Winter is Coming

Maybe it's already here! 36* when I got in the car this morning to head to work. One thing is for sure, October is gone.  Let's see what happened!

Swim: 10,150 yards, 4 swims
Bike: All doughnuts - nothing
Run: 81 miles, 10 runs, 1 race
Strength: 7 times
Yoga: 17 times

81 miles of running is not bad at all! Of course 31 of that came in the New River Trail 50k, my only race on the month. Also leaves me at 1027 miles on the year, well on pace to hit the 1200 mile goal. It felt great to cross the 1000 mile threshold.  I've been hitting the yoga mat and strength training regularly as well. It felt great to get back in the pool too. Next week (supposed to be this week but the pool had some staffing issues) I get to hit the RAM practice at noon! Ah noon practices are going to be great. I really hope it sticks so I can swim 5 times a week instead of 4 times a month.  10k in the pool is kind of pitiful, but it is an off month for swimming anyway.

As we come into November, the goals go back to family time, building a swimming endurance base, and getting my 100 mile running months in to wrap things up. And some of this:

Totally not a mass murderer

New glasses came in! Hipster frames, but kind of cool I think.

Probably the last garden selfie of the year. Notice the yellow leaves on the muscadine vines in the back

This weekend got interesting, if slightly torturous. Saturday my plan was to take out the baseboard heaters above the floor in the morning, then spend the rest of the day watching college football. There was snow being dumped on the western part of the state, but I didn't expect that storm to affect us at all. So naturally when I thought I was done with the baseboards (and picked a nice batch of Ghost and Habanero peppers)  the power went out for 4 hours. no football for daddy. We decided to kill the time by going to a shopping center to get some dinner and hit the Bass Pro Shops store that recently opened to search for christmas gifts and show the girls the giant stuff inside. So we find a great sports bar that I've heard has great wings, and they've got the Florida - Georgia game on. Alright, here we go. Wait, why is everyone in here wearing florida shirts? If anything is worse than being a Gators fan, it's being surrounded by Gator fans. Evil Genius thought it was too loud for her to enjoy anyway, so we had to get the hell out of there. Again, no football for daddy. We settled on a pizza place. After we got home about 8:30, I finally got some good college football.

Sunday I had an amazing time on the yoga mat, and EG even got in on some of the action with me. Then I got in a nice speedy 10 mile run. After that the plan was to go under the house and free up all of those copper pipes that were feeding the baseboard heating elements I removed on Saturday. Turns out, that was insanely painful. Our crawl space is only about a foot high in some places, so I quickly found myself in a tight spot. That's the top picture above. I threw on the overalls, safety glasses, and Rev3 dust mask and went under the house. Then after a few hours under there, I came out with some copper and lots of new bruises. seriously, I scraped up body parts I didn't know I had. We're going to sell off all of that metal (and copper brings a premium price) to a local recycling center so it will be worth it in the end. I'm just glad to have 4" of floor space back.  And I've never been more glad to see that cubicle on a Monday morning knowing that copper was gone.