It's Been 14 Days Since my Last Post?!?

Man has this month flown past! The holiday has come and gone, and the month is almost over. And I have a ton of stuff to update everyone on.

First and foremost, my workouts are coming along great! I've had a couple of wonderful workout since my last few posts that have really shown my improvement over the past few months that I'm going to share a little further on in my post.

Work is another story - I'm starting with this topic because everything else will fall in as I explain. I work as a Buyer / Materials Manager for a private manufacturing plant in Southern California. We specialize in electronic components that are great in extreme conditions - that coupled with the ability to dispense heat in the materials we work with make us a prime contractor for the government in military and space applications. Up until recently we hadn't felt any of the current slow-down of the economy, but that's slowly changing. Late last week I was told by the owner's son that they are consolidating purchasing into our Corporate office in Chatsworth. Now for anyone who has been reading knows I just went through a office move with the understanding my job was stable. We've had meetings upon meetings indicating that everyone job was safe as long as we hit target numbers....... Long story short - we f'ed it up over the last few months and showed a loss due to yields and production mistakes - production pointed the finger at materials, I supplied the reports and low and behold - I have a meeting with the owner's son.

So now I'm kind of in limbo - they have indicated to me that I'm not going to be laid off and I'll have plenty of work to do - I'm just not convinced that what they are telling me is the truth. So I've been spending time putting my finances in order and cutting out excess spending (for the whole family) Luckily Beth and I are in pretty good shape - we own two homes (one is a rental) and my overall debt is fairly low. Both of our cars are paid for and credit cards are paid monthly. I do have some expenses coming up that I'm worried about, but worst case scenario would be that we'd sell the second house and even in this market I could have the other house paid for and zero debt.

That all being said - my $25 fee for my 5k race was scrapped. Instead I rode my bike 30 miles on the day enjoying the nice afternoon weather. The day prior my Father-in-law treated me to a free game of golf and of course my running is free :). I'm back on-track for my monthly mileage, and in fact I should have record mileage for this week and finally go over 100 miles for the month.

As for other items - I have shown improvement in my conditioning several ways over the past two weeks.

1. A local small hill I have in my warm up/cool down route - normally I come down it, but the last few times I've reversed my route direction and I'm able to run up it without difficulty.

2. Riding 31 miles on my bike. It's been a while since I've physically been able to do that. Granted I took it easy with my pace and I wish I'd had worn my HRM because it felt easy. I'm guessing my HR didn't get over 170 the whole time (2+ hrs in the saddle) In fact, my a$$ is still sore but my legs feel pretty good.

3. I run a 2.23 mile route pretty regular, normally with a mile warm up and a mile cool down before and after. On the 22nd I ran this with Beth and Bogey (yeah I said Beth) as a warm up in 28:45 (12:54 pace) and felt great so I dropped them off and did another loop - 20:50 (9:21 pace) and it felt easy, effortless. I actually felt like I was running a training run back in High School. I finished off with a mile cool down to top everything off.

4. I'm currently on an 8-day streak and my legs feel great. My time to recover is getting better, that means I can put more quality workouts closer together.

Keep Steppin'
Bob