It has been a busy few months since Wasatch. I spent the remainder of September and first half of October finishing up projects around the house to get our home on the market to sell. Painting a deck, painting a woodshed, general clean up and repair of little things that tend to pile up on the list when you own a home. I kept running all fall, but really backed off volume and just enjoyed the down time with my family and not traveling.
The Move: Back to the Westside, Baby
On a personal note, my wife and I had been longing to move back into town for a while and the market had finally creeped back enough for that to happen. We’ve really enjoyed the “crater house” but had outgrown the home (1500sf, tiny 1 car garage and no office space for me…plus the fact that it’s 10 miles south of Bend). My older kids are in activities now and we’re shuttling back and forth to town constantly. And, I don’t work out of the house anymore (besides some freelance consulting). Needless to say, big fuel bill when you drive 20-40 miles every day. I felt like we lived in the car and I didn’t move from Denver to Bend in ’99 to get away from just that.
The master bath renovation. Repairing some old dry rot and new plumbing.
So, we frantically got everything cleaned up in about a month and put our house on the market. The crater house was a fun almost 5 years. Watching my kiddos learn to scramble and climb around on our amazing one in a million property was fun, but the location was just not ideal for us. And, anyone that knows us well, we’re antsy when it comes to homes. The Crater House was our 4th home we’ve owned in Bend in 13 years…and most recent purchase was our 5th home. What can I say…we’re both creative folks and we get bored. 🙂
Little did we know it be a whirlwind ride. We put our home on the market and sold it in 4 days! The crazy thing was that we were eyeing a home on Bend’s Westside, big lot, walking distance to everything, close to trails and a big 8 acre park with singletrack in it…plus, it was a mid-century modern style home and we love that architecture. The start of the modern, energy efficient home design from the 50s and 60s. As soon as we were in contract on our Crater House, we made an offer. The owners had inherited it and it was managed by a Trust. The Trust (aka lawyers) were already in negotiations with an investor who had put in a low-ball offer, but they weren’t in contract yet. We threw in an offer quite a bit under asking price—as it needed work—gave it over to the Big Man Upstairs and waited.
The crew, back on the Westside and one of our favorite breakfast spots, just 6 blocks from our new house.
To our surprise, the offer was accepted with one stipulation…no repairs. We were already planning on renovating, so that wasn’t a deal killer. So, we spent November packing and planning the renovation and took possession of the house in mid-December. Wham, Bam. We’re deep in renovation land and hopefully (yes, hopefully) we’re about 3 weeks from being done. So nice to be back on the westside and close to EVERYTHING. Walk to work, walk to pubs, walk to coffee. Awesome. I’m so thankful and feeling mighty blessed as we enter 2013.
Running
I’ve been training through all of this…not sure how, but I’m swinging it. I sometimes get 5 hours a sleep a night, but that’s nothing new. I signed up for Bandera 100k (of which I’m traveling to today…I’m typing in Seattle Airport on a layover). Not sure what I was thinking with so much going on, but I’m impulsive and like most of us ultrarunners, I like running. So, I don’t sweat the details. I’m not at the volume I’d like to be, but muscle memory, right?!
However, I did have a solid November-December of training. Bend enjoyed a mild, dry late fall and I squeezed in a lot of speedwork and tempo work on lower volume for a good 2 months. What I missed in volume, I made up for in quality.
To my dismay, I did have one setback right before Christmas break when I strained the cartilage in my sternum/upper rib while working on the new house. Stupid, boneheaded move (I won’t go into details it’s so stupid), but it happened and had to take 8 days off running because I was so sore. So, after a few weeks of PT, it’s on the mend. Let’s just say I don’t want to fall at Bandera…or get a bear hug.
The Bad Ass Fun Run...or running on the ice planet Hoth?
I did get to test out the ribs on my last long run at the annual Bad Ass Fun Run that Meissner and I started years ago. He’s since moved to Durango, but I’m trying to keep the tradition alive. It’s become a pirate run at different locales every year. Bend got hit with some serious snow and we did a snow run at Smith Rock/Gray Butte area. It was tough. Max King, Zach Violett, Stephanie Howe and I did the longest leg, 19.6 miles. Max and I ended up taking turns breaking trail and ran just under 20 miles in 4 hours and 19 minutes! We were in snow up to our knees on the top half of Gray Butte. It was an adventure. At one point, Max was breaking trail on a traverse in 8 inches of powder and I felt like I was running 6:30 effort, looked at my GPS watch…15:30 pace! It was work. So, I have to say…I’m looking forward to some dry, warmer trails at Bandera. And, sharing a hotel and catching up with Meltzer. The Bronco Billy and Speedgoat Show. Always good to hang with the Old Goat. Plus, I get to razz him that I tied with him in votes for Ultrarunner of the Year. Giddyup.