Matt Keally's Blog

I bet it was 55 degrees this morning in Mountain View with a high of about 72. I bet the dew point was in the 40s.

Back here in the jungle, it was 73 at 9 AM with 100% humidity with an estimated high of 96. Actually, it didn’t seem as bad this morning as it did the past few, but it’s still way out of whack. What gives? Normally it’s nice this time of year. I’m just glad I can run in the morning.

Things seem pretty drab without brutal workouts and races to look forward to, but this weather would make it exactly that: brutal. I got the feeling that I wasn’t really wanted by some of the guys on the team for the week or two that I showed up. There were a lot of “you don’t even have to be here” kind of comments. It was almost like those that said that didn’t want to be there themselves. I showed up because I liked going to practice and I liked the day to day stuff and the workouts, but maybe some people don’t. Then, why are they there? They are the ones that live for the races and not the training. For me, being on the team was “more about the journey than the destination”. Races had always been on par, if not secondary to good training. You can’t expect to race well if you don’t get in a solid base. Anyways, it’s not like I was being some kind of huge negative influence on my (ex?) teammates by being there. I know my priorities have diverged from theirs, but at least I know and respect what they are doing.

Going to practice also took a huge chunk of time out of my day and now I have a lot more time to do school work and “real” work with the people at Ames. To do an 8 mile run I would wind up being gone for three or more hours in the afternoon, but I can just get up and get it done without screwing around. Everyone I really associated with has graduated and in some ways it did feel kind of weird with everyone being younger and new. Maybe it is time to move on.

But, move on to what? I would like to get back into a training groove again and start doing a few light workouts, but something has kept me from doing it. I still run every day, but it seems that some pain or ailment crops up every time I think about it. I seem to have lost some motivation for that sort of thing as well — that’s one good thing about having a team. I should set a goal of running in a particular race and then work towards that. One of my teammates who graduated ran a painful 3 hour marathon off 8 miles a week in Chicago this weekend. The heat probably just made things worse. Another one of my graduated teammates ran another marathon this weekend and didn’t fare much better in the heat, either. I’m not sure I was ever cut out for marathons, but I could do one just to say that I have. The Richmond one is in another month — I could do that, but it isn’t really enough time to get in killer shape. They do have a nice 8k road course though that I almost did last year.

I preordered the Orange Box to save five bucks and played some TF2. It seems to be an acquired taste. The more I play it, the more I like it. I’ve always been a fan of more realistic FPS games, but there is something about it that makes it fun. The class balance seems really good, which forces there to be at least one member of every class on a team. If not, your team really starts to suck, especially without medics or engineers. Hopefully Episode 2 and Portal will be good too. I’ll find out tomorrow.

Otherwise, that’s about it. I’ve regressed to cooking my own meals again, mostly because it seems weird being in the Caf now with a bit of an age gap starting to form.

To sum it up, I think it’s time to get out of here, go somewhere cool, and find an interesting job somewhere. A few more months of school and I’ll be able to.