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The Phoenix trip, day 4

Woke up. Stuffed two or three muffins (OK, four of the too-small muffins) and a couple glasses of OJ down the gullet before heading over to work. Spent all the good daylight hours bending the systems to our wills. Got hung up on something stupid… the login scripts.

See, the PC users have mapped drives that automatically mount at bootup. The new server needed the same thing, but the sample scripts (two of ‘em) we retooled off the interweb both failed. After struggling entirely too long with this problem, I gave Brian a call and he quickly pointed us in the right direction and saved the day from dragging into evening and pissing us all off. Thanks Brian! Watch your e-mail for a special thank you from the company.

By the time we finished it was pretty much sundown and I opted to skip a run, plus I was still a might tired from yesterday’s run in ridiculously dry heat. It took me about 20 hours and finally some ibuprofen to kick the dehydration headache that was clinging to me like a facehugger. All the Arizona Green Teas I sucked down did little to refill my tank. (Good thing the company has a cooler filled with drinks for just 25 cents otherwise I would have had to hit the ATM.)

When we left the office we scattered like roaches exposed to light and I thought of getting another delicious philly cheese steak sub from Corleone’s, but alas, they were closed. The nerve. Deprived of a sub. Bastards. So I drove around a little and settled on Chipotle’s for a couple hard shell tacos with chips and salsa. The tacos were good, but the salsa… meh. And the chips… holy schnikes they were salty! It was like dragging my tongue across the Utah salt flats and taking a break every couple feet to have a chip. I could feel my heart rate rising just sitting there reading my book and choking down these sorry triangular chips. I’m sorry, but if I’m going to make my heart rate accelerate, it’s going to be for a better reason than just eating raw salt—like a good morning workout or an afternoon 100 mile ride.

After being inundated by salt, I was craving something sweet. Where was that Cold Stone? Oh yeah, just around the corner. I get some sort of German sounding chocolate concoction in a chocolate dipped waffle bowl. Again… meh. Pretty good, but not good enough for me to get again. Certainly not good enough to get again for nearly eight years… like a certain Roma’s sub. Mmmm, Roma’s…

Here’s another sunset shot…

And a shot I don’t particularly like of myself running (with my monster nose, unshaved face and weak chin), but it’s all I took.

The Phoenix Trip, day 3, 10, 96

Day 3. Miles run: 10.55. Temperature, 96 degrees.

Miles run: 10.55
Time: 1:45:31
Pace: 9:59
Temp: 96°
HR: 167/187 (time over 170 bpm: 1 hour, 1 minute)
Perceived effort: 8
On the iPod: random mix

Finally got out on the road, though a little late in the evening–I knew I’d be coming home in the dark.

Here is a map of the route: (click on the image for interactive version). The large empty area on the map in the upper right is Camelback mountain. The course was an out-and-back over the same route. Flat as a pancake, except for the last mile of Dreamy Draw Drive which is slightly inclined up towards the mountain. Those of you from the Adirondacks would barely even notice it.

Things I noticed:

• The strange new-sounding bird songs
• The heavy scent of lilac on the air
• That 96 degrees here feels like 70 degrees back home
• About 3 or 4 photobugs
• I had to dodge a couple protein clouds. (Swarms of gnats)
• Luckily (and I mean LUCKILY) there was a water fountain at the 2.25 mile point and one at my turnaround at 5.2 miles. Couldn’t have planned that better.
• Lots of rabbits
• The roads are wide and sidewalks generous. I didn’t have any close calls with cars.
• The sky is bigger here
• Saw two Kildeer Plover. They always remind me of my childhood in Canada.
• Didn’t pass any other runners. But did see a few cyclists. Though no roadies.
• My sweat evaporated immediately. However, when I stopped, the sweat poured out.
• My heart rate was higher than normal–even with frequent 5-10 second photo stops muddying the data.
• I could feel the heat in my feet. Blisters were a result of the run. Though they don’t really hurt–I just have to be careful about them now.
• I bonked at around mile 8.5.

I was frankly surprised it didn’t happen sooner. I know, I know, why do I keep doing this? I guess I like knowing how far I can go on just the immediate tank. Then it’s a matter of seeing what’s left in reserve. It’s hard to carry food while running, let alone water. I have to get some sort of runner’s belt or something. I’ve seen ‘em in magazine. They look uncomfortable and distracting, but unless I sprinkle the course beforehand with Clif bars or stop and convenience stores with a sweaty $10, I’ll continue to have this problem.

The night featured a new moon, so no light from above. Didn’t matter, really, nearly the entire course had street lights or lights from houses nearby.

The reward for a good run like this warranted a nice steak, so I checked Google for local steakhouses and chose Texaz. It was pretty good–I’ve had better–if I wasn’t nutritionally depleted, I may have been more discerning and less generous in my review. The coleslaw was pretty good!

After the dinner I drove downtown and hit an AMC theater for the 9:55 showing of “300.” Overall a good flick, but there were 2 or 3 cringe-worthy moments of anachronistic hubris and bravado that would only have occured in the 20th century, let alone back in the days of Sparta. The fight scenes were outstanding with cartoon-like blood, and on-the-verge-of-too-much slow motion camera effects. But just enough to heighten the drama of the action.

After the movie, a quick stop at an Albertsons for snacks and drinks, then back to the hotel to crash and recover.

All in all, a very good day.

More photos are here. (Flickr seems to put them in reverse chronological order, so keep that in mind…)

The Phoenix trip, day two

Up bright and early, breakfast here at the hotel of scrambled eggs, bacon, salsa, orange juice and an english muffin. Hop in the Caliber and zoom off the 3 miles or so to work. Snap a picture of one of the few bumps on the horizon. It’s so bizarre seeing such an UTTERLY flat landscape with the random high peak jutting up from the desert like a broken tooth. From the air at night, these were black holes in the web of city lights. Apparently Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the States.

Got to work and found two coworkers who are sick. One of whom is integral to the project we’re doing this weekend. He ended up going home early today in an attempt to get some rest and try to spur a faster recovery. He didn’t look happy. The other guy also went home early. I’ve been washing my hands with Monk-like fastidiousness today. And, I’ve been conscious of NOT touching my face, and being generally paranoid about getting sick because of these guys.

This is the machine we’re focusing most of our work on. Both directly and indirectly. It holds a LOT of data. Unfortunately, we’re decommissioning the old server and have to copy all the data from it to the new machine. We’re talking roughly a terabyte of data. How much is a terabyte of data? According to this page, it’s “all the X-ray films in a large technological hospital OR 50,000 trees made into paper and printed.” It’s taking about an hour to copy 12 to 15 gigabytes of data. At that rate, it’ll take three and a half days. Not good. We’re hoping it’ll pick up. So my boss took the first shift. I’m taking the second shift starting around 4am, and we’ll see how things go.

John Ceceri, ultra-cycling event coordinator extraordinare, e-mailed me and gave me good news and bad news. The bad news is that the first big ride of the season, which was scheduled for this Sunday, is canceled due to the weather. The good news is that it’s rescheduled for next weekend. This ride is the first in a series of brevets, a 200km ride. The next brevet will be 300km, then 400km, then 600km. One each month. I was disappointed in missing the first ride because of work. However, you may have noticed I haven’t posted any stories about rides in a while. How very observant of you. No rides since December 31st. I’m thinking I should get back in the saddle either Wednesday or Thursday this coming week and see how the legs feel after nearly three months of running. I’m cautiously optimistic that I haven’t lost too much cycling conditioning–and that the running has maintained my cardio-vascular conditioning pretty well. We’ll see.

I heard the snows have started in earnest back home. Sorry I’m missing it guys.

Here are a handful of pictures from today.