Slacker

The kids made it back home last night.  After traveling 13+ hours and crossing 7 time zones, they got in around 7:00 pm last night.  Happy to be home but worn out.  They slept in this morning and we took them out for lunch today before junior heads back to Austin.  We got to help them open wedding gifts and view some of the honeymoon pictures, but ran out of time.  As usual, Stephen had to unpack, wash clothes, repack before he heads north.  The only difference now is that he is sharing his time with his bride.  

Opening wedding gifts

Luna - their Aussie foster dog.  She's a bit skittish around men and was eyeballing me for a while but I won her over with my smile and charms

With everyone out there running in minimalist shooz, I feel like a slacker.  I haven't done a  real run for couple of weeks.  Normally, I will run during my lunchtime at work - it gets me out of the office, keeps me from those office lunches, and serves to bleed off some stress/steam from the daily grind.  I started this habit way back at my last job in the 90s.  The plant was out in the country, too far from the local town to go for lunch, no good options for fine dining (Dairy Queen does not count), and they had a nice work out room with 1st class showers.  I got into the habit of running a couple of miles at lunch, cleaning up and then getting some soup or salad at the cafeteria.  Since I hate running treadmills, I would run the local country roads/trails around the site.  I even made it a point to run in the middle of summer to "build up stamina" .

The new place has a gym and shower, so it allowed me to keep up the habit since I joined this place 10 years ago. I have even blocked my calendar during lunch to allow for a run.  But lately, I have been too busy to suit up and hit the streets.  I could blame it on the work load or all of the wedding hoopla, but that is just a lame excuse.  The last serious run I did was out in Paso Robles three weeks ago.  Beautiful run.  An early morning pre-dawn run with temps hovering in the mid 50s, little humidity, no wind.  Ran along the back roads around the hotel through several wineries, farms.  Definitely a zen run for me - one of those runs where you just want to keep on going.  Whenever I go on any of these supplier road trips, I make it a point to get at least one or two runs in.  Normally, my schedule is screwed up, I am several time zones out of sync, I am eating out way too much, jet lag is killing the knees, so it is sort of an obsession of mine to run whenever I go to a new place.  I've run along the California coast line with the sea lions, jogged alongside the Minnesota River in Mankato,  run through the fields of Hanau, Germany, cruised the country roads of Forrest Grove, Oregon, huffed up and down the hills of San Diego, run the beach in the Pacific Northwest, jogged the Mall at Washington DC between the Washington Monument and Congress.  In no way does this make me some sort of uber runner, I am just taking advantage of the trip to enjoy some of the local scenery.  Besides, it beats sitting in the hotel watching HBO or the local news.  Besides, it helps burn off some of those beers and dinners out with the suppliers.  Friday I finally got off my butt and hit the streets again.  My calendar was open (or so I thought) for the afternoon, so I laced up and hit the streets.  Pouring down rain when started out but it cleared out to leave a cooler, steamy run (mid 80s).  Good run, if not a bit muddy.  Of course, when I get back to the locker room, I have an e-mail from my boss asking me if I was coming to the meeting (sent 30 minutes before).     Good run, even if my legs don't appreciate it.  I have to remind myself that it is only 139 days until the starting gun.  I am off again on Tuesday on another supplier road trip and hope to get in some east coast running in this time while trying to avoid the lobsters.