Present and Accounted For

I'm back!

I had to disappear for a little, but I'm back to blogging, advising, and generally ranting about running.  Where did I go, you may be asking yourself (or maybe you're just thinking "Shut up, we don't care anymore")?  As a bridge engineer, one of the few times I get to go out into the field is on bridge inspections. 

I spent the last week free climbing steel, repelling columns, pecking on things with a hammer, and freezing in the cold damp weather.  We were inspecting an out of service railroad bridge that may (or may not, depending on the cost) get turned into a rails-to-trails bike path over the Kanawha river sometime in the future.
 

The main span of the bridge.  We repelled down those columns into a john-boat.

Old wooden columns, we call these "bents".  A lot of these were in a bad part of town, we had to examine all of them - climbing some, using a lift vehicle, or using a ladder.

Repelling one of the piers in full gear, about 40' off of the water

Oh yea, and I ran a couple of times.  I did a few hard workouts last week, but didn't get any extra mileage in beyond that.  I just didn't feel up to it most days.  Repelling is hard on the lower back, hips, and thighs, and up on a bridge it is always windy, so my face was wind-burnt pretty much all week.  I probably used a half bottle of aloe trying to get my skin to recover.

With that all behind me, I can get in a few hard weeks of training and mileage.  My first race, the Susan Komen Race for the Cure, is the first weekend of May.  I'm the team captain for our office team - meaning basically that I do all of our book keeping and disseminate information when needed.  I've got 2 more weeks of inspection in late April, so I may have to scale back my time goal for the race depending how my training goes while I am in the field.

I've felt kind of slow during my past few hard workouts, but been able to compensate with extra effort.  I think inconsistency in my mileage is to blame, hopefully I'll be able to get back into my routine for a couple of weeks before I head off for inspection again.