And so did my watch! I had a blog post almost ready, and then BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH! About a week ago now, accounting for some of the delay in posting. This has happened before on this laptop. There is a flaky connection between the motherboard and the hard disk, and eventually the hard disk gets corrupted and the boot files are overwritten with junk. Or so it seems. Repair doesn’t work - the only solution is to wipe the disk and do a complete reinstall of Windows XP. It’s a six-year-old laptop, crashed several times now, and I responded to this latest crash by ordering a new laptop. Ten times the disk, ten times the speed, twice the screen area, about the same price as six years ago. Meantime, this little old clunker is limping along again. I might try to keep it running, because it’s a lot smaller and lighter than the new one.
The watch crashed Tuesday. Tsk.
Today’s run was 3.3 miles in 33:11, pace 10:03. Some walking, but apparently mostly running, or the pace would have been slower. The watch worked OK today. I hope it keeps working - I don’t have time to get a new one right away. Brooks Summon shoes - gosh they felt clompy compared with the Launch shoes I’ve been wearing. Even compared with the Nike Lunarglides.
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2009:
My watch crashed! Not a good week for hardware. I finished a 4.2-mile run, pushed the button to record the finish time, and the watch went blank. Then it started up again, midnight, January 1. Darn. The time for this run isn’t important, but I just replaced the battery in this Timex watch and now it looks like I should probably have replaced the watch itself. It is six years old, almost seven. Probably time.
Before the crash, though, I clocked myself doing two of the loops at a 9:22 pace. I suppose the overall pace was in the vicinity of 9:30. Or so. I felt very good this morning. Except for the watch, it’s a masterpiece!
Sunday, Nov 1, 2009:
St Croix Valley runners, “standard” eight-mile Sunday run. We haven’t done this run in a long time, though, at least I haven’t. Cool at 7:00 am, 30 degrees or so, but great for running. Gauss, Candy, and I took it fairly easy and enjoyed the run. Time 1:31:49, pace about 11 ½ minutes/mile. It’s good.
Saturday, Oct 31, 2009:
BOO! St Croix Valley Runners, the usual five miles, but mostly in the dark. I was surprised how dark it was at the start, because I had run with these folks just two weeks before and it sure didn’t seem so dark then. But sunrise is racing forward about ten minutes per week these days. New guy Kent joined us again for the second time, and took off in front with Dave2, himself just back from a very successful 50-mile trail race. Then George and Paul, and finally Gauss and myself. We had a nice, easy run, finishing in 49:43, for a pace just under ten minutes per mile. Dave1 showed up after the run to let us know how his surgery went. He won’t be running for a while but seems cheerful..
Beautiful morning, enjoyable run.
Thursday, Oct 29, 2009:
North St Paul Community Center upstairs track, four miles running & one more walking. I felt a little pain in the bone just below the right kneecap, so I stopped running. No problem later - false alarm. But I was wearing the Nike Lunarglide shoes, and will stop wearing them for a while, after that maybe only on trails.
Splits: 9:06, 8:43, 8:58, 8:51, total 35:38, pace 8:55.
I am supersticious. Bad things come in 3's so the car, the computer and then the watch... Three crashes and now you are free. Well only if you are supersticious like me... Some of my best runs have been when I leave the watch home and run a new route. Take care!
ReplyDeleteWatch goes out. Laptop crashes. Remember how we used to take care of things and coax years and years out of them (and expect to). Our turntable lasted decades (replace the needle occasionally, fughedabout ever replacing the speakers), my VW lasted twenty years, etc. Well, now my laptop died after 14 months, they replaced the hard drive under the extended warranty plan but now I can buy an installation disk from Sony so I can re-install windows, my Timex stopped after three years, my HP computer, a little older, is hopelessly broken and infected. I gave up and yesterday went to Best Buy and bought a HD TV and amplified antenae and now am figuring out how to get rid of the three TVs in my house which haven't worked since June (smow) and where to throw out the conversion kits which were just a waste of $10 for me (after the govt. coupon). My CDs all skip (how are they better than LPs after all?), my digital camera is so slow to "set up" that I can't capture any running shots, my wrist garmin takes 3 minutes to decide to start, my dashboard Garmin (which is VERY useful in foreign cities) tells me stupid ways to get anywhere local. Six years--in 21st century time, I guess you got long life out of your stuff.
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