What the title says. I got new Scarpa Golden Gate ATR 2 trail runners. They are size 42, which would normally be Bigfoot++ sized, but Scarpa is a European company and they sensibly use European measurements. It’s equivalent to a size 9 here, and the shoes seem to be about that, maybe just a tiny bit bigger. They look nice, have oodles of good reviews and seem to hit all my requirements, so we’ll see how they feel.
This has nothing to do with my surgery, which is a good thing. Surgery did not really cross my mind today except when I briefly talked about it with a neighbour.
In the opening track “No Man’s Land” on Billy Joel’s last album, River of Dreams, is the line:
I’ve seen the children with their boredom and their vacant stares
This immediately brought to mind people staring at their smartphones and scrolling endlessly through social media (which admittedly is a problem not just affecting The Youths, but everyone). The thing is, the album and song came out in 1993, which is 33 years ago as I write this.
1993 effectively predates the internet (as the public knows it) and predates social media and smart device addiction by decades.
Which makes me wonder, what did Joel know back then? Or was 1993 a lot worse than I remember?
This is not to imply that I do not normally bathe, or that I’m one of those people who believe you only need to wash your armpits and groin and the rest of your body can just naturally accumulate…stuff. It just means that I was told after surgery to avoid taking a bath for a while, since it could cause problems with the sutures/incisions due to all the soaking in water and such.
But as the title says, it’s been 39 days now, and it was time after a run and walk around the lake today to have a bath. It felt very nice to just sit back and soak for some time in the tub (full of bubbles because I am pushing the idea that bubble baths are great, because they are, in fact, great). I look forward to more of these simple pleasures in life.
View from Cariboo Dam: Partly sunny with a decent breeze blowing.
It’s Canada Day and you know what that means! That’s right, people go out on the trails and wave tiny Canadian flags.
Well, maybe not the flags, but there were more than the usual number of people out for a Wednesday morning, but the weather was pleasant and the people were, too, so it was all good.
I changed my mind for my second post-surgery run and rather than re-run the same route as Monday, I opted to go clockwise and to not do a short loop. Instead, I ran the 2.5 km, then kept walking and did the full loop around the lake, in part because I wanted to see how the lake and trail looked after more than a month’s absence, but also because I wanted to take pretty photos of Still Cree. And it was very pretty today.
As for the run, I improved, going from an average pace of 6:18 to 6:11/km. Not bad. I was actually slower to start today, likely because it was warmer, but didn’t drop off dramatically as I had two days ago. My BPM was up to 147 and my max (recommended) heart rate also increased. Somewhat surprisingly, the run was rated Productive by my watch, perhaps because it looks so good in comparison to a month of not running.
The run went fine–I was creaky again to start, with the right shin taking a minute or to settle in, but no issues after that. I felt like I could have kept going, but my OCD needed another 2.5K so I could get back to a nice even-numbered total distance. The forecast called for mostly cloudy but after last Saturday’s Great Burning, I slapped on the sunblock and hey, it was indeed partly sunny for the run and when the sun was out, it definitely felt like it was in a burning mood.
Overall, a good follow-up. I look forward to getting run times under the six-minute mark again soon™.
Still Creek, less still and today, full of geese just…waiting.
Stats:
Run 1,040 Average pace: 6:11/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 11:40 a.m. Distance: 2.5 km Time: 15:30 Weather: Partly cloudy Temp: 18-19°C Humidity: 63-58% Wind: light to moderate BPM: 147 Weight: 168.5 pounds Total distance to date: 7,020 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (290/521/811)
I now wear the surgery like an old coat, familiar and a bit lumpy. I don’t think about it much, though occasionally I get a reminder, like a sudden twinge in one of the incision areas–the VCI1Video Camera Incision is still sensitive if I poke it. This is a good reason to not poke it.
The weight gain literally happened on the second-to-last day of the month, when I jumped 1.4 pounds overnight. For most of the month I trended down.
There wasn’t too much movement overall, though, so it seems my surgery and recovery had little impact on my weight. I only ran once, right near the end of the month, and walked intermittently, but as I discovered way back in 2008, exercise is not the way to lose weight. Not eating bags of cookies is.
On the plus side, my muscle mass is up slightly! Maybe I’ll spend July eating protein-rich cereals and turn into some kind of hulking bodybuilder type.
Stats:
January 1, 2026: 169.4 pounds
Current: 169.4 pounds Year to date: Unchanged
June 1: 168.4 pounds June 30: 169.4 pounds (up 1.0 pounds)
Body fat: June 1: 26.7% June 30: 26.3% (down 0.4%)
Skeletal muscle mass: June 1: 29.7 kg June 30: 29.9 kg (up 0.2 kg)
I ran, as mentioned in the previous post, and the good news is the surgery didn’t seem to have any effect. After 42 days off, I was slow, but that’s because I took 42 days off.
I last ran 41 days ago. I was slightly heavier than today, which is a coincidence, though I did have a tumour the size of a “big marble” removed from my chest in the interim. After a heat wave and then showers, today was finally the day when both the weather and my will aligned and I set off to do a “baby” run of 2.5 km at Burnaby Lake.
Which I did!
My legs felt creaky at the start, but things smoothed out after a minute or so. My pace was slow–6:08 on the first km, drooping to 6:28 for the second and averaging out to 6:1`8/km overall. This will improve as I get back in shape. On the plus side, my BPM was a mere 138, so I wasn’t particularly straining despite the long layoff.
More importantly, I didn’t feel any of the surgery side effects had any impact on the run.
The weather was also good for runninng–17C and cloudy. Humidity was 70%, so no danger of DMS. It was also very calm, with virtually no wind.
Everyone seemed especially friendly on the walk to the lake, too. That was nice.
Overall, a solid return. The plan is to do another 2.5 km run on Wednesday then switch back to 5K after that.
This one run put me back into Maintaining, which is where I was at 41 days ago, so that was also a somewhat unexpected bonus.
Turtle nesting area, post-run. I was a turtle for my run.
Stats:
Run 1,039 Average pace: 6:18/km Training status: Maintaining Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop) Start: 10:52 a.m. Distance: 2.5 km Time: 15:49 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 17°C Humidity: 70% Wind: light BPM: 138 Weight: 169.2 pounds Total distance to date: 7,017.5 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (287.5/521/808.5)
The plan is to write daily posts until I reach the six-week mark (the end of the “full recovery” window), or 42 days, which will be six days hence. After that, I’m going to just chime in whenever I feel something has changed/shifted or revealed itself as an alien.
As for my current thoughts, sleep is still very uneven, per my Forerunner watch, but it may be wrong, so I take what it says with the proverbial grain of salt.
Generally, I regard FIFA with indifference or vague ill will. I am not into sportsball, the organization is widely regarded as corrupt, it paid fealty to Trump to by awarding him a nonsensical “peace prize” which meant so much to him that he immediately turned around and launched an illegal war with Iran. Host cities for the World Cup will see little benefit other than a lot of extra costs.
But in the spirit of looking at the bright side of life1If you know, you know, here are 3 good things about FIFA, specifically in regard to Vancouver being one of the host cities:
A lot of people seem to genuinely enjoy the games
The SkyTrain is running on a more frequent schedule, which is aces for me when I need to use it (I just need to not use it when there is a game pending)
Science World admittedly looks pretty cute as a giant football/soccer ball
Changed the colour scheme of this blog, that is, back to a warmer, softer look for summer. No AI was used, I handcrafted each colour using a time-honoured artisanal process. OK, I actually just selected a few colours I’d used before. I suspect I’ll do another major revamp of the site before the summer is over.
Meanwhile, my 4-6 week “full recovery” window maxes out at 42 days, so I have exactly one week to go. I can now say I am confident that I will not have recovered from all nerve damage/numbness in the next seven days, which is a bit of a bummer, but I can sneeze without hurting myself, so I’ll take what I can get.
Maybe I should look up artisanal ways of stimulating nerve endings back to life.
