The first April treadmill run, 2019 edition

Back to the treadmill today, though the weather turned out to be unexpectedly decent, so a run outside would have worked, too.

My goals were the same as last time–maintain pace, hope for no issues, finish with a nice BPM. And I hit all three, woo.

I goofed a bit on the tracking, letting the timer run (ho ho) for over a minute into my cooldown (walking) phase, so my average pace was officially 6:19/km. Using my primitive caveman math skills to eliminate this part of the run, my overall pace was actually closer to 6:12/km, so pretty much identical to the last treadmill run. My BPM was down slightly, as well, to 153.

No issues encountered throughout, it was just a nice, steady run.

The stats, slightly skewed by the aforementioned extra time:

Distance: 4.18 km (4.01)
Time: 26:25 (24:50) 
Average pace: 6:12/km (6:11/km)
BPM: 153 (155)
Calories: 314 (283)
Total treadmill distance: 42.72 km

Round Balls No. 12 clone found!

I came across another page of The Ever Continuing Saga of the Round Balls, this one from June 1986. It claims to be No. 12, making it the second unfinished No. 12 out there. I can’t even blame a printing error on this one. Maybe I lost the other one and started over.

This Round Balls comic is noteworthy for the fact that the Round Balls do not actually appear in it. I’m not sure where I was going with this one, but I do like the stick man. He seems very business-like.

I thought I was very hip at the time by dissing on both Nancy and Doonesbury.

Good news in reading!

It finally appears that Kobo has stopped recommending books by Bentley Little to me.

I have nothing personal against Little. He’s a prolific, award-winning horror author. I’m sure he’s a very nice man. Or maybe he’s a monster. I don’t actually know.

What I do know is that I read his book The Store and did not like it. I rated it one star, both in my Goodreads review and on the Kobo site itself. I almost never rate books on the Kobo site.

But because I had purchased the book on Kobo, it kept recommending his other books. As I mentioned, he is a prolific author, so he has a lot of other books that can be recommended. Perhaps I would like one of them, maybe even several. It doesn’t matter, because the one I did read I DID NOT LIKE AT ALL. This killed all interest in experimenting further with Mr. Little’s oeuvre.

If I am wrong, then I feel an apology of sorts is owed to Mr. Little. I mean, on Kobo, The Store has an average rating of four stars. But even if I am wrong, I am still entirely content to never read one of his books again because The Store was so very not to my liking.

And the good news here is that I have now purchased and read enough books to finally push Little off my recommended reading list on Kobo. The moral of the story is, obviously, capitalism works. Buy buy buy and it will all work out in the end.

The Store is currently available on Kobo for the low price of $6.99.

Why do people suck?

I think about this sometimes, but not often and not in any great depth, because it’s incredibly, horribly depressing.

But when I do, I wonder, what is the default nature of people? Are we inherently generous or inherently selfish? The latter seems better-suited to survival, but since humans are also social, the former would seem to be necessary, too. The general attitude of “I got mine!” would appear to be self-defeating over the long term.

Are we maybe both generous and selfish and these values shift, they ebb and flow over generations, swinging one way, then the other? Does the key to our continued progress–however slow it may seem at times–lie in never swinging too far toward selfish?

I don’t know. All I do know is Trump still hasn’t been kidnapped by Bigfoot, so something is obviously wrong.

My only answer is to be nice to people and hope that due to the butterfly effect, everything will work out A-OK! Somehow.

My one day Compass wristband adventure

Translink, the local transit authority, offers a wristband that allows you to tap in and out of buses, the SkyTrain and other transit-y things. I decided to get one but because you can’t transfer funds between Compass cards (or bands) without visiting one of their two customer service locations, I had to wait till the start of the month (this one, April) to put my usual two-zone pass on the band.

This worked as expected and I was set for my morning commute.

I tapped in at Sapperton station. Success. Hooray for technology!

I tapped out at Waterfront station. Success. Hooray again.

I tapped in at the Canada Line Waterfront station. Success yet again. Smiles all around. No more fumbling to get a card out of my wallet. All I had to do now was deftly(ish) flick my wrist at the fare gate and I was set.

But when I arrived at the Langara-49th Ave station, things changed. For the first time in my commute I had someone right behind me as I tapped out. This, of course, was when the wristband failed to work and I got the “LOL Try again!” message. But before I could try a second time, the guy behind me tapped his card. Why he did this, I don’t know. Morning brain? Inability to read? I mean, the message was obviously not for him, as he hadn’t tapped yet.

I was thus unable to tap out. I took note of this, as I’d have to call customer support and have them fix the missed tap out.

I wanted to confirm my suspicions online, but the Compass site was crushed by the first-day-of-the-month traffic and I was not able to get on. Then I left work early due to a weird fire/police situation (see other post for more). Sure enough when I got to the station and tapped, I got an “Insufficient fare” message. I used my Visa card to tap in and tap out downtown, which worked fine, but cost me money I shouldn’t have had to pay.

I went to the customer service at Stadium station and the woman who helped was very nice and switched the stored value of the band back to the card, then, because it wouldn’t process immediately, she gave me a two-zone pass to get me home. Which it did.

When I checked tonight, my Compass card is again showing the two-zone pass and the band is showing $0.

The reasons I didn’t just get the charge fixed and otherwise keep using the wristband are as follows:

  • It’s actually a little awkward to use the band. The area you need to tap is clearly meant for a card you’re holding in your hand. If you could embed the band in your palm it would work a lot better, plus be futuristic and also gross. If the tap area was on the side of the game as you walked through, it would work great with no surgical implants necessary.
  • This happened on my very first trip. It seemed an omen. If it had happened a week in, I would have shrugged it off.
  • I can see this happening again. Because the band is more fiddly to tap and because I travel during rush hour and often have people both ahead and behind me at the fare gates, it’s quite possible the same situation of “tap failed, next person taps before I can retry” could occur again. And again. I was wearing a jacket today, which probably contributed to Mr. Tap Happy’s confusion, as he never actually saw what I was tapping with. When people are rushing through fare gates, they are not really paying attention to much more than MUST TAP AND GET THROUGH.

So I’m back to fishing the card out of my wallet, which is inconvenient, but generally reliable. Maybe I’ll move it to a pocket or something and just hope I never lose it. Or maybe I can find a time travel machine and go into the past and make sure the fare gates never get installed.

Or maybe one day they’ll have the gates automatically detect payment without you having to do anything but walk through them. That would be nice. And probably impossible for another hundred years.

But at least I tried. And I kept the band, just in case.

Run 604: Now with less beating and more naked chests

Run 604
Average pace: 6:10/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 12:46 pm
Distance: 5:02 km
Time: 31:01
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 15-17ºC
Humidity: 46%
Wind: moderate
BPM: 157
Weight: 167.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 4600 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 2, iPhone 8

A week between runs and I headed back to the lake, opting to run clockwise. It was a little breezier and warmer, with the temperature more like early summer by the end of the run at 17ºC.

My plan was the same as last week–to go slow and steady, to not push and to keep the heart rate down. I did start to push a little in the last km–sometimes it’s hard to stop yourself–but a stitch in the gut made it easy to pull back. I finished the run exactly ten seconds slower than last week, but more importantly, my BPM went from 163 to 157, matching my last treadmill run, so things are definitely improving. If I can maintain this, I’ll slowly start pushing again, but I am literally in no rush. My mantra this year is to run regularly and run carefully.

To that end I actually did a few stretches before the run. They didn’t seem to have much effect, but the important thing is I stretched and I may stretch again and all the stretching will pay off down the road (or trail).

Also, I saw four (!) guys running shirtless today, which may possibly be peak shirtless for the year–and it’s still March. This is very weird, yet delightful.

Dogs and other pedestrians were no issue and overall, conditions were quite nice. Nearly ideal, in fact. I am pleased with the final result.

I also hit a semi-official milestone tonight, reaching 4,600 km run in total. The actual number is higher because I started tracking after I had been running for a few months, but, like in horseshoes, it’s close enough to count. That I started running at 44 and have kept it up every rear for the last ten years is a nice achievement in itself. I’d clap myself on the back if it weren’t so awkward to do.