Flex Time

Today is a day where flex-time pays off. Eric's running partner Steve, and his wife Lorri are off on a fabulous vacation in Italy. Lorri teaches the mid-morning Pilates class at the Y - we used to take the class together, we trained with the same person, and after I asked to move to 6:00 am, Lorri took over the class I had been teaching. When Steve first started running with the Run Club, I didn't know he was Lorri's husband. We had an epiphany one morning in Starbucks - conversation wandered around and something he said triggered it - "Wait, are you Lorri from Pilates husband?", "You mean Pilates-Michelle and Running-Michelle are the same person?" We laughed and belatedly realized we had met briefly twice before. Anyway, I am taking the morning away from work to sub for Lorri. This was the one day they couldn't find a sub for, and coincidentally, the one day that I didn't have anything pressing on my schedule. It will all work out in the next few weeks as I have three different nights coming up where I have to work. I'm following Pilates up with a work-related lunch and short shopping trip, then finally, back to the office. It's a nice change-up from the normal routine.

I didn't run yesterday - I apparently picked up a stomach bug. I didn't feel too good at work on Monday and it got progressively worse. Monday evening was the pits. I went to bed early and slept straight through till 7:30. Yesterday was better, but I had a lingering headache. Today I feel great. Rick was waiting out front this morning. We went 5.78 miles, 11:31 pace. I'm giving Rick credit for getting my pace down - all these morning runs with him at just a little faster than normal have paid off. I'm actually starting to feel comfortable here, where a couple of months ago, I felt a little challenged. Thanks Rick!

And to answer two questions in the comments of the last post: sometimes Eric will start out with me, then run ahead, but usually (and on the Lake Padden run) we just go separately. At training pace Eric is a good 3-4 minutes/mile faster than I am. At racing pace...well, let's not even go there. We typically decide how long we're going to run, he checks where I'll be going, and we meet at the end. It works well for us.

Question two wasn't really a question, but a comment about my programming days. Here's the scoop: I graduated in 1982 with a BS in Computer Science, one of two woman graduates in that major, in that year. Just to date myself, when I started in the major, we used key-punch machines and turned in decks of cards to run our programs. The University got their first Mac when I was a senior - students were allowed to look at it, but not touch. Programming was done in machine code, Fortran, Cobol, and a language I can't quite remember, but I think was called PLU. My first job out of college used key-punch, my second was on an IBM Series-1 and used a special language (can't remember that name either) that was Series-1 specific. I wrote code for interfacing between the Series-1, a peripheral and mainframes. I had some big power companies as my accounts, including Southern Cal-Ed and Puget Power. The next job after that (we moved back home to Bellingham) was with a small company and involved and IBM System 36, Cobol and RPG. I was full-time till Web was born, then went part-time. When I was pregnant with Riley, Eric got a new job and we were moving - I tried to give notice, but they talked me into taking a new-fangled Tabletop System-36 home and continuing part-time. I did that for two more years before calling it quits to stay home full time. I stumbled into teaching Parent Ed three years later, and the rest is history. Just for grins - the first portable computer I took home weighed about 30 pounds, was as big as a suitcase, and had a 6-inch orange and black screen. My kids have seen pictures of it and find it hilarious.

Now that I've given all you masters-age runners a run down memory lane, and made all you younger runners giggle at the clunky machines and codes of the past, I'll call this a post.

MM#402, signing off from the beautiful foothills of Mt. Rainier, where old programmers have changed careers and children have replaced computers.