Happy Pi Day!

(Thank you internet for the lovely picture, as I can't use the actual symbol in my text!)

Here's a Pi Day problem for you.

A 9” pie costs $8.99, an 8” pie costs $4.99 and is on sale for $2.99. The smaller pie is clearly the better deal…right? By circumference (pi times diameter), the larger pie is 28.26 square inches and costs .32 per square inch. The smaller is 25.12 square inches and costs .20 per inch regular price and .12 per inch on sale. However, the bigger pie is also deeper and when you consider volume (of a cylinder, which is the closest I can get) (pi times radius-squared times height), the larger pie (height 2 inches) has a volume of 127.7 cubic inches and the smaller (height 1 inch) has a volume of 50.24 cubic inches. Dividing the price by the volume, the larger pie costs .07 per cubic inch and the smaller costs .10 per inch at regular price…however on sale for $2.99 it is only .06 per cubic inch and is still the better buy!

You're welcome.

Who said we'd never use math after high school?

(I should share this with QFC. I’m sure they’d want to use it in their advertising!)

Sadly, I won't be eating any pie myself as I am still plugging along in the quest to remain (mostly) sugar-free through Easter, as I attempt to tune up my body as well as my running for the Eugene Marathon.

Running continues to go pretty well since the great Garmin satellite fail last week. On Saturday I did 17 miles, with a three mile warm-up, Lake Sammamish Half Marathon (2:03:35ish), and a mile to finish the job. It drizzled pretty much the whole time and I got pretty wet by the end!
I finished the half marathon, ran a mile extra, looked around the booths, ate a piece of pizza, went to my car to get some money to buy a shirt, and as I was walking back toward the finish line carrying my purse somebody cheered me on--"You're almost done!" Embarrassing.

Monday morning it was raining so hard it made Saturday's drizzle look like nothing. Plus it was dark (thank you Daylight Savings Time for making my life miserable). But I perservered through eight miles and my average pace was sub-10, so that's something. I am hoping to keep my weekday runs up around eight miles rather than six or seven in this last six weeks before Eugene. That will involve getting up at least ten minutes earlier than I have been...and 20-30 minutes earlier would be so much better, allowing me to run and get to work on time!

Finally, today was my half-assed attempt at this week's speed work. Correction...my attempt was fine, my results were pretty half-assed. I've said before that my goal paces for this training cycle are, sadly, too fast for me, so I'm not too distressed about missing the goal paces and just using "effort" as my measuring stick. So with that modification, my speed work today was supposed to be two sets of 3 x 1200 (or 3/4 mile) at 5K pace effort (after a two-mile warm-up).

The warm-up went fine. As for the intervals.... I was not doing this at a track, and my route included uphills and downhills, so I didn't expect a very consistent pace anyhow. The first 3/4 mile went fine, although I would characterize my pace as 10K rather than 5K pace. A couple minutes of recovery then another...this time slightly uphill...again 10K pace (but slower than the first). My third split started out well, but about halfway through, luckily as I was approaching the Y, I had to stop for a bathroom. Immediately. I had no choice in the matter.

That threw me off a little, and I decided to start interval 3 over again. I skipped the long recovery jog between the two sets, as I already had a longish break in the bathroom, and went directly to #4, then 5. The problem was that I was running out of time. I tentatively decided to finish #5, then maybe just do half of #6. But halfway through #6 I realized I hadn't restarted my watch after some stopping point, and had just run at least a quarter of a mile unrecorded! This is where things got confusing. Ha. Somehow I managed to complete all of lap 6, in fact one of my laps was .8 instead of .75 mile. And then I did another half mile, somehow. I finally finished with 8 miles on my watch, but I figure I ran about 8.25 (or more) in total.

On the good side, it did not rain at all while I was running this morning!