Spooktacular!

Happy Halloween to those who read my blog by accident! Halloween at my office is taken as a serious event and all the employees are “strongly encouraged” to dress up for the day. And by “strongly encouraged” I of course mean “dress up because if you don’t, you’ll get a stern talking to about playing on a team, etc.” People are even given a hard time if they take the day off! Last I checked, the markets aren’t closed on Halloween and the federal government is still operating. Thus, this is not a serious holiday.

My plan for next year is two-fold. If I can, I’m taking the day off and not even bothering with the whole thing. If I get some push back on that (corporate speak for catching flak), I can either use the old “St. James Aluni Council meeting” excuse or I can drop it and come to the office. This is where the second part of my plan comes into play.

This year I went as a masquerader from Venice (think of the hooded guys in spooky masks from Eyes Wide Shut or, the costumed guys from the Mozart opera Don Giovanni). It’s a great costume because it’s mysterious and spooky but it’s damn near impossible to explain to people. Two people today got it right away without an explanation, which surprised me. However, most people are just kinda freaked out by it because they can’t see your face. I’m keeping this costume for the future because it’s easy to wear, always cool looking, and easy to maintain. I’ll put a picture that Annie took over the weekend on my Flikr album. I am definitely going to keep an eye out for a better mask to use, preferably one that covers my entire face and has a creepy look on it like these from Eyes Wide Shut.

But, for next year, should my attempts at getting out of Halloween fail, I will get back to my roots and come as a stereotypical WVU fan. Accent and all. Having been born in West Virginia (OK, actually Virginia, but I grew up in WV), I speak hillbilly fluently and can switch back and forth at will. So, with that in mind, I don’t feel quite as desperate to get out of the day next year.

On to running issues. I did my fastest easy run to date last night. I ran 4.5 miles at 9:50 or better. I ran the first mile at 9:50 and then the rest at 9:30. Even though I felt tired when I stopped, I wasn’t exhausted and felt like I could have kept going by mixing in some short walking with my running. Tonight I’m going to do a shorter tempo run of 3 miles, with one-mile warm-ups and cool-downs.

Also, if you didn’t catch it last night, I would strongly urge you to find a re-running of the NOVA Marathon Challenge episode. I TiVoed the episode but watched it immediately after it was done. That way I can keep it on my TiVo and re-watch it without spending the $20 for the DVD from PBS. It was really interesting, though, They took 13 non-runners and gave them 9 months to train for the Boston Marathon. During that time, they had two coaches from Tufts University working with them to help them prepare properly. It was interesting to see how each member faced the prospect of running a marathon and how they responded, both physically and mentally, to the stresses of training for that long a distance.

I’d be interested to know more about the details of each member’s training because it seemed that some of them just weren’t prepared to run 26.2 miles, despite having completed a training program successfully. Their longest training run was 20 miles, which is huge, but leaves that last 6.2 miles unexplored. I’m not sure if you need to run 26.2 miles during the training process, but the difference between 20 miles and 26 miles is enormous. I have seen programs that recommend final training runs of 22-24 miles to get your closer to that exhaustion point that most runners reach after mile 20. The Team NOVA runners didn’t have that experience and so most of them fell apart after the halfway point, although they all finished the marathon eventually.

I was checking my bank account statement last night and saw an odd check that had been cashed for $20.00. I thought it was odd and couldn’t remember writing a check for $20 recently so I took a look at the check because I get free imaging with Bank of America. And what did I write a check for $20.00 to? Why, the Great Strides Against Prostate Cancer 5K! The very race that I was sure I had forgotten to register for back in late September (see September 29th’s post, “I’m an Idiot”)! So apparently I not only registered for it, but I totally failed to document the registration both physically and mentally. Nice. Well I donated to the St. Joseph’s Medical Center so all is not lost. I would have felt bad if the race had been done through a race company because my money would have gone there instead of a medical center treatment program. Nonetheless, this is a good lesson to always document your race registrations.