20 miles in the snow with who knows what conditions. After bantering about different options, I ended up deciding that with unknown snow conditions, I would err on the side of choosing a shorter distance and set my sights for the 5.5 mile course at Old Furnace State Park (Killingly, CT).
Drove for 50 minutes to get there, as I'm just pulling into the parking lot, I see two runners in the snow about to set off. Wait a minute - I know those two runners. Against implausible odds, I'm pulling into this relatively obscure state park an hour away exactly as Bob Jackman and Zack (Zach? Zak?) Kudlak are starting their run. I rolled the window down and yelled out. No, of course I didn't "roll" the window down, but I'm so old that that's the way we used to do it before power windows. But I digress ..
The two were nice enough to wait up for me, and this was a huge win for me. Probably a drag for them, as they were just starting. Beyond the coincidence of meeting up just at the start of their run, this was the the run that I needed some guidance and companionship the most, as it was confusing labyrinth of a course on a property that I'm not at all familiar with. Bob and Zach had actually marked a number of the intersections!!
So off we went. Bob was in the lead. Well, except when Brady would sprint past him, and then drop back for me, and then sprint past him again. The snow was deep but well packed, but I could only see Bob in sight for a mile. There was one intersection where there was no flag (how dare they!) and I paused for a bit, hoping Zach would catch up and point me the way, but then just acquiesced to the way Brady chose, hoping that he was doing that based off Bob's scent. After a while, I saw a flag at a hard right turn, which Brady, leading the whole way, took correctly, so I'm assuming he had picked up Bob's scent. Good.
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| There was some deep, soft snow out there! At this point of the course, I slipped backwards (even with YakTrax) before eventually getting a grip and making my way forward again. |
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| Packed down sections like this were much quicker to run on |
Was doing well following the course until we came to a wide open area (a closed parking lot covered in snow) and trails diverged in many directions. Brady didn't know where to go, and I certainly had no clue at all. I probably lost two minutes trying to figure it out until I remembered I had loaded the route onto my Strava account and brought my phone FOR THAT VERY PURPOSE. Took out my phone and quickly figured the direction, and then validated I was on course. I had to do that phone based reconnaissance probably four more times during the run, but that and Bob's occasional flag kept me on course for a less than intuitive route.
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| Hike later in the day, with Jana and Brady, back in Westerly (Woody Hill). The snow was in such great shape that I wanted to get out there again, as who knows how long it'll last. |
Sunday: 7
Every wake up in the morning and can't make up your mind about where you're going to run? Preference was trails, but there was a lot of snow and everything was melting and wet and the temp was above freezing all night, so that's out. How about a beach run? Looked up the tide chart and found we're just coming up on high tide. Ugh. Ended up running local roads with Brady, doing my best to pick quiet back roads wherever possible.
Weekly mileage: 32 run (of which 11 on snowshoes, 7 on YakTrax), 2 snowshoe hike, 3 hike
Weekly synopsis: My weekly running goals are out the window as long as the snow is on the ground. Not that I am complaining at all, and I could easily change up to all roads and get more mileage in, but what's the point? Winter is short, I'm enjoying my snow runs, and it's not like I have a spring marathon I need to train for or anything.
Weekly highlight: Truly so many fun snowy runs this week, but I'm going with the Old Furnace Border Patrol Challenge run. It felt more like a race with Bob and Zach out there at the same time, and was reminiscent of past Snowy Sufferfest races in the Galoob era. Good stuff!
Weekly lowlight: Work stuff, but no running complaints.
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