Month of May

Started: 2011-05-26 08:00:27

Submitted: 2011-05-26 08:40:23

Visibility: World-readable

At work recently I've been working on cleaning up the overhanging technical debt incurred by my earlier prototypes on a big new project. That, and the continuing triage and support (including one embarrassing conference call with a customer in which no one had any real idea whose code was being used in the case that was failing; it turned out to not be my code at all but one of the drivers my code interacted with) has kept me sufficiently busy to not really notice my recent promotion to Staff Engineer. (So far it's been a promotion in title (and a corresponding raise) but no material change in my actual responsibilities.) I'm trying to leverage my promotion into an enhanced technical leadership role, which may take some time to actually come into being.

My personal life has been dominated by my Bolder Boulder training regime. At the height of my training in mid-May, prior to my pre-race taper (which was slightly accelerated by my almost getting sick -- I managed to avoid catching Kiesa's stomach flu by coming home early one afternoon and taking a nap) I was running 30 miles per week, and I managed an unofficial 10k time-trial PR one afternoon. I capitalized on my training by running the Bolder Boulder qualifier race Flat Out 5k; despite arriving at the starting line barely ninety seconds before the starting gun, I ran 5k in a hair under 7 minutes per mile and finished, by my watch, in about 21:25. Despite not training specifically for 5k, I beat my two-year-old previous 5k personal record by a minute and a half. I qualified into wave B, with an estimated 10k finish time of 44 minutes, and promptly registered for the Bolder Boulder itself.

(Every so often I stop to wonder how far and fast I can push my running. All indications so far indicate I'm on track to take another four minutes off my 10k time; if I keep that up I can expect to win the race in a couple of years. This year I had a better aerobic base coming into the spring; I kept up running through Christmas and started my training in the spring with an aggressive but workable training regime. I don't know how much more time I want to devote to running; peaking at 30 miles/week seemed to be the right balance between running and the rest of my life this spring. Do I live to run, or run to live?)