I'm on vacation in Aiken, SC, and this is a good thing. As I learn the nuances of a town that I have been to yet not a part of for several years now, I see what a really neat place this is. The confusing one-way streets, the beautiful and historic Willcox, the amazing Hitchcock Woods,  and the lay of the land can't help but make a horse person smile.  The energy is palpable. More to come as the week progresses...

I'm training for the Miami Half Marathon which takes place the last weekend in January...but I won't actually be running the race. How weird is that?  The last half I ran two years ago about killed me so my thinking was to at least see if my body can handle the mileage before making hotel and plane reservations.  Vacation time is limited with horse shows and a potential ski trip on everyone's agenda, so if I can't run then I don't want to bask in the warm Miami sun.  Well, that's not completely true.  I would love to go to Miami just because but that's not going to happen.  The triathlon training has made a huge difference in how I feel and while the runs weren't perfect, the last two weekends of 8 and 9 miles have not made me lame, which is pretty encouraging.  So while I won't be running Miami, I will be able to take pleasure in knowing that my 41 year old self can still run a half.  Wonder if I can register for the race, run it in Kentucky and still feel justified to wear the T-Shirt?  Racing is all about the T-Shirt.

I don't have anywhere else to post this, but feel that the world needs to know how bad the CenturyLink customer service really is.  I've had two outages recently.  One was for about 3 days and the most recent was for 6.  In the first incident, CenturyLink kept giving me the story that due to a high volume of trouble calls and excess rain the local carrier was unable to get a technician on site.  I kept checking in and they kept giving me the same excuse.  On day 3 I finally placed a call to the local loop carrier myself and while the support specialist was very confused about how to handle the situation since technically I was a CenturyLink customer and not theirs, he pursued it and made some phone calls.  Maybe it was coincidence, but the service went back online while I was on the phone with him.  Thank you local loop tech; aggravating CenturyLink techs!

So another office went down last Tuesday about 5:30.  Normally the ISP handles the testing, contacts the local carrier, etc. and in the past there have been only short outages.  I guess they have changed their policies and don't do anything on an alarm until the end user (me) calls in.  Long story shortened...after being on the road doing an upgrade in another office and not being diligent about the offline office, I finally called CenturyLink Thursday AM to find out what was going on.  And that's when I found out about their "policy".  So now that I have contacted them to say that yes, there is a problem, they did the testing and contacted the local carrier. After some more problems on CenturyLink's end Friday and Saturday, meeting up with the local carrier tech wasn't going to happen until Monday. I followed up Monday morning only to find out that another oversight on CenturyLinks part required that we open a new local carrier trouble ticket.

About 1:30 the local carrier tech called to tell me that he was on sight and the service went back online a short time later.  A very snippy, hard to understand, and rude person then called to tell me that nothing was found on the circuit during testing and that everything was fine.  I told CenturyLink that something had to of been changed/fixed/rebooted to get things working and he abruptly told me that because everything was fine, he was closing the case and he pretty much hung up on me.  And then I had a Woosah moment.  After speaking with someone in the local office, come to find out the local carrier tech had fixed a broken wire.  So not only did the CenturyLink tech lie about what happened, he did it with attitude...and this would why I am writing this post.  Let the power of the Internet due it's job.

  I've gotten into running 5Ks again and this weekend's pick was the YMCA Reindeer Ramble at the Keeneland Race course.  Despite temps in the lower 20s, there was a great turnout.  This being my first Ramble, I didn't realize that a costume contest was part of the race.  There were a lot of antlers, red noses, green and red outfits and twinkling lights.  It was great.

The race went well and I finished second in my age group behind fellow triathlete Liz Knapp.  I knocked a minute off the Thanksgiving Day race time so I was pretty happy.

I don't know if it was because it was a YMCA race, but there were a lot of really good young runners.  There were serveral girls that ran in under 22 minutes, so congrats to them!

Reindeer Ramble 2011 Results

Reindeer Ramble 2011 Photos

TJ and I have been running the Thoroughbred Classic for several years now.  It's a good race to dissipate the guilt from the gorging later in the day.

TJ kept telling me that this was going to be the first race that I might beat him in.  My times have been improving, but I wasn't sure that was going to happen.  I did take the lead early on and felt good until the darn cramps kicked in at 2.63 miles.  I don't know how to get rid of them other than to stop, lean over and breath deeply for a few seconds.  I had to do this two times before I finally got rid of them, but TJ had passed me and he wasn't going to let me catch up.  We ran the last .25 miles at a 6 minute pace. So he can still say he can beat me...for now.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and enjoying a great dinner at Shakertown with Thom and Linda.

Results from the Thoroughbred Classic 2011