Month: March 2016

Run 414: First day of Spring 2016 with bonus rain rain rain

Run 414
Average pace: 5:50/km
Location: Burnaby Lake CW
Distance: 7.45 km
Time: 43:28
Weather: Rain, rain, rain
Temp: 9-11ºC
Wind: low
BPM: 168
Stride: n/a
Weight: 170.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 3355
Device used: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

Today is the first day of spring and I’m pretty sure we hit our quota of rain for the season already. I know because I was there.

As I headed out, it was about 9ºC, which is relatively mild. A light rain was falling from the moment I stepped outside and it did not let up the entire run. It actually started coming down fairly hard toward the end. Fortunately it had not been raining for long before I went out so while there was a good amount of puddle hopping there was only one small spot that required especially dexterous maneuvering.

My lower legs still emerged covered in a spray of dirt and more curiously, a fair amount of bits of bark.

There were few people out given the weather, but the split was even between walkers and runners. Everyone looked very wet. Most walkers eschewed umbrellas for sturdy raincoats with hoods. Most of the runners just got soaked. Like me.

I started feeling a bit of a burn and then a stitch in my left side, a sure sign that my early pace was exceeding my grasp. I slowed down and eventually the stitch subsided. I tried picking up the pace toward the end and the splits bear this out, with the last 1.5 km being a bit brisker. That first km was 5:13/km, altogether too fast for my current level of fitness. Fortunately my body is not shy about sending signals to the effect of “OH MY GOD ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?! YOU ARE, I CAN TELL. SLOW DOWN, IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS HOLY, SLOW DOWN!”

My overall pace of 5:50/km is my best of my weekly runs and I even ran a decent bit more than intended, going 7.45 km instead of the planned 7 km.

The left foot was hurting a little but it was pretty minor and I don’t feel it affected my pace.

I am as pleased with this run as I am displeased with the weather during it, so pretty pleased!

I am tentatively planning on starting thrice-weekly runs again by heading out after work on Tuesday, probably on a 5K on the Brunette River trail. We shall see.

Book review: 11/22/63

11/22/6311/22/63 by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

11/22/63 is very by-the-numbers.

Sorry, had to get the inevitable and terrible pun out of the way.

11/22/63 is one of King’s best post-accident (post-1999) works, a long and adventurous novel that jumps feet-first into the time travel paradox. As expected, giving much thought to the logistics of time travel only reveals the gaps and flaws common to this particular sub-genre of science fiction. King knows this, too, and steers clear of trying to provide plausible scientific reasoning, leaving it up to the butterfly effect and what the main character of school teacher Jake Epping calls “harmonics.”

Saving Kennedy is a favorite time-travel trope, probably the most popular after killing Hitler, and King neatly lays out the scenario where Epping goes back to September 1958 and adapts to living for five years in an era before he was born, all the while tracking his prey, Lee Harvey Oswald. Along the way Epping falls in love with both the past and another school teacher, the tough if clumsy Sadie Dunhill.

Typically, King does a terrific job in fleshing out the many characters, while the sounds and sights of late 50s and early 60s America feel authentic. The story sprawls but never drags as Epping faces obstacle after obstacle while moving closer to his target. As the repeated refrain goes, the past is obdurate and doesn’t want to be changed.

To say more would venture into spoiler territory and although the book has what amounts to two endings, both are fine. There are no giant spiders here. 😛

Unlike King’s horror fare, 11/22/63 has broader appeal, to fans of time travel stories, to those who enjoy the whole “fish out of water” thing and finally, to anyone who enjoys watching characters whose actions and complexities drive the action, rather than the other way around.

View all my reviews

Writing prompt 8: Maybe later

Two things bug me about creativewritingprompts.com:

1. The author uses this smiley: :o)

The bulbous nose reminds me of clowns and like any sensible person, I do not like clowns. It’s also aggressively cutesy.

2. Every writing prompt is hidden behind a mouseover pop-up. Is this to prevent people scraping the site and selling the prompts on the black market? Is it to be cutesy? Did a clown goad the author into doing this?

Anyway, what follows is prompt #108 from the site and the eighth prompt I’ve posted here.

Prompt #8: List 10 things you do whenever you procrastinate

  1. Wait
  2. Look for writing sites to make fun of while being secretly ashamed at only ever having been published in a Moose Lodge newsletter when I was 12
  3. Watch a YouTube video, which inevitably turns into an entire evening of watching terrible music videos from the 1980s, culminating in another viewing of the literal version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”
  4. Stare up at clouds and see in them the faces of famous dictators. “There’s Mussolini!”
  5. Write lists
  6. Hum to myself until the person next to me says, “Stop that damned humming.”
  7. Think how procrastination compares to amateurcrastination
  8. Look busy because appearances are important
  9. Grow slightly older
  10. Turn my name into clever anagrams like Jam As Nest and Man Ass Jet

Book review: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical QuestionsWhat If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a funny, nerdy book that answers some very silly science questions with actual science. There’s also a lot of math, including numbers that are so big you probably don’t want to think much about them. I hate math (or rather, it seems math hates me) but enjoyed the book all the same. Don’t let any math aversion turn you away.

Randall Munroe is the author of XKCD, a stick figure comic that also features a lot of math (and science and technology and stuff). In What If? he answers questions like “What would happen if every person on Earth jumped up and down at the same time?” (answer: not much of anything) As with XKCD, the writing is brainy but accessible and the tone remains light, as one might expect when answering something like “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?” (answer: basically you get the equivalent of a nuclear bomb and would not advance to first base as first base would be vaporized along with everything else in the park)

The questions are regularly interspersed with just-a-little-too-weird “I’m not going to answer that” examples. I can only imagine how many of these types of questions Munroe has received.

The book contains a lot of illustrations to go with the scientific theory, all done in Munroe’s stick figure style. He occasionally teases more complex drawings, suggesting he is not just a one-stick pony, as it were.

What If? is one of those books that’s just plain fun to read. If you think you might enjoy some random answers to random and weird science questions, jump in.

One caution, though. Due to the large number of illustrations, this is a book you may find reads better on a tablet vs. an ereader. The images are black and white, though, so most modern ereaders should handle them decently.

View all my reviews

Run 413: Strange crashes in the woods

Run 413
Average pace: 5:56/km
Location: Burnaby Lake CCW
Distance: 7.05 km
Time: 41:55
Weather: Overcast, showers
Temp: 7-8ºC
Wind: moderate to strong
BPM: 168
Stride: n/a
Weight: 168.8 pounds
Total distance to date: 3348
Device used: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

I headed out earlier today to beat the rain and beat some of it.

The rest fell on me.

The day was cool and a strong breeze made it cooler still. The sky looked semi-threatening and the forecast indicated I’d complete my run before any real rain would start. Just over 2.5 km in, having just exited the Piper Mill Trail, a light sprinkle began. It remained much the same for the rest of the run, picking up a little toward the end.

After the run it turned into a downpour, so the last four km or so I got thoroughly soaked. It was the kind of weather that would have made it very difficult to motivate myself to get out in, so the decision to start early was wise indeed.

I opted to run 7K and managed it without issue, coming in with a slightly slower pace that pretty much equals out to the 5K pace of a few weeks ago. That’s nice to see.

The left foot was a tiny bit sore during the run but perfectly tolerable. I experienced no other issues.

There were no cyclists on the trail today. Hooray! There were several unleashed dogs. Boo! The runners started outnumbering the walkers as the weather worsened but other than a few dedicated walking groups, traffic was pretty light.

The strange crashing happened somewhere after the 9K mark when I was walking out, a few hundred meters shy of the Avalon Trail. I heard a loud crash just behind me and to my right. I snapped my head back (after leaping into the air) and couldn’t see anything immediately obvious but the woods here are marshy and filled with deadfall. There was a very large branch weighing down on other fallen timber and I suspect that may have been what I just heard. Recent storms with high winds and heavy rain have created optimal conditions for trees and branches to come down and there were several chainsawed trees along the trail that hadn’t been there last week. The fact that it seemed to be happening while I was there made me eye every slightly leaning tree for the rest of the trip around the lake.

Nearly every tree leans slightly at Burnaby Lake.

I escaped unscathed, apart from getting completely drenched and overall the run was a success. I increased my distance, maintained my pace and felt fine after. Now that Daylight Saving Time has kicked in, I should be able to start doing 5Ks after work soon™.

Note: The Speedgoats are still bleeding blue into my soaks for the fifth run in a row. I may pick up a different pair of shoes this week or at least see if I can exchange these ones as they’re clearly defective or my feet have new mutant color-absorbing abilities that coincidentally only activate when I’m wearing the Speedgoats.

That darn cat

I am mostly posting this to help force that animated cat image down the page so it’s no longer the first thing I immediately see when the site loads. I mean, it’s funny and all but it’s also kind of weird and more importantly, testimony to my complete inability to write anything, even lousy things, over the past week or so.

There, two paragraphs of text should help. I could also pad this post out even more by inserting a picture…say, an animated cat image…

Run 412: More distance, less stinky and fewer cyclists

Run 412
Average pace: 5:54/km
Location: Burnaby Lake CW
Distance: 6.06 km
Time: 35:50
Weather: Overcast
Temp: 11ºC
Wind: moderate
BPM: 166
Stride: n/a
Weight: 169.2 pounds
Total distance to date: 3341
Device used: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

The forecast thundershowers did not materialize for today’s run and though it sprinkled a little before and after the run, I once again lucked out by having the run itself stay dry. The recent rain meant the area around the fields required some nigh-impossible puddle-dodging, however. This is the last stretch of trail around Burnaby Lake that hasn’t been effectively shored up, so regular rain will often still produce mini-lakes that force you to go into the field to avoid. In this weather the field’s edges are bog-like, so it’s not much of an improvement. Basically, you don’t want to be wearing nice shoes here.

It was also 11ºC again, but with the wind gusting less, it felt much milder. It was nice.

Speaking of shoes, the fourth time out the Speedgoats still bled blue onto my socks, however the blue is a lot less prominent now and maybe in another half dozen runs or so it might stop. That’s still not really acceptable, but it is something to look forward to, sort of. The laces again felt loose on the walk back, but remained tied.

The skunk cabbage did not stink this week. It will stink again, though, as sure as spring officially arrives in two weeks.

Two cyclists rode past me as I began my walk back along the Cottonwood Trail. I thought evil thoughts as they went by (“Crash into each other!” “Get attacked by insane squirrels!”) but really, all I’d like is for people like them to use the roughly billion other trails and spaces in the lower mainland where cycling is allowed.

The run itself was largely a repeat of last week, with the pace within the mathematical margin of error at 5:54/km (it was 5:53 last week). However, I did push out to just over 6 km instead of the usual 5 km, so I was effectively faster. The extra km did not prove taxing so I’ll probably continue ramping up toward doing a full 10K loop again.

Overall, I was pleased with the effort. I can tell I’m making progress as much of my thought process during the run has shifted to various random things and away from “Dear god, when is this run going to end?”

Spring, please

It’s the first day of March, I’m ready for spring. Instead it’s soggy and cold outside (admittedly it would be even worse if it was cold and soggy inside). I do not approve.

If this situation has not changed by March 20 (spring equinox) I will be cross. Cross, I say.