What a Difference a Week Makes!!!

One week ago, I was freezing my butt off and still hoping for a good job opportunity. Now, the weather is comfortable and I have 2 great job opportunities and a possible third! How's that for life turning on a dime?

Overall, I had a solid week of training. Tuesday was an easy day as always. Wednesday is hill work or as I call it "hell" work. Actually, it's a really tough workout, but well worth the effort. This week, I found a great hill to run during my Tuesday easy "recon" run. The hill starts in the Black Dog park and goes about 0.4 miles up an s-shaped hill with a steep grade. Overall, it takes about 3.5 minutes to climb. I ran out to the park and then went up and down the hill 8 times before running back home. I really surprised myself in how strong I was. I've always been a decent climber and consciously incorporate hills into most of my runs when possible. Therefore, Wednesday's workout was a big confidence booster. Saturday I put in a 3-hour effort during which I covered just over 17 miles. I then followed that up on Sunday with a 2-hour run where I did another "recon" route to find new places to run and covered 11.5 miles. It was a tough run since my legs were still pretty tired and sore from Saturday's run, but that's what it's supposed to be. I call it the gut-check workout because it really pushes you mentally to work through the mileage while your body is still hurting from the previous day.

The job situation certainly brightened up this past week, much like the weather. I had an interview on Monday with Lifetouch for an lean manufacturing/process engineering position. I thought it went very well and was rather impressed witht the company overall. I'm hoping to hear back from them early this next week about a second interview. I also received news about a position I had interviewed a couple of weeks ago. They basically stated that I was the man for the job and were just awaiting some budgeting, planning, and final approvals, which were to be completed on Friday. Then, the big surprise was a third entry into the employment arena. Thursday night I received a phone call from a former employer (the company I worked for before my most recent job). They said an engineer there had unexpectedly given notice and had heard from my former co-workers that I would be perfect to fill the pending vacancy. The plant manager asked me to come in a speak with him on Friday and I obliged. My interview with him and the HR manager went very well and they were very interested in making me an offer. For them, this would be an ideal situation, since I already had knowledge and experience in the area which the departing engineer managed. In addition, I was already very familiar with the company and employees, having previously worked there for 6+ years. Not only that, they didn't see this vacancy coming and got caught flat-footed. They currently haven't posted the position and were very concerned about having a gap in coverage for the area, since it has been a troublesome spot as of late. At the end of my meeting with the HR manager, she told me she would be contacting her boss at the corporate HQ and planned to have an offer put together to present to me on Monday. Needless to say, Monday is going to be a very interesting day with 2 possible job offers and a perhaps a callback for a 2nd interview. When it rains, it pours!