Trail assessment: Mostly no snow, running possible but possibly unpleasant

I went a-walking today down the Brunette River trail and counter-clockwise halfway around Burnaby Lake to Still Creek. The purpose was to see if there was still too much (damn) snow to make running infeasible.

The verdicts:

Brunette River trail: Long sections are now bare but three others feature enough snow to still span the entire width of the trail. In some cases, it’s possible to skirt along the edges and avoid the snow, in a few spots it is unavoidable.

The trail (which technically is a gravel service road) is in bad shape now, riddled with puddles and muddy, soft dirt lined with long ruts from bikes passing through. These ruts have all filled with water.

Overall this would be okay for running but not great. The last of the three snowy stretches is at the far end of the trail, an especially awkward spot.

Burnaby Lake: The first km has a few snow patches but they’re relatively short. The second km is for some reason significantly worse, with a lot of patches that are unavoidable. The remainder is almost completely bare save for the straight stretch just before getting to Still Creek, which features a somewhat avoidable stretch of snow. In all areas, the snow is slightly mushy or pliable, making it a little slippery but not treacherously so.

Overall this seems better than the Brunette River trail. I am actually mulling a run after the write-in tomorrow. Timing-wise it should work because the write-in ends at 2 and by the time I get to the lake it’s likely to be past 3 p.m, which still gives me plenty of time to run before the sun sets at 5:37 p.m. It looks to be soggy and cool with a high of 7ºC but hey, it’s not a treadmill!

Also, two days of the extended weather forecast are calling for snow overnight as temperatures drop below freezing. A third day calls for 3-7 cm of ice pellets. It’s like a parody of the weather. A very bad and unwelcome parody.

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Book review: Little Heaven

Little HeavenLittle Heaven by Nick Cutter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Little Heaven pays homage to both early Stephen King and low-budget gorefest movies of the 70s and early 80s. Rather than turn the “camera” away from a gruesome attack, pseudonymous author Nick Cutter zooms in to capture every detail. At times it seems like every other person, creature, and object in the story is “pissing blood.”

Shifting between 1966 and 1980 (the present day for the novel as written), Little Heaven tells the story of a self-styled Jim Jones who follows a voice from San Francisco into the wilderness of New Mexico to construct a religious compound where he and his followers live simple, God-fearing lives.

Except for all the monsters lurking in the woods, most of which seem to be amalgamations of various woodland creatures squashed together into multilegged, multi-headed horrors, all the better to bite, tear and create incidents of pissing blood.

In the 1966 portion, which comprises the bulk of the novel, a woman whose nephew is part of the commune hires three mercenaries/assassins to check out Little Heaven and see if the boy is okay. The three are broadly-drawn, one a black Englishman who all but “pip pip Cheerio’s” his way through the story, a feisty young woman with a sharp tongue and Roland DesChain from The Dark Tower. Whoops, I mean Micah Shugrue. A few of his rougher edges get sanded down in the 1980 part but the language and mannerisms of the character straddle a fine line between homage and rip-off. I didn’t mind that much since Roland is a terrific character to emulate, and his cadence and speech is perfect for a stoic and eminently practical sort of person.

This is old-fashioned horror through and through. The bad guys are very bad, the horrors are nigh-insanity inducing and have no small appetite for removing limbs from anyone they can catch up to, but while there are hints and suggestions, there’s ultimately no real explanation for why they exist and where they are from. They just are. I again didn’t mind this because it’s better than Cutter’s approach to the end of his novel The Deep, which overexplained to the point of undercutting much of the preceding story.

I was least fond of the 1980 section and here’s why: if you remove it in its entirety, the 1966 part still tells a complete story. The 1980 events implausibly set up a “noble sacrifice” but it’s so superfluous to the overall story that it has no emotional resonance.

The whole thing also felt longer than necessary, the equivalent of one of those low-budget gorefests running three hours. Cutting the 1980 segment would make the story tighter and, I think, better.

This is my least-favorite of the three Cutter novels I’ve read (the others being The Troop and aforementioned The Deep) but it’s still a decent read. For someone craving old school horror it may do the trick.

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Run 480: Running on a treadmill uphill (both ways)

Run 480
Average pace: 7:13/km
Location: Canada Games Pool (treadmill)
Distance: 4.38 km
Time: 31:41
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Wind: n/a
BPM: 155
Stride: n/a
Weight: 165.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 3790 km
Devices/apps: Apple Watch, iPhone (for music) and Matrix treadmill (for running)

Only four days between treadmill runs this time, though I was originally planning on using the elliptical. Alas, all of the machines were occupied and I was too impatient to wait a minute or two for someone to decide that soaking in the swirl pool beat exercise.

Instead of choosing Manual or 5K Run I went with Fat Burn, same as I choose on the elliptical. As the run progressed (inclination set to 1, speed set to 6) I felt fine…for awhile. My ankles started to feel sore again, though not as much as the previous time. But then I started to feel really tired. I mean, really weirdly tired in a way I never feel during a run.

I dialed the speed down from 6 to 5.5 and eventually all the way to 4, which is a fast walk. I pondered.

I ramped the speed up a few times after, briefly, but switched off between jogging and walking until the end and I didn’t even cheat (mostly) during the cooldown period, which slows the treadmill to a walking pace. This also explains my silly slow average pace of 7:13/km.

It was during one of the running parts when it felt very hard that it dawned on me what was happening–and how dumb I was to not realize it. The hard parts were uphill. I verified this by tapping on the incline control and saw that it was set to 3.5 instead of 1.0 as the good lord intended. Each uphill segment lasted multiple minutes, which is multiple minutes longer than I have ever done uphill running before. It also explains why my ankles were hurting. I am a lousy mountain goat.

Secure in this knowledge, I will never choose Fat Burn again. I’ll burn fat by not eating Twinkies. For treadmill runs, I’ll stick to 5Ks or manual settings in the future.

The curiously uneventful exercise bicycle workout

Tonight I decided to finally try an exercise bicycle workout at the Canada Games Pool and I’m still wondering if I did it right.

I know I did the clothing part wrong. Light running shorts do not protect your posterior when sitting on a bicycle seat for half an hour. It got a bit uncomfortable at times, but I was able to shift my tuckus just enough to stave off keister agony.

I chose the fat burn workout and it asked me to set a heart rate target and my age. It defaulted to 112 so I went with that but ended up boosting it several times, topping out at 130–which is still well below my usual BPM when running.

I had to pedal pretty fast to maintain my target but curiously the effort didn’t seem too taxing. I sweated a bit but never felt close to the burn I’ve felt when on the elliptical or treadmill. On the one hand, it was kind of nice. On the other, it didn’t seem I was getting nearly as much out of the half hour invested.

There were level buttons and I assumed they would adjust the resistance (gears, I suppose) but they only offered to change the heart rate target. Maybe next time I’ll just choose manual or quick start. Or just not use the bikes. The pleasantness of being able to sit while working out was offset by how uncomfortable the actual sitting was. I think I may actually prefer the treadmill.

Anyway, here are the minimal stats:

Time: 29:19
BPM: 127
Calories: 247

Writing group week 4: Nice weather and fewer people

Last Sunday there was a raging snowstorm outside and inside the Waves Coffee boardroom on Columbia Street, we were jammed in elbow-to-elbow for The Other 11 Months Write-in.

Today it was sunny and a balmy 10ºC (as it should be in mid-February) and only six showed up and two left early. On the one hand, fewer people is a bit of a bummer. On the other hand, I had plenty of room to stretch out in all directions. And did!

It was also a very quiet group, with church-like silence for nearly the entire three hours, save for a burst of chatter at the start and the tapping of keys throughout. At the end, several agreed it had been quite productive for them, so yay for silence.

I again continued to work through old, unfinished material, focusing today on  Weirdsmith, The Mean Mind and Road Closed. Most of the work was done on Road Closed, as I fully converted it over to Ulysses, breaking each scene out into a separate sheet.

At this point, I’m pretty much done prepping my unfinished projects and have one of two choices for the next write-in:

  1. Pick a project and resume working on it (that is, start producing new material–you know, actual writing)
  2. Start something entirely new.
  3. Bonus: Do neither of the above and just tinker for three hours again.

#3 is going to be tempting but I really need to commit to moving forward on something. Maybe I can conduct a self-poll. Or write a story about indecision. Or both. So many decisions.

Run 479: Treadmill with bonus warm water

Run 479
Average pace: 6:28/km
Location: Canada Games Pool (treadmill)
Distance: 4.56 km
Time: 29:33
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Wind: n/a
BPM: 161
Stride: n/a
Weight: 165.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 3785 km
Devices/apps: Apple Watch, iPhone (for music) and Matrix treadmill (for running)

It’s been 25 days since my last treadmill run and I can’t say I’ve missed the treadmill because I hate it. But tonight it seemed time to renew my passion for disliking it.

The run went without incident, save for forgetting to turn the fan on at the start. I’m not sure why anyone would leave the fan off, the whole place is incredibly humid, which is not really conducive to a comfortable workout, so every little bit helps. Maybe some people are fanophobes. One might say they’re not fans…of fans. Ho ho.

Anyway, I did remember my water bottle and this compensated somewhat. I still felt slow and sluggish (reflected in my pace) and curiously for the first ten minutes or so my ankles were sore, something that never bothers me when running. Odd, and another reason to hate treadmills. Once I warmed up they were fine and they feel fine now, but still, weird. And unpleasant.

I chose the “fat burn” setting and this apparently increases the elevation periodically, which would explain why the run would become much harder at seemingly random intervals. I ramped the incline down a couple of times but kept the speed mostly at 6 and leaning more toward 5.5 in the last stretch. It’s still hard to adjust settings to my natural pace. I find it works bets if I go all Zen and don’t look at the numbers and concentrate on how my legs feel. Too slow, nudge the speed up. Too fast, nudge it down. It worked a little better tonight than previously.

Overall, though, I’m really itching to run outside again. The heavy rain and mild temperatures have caused the new snow to melt fairly rapidly. The hard crusty snow underneath will take longer so I’m still not expecting anything before March, but hope, like repeated snowstorms, springs eternal.

 

The sixth elliptical and I get all klutzy

For the first time in a little over two weeks, I finally returned to the Canada Games Pool and did a half hour workout on the elliptical. Or rather I did a 27-minute workout, reached out with my right hand to adjust something or other, snagged it on the cord of my iPhone earbuds and whipped the phone out of the holder of the elliptical. It landed on the right foot pad, next to my right foot.

I immediately pressed the handy pause button on the machine, reassembled phone and earbuds and then hit the pause button again–you know, to unpause (resume) the workout. Instead, it started it over. Was I supposed to hit OK? Just start going again? (My hunch is the latter is the correct answer, as that’s how you normally begin a workout). I had about eight minutes left so started a manual workout and kept going until the watch dinged at 325 calories burned, my overall goal. I suffered no other clumsy incidents for the remainder.

I had the elliptical set to 14/12 and actually kept it at 14 the entire time, adjusting the resistance from 12 to 10 for the manual restart.

I sweated a lot and forgot my water bottle. These things are related.

It was nice to be active again. Now I must resist eating an entire cake as a reward for doing so.

And get more exercising in soon.

Stats:

Calories burned: 394 (345 active)
Time: 31:00
BPM: 156

Writing group week 3: Snow and pitches

Turnout for this week’s writing group was surprisingly high given the snowy conditions (the latest dump started midway through the writing session). As we gathered elbow to elbow around the conference table we settled into a mostly quiet session, punctuated by a few bursts of chatter over pitches for books and random advice.

One person had an iPad mini hooked up to a full-size PC keyboard. That was a little weird. The person to my left had a MacBook. I could tell just by closing my eyes and hearing how the keyboard clicked when she was typing.

For the third week in a row I bounced between projects, spending the bulk of my time converting The Mean Mind from Scrivener to Ulysses format and reading along as I went. To my surprise, it held up fairly well.

Soon I need to commit to finishing an existing project or starting a new one. When I think about trying to choose one thing to focus on I actually feel a certain level of anxiety, almost the beginning of a stress headache. Probably not a good thing.

But I will decide. Soon™.

Book review: Steve Jobs

Steve JobsSteve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What would Steve Jobs think of me waiting over five years to read his biography, patiently waiting for it to go on sale? Judging from what author Walter Isaacson writes, Jobs would probably yell at me, call me a bozo, cry and then the next day tell me how smart I was for waiting.

Or something like that.

Switching back and forth between his career at Apple (and Pixar and–briefly–at NeXT) and his personal life, Isaacson uses quotes from Jobs’ family, friends and workers, along with a generous supply of quotes from Jobs himself gathered from numerous interviews to assemble a portrait of a driven, intense man who apparently had none of the inhibitions or controls that keep most people at least relatively polite. Jobs would hurl insults and blast designs, products and people alike when he saw them as lacking. He analyzed others with an unsympathetic eye and then used his relentless verbal assaults to demand what he wanted–and often got great results.

But not always.

The quest for perfect design and end-to-end control of products led him and Apple to create amazing and well-crafted consumer devices–the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPad and the iPhone. But the same forces that drove him to be so demanding also blinded him to stick with designs that didn’t work (hello, original iMac mouse), to be needlessly cruel to employees and create distance with members of his own family.

He indulged in offbeat diets–long fasts, periods of eating just a single type of fruit, while also eschewing personal hygiene, believing that the diets would keep his body clean and pure. How he could not detect his own body odor after not showering for weeks at a time is perhaps an example of the “reality distortion field” he projected, even on himself.

It was his devotion to odd diets and alternative medicine that delayed proper treatment on his cancer for nine long months and ultimately contributed to his death at 56.

Isaacson portrays Jobs as a genius but also an immensely flawed person, often correcting assertions Jobs makes in the interviews spread throughout the book. In the end, I was left with a picture of Jobs as someone who had an excellent eye for design, an almost insane drive for perfection and both the charisma and chutzpah to woo and wallop people as he saw fit (and he often wooed and walloped the same person, sometimes on the same day). Any admiration you might have is tempered by his often odious personality.

One disappointment with the biography is how it ends. There is a coda that lets Jobs speak about his legacy in his own words and a list of his achievements but, perhaps because the book was rushed to press shortly after his death, there is little that touches on his final days or the events and reactions following his death. In that sense, the biography feels a bit incomplete.

Still, this lengthy examination of Jobs’ life presents a vivid portrait of a distinct personality and how that personality forged one company into a massive success by fully engaging on his strengths. Some at Apple–notably Tim Cook–claim that the treatment of Jobs here is unfair and inaccurate and there is a sense that a certain amount of cherry-picking to highlight the narrative is taking place, but at the same time it’s clear that Isaacson is on the mark on all the major aspects of Jobs.

Recommended.

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January 2017 list: A bad month for jogging and humanity

Here’s an incomplete list of things that sucked in January 2017:

  • snow on New Year’s Eve that added to existing snow and has persisted through the entire month on the trails where I run, making jogging possible only if I include slipping, falling and fracturing bones
  • the mailbox in the building got broken into (on a Sunday when there’s the least amount of mail to steal) and it’s been out of commission for real mail (they’re still delivering junk mail, yay) for a few weeks, with replacement locks that may not be installed until as late as mid-February
  • I only lost 1.7 pounds. Better than gaining but still a bit disappointing
  • everything Donald Trump did in his first 11 days in office. After only eight days he had a negative approval rating and has lived up to every sensible person’s worst fears. A thoroughly awful person and a terrible, awful president. Shame on everyone who cast a vote for this vile excuse for a man
  • there’s more but after Trump, meh

January 2017 weight loss report: Down 1.7 pounds

This year I set a weight goal of 145 pounds. On January 1st I weighed 165.9 pounds, meaning I have nearly 21 pounds to lose. Yikes. Here’s where I’m at after the first month:

January 1: 165.9 pounds
January 31: 164.2 pounds

Weight loss: -1.7 pounds

Not bad but I’d technically miss my goal–at this pace, I’d be 145.5 pounds by December. Clearly, I need to step up the exercise, cut down the snacking or ideally both. I am making progress, though not being able to jog outside yet is cramping my exercise style. I only had two donuts the entire month, though! My goal for February is to go donut-free. And lose more than two pounds.

Writing group week 2: Now with different tea and less battery

I went to my second The Oher 11 Months write-in today and was better prepared for the weather, which was very wet (I say yes to this as I hope it can eradicate the last of the damn snow).

Once inside I asked for the same Chai tea I had last time. Every time I go to a coffee place and order a tea I always get asked if I want a tea latte and have to say no, just tea, with a teabag, in hot water, like people have enjoyed for thousands of years. If I wanted a tea latte I would order a tea latte, not a tea. But still they ask.

They asked again today. I confirmed I wanted tea, not a tea latte, but the girl at the counter was confused by my request for Chai, acting as if it never existed. Rather than go on about how I got it with no fuss last week, I just ordered English Breakfast and pretended I was in London.

When I went into the meeting room, a discussion took place over the various size cups we had, with the conclusion being that although only two sizes are listed on the menu (Regular and ‘Waves’–how twee) there are in fact more sizes and their purpose is to sow confusion, because we couldn’t come up with anything better.

When I settled in and opened the lid of my MacBook Pro I discovered the battery was at 68%. This was odd as I had left it plugged in and charging and I’m pretty sure the ten minutes to get to Waves would not drain 32% of the battery. I then remembered I had applied a hefty update and in moving the Mac to its usual spot I may have jiggled the USB-C cable just loose enough to have it stop feeding power. Even so, having it lose 32% of its battery over three days is not very reassuring. I easily got through the writing session, though, as the three hours only consumes about 25% battery.

I’m still not sold on the new low-travel keyboard, either. I’m close to saying Apple made a flat-out mistake with it. It’s simply not that comfortable to type on. It feels like banging your fingers on a table because there’s so little give. And it’s noisy for a laptop keyboard. Apple’s obsession with thin is starting to bump up against keeping things comfortable and practical.

As for my actual writing, I did a repeat of last week, bouncing between projects, re-reading and tweaking and moving a few more into Ulysses. I then wanted to look at the corkboard I made for Rainy Day. This is a feature of Scrivener, so I downloaded the program and was pleasantly surprised that it automatically registered and activated itself (kind of spooky, really). The pleasant surprise was replaced by an unpleasant one when the program kept repeatedly crashing, making it utterly useless. I didn’t want to waste my time troubleshooting at the write-in so I just left it.

This is far from the first time I’ve had issues with Scrivener and it’s not been platform-specific, either, as problems have happened in Windows and macOS, even when keeping the projects relegated to one platform to reduce the chance of error. I’m pretty close to being done with it. It’s a nice tool but seems in need of a complete rewrite (which sounds like it may be coming, more or less, though when is another question).

In the end I probably read more than I wrote and it’s been a bit frustrating to not fully commit to one thing to work on–a three-hour block is a huge amount of time to get a lot done–but I will keep going and hopefully something will stick. My goal in the next week is to resume doing prompts to help grease the writing wheels.

And maybe start looking for another laptop…