The Powerless Runner

Should I make this my new logo?

Okay, time to put another X on the calender because my house is still off the grid. We are slightly encouraged to see that a traffic light on one of the outlet roads is finally working. Rumor has it that a couple of of neighborhood streets got power yesterday. It's been eleven days with no power to our house and no communication from LIPA. Governor Cuomo is suitably angry about the situation, but in his press conference yesterday, he made it seem like the solution was out of his hands.

The disruptions caused by temporary living quarters, 2+ hour commutes standing in a packed LIRR train and other stressful forces have cut into my already too short sleep cycle. I went to bed intending to do a treadmill run this morning, but I decided to forgo it when I woke up. This isn't the first step towards the slippery slope of skipping morning workouts however. Power or not, I'll be doing my first weekend long run tomorrow. Where I'll be doing it will be determined by LIPA.

Running election scenarios on the treadmill

Today's run (treadmill): 25 minutes

This is a running blog and not a platform for my views on politics. However, today's treadmill run had me thinking about the scenarios that would play out based on the results. In an effort to get going on my run as quickly as possible, I resisted the temptation to flip on the TV or look at my smartphone to see the election outcome. So at 3:45 AM I was distracting myself from my run, wondering whether we'd have a new president or a shift in the control of Congress or the Senate.

I finished my run by 4:10 and a few minutes later I had my answers. I'll admit that I was pleased with the results, and especially happy that both Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost their respective races. That's not a partisan view, plenty of my Republican friends feel the same way as me. 

My positive perspective from the election and a pretty good treadmill run was dashed when I reached my local train station. I discovered that the train that I'd planned to make was canceled due to equipment problems. That meant a half hour's wait in the cold, followed by a train packed like sardines. 

It's day nine and still no power to my home, long lines at gas stations and the LIRR running on a "modified" schedule. But in the long run, everything will return to normal. Although for the LIRR, normal is never all that great.

2:03 is fast for a marathon but not for the LIRR

LIRR, eat my dust!

It has been a while since I've been in the office and it's nice to be back. Our building is running at half power so it's a little chilly, but it isn't so bad that you can't work. My commute seemed to take forever this morning. The Long Island Railroad is running on a modified schedule and this morning it stopped in places that I didn't even know existed.

It usually takes me an hour and twenty minutes from the time I leave my house to when I walk into the building where I work. Today it took me two hours and three minutes, exactly the same time that it took Geoffrey Mutai to finish the 2011 Boston Marathon. Fifteen of those minutes were spent walking uptown from Penn Station, a distance of one mile.

Out of curiosity, I Gmapped the straight-line distance from my temporary home to my office building and came up with 30.7 miles. That meant that my commute this morning - car, train and brisk walk averaged 4:00 per mile, while Geoffrey Mutai pulled off his marathon record at 4:41 per mile. Practically outrunning a train is pretty impressive, unless you're talking about the LIRR.