The Running Thread - 2020

[Jules76126]

I am lucky that I can carry my vacation also. I did have to take a few days off over the next few months, but I am hoping that the beaches will be open for sitting and my parents have a pool. DH and I took a week off in September. Originally, we were looking at Canada or a week in Europe before the Covid craziness started, but now we are just hoping to go somewhere locally. We need to take the week no matter what. DH buys a week of vacation and normally it is use it or lose it, but this year they are allowing people to sell it back so he is going to do that. We don't need the week and we will not say no to the cash. He will still buy the week in 2021 in the hopes that things will be more normal by summer time.

 

[Sleepless Knight]

But I finished the run, and I have to remind myself that not every training run is going to be good.

Bad runs certainly happen. Some around here may remember when I had a series of bad runs that left me really discouraged to the point of briefly contemplating giving up on Dopey altogether and eating the registration costs I had already paid for. Well, after taking a tiny amount of time off, I was able to get out of my own head and got back to it. And two months after that series of really bad runs, I felt like I was flying through Epcot as "Let's Go Fly a Kite" played during mile 25 of the marathon as I then knew I was about to finish my first marathon ever and Dopey. And honestly, in that moment I could not even remember the series of bad runs a couple of months earlier. Bad runs happen, but as we learn to work through them and not give up, great moments will follow that are so much better than the bad ones.

 

[jennamfeo]

What are vacations?

 

[steph0808]

I took a mental health day today. One reason is that I'm coming up to the max of vacation time, and if I don't use it, I stop accruing it! The second reason was because I needed it. I needed a day where I wasn't running around trying to get work done in between teaching my kids and keeping them from injuring themselves. Hahaha

Someone stole our bank account info yesterday, our internet has been out for three days, and I had to field other non-work calls as well. I just couldn't do it today!

 

[E2ME2]

View attachment 494922

VACATION??
I had my last vacation for this year at SSR in January - it was over MLK week, and only cost me 3 & 1/4 vacation days.
I get just over 5 weeks/year now, and I can carry over another 6 weeks, but I retire at the end of this year so I had already planned to hoard
for the rest of the year so that I can cash-out about 10 weeks worth in January of 2021. It will be a nice parting gift, going into retirement!
& When COVID-19 came along, it was an odd blessing that I can now telework 100% with flexible hours, so it's much easier to hold on to those vacation hours. The other part of my plan was to add-on at DVC, to extend our January stays. I just added on 225 points via resale, and I'm all booked through January at SSR, and then we have a few weeks with BONVOY & DRURY near Universal. So for the entire plan to come together, WDW has to be open and operating by Jan. 3, 2021
ET

 

[YawningDodo]

We’re normally allowed to carry over 5 days. This year they’re going to increase that to 10 days. I plan to take advantage, but I also find it beneficial to take a day here and there while working from home just as a mental refresher.

We accrue PTO monthly now and I can bank up to double my annual accrual...but I tend to use it up pretty fast. Made a spreadsheet recently to make sure I'd have enough banked to cover my January WDW trip and leave a cushion of sick days if I took some time off now, and it turns out I did have just enough. We're (hopefully) going back to onsite work the second week of June, at least those of us who aren't able to do our jobs as well from home, so I took off Mondays from this week until then to try to keep myself a little more sane. It was really nice this week; we'll see if it's helpful in the next couple of weeks.

 

[SarahDisney]

I have unlimited PTO (yes, it's really unlimited, no I can't take every single day off, it has to be reasonable, but yes I am encouraged to take whatever time I need), so I can't really contribute to this conversation, but ... my old job we accrued monthly and we used to be able to roll over days and/or borrow from the future and in my last few weeks there they changed that and said they were stopping rollover and would deduct any days you hadn't earned from your paycheck ... we were not happy. I think everyone complained that they couldn't retroactively take away days we had been given permission to use. It was ugly.

I took a mental health day today. One reason is that I'm coming up to the max of vacation time, and if I don't use it, I stop accruing it! The second reason was because I needed it. I needed a day where I want running around trying to get work done in between teaching my kids and keeping them from injuring themselves. Hahaha

My company has really been encouraging us to take mental health days. With everything going on, it's pretty much impossible not to need a mental health day. I hope your day off helped!

 

[BuckeyeBama]

Yeah and that is what worries me about PTRR. Half the run of that race is all the spectators and the priesst throwing holy water on the runners, free pizza and beer at mellow mushroom, random people handing out beer and stuff, seeing the vets at sheperd center, etc. etc. Will any of that be possible on thanksgiving? Will people come out to do it on thanksgiving?

When I did NYCM I felt the same way - the spectators were a huge part of the fun.

I never imagined a marathon could be as great as Disney, but the NYC Marathon blew me away - and it was totally the crowds that made that happen. The NYC Marathon without the crowd support would be just another race.

 

[Guidman]

Had my first fall race cancelled yesterday. It's a 10k at the end of September, usually around 7k-10k participants. I was assuming it was going to happen eventually, but not this far out. I'd be surprised if there's any races here in southwest PA for the rest of the year now.

 

[TheHamm]

What are vacations?

Most of us in my office are going to have 4-6 weeks left over this year, and I’ll be damned if I’m using them up for a staycation.

They took away our option to carry over vacation several years ago, and gave the option to sell back a week- the rest is use it or loose it. They let us know there will not be any selling back this year as a way to conserve cash.

 

[Baloo in MI]

ATTQOTD (from the other day): I run 3 to 4 days a week. Two maintenance runs, a long run and a “speed” day. There is very little about my speed days that could be construed as fast, but it still hurts...

My vacation accruals max at 240, they roll over year to year, but if you get to 240 hours and don’t use them, then you lose them. And all though a good problem, the university provides a generous accrual rate so it is easy to get up to 240 hours. You have actively take vacation or be prepared to donate vacation hours back to the university. I took a week last month to give myself some breathing room from the accrual limit. I am grateful!

 

[YawningDodo]

Much better run today. I had a really hard time talking myself into going out at all, but did that old trick where I told myself I could just walk it and by the time I was getting my gear together I was up for running. Sometimes I do just walk, though, so it's not really lying to myself. I'd rather walk than skip it altogether.

Been working on increasing my run intervals. For ages I'd been at 50 seconds walk/10 seconds run, but in the last month I've gotten quite comfortable at 45/10 even on my longest run. I've been up to 45/15 on my maintenance runs and on today's three miler, but I'm not quite confident in that interval for a longer run yet. I'd like to eventually get to 30/30, but as long as I can hit the pace requirements for the WDW marathon I'm not going to set a deadline on the interval change--just going to keep feeling it out week by week.

 

[GreatLakes]

I'm glad we can carry over vacation time so we can avoid the staycation problem. I'm debating 2021 spots now to use up all that extra time.

I'm going to be stuck using some this year. Hopefully by the end of the year we can go somewhere and I have a convention in FL in October that I'm planning to tack a vacation on if it happens.

We can only carry over 280 hours and I'm currently at 327.74 and I accumulate 6 and change every two weeks. There is also an industry regulation that all staff have to be off for 5 consecutive business days with no access to anything. We shut down VPN access for staff when they are taking their mandatory time off for this.

We can sell our PTO at 90% value but I'd rather take it and just do local stuff if I have to.

 

[Novatrix]

*sigh* Sometimes I really wish I worked in a different industry, especially listening to everyone else talk about vacation time. My company is use it or lose it, which isn't too hard since I only get 10 days a year.

On the positive side, it does qualify me as an essential worker, which is a blessing in these trying times.

 

[Krandor]

*sigh* Sometimes I really wish I worked in a different industry, especially listening to everyone else talk about vacation time. My company is use it or lose it, which isn't too hard since I only get 10 days a year.

On the positive side, it does qualify me as an essential worker, which is a blessing in these trying times.

My company is unlimited vacation time. basically they just don't track if. if your manager approves you to be off then you can be off and I've so far never not been approved.

 

[YawningDodo]

*sigh* Sometimes I really wish I worked in a different industry, especially listening to everyone else talk about vacation time. My company is use it or lose it, which isn't too hard since I only get 10 days a year.

On the positive side, it does qualify me as an essential worker, which is a blessing in these trying times.

That was my same position for a few years...honestly, it was rough because vacation time was really important to me but I was stuck with just 10 days. I made noise about it at every performance review, letting my boss know that I would see an increase in vacation time as being just as valuable as a raise. When they switched us over to the new PTO system I got bumped up a category above what I was entitled to based on my number of years at my job. It's still not as much as I want, but it's better (20 days general PTO/year). I honestly think I would have been put in the 15 day category if I hadn't spoken up multiple times about what I wanted. It probably helps that we're a fairly small nonprofit...I dunno, that helps and hurts. The organization can theoretically be more flexible, but nonprofits in general aren't great about recognizing that their employees might want lives outside of their jobs.

 

[Novatrix]

That was my same position for a few years...honestly, it was rough because vacation time was really important to me but I was stuck with just 10 days. I made noise about it at every performance review, letting my boss know that I would see an increase in vacation time as being just as valuable as a raise. When they switched us over to the new PTO system I got bumped up a category above what I was entitled to based on my number of years at my job. It's still not as much as I want, but it's better (20 days general PTO/year). I honestly think I would have been put in the 15 day category if I hadn't spoken up multiple times about what I wanted. It probably helps that we're a fairly small nonprofit...I dunno, that helps and hurts. The organization can theoretically be more flexible, but nonprofits in general aren't great about recognizing that their employees might want lives outside of their jobs.

Before the current situation with coronavirus, I was planning to bring this up at my next performance review, but as a large Manufacturing company they tend to be even worse on the lives outside of work front. It took me a year to break them of the habit of calling me at 3am multiple nights in a row for non-emergencies.

 

[dis_or_dat]

We've been asked to zero out our vacation days by year's end. DH is getting stir crazy so he and his bros have made pie-in-the-sky plans for a road trip to Disneyland or flight to Hawaii, now they're thinking about something more local; all to which I say good luck with that!

 

[GreatLakes]

Completely selfish QOTD though hopefully it will also help some other people if they are looking.

We are going to buy a treadmill. As much as I would love to drop the cash on a Woodway I just can't justify that cost right now. I've been poking around for something around $1,000 and the Sole F63 keeps coming up as the best option.

Does anyone have any experience with Sole or have another recommendation in that price range? I want something stable so it doesn't feel like it is bounding around with each step. I have a feeling @DopeyBadger has some input if you don't mind me tagging you.

Then I just need to find a 30 nd 40 pound kettlebell in stock. I was going to pull the trigger and get one each fro Rogue in February and didn't pull the trigger. Man I wish I had.

 

[C.beara]

Does anyone have any experience with Sole or have another recommendation in that price range? I want something stable so it doesn't feel like it is bounding around with each step..

We have the Sole F80, it’s built super solid, but I don’t remember pricing. It’s a slightly longer/wider belt, and a good motor, but not many bells & whistles.
I tried out a couple of the Sole’s at the fitness store and I felt they were all very solid; I’ve been very happy with our choice.