it's heatin' up

well summer certainly decided to show itself here lately. it's been blazing hot with very high humidity here for the past week or so. and i love it! (well, i usually love it - more about that in a minute...) yes, i'm weird in the sense that i love working out in hot weather. give me 90 degrees over 30 degrees anytime. i get kind of a strange sense of accomplishment when i get back from a run when it's hot and humid and i'm completely soaked in sweat. then i'll take a cooldown lap around my neighborhood, go inside to the cool air conditioning, take a shower, and feel wonderful.
when we came back from the soccer tournament in evansville the other weekend (we lost in the semifinals - crap!), i was looking forward to that exact sequence of events. not quite...
soccermom was the first to walk into the house upon our return. then, as i was unloading the minivan, i heard what every husband dreads. in a puzzled voice, she said:

"honey, come here for a second and take a look at this"

i stepped into the house and immediately noticed how hot it was. i figured she probably turned the air conditioning off before we left. nope. the air was turned on, alright, but the breaker was tripped and wouldn't reset. the bottom line was that it was 91 degrees in the house and i know exactly nothing about geothermal heat pumps and air conditioning systems. after opening all the windows and cranking up all the ceiling fans, we managed to get the temperature down to a chilly 86. grr.
well, i figured since i was sweating just sitting there, i might as well go running and sweat for a reason. so i did. 5 very humid miles. i got back with that very familiar and enjoyable waterfall of sweat running down me, took a lap around the block, and went inside to cool off in the air condit..... uuuhhhh, wait - there's no air conditioning. ok, skip that step and go right to the shower.
i took the coldest shower i'd had since i dated that catholic girl in 12th grade, and like then, it did no good. i got out and trying to dry off was useless. i was sweating too much. we lived all last week like this. as it turned out, the compressor died. the a/c guy called friday and said the part came in. he replaced it saturday, took my $900, and the house is back to 74 degrees.
saturday nite it was still very hot and muggy. i did a hard 6-miler and purposely heated myself way up, did my lap, and hit the air conditioning. ahhh. bliss. so sweet. much much better...

hey, i wanted to give a congratulations to all of you who completed milestone events over the past couple of weekends. in particular, wil, who nailed her first marathon, and nancy, who completed her first half ironman on the challenging eagleman course. congrats, guys! you rock!