Exercise

Exciting heel update #4 (with bonus exercise update)

Okay, so here’s the thing: my left heel is still a bit sore but it strangely gets less sore when I walk or run on it for awhile. Eventually it starts getting sore again, but I haven’t tested the outer boundary of this yet. I’ve done a 10 km walk so far and had no issues.

So I really have no idea what happened or is happening. I suspect my doctor would not know, either. I’m not sure an x-ray or ultrasound would reveal anything, either. I suppose if I minimized my walking as much as possible that it would eventually heal (ho ho) to the point where it would not be sore at all, but realistically, that’s not going to happen.

Maybe one day it will just feel better as suddenly as that day it suddenly started to hurt.

Anyway, it’s dumb and I have decided I am not going to let it stop me from resuming running, because I’ve been running more as part of my post-work walks. And I’m going to start logging these walks as workouts, which they are, because I sweat and stuff.

What I have been doing for the last month or so is walking to the end of the Brunette River trail and back, a route that covers a little over 7 km. It takes just over an hour when walking.

Today I ran more than I have since starting these walks, including a stretch where I clocked in at a pace of 5:58/km–on the slow side for running, but basically impossibly fast for walking, unless I was five meters tall, maybe.

Here are the stats of my walk, which I will include going forward (also the heel feels no worse for having done this):

Walk 1
Average pace: 7:58/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 7.63 km
Time: 1:00:53
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 23ºC
Humidity: 50%
Wind: light
BPM: 128
Weight: 173.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 7.63 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 8

Treadmill walk: It rained again

The last time I was on the treadmill was on July 11, when it rained.

It rained again today, so instead of my now customary one hour after-work walk, I hit ye olde treadmill. I actually felt pretty energetic, so I guess all of the walking is paying off. My heel, which is still sore (exciting update very soon) held up without issue, at least as I type this a short time after finishing the workout.

I accidentally tracked this as an indoor run rather than an indoor walk, but it doesn’t seem to have affected anything, other than making it look like a rather sluggish run.

As you can see, I was a bit zippier (beating the official treadmill pace of 9:13/km, which assumes an incline of zero, not 10), burned a few more calories and had a marginally higher BPM, which is pretty much a rounding error.

I also continued my alphabetical music listening and have now made my way into the B’s. I skipped a few ore songs than usual because walking on the treadmill requires peppier tunes than walking outside. You know how it is.

The stats:

Pace: 9:19/km (9:22 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30:03)
Distance: 3.22 km (3.20 km)
Calories burned: 293 (318)
BPM: 140 (146)

A long walk to a sore heel

UPDATE, April 4, 2021: The injury took a long time to improve and then, after mostly disappearing, came suddenly back worse than before in December. My doctor identified it as plantar fasciitis. As of this update, the foot is much improved, but still not 100%. This is what you call a long term injury.

Today the weather was warm and sunny (after an initial forecast of mostly cloudy) and I couldn’t just sit inside while it was summer all over the place outside.

So, I went for a walk around Burnaby Lake, wearing my running stuff in case I started feeling extra zesty (more on this in a bit).

I felt pretty good heading out and indeed, my walking pace was a bit better than in recent months. That continued as I hit the 5K mark midway around the lake, still brimming with energy and feeling fine. I even started running off and on along the Southshore Trail.

The resurfacing of the Cottonwood Trail is coming along nicely and the notion that it will take until September to complete seems silly, as they are probably more than half done already (and were diligently working away when I walked through this afternoon). It will be spiffy for running when complete as this trail section has about a hundred billion exposed tree roots waiting for me and my feet.

There were more people out than perhaps expected, but it is summer and it was very nice out, with a breeze providing just enough cooling to keep it from feeling hot (it’s not really hot, but weather the last few weeks has been a little cooler than seasonal, so even 24C feels a bit toasty when you’re out in the sun).

I finished the loop just before 3 p.m. and as I exited the lake trail and crossed over to the river trail and the return home, I was still peppy. The peppiness finally began to fade around the 16 km mark, when my right hip began to feel a bit tweaked. It wasn’t bad and didn’t really slow me down. In fact, after a few minutes it worked itself and I continued to steam along. But then my left heel started to hurt. Weird.

It continued to hurt the remaining two km or so on the remainder of the walk and as I type this at 10:23 p.m., it is still sore. The right heel is fine.

I have no explanation for this, just guesses and crackpot theories:

  • The few minutes the right hip hurt, I overcompensated in favoring my left side, making my apparently brittle left heel very sore
  • The orthotic in my left shoe is sufficiently worn in the heel that it reached a breaking point where it started hurting instead of helping
  • aliens
  • previously unknown injury suddenly surfacing (aliens?)
  • karma, somehow (also the name of my next album)

It may be fine or better(ish) by morning, but it’s a sore note for what was otherwise a fine afternoon out. I was even delighted by unexpected wildlife, watching a crane hunt food and a turtle laying out on a log enjoying the sun.

Here’s a few photos before the hobbling started.

Just starting out, I thought this field of what is really just weeds looked interesting, but it didn’t turn out quite as I had expected. This field had previously been kept cut and served as a small park area. I’m not sure why it was decided to let it grow wild.

The classic shot of the lake from the bridge at Deer Lake Brook. I managed to tilt the view slightly, but was too lazy to fix it. Just pretend the earth was rotating too fast for me to compensate.

From the point just before the Cottonwood Trail, looking west.

The heron snatching a snack:

Close-up of heron from the shot above.

Treadmill workout: No rest

I was thinking about maybe going for a run today, but then it started to rain and my enthusiasm for the idea washed away. But I started feeling guilty about not exercising, even though it is the first day of my vacation.

The result is below, another treadmill workout. Stats are pretty close to the previous workout. The 30 minutes seems to go by quicker now and as a special bonus today I came up with an idea for a short Super Spud comic while on the treadmill.

Stats (BPM was down, despite pace being a bit better. As the kids say, sweet):

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:19/km (9:22 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30:03)
Distance: 3.22 km (3.20 km)
Calories burned: 293 (318)
BPM: 140 (146)

Treadmill workout: End of the week

The end of the week and I was a bit slower on the treadmill after a week of doing stuff like working out on treadmills.

Nothing extraordinary in the stats, so here they are:

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:22/km (9:19 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30:05)
Distance: 3.20 km (3.22 km)
Calories burned: 318 (326)
BPM: 146 (146)

Treadmill workout: Steady Freddie

I went to bed way later than normal last night (bad) and felt a bit tired most of the day, so I was uncertain how the workout would go at noon.

While it rained steadily outside (summer is not looking like a scorcher at this point), I did my 30 minutes on the treadmill and turned in a surprisingly balanced effort. Each km was within a few seconds of the other and I ended up feeling fine (and less sweaty than the last few days).

The stats are only slightly different than yesterday. BPM is trending back down along with my speed, perfectly logical and all that.

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:19/km (9:16 km/h)
Time: 30:05 (30:05)
Distance: 3.22 km (3.24 km)
Calories burned: 326 (342)
BPM: 146 (149)

Treadmill run: Not so fast

Today’s workout was fine. I did not replicate my blistering pace of yesterday, but it was still solid all around. It seems the secret is to listen to Jonathan Coulton while exercising.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Here are the stats:

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:16/km (9:01 km/h)
Time: 30:05 (30:03)
Distance: 3.24 km (3.33 km)
Calories burned: 342 (343)
BPM: 149 (151)

Treadmill workout: Strangely fast

I don’t really have an explanation for this, but today’s treadmill workout was strangely speedy. Here are the splits:

1 km: 8:40/km
2 km: 9:20/km
3 km: 8:57/km

Yes, two of the three km were below nine minutes. Why, I can’t say. Two other notable aspects: my distance covered spiked up to 3.33 km and my BPM edged up a bit more, too. Both of these are unsurprising given the extra speed. The BPM is getting close to running territory, so I’ll keep an eye on it–but it definitely felt like a good, hard workout today, so for now I’m not overly concerned. Recovery was the same as usual.

The stats:

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:01/km (9:22 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30:03)
Distance: 3.33 km (3.20 km)
Calories burned: 343 (347)
BPM: 151 (148)

Treadmill workout: Title

Yeah, the thing with working out on a treadmill is it gets harder and harder to jazz up what happened.

Today I listed to Jonathan Coulton and felt peppy. One item of note is the increased BPM, but looking at the chart, I can see that it was steadily increasing toward the end, coinciding with my increased effort, so I don’t think it’s a concern.

Stats:

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:22/km (9:21 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30:03)
Distance: 3.20 km (3.21 km)
Calories burned: 347 (311)
BPM: 148 (140)

Toodling around Colony Farm Regional Park

Nic and I went to Colony Farm Regional Park looking for birbs and getting steps.

We accomplished both. Since I am using an iPhone 8 for my photos and its zoom capabilities can be summed up as “lol” I have no pics of birds to share.

But I do have a snail.

Here are some of the things I deemed worthy of taking pictures of.

Coquitlam River
Coquitlam River, looking south, with one of the spans of the Port Mann Bridge visible.
Spiky pink balls
Invasive but pretty tansy. These things grow in copious quantities along one of the trails.
The promised snail, happily sliming it up.
Man taking photo of man taking photo. Nic is wearing typically bright male plumage.
Marshland with technology lurking in the background.
Flowers of undetermined origin (I’ll edit this later when I’m not feeling lazy).
More tansies

Treadmill workout: Less than a week later

The one thing of note today is that I felt downright peppy in the last ten minutes, almost moving fast enough to warrant adjusting the speed of the treadmill up.

I have no real explanation for this.

The stats reflect this with a faster pace and more distance. Pleasantly, my BPM was also down, despite being faster.

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:21/km (9:27 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30:03)
Distance: 3.21 km (3.17 km)
Calories burned: 311 (328)
BPM: 140 (145)

Treadmill workout: Has it been a week already?

Yes, it has been a week. But today, with the weather looking damp, I got on the treadmill for a noontime workout.

It’s another case of virtually identical results, so I’m not going to say much else here. I did start out a bit slow with the first km being 9:41 but picked up after that and kept a decent pace through to the end.

The stats:

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:27/km (9:29 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30:02)
Distance: 3.17 km (3.16 km)
Calories burned: 328 (329)
BPM: 145 (145)