I started work this week. It took some fine tuning and a couple of frustrating days to figure out how to integrate running into my work week. I'm used to full time meaning that therapists are at work for 8 hours total, with a half hour for lunch resulting in 7.5 hours on the clock per day. Here therapists are scheduled 8-5 with a full hour for lunch, so that means getting 8 hours of pay but being at work for 9 hours total. That, plus the 45 minute commute each way... makes for much longer than expected. Its actually less time for the commute (and more consistent) than when I was in grad school either cycling or taking the subway. Just means I have to get up between 4:15 and 4:30 - which, for those of you who don't already know, is okay by me. Were I to try and run after work, I'd be a very unhappy trudge of a sloth with no motivation.
Thankfully my coworkers are great, the facility is informal but professional, and I actually enjoy being at work. The patients are all nice people too. I worried that they'd be nervous or upset by the change in therapist, but they are all good people.
So within this first week of trying out the new schedule I had a handful of other fun occurrences.
Monday morning, orientation day, I awoke to Merus meowing and jumping around in the bathroom by the washer and drier. She never ignores when food is being prepped. I turned the corner, threw on the light, and there she was sitting proudly with a mouse dangling from her mouth. She looked up and meowed without letting go. In my two and a half years with these worms Merus has only watched Sadie with interest as she hunts, never participated. Apparently she was just waiting for the big game.
I flipped into mama mode and worried about her chewing on it and hurting her poor gums (her wet food is always mashed with water into more of a liquid) and grabbed a bucket nearby. She didn't want to let it go, but when she did it scurried under the drier and likely back to whence it came. I wasn't fast enough to throw the bucket over the top like I had hoped. No idea what Merus would have done with it had I not been around. It has not returned since.
Speaking of hunters, Sadie has entertained herself royally by hunting and eating countless flies each day. We seriously do not know where the flies spontaneously come from, but I am getting very good with my fly swatter technique. Merus just jumps and swats at them, enjoying the hunt now that she is a huntress. Sadie probably eats at least a half dozen a day, sometimes three times that much. On Tuesday I arrived home to Sadie sheepishly tucked up behind a chair, a nervous look on her face. Looked across the room and found a puddle of puke. Fluid was all clear, but there were probably two dozen fly bodies and innumerable separated wings all mushed together. Doesn't slow her down from eating more. She does not puke often (this was probably her seventh puke in two and a half years), but she always hits an easily cleanable floor away from any and all objects. Figure that - the Bad Cat is neat when it comes to bodily functions. Like the time she peed in the trash can after I stupidly removed one of their litter boxes.
After two days of wanting to run but being denied by improperly judging my schedule, Wednesday I was bound and determined. Tuesday evening I was so pissed off that I was yelling at the cats "Who cares about these big cats, anyways? And when are they even actually in the area? F*** it, I'm gonna do the loop in the morning with a headlamp and that's how its going to be." A couple hours later I cooled off to some sense of reason and decided to look up info on mountain lions. *Sigh* Okay, cautiousness is good. So I instead did repeats up and down the stretch of our road north of the Rio Grande bridge. It's just about a mile long one way, so I did 3/4 mile intervals with the last 1/4 mile as recovery jog before turning around.
It is incredibly dark all around when there is absolutely no competing light. I could have run easily using just the moonlight, but used my headlamp so I could sweep for glowing eyes. The cattle drives are increasingly bringing the 500 cows and couple hundred yearlings back to lots on/next to the ranch, so the road is flanked by cows the entire stretch behind barbed wire fences. Only a few spots are there trees, otherwise it is basically open. Still, I swept. That first mile I probably looked like I was headbanging sideways (but without hair for effect). Cow eyes are wide set, and they stay stock still and barely blink, curiously eying you yet not moving. A skitter - I stopped to assess, though it was only a raccoon climbing a tree. Those eyes bobble like a baby learning to keep its head up straight while sitting. As the eyes became more of a pattern I swept more slowly, less frequently. In my last mile I was a quarter mile from the bridge when I heard lots of splashing and saw eight pairs of eyes moving fast. I froze. So did the sloshing. Then six of them leaped over the barbed wire fence and continued bounding across the road to the next grass lot. The other two stayed still in the water. Deer. I turned back to give them time to cross and be with their herd. No other trick eyes after that.
This morning I decided one pretend daredevil run per week was enough for now, so I drove into town early to use the hospital's wellness center. I figure that during January and February there will be plenty of opportunity for treadmill time when bad weather hits, so why not go ahead and see if treadmill running was as foul as I remembered. I decided to use it for hill training, since that's what I miss most about mid-week runs are my hill repeats. I dropped the speed to something that seemed logical compared to previous runs and considering the altitude, upped the incline to 12%. Whoa, Nelly! Dropped the speed some more. A little more. Toughed it out for half the time I expected, then dropped the incline to 7%. Kept it a little more reasonable from then on out. I decidedly miss downhill running, though. Especially when I made such an effort to learn how to run downhill to avoid pain back in the days when my knees were cranky. I take pride in that. And I miss it. If only treadmills could handle that (affordably). But at least I got some energy out before the day started.
No comments:
Post a Comment