Run to Win

Doug Flutie is coming back to New England.

I first heard it on the radio last night, and I was trying to think, why? That doesn’t make any sense. If New England had QB problems, they would want a young gun to step up, and not put the ball in the hands of somebody who will be gone in a year.

But that is from a New England point of view. From his point of view, he is coming home. Maybe his role will just be in the classroom for the 2nd string QB. Or maybe he will fill a “fill-in” role if Brady gets hurt. It makes me wonder what kind of deal he got with New England. I imagine it can’t be overly high.

Even though I do not expect to see him anywhere but on the sidelines during the season, at least I will get to see him play a preseason quarter or two. I have not seen him play since he was in Buffalo.

The hosting providor we use at work, Intermedia, has shown us once again what their customer service and technical support is worth. One of my coleagues spent the last week researching our options for doing a mass mailout to our customers (they did ask to receive this “promotional mailing”). Historically, we have been limited to 200 messages per hour when we send them locally, but according to their knowledge base we could send 3000 messages per hour if we do it from the website. So, he wrote an application that would send 1000 messages per hour and then sleep until the next hour. What Intermedia fails to mention is that they also put the 200 email limit on sending emails from the website.

So, what’s so bad about that? Well, instead of not allowing more than 200 messages, instead they raise an internal flag in their logs. If enough flags are raised, it will automatically shut down our entire account with them. No warnings, no calls to see what is going on, no website, no email, no control panel for our account. Everything just gets shut off. Jeremy was monitoring his mailing program, and noticed that our entire website shut off as soon as it happened.

We host 6 accounts with this company, and this is just the latest in a string of gaffs that is getting under my skin. We really need to switch. Too bad we don’t have the time to rewrite all of our websites to use MySQL and PHP, so I could get them onto Blue Host, the company that is hosting this website. Granted, I have only been with them for a few weeks, but I haven’t had any troubles yet.

Went to the team workout this evening, and it was one of those chilly (but not cold) days where it is just pouring. You always dread going out for your run, but once you are out there you can not imagine anywhere that you would rather be. At least, I usually can’t.

I had another sopping wet workout a few weeks before the marathon. The only people to show up were 3 other people running the marathon, myself, and my girlfriend. It was much colder then, being 3 or 4 weeks closer to the just past winter and at 7:30 on a Sunday morning instead of at 6 on a weekday evening. The new jackets that we got last year worked like a charm to keep me dry, and I enjoyed the run.

Tonight’s workout was fun, too. It was my first speed work in quite a while. I only ran 5 by a bit less than a quarter mile, but I could certainly feel it on the return trip. That might have been the wind chapping, though.

We finally got around to labeling the four cases of maple wheat and a new bitter that we had laying around. We decided to go with the picture of the statue for the bitter (a new label), and we kept the picture of the goats from last year’s maple wheat. The goats are from the “No Wahala” farm up in Hudson, which is owned by uncle. “No Wahala” is what the Nigerians used to tell him when they were going to take care of something (such as a decapitated corpse floating down the river) and he did not have to worry himself over it. It means “No Trouble”.

RunToWin.com has acquired new hosting! We have decided to host with Blue Host Web Hosting due to their good reputation, large number of options, and cheap price. We will be at our new home for the next two years, at least, and I hope our stay is a good one.

Development of the training software has begun and should begin to show up on here fairly soon. We will keep you posted.

I have learned a few things from running marathons.

In Jacksonville, Florida, I learned not to just stop and walk through a water stop after running for 23 miles under 7 minute pace.

In Portland, Maine, I learned that no base and 9 weeks of training just isn”t enough.

In Cleveland, Ohio, I learned that you can run a good marathon on 45 miles a week and nothing but water during a race.

In San Antonio, Texas, I learned that sleep is necessary after a marathon, or you are going to get sick.

In Boston, Massachusetts, I learned that the backs of your legs really can burn pretty bad if you never turn and have the sun at your back for 3 and a half hours. I also learned that no matter how tired you are, you need to eat afterwards.