Healing Tears

Out in the bush high over the trees

 Screeches ring out of black-feathered banshees

"C'mon you blokes, it's time to move on,

We've eaten our fill and there's work to be done

And more she-oaks to rip into beyond yonder peaks

Loaded with nuts to crack with our beaks."

An urchin arises out of the dust

Runs into the hut as all urchins must,

"Mum rain termorrer, rain termorrer,"

Breathless and filthy, he's not wearing shoes

"I just saw a big flock of black cockatoos!"

 She looks up from the lifeless mound in the bed,

"Who's been putting that guff in your head?"

She's been let down by hope too often before

To believe the old folks' silly folklore.

The cockatoos nestled in their roost for the night

As the feverish infant lost a brave fight

The mother she cried and tore clothing asunder

Her grief smothering rumbles of distant thunder

The dawn would bring with it inches of rain

Saving the crops and soothing the pain

(C) Stephen Lacey, 15 May 2020

Peewee Pee Who

Pee-wee's are such cheeky chaps

With no respect for nanna naps

They'll shriek all day at a piercing pitch

Like alarm clocks with no off switch

Best not work nights if you have peewees

Plovers in Cognito

So alike in appearance is the plover,
That one cannot be distinguished from anover,
Not even by a bruvver or the muvver.
When everyone looks so much the same, it must be hard to choose a lover.
Spare a thought for the inherently incognito plover.

Lymphoma Update, October 2019

Soon after we came back from Australia, we confirmed that there was lymphoma activity in my spinal fluid again. I pretty much already knew because of worsening pins and needles and weakening in my left hand. A PET/CT scan also found four or five small tumors, all in muscle tissue. I was admitted to hospital on the 5th September, just 10 days after our return from Australia, and in hospital I remain.

At first my doctor just treated the spinal fluid activity with a couple of intrathecal applications of chemotherapy. He wanted to hold off on systemic chemo until any more urgent symptoms arose. A bloodshot patch in my right eye kept getting worse until there was almost all red and no white. Then the double vision started. A CT scan discovered a tumor in muscle tissue behind the eye. At the same time my blood counts plummeted. Treatment could be put off no longer.

Early October, just days after our 30th wedding anniversary on October first, I started a course of high dose cytarabine and etoposide, preceded by a dose of rituximab. My doctor had inserted a central venous catheter (CVC) with three lines to facilitate all the IV administration. The chemo was delivered over five days. During those days and the two following weeks I experienced a lot of nausea and associated unpleasantness, and my blood counts were all bottomed out. The CVC seemed to be red and angry more than it should be, and I was having a constant fever, so my doctor put me on three doses of two types of IV antibiotics a day. For 3 weeks I had almost no white blood cells and low enough hemoglobin and platelet counts that I was on transfusions of whole blood and platelets every other day.

About 10 days ago they removed the CVC (testing confirmed a staph infection), but I still had a lot of IV demands, which meant I had to have canulas in my arms. I dreaded this because my veins have become so hard to find and access. However, great work by some experienced nurses got me off to a good start. But the antibiotics are harsh, and the canulas would only last a day before the vein got red and angry. Lots more canula attempts, many fails. I watch them insert the needle, probing for a vein. When they do hit one, blood fills the little plastic section to which the needle is mounted, there is relatively little pain and I am relieved. When they can't find their target, the plastic section stays dry as they probe and seek the elusive vein and sink the needle deep into unproductive muscle. It hurts. Some nurses are too impatient, and bam, bam, bam; three painful misses in a row. The better ones are relaxed and careful and concentrate hard on finding a likely target.

Finally, by about the 20th October, my temperature came under control. Then a hint of bone marrow recovery as my white bloods and hemoglobin twitched upward. With a normal temperature and increasing blood counts, and decreasing mouth soreness (ulcers and sensitive gums), I was finally starting to feel human again. I could enjoy my food and had energy to talk and found I could even smile and joke around with the nurses once more. I really had been in a funk. None too soon the antibiotics stopped, and no more transfusions did I need. The final canula, which took a young resident doctor over one sweaty hour to insert on Wednesday night, was removed today.

Side effects aside, I have responded well to the chemo; the lump in my arm has gone and my right eye has recovered. Some pains from the tumors (in my chest and leg) have also gone. Next week I'll have another bone marrow biopsy and lumbar puncture to see how things stand, then another round of chemo (sigh).

Ultimately it is difficult to see a clear path to a stable remission, let alone cure, considering how short this past remission was. The only hope I see is CAR-T therapy. Although Kymria, one of the two commercially available CAR-T treatments, is now technically available in Japan, very few centers have got their licence to provide it. Several Tokyo centers are supposed to be coming on line in the new year. But there will be very few openings and I believe they will preference young leukemia patients ahead of old DLBCL farts like me. Still, that's the only hope I have, because I can't keep having this bone marrow crushing chemo indefinitely, and we will have to push and fight as hard as we can to get access to the CAR-T.

Hair today

Gone tomorrow

WM: An Explanation of my Facebook post of 24 August 2015

My Facebook post is a photo of me hopping on a suburban Tokyo bus and saying it is a great day to be going HOME. To those not yet in the loop, it wouldn't have been clear where I was returning from, but it was obvious that I was pretty happy about it. Unfortunately it was neither a return from a business trip nor a holiday, but release from a 4-week stay in hospital, for I have developed a slow-moving non-Hodgkin's lymphoma called Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia (WM for short: a rare type of blood cancer, which means it is a bit like winning the lottery...only different). It was diagnosed in early July immediately after I returned from my trip to Australia. It is incurable but it is treatable using a combination of a steroid, monoclonal antibodies, and chemotherapy. I can expect to achieve remission and return to a fairly normal life for some years at least, but it is actually impossible to predict how complete or long-lasting the remission will be. Resistance to treatment or conversion to a more aggressive lymphoma are an ever-present possibility, or I might well live to a ripe old age without further recurrence. Nothing is certain, but the odds are not too bad in my favor. (Here is another link to an explanation about WM for those who want to know more.)

Doing what you have to do

During this stay in hospital I had my first two rounds of chemotherapy. At first my blood cell counts were dangerously low and I had to receive quite a few transfusions, mainly of platelets. Platelets have a critical role in stopping bleeding; had I had a stroke during this time I would have been dead, and even now my platelet levels are still well below normal and I should avoid sharp knives and automobile accidents.

About 10 days after the first chemo, my blood counts started improving, and by last Friday they were at pretty comfortable levels with respect to not needing more transfusions, at least for now. The doctors were happy to release me today to continue my next four rounds of chemo as an outpatient. I spent about 4 days feeling pretty sick from the chemo each time, and I suppose there is more of that ahead, but at least I will be at home.

Card from running friends

Visit from my boys 

I have received the most fantastic levels of support from family, friends, and my company; my wife has been an absolute rock, and my three sons a constant source of strength. My Tokyo-based friends almost killed me with kindness at times, but I have generally received support and space as needed. I can't adequately express my appreciation for all the messages, spirit-lifting visits, and generous gifts.

It was great to get home and find my chili and basil plants doing well

By using Facebook for this announcement, this post will be read by many people who don't really know me that well, and by others who will probably feel hurt that I didn't tell them sooner. But it has been a dilemma all along as to who and how I should communicate my situation. Facebook seems to be a heavy hammer to wield, yet it is already hard to stay on top of the separate communications I've started, and I guess it is not fair to continue to stay publicly schtum, especially now that my recovery seems to be on the right track. All I can do is ask for understanding that there seems no right way, but this is the way I've chosen.

I want to keep this as short as possible, but a final thought to leave you with. Despite my joy at finally getting away from the four walls, snoring wardmates, and hospital food, I am left with thoughts of those I had to leave behind in the hematology ward. Many people there have it far worse than me, receiving much more aggressive treatments and being stuck inside for many months longer and with less optimistic prognoses. My heart almost broke on a daily basis watching what people had to endure -- the never-ending drips, the gut-churning treatments, hair-loss, nausea, ulcers and infections, lack of privacy, unstomachable food, and when feeling better, the constant battle with boredom and monotony. The nursing staff are hard-working and absolutely brilliant, but there is only so much they can do to ease the unpleasantness. So I want to end this message by reminding all who are eligible, to please consider donating blood when you can, or even learning about and registering as a bone marrow donor. As I have discovered, blood diseases can strike anyone at any time. Donors literally save people's lives. People just like me. And people just like you.

Thank you for reading my story.

TELL 10 km 2010

Despite saying and feeling with some conviction that I was not going to run hard today, in the end I did run pretty hard. Took off and was just going comfortably along and found the 2nd km was around 4:00 pace. That ended up being the fastest I would run, and most of the race I was going at about my former marathon race pace. It was hard. It was my present 10k race pace. And I ended up with a 42:32. This would be pretty close to a PW for the distance for me. Some guy had been sitting on my tail up the hill and coming towards the finish, and with about 100 m to go he passed me. I kicked down and was about to try and sprint to the line, and it hurt, and I only lasted a few strides and then just said "Ah, fuck off, have it mate!" It wasn't worth it. Nothing to gain, nothing to prove.

But on the up side, my legs felt fine. Arnaud in his comment to my earlier post is right; I have needed the time off to let my body recover. Ewen is right too. I am stuck in quicksand and need to really give myself a shake if I am going to get out of it. Not running used to be unbearable, but of late it has become not just bearable but easy. Too easy. Danger, danger, Will Robinson.

I must go for a run tomorrow.

The Running Doldrums

I have a very serious case of the yips. The doldrums. Not running much and feeling less and less inclined to. A vague sense of, well, I should get back into it is all I can seem to muster.

Today I am off to run TELL, a 10-k charity race around the Imperial Palace. My sole motivation is that it will get me out of the house and into my running shoes. My third run in about 4 weeks. I don't know where it goes from here.

Tokyo Marathon 2010 - Photomagraphs

Here's some bloody photos of me bloody mara-bloody-thon.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Don't trust your Garmin around tall buildings!

This picture shows the first couple of km of what my Garmin captured in the Tokyo Marathon versus the actual course. The original explorable map can be viewed here on my RunningAHEAD log. Zooming to the start and turning on the satellite view will soon show just how many tall buildings there are around here-- it is Nishi-Shinjuku after all. From past experience running through this area I knew the GPS data would be dodgy. For that and other reasons I took all my laps manually. This was a good move as the splits were all over-estimated and the total distance something like 43.5 km. I manually adjusted the distances after uploading to my log. Just look at that shocker of a trace...it did get much better from about 4 km, but other bad spots can be seen on the map. Just thought that might interest some of the Garmin users out there.

Note: we are proud owners of a brand spanking new iMac. This screen grab was obtained and edited with Skitch, uploaded to the Skitch host and then dropped here. All very quick and painless. This was my test post.

Tokyo Marathon 2010

Tokyo marathon really seems to be jinxed as far as the weather is concerned. Out of the four times it has been held, only one, in 2008, was run under good conditions. The first year, 2007, it was wet and cold, and last year was very windy with some rain thrown in for good measure. This year we were all watching the weather forecasts from a week out, and it looked promising as rain was forecast for Saturday but largely clearing by Sunday. As the day drew closer and the forecasts more reliable, the prospect of rain gradually increased. As this link shows, the period between 6 am and noon was in fact the coldest and wettest of the 24-hour period, and the temperature fell from 4.5 °C at the 9:10 am start to 3.1 °C at 11 am. That would explain the big plops of wet, slushy snow that started falling between 25 and 30 km.

So, it was a fun old day of being soaking wet and cold to the core for everybody. I'm sure that contributed to it being my personal worst result (for official races) of 3:13:16, but there were other factors too. My legs did not feel good right from the earliest stages. I probably started too fast for my fitness, being just off 3-hour pace. I knew it was risky, but I wanted to give myself a chance. There are two ways you can miss your target in a marathon: one is to go out too fast and fall into a heap, the other is to go too slow and never be able to make up the lost time. Running at between 4:20 and 4:15/km, I felt, was a reasonable compromise even though I wasn't as confident of my fitness as Ewen was. But by 10 km I knew it wasn't going to happen as feelings of fatigue started creeping through my legs despite sitting on a not-overly-aggressive 4:21/km pace (4:15/km is needed for a 3-hr marathon).

My pace had fallen to 4:31/km by halfway, by which time I knew it was going to be a game of survival. The rain wouldn't stop, I really felt cold and tiring, yet not from a lack of fuel. Ultimately, though, I think the main reason was a lack of fitness due to the inadequate training in February. The wet and cold played a role, but I just wasn't in shape to run that fast. Simple as that.

The crowds were great through the middle of the race from Nihonbashi to Asakusa and back. Saw lots of Nambanners through here and got plenty of "Ganbatte Namban" from strangers reading my singlet. (I was wearing a singlet over a T-shirt). The crowds were understandably much quieter than other years. They too were suffering in the conditions, and I wondered sometimes whether it was worse for them or us.

I had to have a plop-stop at about 33 km and lost about a minute with that. But then I was moving along pretty well. I sped up for a while but then had to settle for a strongish 4:45/km. I was still passing plenty of runners even at that pace and was going along painfully but happily at 38 km, thinking that all I had to do was hold pace to break 3:10. That would have been satisfying, all things considered. Then, right at about 39.8 km, a sharp pain shot through my left hamstring. It was the injury I'd been nursing since the start of February. It had been there in the background through the whole race, but never threatening to worsen or seriously affect my pace. But this brought me to a sudden, limping hobble. I stopped for a little to stretch and try to get it feeling better, and then took off again. I could run, but it seriously shortened my stride and had me just limping along. I had not long before passed and once and for all shaken off a runner from our club who I'd been "dueling" with for a while. But he soon came on by and that was the last I saw of him. Good luck to him. Soon after that I saw Bob cheering at the side of the road. I think he was telling me to hurry up. I yelled back, "MY LEG'S F#%&ED!" Anyway, I was resigned to my fate and realised that as long as I could run, I should do so and finish. I was still moving at an acceptable pace of 5:15 or 5:20/km, or something like that, but 3:10 was definitely shot. The final finishing straight to the goal took longer than any other marathon I've ever run. Jeez, just get here will you. And then, finally, it was over. 3:13:16.

As if to mock us, the weather came out bright and sunny in the afternoon. Still cold, though.

One good decision I'd made before the race was to turn off the auto-lap feature of my Garmin. I took splits manually whenever I noted a km marker. They were consistently long, and the overall length of the race was recorded as over 43 km. Naturally that also meant any pace readings were also over-estimated. People, don't rely on your Garmins too heavily!

Well, this post is quite long enough. I have no idea what I will be doing next, but the first priority is get my leg healthy again, so hard training certainly won't be featuring on this blog again any time soon.

Yeay, my banner is back!

Thanks Hannah. Glad I didn't nag you ;-)

Well, Tokyo Marathon is coming up this Sunday Feb 28th. I won't have a very good one despite having a fantastic month of running in January. The problem was I overdid it a bit and ended up with some inflammation type pain in my left hamstring and knee area. It has settled down somewhat with several weeks of reduced mileage, but my fitness has slipped and the leg problem is still hanging around somewhat. I had been on track to go close to a 3-hr race, but now it is impossible to say. I may still pull out a 3:05, or it might go pear-shaped. Only time will tell. But Tokyo is a fantastic event to be a part of, so even if I end up limping the second half, wild horses won't stop me lining up on Sunday. Yippee kai oh kai yay!!

Ho Ho Ho ...

Well, someone certainly got a great Christmas present. Congratulations Scott!

As for me, it is just steady as she goes. Battling the ravages of time, trying to shake off niggles, which I am beginning to think at my age are a permanent companion to be tolerated, not an unwelcome guest who is at least eventually going to leave.

Been getting in a few nice runs lately and today did 17.5 km in 1h 21min at a heart rate of 142 average, which is not too bad, really. Especially as I pulled up feeling reasonably fresh and without any major new injury.

Another big bit of news is that I got a Garmin 405cx. Nice bit of kit! I love the ANT+ auto upload and being freed from having to take splits and worry about measuring the length of the course I run. Having a reliable heart rate monitor again is nice. It is helping with my motivation, which is definitely a Good Thing.

Ohtawara Result: 3:06:58

Full splits at my log.

My first marathon was 3:06:06, on this course, so that is one of the benchmarks I would very much like to have beaten. But I didn't. The very most I dared hope for was sub-3:05, but I didn't really think it was achievable, and it turned out I was certainly right about that. The disappointment--satisfaction mark was 3:10, and I was comfortably under that. No PW this time. So I am happy.

I ran pretty strong right throughout and only had a 1-minute fade in the second half. Finished with legs screaming and breathing through the roof, so I cannot say I left anything out on the course. I suppose the best way to sum it up was as a no-fuss, business-like performance.

And now I just discovered that I made it into the Tokyo Marathon on the second draw of the lottery. I am chuffed about that because, to be honest, I really couldn't see myself training on without something like that to aim for.

Cheers for the good wishes!

Re: Ohtawara

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Joachim Dirks <xxx@xxx> wrote:

> Hi Steve,
> wish I could join you this weekend in Ohtawara.
> Your Mileage over the last weeks is impressing.
> What are you up to...? sub-3 is in reach?
>
> Wish you all the best for a great run!
> Have fun and please keep me posted!
>
> cheers
> Joachim and Christiane
>Hi Joachim,

Thank you so much for that email. I have been wanting to write to you
all this week just to let you know my situation, but have been
constantly pressed for time. So, yes, I am in OK shape. Definitely not
sub-3 this time. I know it. I had a fairly good October, but really
the mileage was what I needed in September, and October should have
had another 100 or 200 km, but too many setbacks with injury and a
heavy cold that hung around for weeks and weeks, just when I was ready
to ramp up the mileage. Still, I have trained as much as I could
without killing myself.

On 1 November I ran Phil's half marathon at Arakawa and 4:15 pace was
a bit too stiff for me. I faded each 5 km from 10 km to the end,
finishing at about 4:30 pace yet working hard. So even though I did
take tired legs into that run, still, it would be impossible to hold
4:15 through to 42. Just impossible. Then last Sunday I ran 22 km at
marathon pace of about 4:25/km, to simulate how I would feel at half
way. The answer is, well, not so great. I wasn't fading badly or in
pain, but it was not easy either. So if I go out at that pace on
Monday, it is going to be real hard work for the second half, but
there is a chance I can hold on and bring it home for a sub 3:10.
That's my aim anyway, and if I can by some miracle get under 3:05 I
would consider it a great run. Definitely I hope to run in such a way
as to give myself a chance at a negative split. If I achieve that, I
will be happy.

Thanks again for your email. I will miss not having you or Paddy in
the race with me. Instead I must target to beat Terry Minegishi :-).
Hope you're running well!

Cheers

Steve

Quick update

I have to apologize to Scott in particular for not updating sooner re intentions for Ohtawara. Well, I have entered, and my full intention is to run it, though I will be threatening for a PW I think. It has been a very up and down preparation. The best way to catch up is by browsing my RunningAhead Log, but in a nutshell, after finally getting some consistency together after coming out of the period of work helldom, and starting to inch my long runs up towards 30 km, and starting to get some relief from the summer heat and humidity, what should happen but I get a leg injury. The old biceps femoris again. First it was just a niggle, but then I tripped and tore it. That was about three weeks ago. I had five days off, then tentatively started coming back. After a week of that I brewed beer and got a really crook back from carrying heavy pots of water and wort, and that caused other problems when I tried to run through it. I battled on and now things have come back to an even keel and I am trying to get consistent again. I actually ran 33 km last Sunday at reasonable pace, so I'm feeling a bit more confident about the marathon again, provided I can have a good October, with 4 or 5 good long runs and a few race pace runs, and hill workouts. I aim to do at least one and maybe two hill workouts a week.

So that's it. Scott, have you entered and are you interested in Ohtawara? Sorry if I've given you a bum steer by being quiet for so long. It has just been so hard to know which way things were headed.

Crappity crap crap

Well, the first half of June was going along pretty well. I was keeping the steady mileage going and had a couple of longer, faster runs. Ripped out a few very strong aerobic runs of under 4:20 pace. And then, WHAM!! I got hit by the work-goes-ballistic bus. My job is working on proposals for engineering consulting projects, and every now and then it just goes mad. And it has, and I had a whole string of days where I was working from 9 to 10:30 or 11, and by the time you get to bed after that, it makes waking up at 5:30 for a run an impossibility. So the past two weeks have been about 30 km each. I have to admit that a couple of weekend hangovers made the situation even worse. And the arrival of the steamy rainy season has taken some of the pleasure out of running. So that is where we are at. I am hoping to try and get back on track from Monday, but have 2 days in Singapore for work coming up this week, so that probably won't help...I'll report back in a couple of weeks. I should also mention that lthough work has been manic, it has also been satisfying and rewarding in its own way, so that is a bit of a paradox.

SPEED!!

In this steady spring (merging into summer) build-up I have been meaning to keep a little bit of speedwork in the mix. I didn't do a very good of that in May. The closest I got was a fartlek consisting of a couple of 1.6 km intervals in 6:00 min on the 2nd, the 3-km time trial on the 6th, and the 3-km time trial on the 28th (see last post). Most of my runs were "lower aerobic" with a couple of "upper aerobics", an "easy" or two and one or two barely qualifying as longs. I suppose that is why the improvement in my 3-km time trials was not especially dramatic.

So to try to redress this lack of speed-work, on Wednesday night, two days ago now, I attended the club's 6 x 1000 m interval workout. Oh, the first one felt horrible! I'm glad Joachim was there to drag me around. Somehow I ran faster than 3:50, but I wasn't sure how. Then, miraculously the second one was a totally different kettle of flathead. I went off feeling fast and the breathing much easier. 3:37! That took a bit out of me, but basically I think the cobwebs were blown away and I then ran 3:39, 3:41, and 3:40 before calling it a day (yes, that's only five for those who were counting). But I did run from work to the track and then home from the track for a 15-km day. Almost Hosakesque. But crikey! Nothing like this man, who seems to be training the house down!

Results of the latest (2nd) 3 km time trial are in. times are the 1-km splits for those that need the decipherin'. I think they know who they are.

May 6: 3:52, 3:52, 3:54
May 28: 3:48, 3:52, 3:52

Actually, I thought it had been a month since I did the first one. A bit silly. I better wait a full month now until the next one.

Anyway, not much progress to be seen. The weeks since then (including the May 6 week) have been 69, 46, 91, 85 (if I do the expected 25 tomorrow). That awful 46 km week happened because I had a weekend that was beset by work and weather and brewing that conspired to stop me running on either the Saturday or Sunday. A very rare event. That resulted in me going into the next week rather fresh and racking up the 90 km. I can't really expect much progress on the back of those numbers, but the regular aerobic runs of 15 km have had a bit of quality about them and are setting me up to handle increased frequency and distance (like he 17.8 km at 4:27/km I did today). After that the results should start to come through.

My Beer!!

I think I mentioned last July that I got a best of show in a home brewing competition. The main prize was that the organizers brew a commercial batch of the recipe, the Yokozuna beer, at a micro brewery in Chiba (Loco Beer). I helped out on the brew day in late December.

Now, five months later, lookie, lookie, that there beer is now on sale over the Interwebs. It isn't cheap, but if you are in Japan, go at it and try some of the best beer ever made in the 5000 plus years of the history of brewing. Oh!! You think that's a bold claim do you? Well, it is a bold claim. And there is only one way you will find out if it is true ;-)

There is a page with an English explanation here.

Where I is at

Running. I've been running. I took a full six days off after the 30k trail race, but then came out and ran pretty easy the next week, reaching a tad over 70 km. I certainly wasn't fully recovered the first few runs, but by last weekend, after two weeks of recovery, felt pretty good and ended up on Sunday running around the trails of Kamakura with Satohi before a BBQ at friends'. I really enjoyed the Kamakura hills because there was not so much walking. Not like the western Tokyo trails, where the hills are up, up, up, and down, down, down. But when the hills are relatively short and technical (read complicated by roots, rocks and erosion), such as at Kamakura, you can attack and use momentum to pick out interesting ways of navigating the terrain. I like that.

This week is Golden Week--three consecutive national holidays from Mon-Wed--and with added rest I've felt my speed coming back naturally, and steady aerobic runs are dipping down under 4:30/km. In fact yesterday I spent 4 km of a 13 km run at below 4:20/km and averaged 4:28/km...not bad.

I'm also throwing in a little bit of speed work here and there. Last Saturday I did two 1.6 km intervals midway through a 14-km run. The first was right on 6:00 min, but it felt forced and labored. The second I tried relaxing into it and ended up running a couple of seconds slower, but it felt more like the right pace.

Today I was going to run in the park in the afternoon with Colin, but the rain set in for several hours, and Colin couldn't make it anyway. I was very frustrated as I really wanted to run, but just couldn't bring myself to head out into what was pretty heavy rain. I waited and waited and was about to give up and pour a beer around 5:45 when I noticed the rain had eased right off. So I made sure dinner was under control and squared things up with the good woman before heading out. I ran up to Oda field (5.5 km) at 4:45/km. There I decided to do the first of what will be a series of monthly 3-km time trials. Did that at a pretty hard effort with rather pedestrian (but not surprising) splits of 3:52, 3:52, and 3:54 ... I was pushing that last km too, so the loss of 2 s really shows I was near the limit. Good. This will stand as a good benchmark of where I am at here at the beginning of May.