The Pros and Cons of "Slow"

It's interesting that slow can be a good and a bad thing.

Wanting things to slow down...
Here I am at one moment complaining how crazy work is and has been for the last few months and that I can't wait for it to slow down. It seems like we've been going almost nonstop since October and there still isn't really an end in sight. I decided not to take any vacation days this week thinking that not only could I get caught up, but I could even get ahead. Everyone thought this was wishful thinking, but it's amazing how much you get done with no one around bugging you every 5 minutes. I think I may have achieved my goal. January is likely going to be awful so the more I can knock out of the way now, the better I am. I was able to get overly organized on my project from hell and have pretty much documented everything I possible can. I am now almost at a point where I am pretty much waiting on other people for definitions, explanations, or directions and all of that has been sent off to the appropriate people (and cc'd to the other appropriate people so there's no "but I didn't get the email"). I'm almost ahead of the game.

Wanting things to speed up...
And then I switch gears to training and complain that I don't seem to be getting much faster. Or that I'm not getting faster at a fast enough rate. Sure, if I look at the numbers, they are generally getting smaller, but we're talking a few seconds here and there. It certainly doesn't feel any different. Yesterday I had a 10 mile run to do. I figured that this run would show me the improvements. I wasn't rushed into squeezing it in, so there wouldn't be any reason for cutting out a mile or 2. I slept in so I was well rested going into it (or at least supposed to be in theory). It was slightly warmer than it has been so I was less likely to hit my 1 hour freezing joint time limit. And there was the reward of being able to eat whatever I wanted to for the rest of the day. But it really wasn't all that different. I actually felt a little more tired going into it than my last few runs. I even felt a little rushed since I was technically supposed to be at my dad's house at a certain time even though I had already told them that this was unlikely. So it was a pretty slow start and I wasn't sure I'd be able to do my Z3 set without some real pushing. I had 3 miles in Z3, with a 2 minute walk break between each. This is actually one of the easiest Z3 sets there is and I was already dreading it. It is exactly 4 miles from my house to the main entrance to the Res and I usually just keep going onto the gravel for my longer runs - it's a little break from the pavement and there are a few rolling hills to keep me honest. But my first two miles were supposed to be out and back. This meant that the first would be going up the hill past the Res and the second would be going down the hill. This doesn't make for very even splits which is what I was aiming for. It also wasn't helping my motivation. At the last minute, I decided to pull into the Res and just run along the road there. A wise choice. The flatter course was much more motivating. There were some people ice-skating on the frozen Res, which seemed stupid, yet kind of fun. It's been so long since I've been ice-skating, which I used to do all the time. But it was a nice distraction as it was sort of a holiday theme and brought back nice memories. Suddenly I was ready to turn around and head home. And this always gets me. When I turn around, I am now facing the mountains and again, am just awestruck about where I live and how lucky I am to live here. This of course turns into how fortunately I am in general: to live in this beautiful place, to have supportive family and friends, to still have a job, to be able to run. I tried to enjoy the rest of the run as best I could. It didn't matter how slow I was, at least I was running. And you tend to see a little more when you run slow - this is what those fast runners miss out on. Sometimes it's good to be slow.

Sometimes slow can be a good thing. At it seems like right now, this is what I need.

Finally, one Good (Cold) Day

With work and life all over the place, training has taken the back burner. I'm trying to get it in when I can, but I feel like I'm rearranging my schedule at least 5 times a day. And this %#!&* cold weather isn't helping! Come on, who can deal with -5? There's only so much running I can do on a treadmill (especially since all of my recent biking has been on the trainer) and I swim outside. I'm kind of limited.

Anyhow, in general, most of my twice a day workout days have been cut to once a day and my longer workouts have been cut to shorter. Everything seems to be suffering. I did make it through an 8 but supposed to be 9 mile run last week. It went okay until about 60 minutes in when my joints just had enough of the cold. An hour seems to be my limit in these low double-digit temperatures. And then the thawing out period is absolutely painful. My knees have never hurt more than when warming up after extreme cold. There always seem to be something wrong these days.

I woke up Saturday extremely un-excited about having to do a 35 mile ride/7 mile run brick. The ride had to be done on the trainer once again and it's really hard to stay motivated for over an hour with everything to distract you. But thanks to some dumb movies, I made it through 2 hours and 15 minutes. I was actually looking forward to the run at this point to just get out of the house. I quickly changed my mind when I got outside into the cold and the wind. It did force me to keep running though and I made it through all 7 miles. Finally, a workout in its entirety.

I also passed a man over by the Reservoir who was wearing shorts. Insane! It was 19 degrees factoring in the windchill when I left the house. He apparently is either crazy or doesn't have the same joint and warm-up pain that I have. I vote for crazy.

Anal? Perfectionist? Well, yeah...Triathlete.

Warning: I need to vent. This is just me ranting about work.

I'm on this absurd project for Merrill Lynch (sorry Kristina). It sucks. It's a HUGE site and a tiny timeline. The project plan is a nightmare. It's complete chaos. They had actually hired temp web developers for a while (they may still be there, but no one tells me much about the project). Oh yeah, and 90% of the project sits in another building, across the parking lot, a whole 2.5 minutes away. Everyone in this other building works off of a schedule posted on the wall. Yes, in this computer age, we have things written on the wall. This schedule changes at least weekly, but often several times a week and is only applicable for that week. It's the "this is what we're delivering this week" list. I can't see the wall unless I make a 5 minute roundtrip walk. But that's okay, because someone emails me the schedule for the week. HA! I wish. No, I'm going off of a schedule I was given over a month ago that I have since been told is essentially null and void. And here's the thing...for a lot of the stuff that the web is developing, they need data from me in order to finish everything. They can't completely code a page without my piece since they need to reference my code within theirs. This means that I should be done with thing before they start. So back to that schedule on the wall...what it really means is that everything listed are things that I would have needed to finish last week in order for the web to start working on them. But I'm not even give then schedule for this week, so how the hell am I supposed to know what I was supposed to have done last week?

That's Issue Number 1.

Issue Number 2. Project management. They have decided to create a ticket (essentially a work order) to track each module. There are often multiple pieces, and hence multiple people, working on a module. However, a ticket can only be assigned to one person at a time. It's a linear process. But we're not developing in a linear fashion - everyone is working on it at the same time and all are doing different things. So I'm supposed to update the ticket when I'm done with it even if someone else is assigned to it and potentially using it for something else. My comments end up getting lost in a huge mess of text. Really convenient for figuring out what's been completed or not. There's no way to filter on this. This means that I need to come up with another way to track my work because I know it's going to come back to me with people wanting to know if I'm done or not. And telling them to dig through a stack of tickets isn't going to cut it. The other problem I have with this approach is that if I run into an issue with my piece of the module, like mising data, where do I track this? Throw it into the ticket that's already assigned to someone else that really can't help me with my missing data and is therefore lost for all eternity within the bowels of a ticket? Just doesn't seem like a good idea. Who the hell is ever going to find this? An analogy: trying to find a word or phrase in a book without a Table of Contents or index. Good luck!

Because I need to be more organized than this, and as a CYA measure, I am tracking my work completely separately. I've given up on trying to convince people of the current method of madness. And of course what I've come up with tracks everything I could possibly track...what issues I have, who is looking into it, which tickets have been updated, and so on. I'm even tracking down to the specific data points that I have questions on. So at least I know where things stand. Actually, I was basically told that this is how they want to do it so I need to do it that way. Seems completely inefficient to me, but what can I do? So then I asked the web developers if they could let me know when I should promote my code to our testing environment. They asked if I could just constantly promote, like as soon as I was finished. I said that I would prefer some sort of confirmation from them that what I had given them worked and they were able to plug it in correctly. Sometimes we have different ideas about how things work and what I give them doesn't always work. I like to make sure my code works before it goes to anyone else. I test it to the extent that I can. When I pass it over to the developer, I also like to test this integration before sending it onto QA. What it really comes down to is that I take pride in my work and I like to do things right the first time. I'm thorough and I find that it saves a lot of time in the end. But they were basically asking me to throw away these work ethics and just go ahead a push it somewhat blindly. Their argument was that I would otherwise be getting hundreds of emails a day from developers asking me to promote my code. I really didn't have a choice and all I could say was that if I worked this way, I couldn't guarantee anything would work and that I would potentially break more things. I personally have a really hard time working this way. Again, I like being right the first time. I don't like being haphazard. I need to be organized.

Most of the people reading this blog are triathletes. You're probably all saying that there's nothing wrong with my way and that this is the way it should be done. That's because there's a certain personality and personality traits that many triathletes share. Being anal, being a perfectionist, being organized...Come one, we can tell you how many calories we need to injest per hour per activity. We measure out drink mixes for pre-workouts, workouts, and recovery. We are organized. We have schedules, routines. We have to plan in advance. And, and this is the big one, we remember every little thing that goes wrong and analyze it and over-analyze it and try and come up with some explanation as to why it happened and what we need to do to make sure it doesn't happen again. (This applies to good things as well, but we tend to not over-analyze them as much...). We do not like failure. We try and learn from our experiences. We are constantly striving to be better. I personally think that this is a commendable thing to want to achieve.

So it's really no surprise that I apply this to work as well. I probably apply this to most aspects of my life. Bu am I wrong for trying to do so? Am I wrong for trying to make things more efficient, to make things better?

I was at the bikeshop once and I was blabbing away to Tim (the owner). This was before my Ironman, and probably shortly after I got my new bike. Somehow I started talking about the movie Wordplay - a documentary about crossword puzzles and the people that do them (it's a good movie). I started to realize what I was saying and suddenly felt the need to follow it up with "sorry, I'm a bit of a dork". He looked at me and said that I was going to fit right into the Ironman world. I now understand.

So, to borrow from the old runner's saying...Triathletes. Yeah, we're different.

TGIS

4 mile run

Yes, thankfully it's a stabilizer week. A very much needed one. I took full advantage of it already by bagging my swim this evening. Aside from feeling a bit tired, it started snowing and got cold and the thought of jumping into a pool, well, let's just say that it was not such an appealing thought.

My run today was 3x400m hills. Yes, Monday seems to be Hill Day. I went out way too hard on the first one and was about to die after maybe 200m. The road was also covered in gravel from last week's snow, so it was already hard enough. I was not about to make the same mistake the next time around which meant there went my negative splits. I did end up doing the 3rd one the fastest, so at least I felt like I had somewhat redeemed myself. Last week I thought I was starting to like hills. I changed my mind today. Perhaps because I was a bit tired.

And it turns out that I made up for the swim by making applesauce. I think I used my arms more in this: peeling, chopping, and mashing, than I do in swimming. I was exhausted when I was through.

A Quick Week Recap

Monday: 5.5 mile run, 2000 m swim
Wednesday: 20ish mile ride (trainer)
Friday: 7 mile run (treadmill), 2000 m swim
Saturday: 40 mile ride (trainer)
Sunday: 2500m swim, 16 mile ride

The best day was probably Monday. I did some hill training and that went pretty well. I think I'm getting better on the hills and am actually starting to like them more. I prefer the longer distances - the 200 m uphill sprints still kill me. The rest of the week seemed to go downhill. I had a good ride on the trainer on Wednesday and decided it really comes down to what you're watching. The prior weekend I watched a not-so-great movie and the ride took forever. Wednesday I watched a completely dumb, but very captivating movie, and the time flew by.

I felt like crap most of the weekend. Saturday and Sunday didn't go all that well. I was supposed to ride 50, but was the closest I've come to throwing up on the bike. That was enough to make me stop. My legs have been quite tired the last few days - they were burning like made during the last few rides.

I think it's probably a combination of things. My house is on the market and had its first set of showings this week. It better sell quickly because I don't know how long I can last. It's not like I'm a messy person, but to keep things so excessively neat is just not possible. I'm trying to train myself to put everything away immediately, but then I hit that one night where I'm just exhausted and say "I'll do it tomorrow". And once you get lazy, it's like instant relapse into how you used to live. I've been getting up ridiculously early to vacuum and do dishes. The biggest problem is that you can't just shove things into the closet. So where do you put things like workout clothes which accumulate very quickly over the course of a week. I've started "storing" things in my car if I'm really struggling. The other thing is that I have to un-dogproof the house before a showing and then re-dogproof it later. There's a lot of inefficiencies in this process. Thank god for checklists.