Treadmill Test

Well the weather around DFW this weekend is pretty lousy. It has been drizzling/raining off and on for the past two days with temperatures flirting with the freezing mark. The wind is not bad, but the cold and damp don't mix well when you are training for the Cowtown Marathon coming up next month. Ryan and I had a 14.5 mile training run planned for Saturday morning, but plans quickly changed when I got soaked just walking to my car that morning. I convinced him that we should just do some mileage on the treadmill and save ourselves the misery of getting soaked the first mile of our run and then being miserable the rest of the time.

Well the treadmill was about what we expected, boring. It just doesn't feel the same when you are running and not making any forward progress at all. One of the best things about running is the little adventure you have each run. I love to just take out of the door and see where things lead me. You never know what you might find or where you might end up. A lot of the times I will end up running farther than anticipated because I just want to keep going and see what is around the corner.

The treadmill while great for a short little workout is quite monotonous for those of us who run long distances. I put around 11 miles on the treadmill on Saturday and another 5 today, but I am hoping the weather clears up and I can hit the roads again on Monday.

Lesson Learned

So today I learned a lesson in record keeping. Normally I am pretty good about keeping track of receipts and documents, but lately I have been slacking off. Maybe it has something to do with the 100+ things I have going on or maybe I just haven’t made it a high enough priority. Either way there is a huge stack of documents that I have to go through and organize soon before I get caught unprepared again. Ok, here is the story

I sold my textbooks from last semester on Amazon Marketplace this year. Overall it was a great experience and I sold all of the books within four days. When mailing the books I always buy the insurance even though I think it is overpriced. I really didn’t feel like taking the hit if the books never arrived. Well guess what. I get an email from a guy today claiming he never got his book that I mailed on December 10. First of all I don’t believe that the guy never received the book. As bad as the post office is, they usually get the packages to their destination at some point or another. The real problem though lies in the fact that I can’t locate my insurance receipt from the post office, and the postal system is so archaic that you are SOL if you lose the piece of paper. There is no such thing as looking it up electronically.

So it looks like I will be taking a $50 hit just because of some lousy record management on my part. While this does suck, it is at least motivating me to take better care of everything in the future. Lesson learned.