Moving at a Snail’s Pace

The Soyuz that launched on Wednesday docked to the space station today. We watched the last couple minutes of the docking here in the office. Man, that thing goes flying in! They docked at about 0.15 meters per second — that’s more than 4 times faster than the shuttle, which docks at the comparatively glacial paces of 0.1 feet per second. Try to walk at 0.1 feet per second sometime. It is slow. Then again, when you’re in the shuttle (or the simulator) watching the giant space station coming towards you, it feels really fast.

I am dragging like nobody’s business today, and walking like an old person. A few months ago, I discovered that playing softball — and specifically, catcher — after running was not such a good idea, since it was basically the equivalent of following a run with an hour of squats. Last night I discovered that it doesn’t really work so well the other way either. Play catcher (i.e. hour of squats) and then run? Yeah, it still makes your legs feel the same amount of wobbliness the next day. Oof.

I had a good run thanks to the lovely weather, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been a slacker lately. I haven’t been posting all my runs, so I haven’t been as much of a slacker as my blog might indicate, but suffice it to say that I have been slacking all the same. We will see how Sunday goes. I know I can make the 10 miles, and I know I can make it under 2 hours, but I don’t know how much. My ideal goal would be 1:50, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to maintain 11:00 pace the whole way. Thus, I am not setting a goal. I’m just going to treat it as a long run, not a race, and thus I don’t care what my time is.

Matchbox Twenty’s new “How Far We’ve Come” is an ideal running song, by the way. Perfect pacing.

My brother Brian found out recently that he passed the 4th and final part of the CPA exam, so he is now officially a Certified Public Accountant. Congratulations to him!