Progress can be slow at times. But progress is still progress. You do the best you can. You keep moving forward.

I remember having a pretty serious hamstring strain a few years ago at the height of training for the Rehoboth marathon. As is often the case, despite not being 100% healthy and with less than optimal training coming in, I went anyway because Loopsters. I'm not much of a party guy and even though Rehoboth is the most famous and enduring party Loopfest, I knew I wanted to touch base irl with everyone. There would be no less a party just because Dave wasn't dancing on tables.

ocrunnergirl (who over that year had been working through a hamstring thing as well and I imagined would know what was best about it) taped the hammy for me that morning, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I got about 2 miles in before the muscle decided he was done for the day. With 24-ish miles to go, I knew I was in for a long morning. Kept the 4:30 pacer's sign in sight as long as I could, but there was SO MUCH WALKING limping along for another 4 and a half hours. Even stopping to chat with Bart Yasso, standing at a seemingly random spot along the trail, didn't slow me up much more than I was already.

The bar for my PW is set pretty low, thanks to an untrained and warm day in Boston (2016) and 45 minutes of wandering the streets of east Louisville at the Kentucky Derby Festival (2010). But this one came close. I snuck in just ahead of the 5:00 pace group.

Point is, I never stopped. Yeah, it was painful. It was achingly slow. But it was a beautiful morning and I finished with another state crossed off and another medal for the collection. Mission accomplished.

This 62 year-old Achilles tendon hasn't bounced back much in the last month. I have gone the last couple of days without the boot and it doesn't seem to be getting any worse, so that's encouraging. I should put it back on for another week. Not getting worse isn't the same as getting better. And I need it to get better. I'd like to run a marathon this year, even a slow one. I've been vaccinated for Covid and have one more week before I'm at full immunity. Ought to be able to find a race in a state I haven't done yet for this fall. Of course, I need a little running to happen first, and so far I'm not ready to test this thing. Starting from zero again.

Anyway, the point of all that, aside from making this post about running, is that what began as a floor replacement continues, slowly, just like morning in Rehoboth. There are just so many little (and big) projects that have turned out to be tails of this monster. Things that I would always think about changing but never enough to raise them to the top of the priority list.

The last major on of those has been the half bath on the main floor. My last upgrade was a temporary one - just putting in a nicer toilet and sink, painting the walls and old vanity. The floor was still pending at the time so we didn't want to invest too much into it.

After tearing out the vanity and clearing it all for new floor, it became item #1 on the upgrade list. The toilet was OK, but that vanity had to go. It had been built in and was deeper than it should have been. There was a cutout in the door trim to accommodate the extra. Suppose it was a reasonable strategy at the time the previous owner did it, although I've never understand the deal with not aligning the lights with the sink. (The project that never ends) Anyway...new floor, new vanity. And, of course, that also meant doing something with the heating, because, guess what? It didn't align with the sink, the plumbing or the lighting. We debated whether to just seal it off, let it vent directly into the vanity, exit out the side, offset in the front, or try to route it so it came out through the front center of the new vanity. That last would look best, but also require the most work.

And that's what we did. Had to do more engineering than I'm used to. For the record, I am NOT an engineer, although perhaps I should have been, because I find these sorts of projects really fun and interesting challenges. Had to figure out how to reduce the 6 x 10 outlet down to 2 x 10 and move it over 3 inches. This is where I wished I'd taken math more seriously in high school. And by math, I mean geometry (which I thought was just fun with shapes) and trigonometry (skipped altogether because it looked hard and I wasn't interested in hard - I was interested in running and young women). Fortunately, all four of my children excelled in math and I was able to enlist their help to design my ducting. After that I wished I had a few more tools that would have made the manufacturing easier. But, in the end, it worked out well enough and on the outside looks exactly like I'd hoped.

Of course there were additional trips to Home Depot for longer water lines since this sink is higher that the old one, plus remember it's six inches to the left of where it used to be. What I'd planned to be a half day job turned into 2 days (as per usual), but the finished project if perfect.

All that's left is replacing the baseboard and that door trim, plus re-painting. If you look closely at the last picture, you can see that the new can of Toasty Gray from Home Depot isn't a 100% match for the previous can of Toasty Gray from Home Depot. Of course.

Keep moving forward, my friends.