In Need of Sleep

Today was my Mother's birthday; she turned 59 for the ninth time! Though it was her big day, I focused a good deal of time on my uncle, Uncle Sam. It will be time to pay him soon, so I started assembling/printing all my tax documents.

From this exercise, it became clear that 2007 was a good year for interest earning accounts. My GMAC Bank, ING Direct, and ETrade accounts all did quite well. Though it will hurt to pay my uncle his share of this booty, the good thing about paying taxes is that it does at least mean you were making money!

2008 is not shaping up to be a repeat of 2007; the Fed has beaten interest rates into a bloody, barely-above-inflation pulp. That spread, the delta between inflation and your interest rate, is really the number that matters. Though it's good to get any amount of interest, unless you are making more than inflation (about 3% or so) you are actually losing money in the long run. So with interest rates now barely above inflation, what's a person to do?

At some point the world is going to decide that we are at the bottom of this subprime/recession mess, and though there may yet be bad news after that, the markets will have factored that in, and will be healing. That's probably a good time to buy. How to know when the occurs? I think if we can make it to the middle of the year with housing and foreclosure numbers not causing the markets to tank (something they are still doing) then that's the sign that we're setup for a recovery. At that point, I think some money into an international index fund (Fidelty has some good ones) would be a good move. The international markets have been/will be affected by this global credit mess, but they are not facing the local recession that the US is. Once the credit mess flattens out, those markets should rebound nicely. I'm actually going to put my $$$ where my mouth is; I'll be transfering some money to my ETrade savings account where it will earn me 4.4% until it's time to make a move on the international index funds.

And now to running. Today was the first day of the HoustonFIT StayFIT 5k/10k program (well, the first day I could have participated in). I did not participate. I needed sleep, and a lot of it. I call my periodic spells of socially unacceptably long sleeping episodes "going into the hole". I went into the hole Friday night, and didn't emerge until 3PM Saturday! Too much travel, too much flag football, too much stress at work, and too much poker on Friday ... twas time for a sleep-in. So now the question is will I start the StayFIT program on Tuesday, the speed workout day?

I'm going to join. Why? Ultimately for reasons that are not running related, and though the analytical side of my brain has launched a worthy "don't do this" attack since part of me doesn't see tons of value here, I've thrown those concerns to the wayside. I'm ultimately going to run this because it's Felix and HoustonFIT. Whether good or bad, my brain is wired to associate HoustonFIT, and particularly Felix, with running; it just doesn't seem right to not participate. Sometimes you have to make decisions for reasons that don't follow a logical path. It proves were human after all!

This is dragging on, so to the meat of the matter, my run today. After lunch at 3:30PM (remember, I was in the hole), I waited for digestion to run it's course, then headed to Memorial for a run. The idea was what I'll call a laddered tempo run. Start easy (10 min/mile) and then decrease your speed by 30 seconds/mile for the next three miles. With that as my task, my first four miles were as follows: 10:02, 9:28, 8:55, and 8:18. Since you continue, mile after mile, to ask for more from your tired legs, the idea is that this style of tempo run will have a profound impact on the body; it certainly felt like it did!! I was suckin' wind like a limp Hindenburg come the end of mile 4!!! The weather conditions were not ideal, so I think my success at this run is a big mental boost heading into Austin; I'm glad I got out there with a plan and stuck to it.

In my last mile, the "cool down" mile, I decided to do something that Sean Wade (Houston's most well known distance runner) likes to do. After a quarter mile of mostly walking, huffing, and puffing, I started doing medium intensity intervals. I ran two light poles easy, then two at a decent clip, and repeated until the mile was over. This is a good compliment to the ladder tempo run because again, it forces your body to work hard when it would rather be lounging after those three hard tempo miles. I often times speed up towards the tail end of cool down miles, but I think I'll start doing these intervals; it's a good way to sneak some quality time into the last, othewise trash, mile of the day.

Time to pay a visit to the newest local pub. After all, I may need a few drinks to help me sleep after my extended stay in the hole! Take care.