Odd because I usually finish strong, but the last workout was the opposite and today, I felt for sure I finished stronger on the last km but was in fact slower.
I have no explanation for this.
But I did sweat a lot. And I am two for two on my 30 minutes of exercise each day thing, so that’s good.
The stats are mostly worse than yesterday, though. Bluh, I sez.
Speed: 6.5 km/h (6.0)
Incline: 10
Pace: 9:44/km (9:41 km/h)
Time: 30:04 (30:03)
Distance: 3.08 km (3.10 km)
Calories burned: 311 (300)
BPM: 145 (140)
Starting, let’s say…today, I am committing to a 30-minute workout every day. Yes, all seven of them, every day that ends in “day.” That workout could be any of the following:
treadmill walk
treadmill run
outdoor walk
outdoor run
30 minutes of pushups. Actually, this would probably cripple me.
Today I did a 30-minute treadmill walk. It went fine, though I actually got slower as the walk progressed, which is the opposite of what usually happens. I don’t have any particular explanation for this.
The stats are all slightly worse than the previous walk, except for BPM, which was down a wee bit due to me not trying as hard. Maybe I was weighed down by the ravioli I ate last night.
It was good ravioli.
Speed: 6.5 km/h (6.0)
Incline: 10
Pace: 9:41/km (9:34 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30:05)
Distance: 3.10 km (3.14 km)
Calories burned: 300 (321)
BPM: 140 (143)
As happens sometimes, I went to watch a video on YouTube and found myself going down the rabbit hole, bouncing from one video to the next and there goes an hour of time in what feels like seconds.
It started with watching a live version of “Live and Let Die” from 2009, followed by the opening credits version, then another live version from 1973. The song was a big hit, but I’m still surprised because structurally it’s a bit odd, with no traditional verse/chorus and several sudden shifts in tone (which McCartney was known for, especially in his early 70s songs).
This eventually, somehow, led to an “uncensored” version of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” I love just about everything about this song: it’s catchy, evocative, haunting, it’s great fun to sing along with (“You too can be Eddie Vedder!”) and the video, which won MTV’s Video of the Year award in 1992, is equally effective, due to the young actor playing Jeremy, the striking art direction and, of course, the ever-intense Vedder howling away, veins on his forehead bulging.
I figured the uncensored part was the line “seemed a harmless little fuck” because MTV generally did not allow f-bombs to be dropped on air. But it turned out to be a mere second of footage right near the end, where Jeremy walks into the classroom, tosses an apple to the teacher, then turns to face his classmates. You see him make a motion as if he is raising a gun, then the shot cuts away to show the other children in tableau, with looks of shock and horror on their faces, many of them splattered in blood.
Some took this to mean Jeremy had shot up the room, but the uncensored version, in that one second of previously unseen footage, shows him raising the gun and putting it in his mouth. It’s quite chilling, and while I always thought that’s what happened, it was still stunning to see it. I get why MTV would not air it–probably out of fear of inspiring troubled kids to emulate Jeremy–but it’s good to see Pearl Jam finally make the original version of the video widely available. Its message of bullying, depression and suicide are probably more relevant now than they’ve ever been.
A sad coda in the comments (I know, never read the comments, but the ones I read are surprisingly decent) notes that the actor who played Jeremy died in a drowning accident in 2016 at the age of 36. The band went to his funeral.
I did another lunchtime walk on the treadmill. Nothing unusual to report. I reverted to the 6.5 speed setting and did not collapse into a ball. I sweated decently.
The pi was achieved by covering 3.14 km. Mmm, pi…
The increased speed increased also increased all my stats, including BPM, though not to an alarming degree. This is closer to my usual treadmill workouts, which is nice to see in my current flabbo state.
The stats:
Speed: 6.5 km/h (6.0)
Incline: 10
Pace: 9:34/km (9:54 km/h)
Time: 30:05 (30:04)
Distance: 3.14 km (3.04 km)
Calories burned: 321 (272)
BPM: 143 (136)
I uncovered a pile of old photos from the olden days and have started scanning a few of them in to share with the world of the future.
I am impressed at how lousy image quality was back then.
This photo was taken in the hallway of the house I grew up in on St. Julian Street. I have no idea why we were sitting on the floor of the hallway getting our picture taken, but we seemed pretty happy about it.
The guy with the amazing bangs to my left is Claudio, a childhood friend who lived a few houses down. His father made endless wheels of stinky cheese in the basement of their house that was the best cheese ever.
I have no pictures of the cheese, sorry.
I believe I was about 12 in this photo and, like so many from that era, I am wearing a shirt with numbers because I had a weird thing for them that I still can’t explain.
A day after doing a 5K run and a lot of walking for the first time in more than two months I decided (with it raining outside) to get at least a little exercise by going on the treadmill for a 30 minute workout at the more causal speed setting of 6 (bumped to 6.5 for the last five minutes).
Every muscle that had been worked yesterday screamed. Then they eventually stopped screaming. By the end I was feeling tired (I had been feeling sore and tired all morning and wanted to nap, not work out).
Overall, it was not too bad an effort and shouldn’t contribute much to even more soreness in the days ahead. I am going to try to hit the treadmill more often at noon, either walking or running, when the weather is not nice, to insure I get a little exercise every day. It won’t make me shed pounds, but it will help keep me a little healthier. Plus, it keeps my AirPods from getting lonely.
The stats (previous workout in brackets). As befits my current flabby state, BPM was a bit higher and pace was a bit slower, but nothing too egregious.
Speed: 6.0 km/h (6.5 km/h for last five minutes)
Incline: 10
Pace: 9:54/km (9:47 km/h)
Time: 30:04 (30:04)
Distance: 3.04 km (3.07 km)
Calories burned: 272 (251)
BPM: 136 (132)
Today a lot of media sites are participating in support of an initiative, using the hashtags #TheShowMustBePaused and #BlackLivesMatter (not without some unintended consequences).
Here’s what you’ll see if you access Apple music right now, for example:
This is in response to the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by members of the Minneapolis Police force. Since word of the killing, complete with footage, came out on Monday, protests have formed around the world and particularly across the United States. Most have been peaceful, some have been violent, some have been infiltrated by white interlopers looking to make the peaceful protesters look bad by association with their destructive actions.
These protests against police brutality have been rife with even more police brutality, with people doing nothing at all being attacked, teargassed, and beaten. Journalists are being violently attacked. It is disgusting and lays bare just how perverted the police forces in the U.S. have become, interested more in oppression and violence than actually protecting people, especially when it comes to anyone whose skin color is not white.
I am a white man, about as privileged as can be. I am a member of a minority, but it is an essentially invisible one. Most people won’t know I’m gay unless I specifically mention it, or, I don’t know, wear nothing but Pride-themed clothing. But I am very obviously a white guy. I cannot conceive of the things black people must go through in the U.S.–or even in Canada, which has yet to exorcise its own racist demons. It fills me with anger and despair that people can so thoroughly let themselves be subsumed by hate in service of power and authority, of feeling superior to others.
And in the U.S. they are aided and encouraged by a terrible monster of a man, Donald Trump, who is leading the destruction of the country, lashing out and inciting from the basement of the White House, the windows dark at night as he huddles in safety deep below ground, a fitting place for an unrepentant troll.
The Verge has a story today on how Twitter and Facebook should just ban people like Trump, because their tweets and posts are fomenting hate and division, and getting people killed. I agree. This is just one story of many you can find like it on the web right now, but marvel at how a tech site–a place where you go to read about gadgets and reviews of MacBooks–feels compelled to publish an editorial like this. This is the world we live in now.
