I got a notification on my watch and like any well-trained modern technology user, I checked it out, to find this:
Nice indeed! There are a few issues with this, though:
I do not own an elliptical
I was sitting in my chair at the computer doing pretty much the opposite of burning calories. How many calories are consumed by using your eyes to read text off a screen? I’m assuming not many.
This raises the question of how the Fitbit Inspire HR, which was in my pocket at the time, somehow decided I not only did an impossible workout, but did it for 19 minutes. Normally there would be some semi-plausible explanation, like I was moving back and forth from one room to another, and it was misinterpreting that as exercise, but no, I was sitting still in a chair.
Now, I have tricked my Apple watch into thinking I did a few minutes of exercise by vigorously singing along to music with the headphones on, but that’s one of those semi-plausible things. With the Fitbit the only way I could have been less active is if I was sleeping.
It is a mystery, then, and a reminder that while technology can be great, it can also fall flat on its shiny metal face.
After a few days of being slothful and shamefully leaving my activity rings incomplete, I hit the treadmill at lunch today, despite the sunny weather, as I am still practicing physical distancing (no longer social distancing, because you can still yell hello to the other person on the sidewalk on the other side of the street).
I was a lot pokier than Monday’s effort, but not too bad overall. BPM was accordingly down. I listened to They Might Be Giants (brand new album) Flood and how can it be 30 years since that came out? I just checked and the two Johns are 59 and 60 years old. Time is weird and frightens me. But Flood is a good album for exercising.
Stats:
Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10
Pace: 9:29/km (9:09 km/h)
Time: 30:04 (30.03)
Distance: 3.17 km (3.28 km)
Calories burned: 313 (328)
BPM: 142 (151)
There is no sugar-coating this month’s report, though it might seem accurate to say everything in the report was coated in sugar, then eaten by me.
I am up 3.9 pounds for the year to date. This is not good, as I had been trending down. Looking at the calendar, I see that I impressively gained five pounds in the ten days from March 21-31.
What happened? Cookies, and plenty of them.
But also the global pandemic, which is actually connected to the cookies. While others were hoarding toilet paper, I was hoarding food, specifically hoarding it in my mouth and then in my belly. More than any other time in recent memory the stuff I ate was comfort food. I apparently needed a lot of comfort.
It’s not a coincidence that I started working from home on March 18.
For April I simply vow to improve. The cookies are gone, I’m going to resume regular workouts, and just generally try to do better on what I eat. At least I didn’t have any donuts.
The fat-filled stats:
March 1: 169.8 pounds March 31: 175.7 pounds (up 5.9 pounds)
Year to date: From 171.8 to 175.7 pounds (up 3.9 pounds)
And the body fat:
March 1: 22% (37.3 pounds of fat) March 31: 22.4% (39.4 pounds of fat) (up 2.1 pounds)
Today started out pretty nice–the temperature got up to around 12 degrees, it was mostly sunny. A beautiful day to go for a walk or, in my case, a run.
I planned to go to Burnaby Lake, and was set to run clockwise, starting on the south side of the lake.
There were a lot of people on the river trail as I made my way to the lake. I feared the worst, but pressed on. At the lake so many people were crowding on the top of the dam that I actually stood back and waited a few minutes for them to clear out before making my way across.
I had to pee. The Jiffy John was, naturally, occupied.
I came out and there were groups of people on the trail near the parking lot (families and such), so I thought I’d walk to the road and actually start my run there, allowing me to go directly onto the Avalon Trail, which is wider and can more readily accommodate more people and the social distancing that is the vogue in these plague-filled days.
Sign at entrance to Burnaby Lake
The idea of maintaining 2 meters on a park trail is largely a fantasy because the trails are often barely that wide to begin with, and people aren’t terribly likely to traipse through the skunk cabbage just to comply. But still, it’s possible to at least spread out and do your best. Besides, Burnaby Lake isn’t exactly the seawall at Stanley Park in terms of popularity.
Except today it kind of was. I looked down the road to the Avalon Trail and it was packed full of people–more than I’ve ever seen, groups moving in both directions, with more feeding in from the trail connecting to it from the parking lot.
And the parking lot? Normally in late March, even on a nice day, the lot would have maybe a half dozen vehicles in it. Today they were parking in the middle, the lot nearly full.
Avalon parking lot. Some of these cars are not maintaining social distance.
The lot is rarely this full during the peak of summer.
Now, I get annoyed at having a lot of people on the trail when I’m running when there isn’t a pandemic. But during one? It’s dumb. These people are basically doing the opposite of what they should be. Instead of staying home, they are going out. That itself is fine. They are going to a park. Also fine.
They are all going to the same park and jamming the trails with huge crowds of people. This is not fine. This is, in fact, how you spread the virus.
Metro Vancouver is partly to blame here. In the city of Vancouver the Parks Board has shut all of the parking lots for parks and beaches. While that won’t stop everyone, you can see by the above photo that it may have stopped dozens.
I was initially looking forward to heading out because the forecast was for rain showers and while some would still be out no matter what the weather, a lot would have stayed inside and watched Frozen with their kids for the billionth time. But the weather changed and instead we got a mix of sun and clouds.
I left without running. The stress of having to push through the crowds was too much. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the experience. Ironically, partway on the walk back it did start to shower a bit, but too little, too late.
My next outdoor run will only happen if it’s raining even before I step outside.
On the last day of the first full week of working at home, I chose to not go for a walk at noon–not because it was cool and rainy (that’s oddly nice right now, because it means fewer people are out and aboot), but because I wanted to start getting back onto the treadmill regularly again.
Strangely, I was peppier than expected, especially during the second km where my pace was a zany 8:48/km. I don’t know if the music* got me revved up or if I was working out frustrations, but I motored. And felt pretty good, too.
There’s not much else to say because, well, treadmill. I am thinking of doing an actual jog on the treadmill soon, but I think I want to do a few more outside in the plaguelands first.
Stats below. Compared to the previous walk, my BPM is a lot higher, but again, I was trucking, so no surprise there.
Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10
Pace: 9:09/km (9:22 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30.05)
Distance: 3.28 km (3.21 km)
Calories burned: 328 (277)
BPM: 151 (133)
* the music was Brian Wilson’s 1988 solo album, which I actually quite like, despite the weird, almost formal-sounding vocals
Run 647Average pace: 5:48/km
Location: Brunette River
Start: 1:42 pm
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:13
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 12ºC
Humidity: 55%
Wind: nil to light
BPM: 166
Weight: 171.5 pounds
Total distance to date: 4845 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 8
Shoes: Saucony Switchback ISO (205 km)
Technically today was not my first run since the global pandemic started, but it was the first since, to frame it colorfully, shit got real, with lots of closures and a huge emphasis on “social distancing”, which I will get to in a bit.
First, this was my first run in three weeks. I’m not sure how I managed to go another three weeks without doing an outdoor run. I swear I’m not lazy. Today I headed out in mild conditions wearing my light long-sleeve shirt and would have been fine in a regular t-shirt, as it was not cool in any way (in all senses of the word).
I wasn’t sure if I was going to run at the lake or the river, so I walked to the end of the river trail to give me more time to decide. Given how many people were about, I chose the river trail, as it would be easier to keep some separation between myself and potential plague carriers.
This turned out to be surprisingly difficult, despite the river trail actually being a gravel service road that is wide enough to (barely) accommodate two vehicles passing by each other. Why? Because people are dumb or indifferent. Observe below.
Good people: Walking close to each other, staying on one side of the trail. Lots of room to pass by without getting close.
Bad people: Spreading themselves as far across the trail as possible, making it impossible to keep the recommended safe distance away, which is six feet or two meters, depending on how metric you are. For example, two friends (?) were walking down the trail, but they were walking down the middle and also had some strangely large gap between each other, effectively providing three narrow channels for me to choose from. This would be like if every chalice at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was poison. You can’t help but to choose poorly.
There was another pair that did the opposite, which creates nearly the same issue. One was walking a dog (all dogs were leashed today, which was nice, if odd, to see). One walked on the left side of the trail, the other on the right, with a gap between them that again left me insufficient space to squeeze through as per social distancing recommendations. Why would you even walk like this? It would be like walking on opposite sidewalks down the street. Do they secretly hate each other? Does one of them have dog allergies? These two ended up making me alter my run.
Oh yes, the run. It was surprisingly stressful because I did not want to have to keep carefully dodging around people who could potentially be carrying COVID-19, I just wanted to run. I almost felt like stopping early to I could just get out of there. After going between the two–let’s call them “space” people–I realized that given where they were, I would have to pass between them at least two more times to complete my run. I opted to turn around early before getting to them the second time and when I got back to the entrance I was at about 4.5 km done. I ran off the trail and onto the sidewalk on North Road, figuring I’d do the last 500m by running into and through Lower Hume Park. It was then that I saw directly on the sidewalk a huge group of people. I mean, this is something I never see. It’s like they specifically appeared to induce anxiety in me. I waited a few moments for a gap in traffic, then crossed over to the empty sidewalk on the other side.
I didn’t hit 5K as soon as I would have liked, so had to turn out onto the field and finished as I ran across the baseball diamond. It felt a little weird.
The actual run itself was fine, especially given the three weeks away. My pace was 5:48/km, better than expected (though as always the river trail is more forgiving than the lake), though my BPM ticked up a bit to 166, though it’s possible my general fretting may have contributed there. I was pretty tense the whole way, only relaxing a bit during those rare moments when no one else was in sight.
I actually wished it had been raining so these people would have stayed home to watch Contagion on Netflix.
I’m not sure when I’ll run outside again. Maybe when the weather is miserable, which will ironically make me happier.
Yesterday Nic and I took a break from the pandemic to stroll around and take pictures at Burnaby Lake, roughly up to the halfway point before taking the SkyTrain back. Ironically, social distancing was far easier on the SkyTrain (virtually empty) compared to the trails at the lake, as it was sunny, mild and packed with people. And ducks. And pigeons. And poopmonsters.
Here are a few pics I took along the way with my iPhone 8. Nic’s DSLR with a telephoto lens that could double as a murder weapon took better close-ups, but hey, you work with the tools you have. These pics are still better than what my vintage 2008 digital camera could do.
Still Creek being true to its name .
Looking west over the lake, not a lilypad in sight.
Fungus in the forest.
And the obligatory duck picture taken at Piper spit:
