The last week or so of June has seen a ridge of high pressure over the area, with mainly sunny skies and highs ranging from 21 to 30 degrees, all above seasonal averages. I know we’ll pay for this somehow with something like two weeks of hail in July, but it’s been a pretty nice start to summer 2017. I actually saw bikes on the Brunette River trail kicking up dust with their tires instead of mud. It was weird.
News*: Trump is still a boorish, vulgar idiot
[tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/880408582310776832]
[tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/880410114456465411]
This is the President of the United States. You know, the person more than 62 million people voted for. The bar for acceptable, respectable behavior by a president is now so low it is below ground. It will be generations before the presidency recovers from this thin-skinned, dull-witted infantile blowhard, if it ever recovers at all. I’m not sure it will.
And good job, too, to the Republicans who will stand by and say nothing–or even defend him–as they go about their work of dismantling the United States to better serve the rich few at the top.
I used to think this lazy, ignorant man might resign because the presidency is hard work. I never imagined he’d just not do the work (and what little he actually does is borderline incompetent most of the time. The rest of the time it’s just plain incompetent).
* haha, not really news
Amusing cat image, bonus June 2017 edition
Cat hotel:
June 2017 weight loss report: Down one pound
Here”s this month’s weight loss (?) report:
June 1: 164.4 pounds
June 30: 163.4 pounds
For a weight loss (!) of exactly one pound. Not exactly a staggering amount but still down for the month and continuing the downward trend started in May.
For the first half of the year I have gone from 165.9 to 163.4 pounds. That’s 2.5 pounds, which is pretty so-so. The good news is most of that has actually happened in the last two months, so the weight loss is accelerating. Yay.
And body fat for the first half of the year:
January 1: 19.1% (31.7 pounds of fat)
June 30: 17.2% (28.3 pounds of fat)
Down a not-bad 1.9%/3.4 pounds of fat. No wonder I feel slightly lighter when running.*
* I wish I could actually feel the difference
Run 504: Now with carbon steel legs
Run 504
Average pace: 5:23/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 6:52 pm
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 27:09
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 25ºC
Humidity: 46%
Wind: light
BPM: 154
Weight: 164.9 pounds
Total distance to date: 3914 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
I ran a strange new variation of the river trail tonight, walking to the midway point, then running to the end (west), all the way back (east), returning to the midway point, then heading back to the start (east again). I did this mainly to avoid having to run past a large cluster of kids smoking some of that wacky tabacky.
The first few hundred meters were weird. It was warm and seemed more humid than it really was. I had some difficulty getting a regular breathing rhythm going. I even had a few moments where I wondered if I could even complete the 5K at all. I settled in not long after, but continued to feel the effort for most of the run.
As it turns out, this was because I was running much faster than I have been of late, coming in at a reasonably peppy 5:23/km, a full 14 seconds better than Tuesday’s (admittedly longer) run. It felt like the second km was much stronger than usual and that turned out to be the case. The first km was 5:19/km and the second km was only one second behind at 5:20. The last km was 5:18–the fastest–but overall this was my most consistent run in a fair while. Even my BPM was lower at 154.
The right heel felt a bit sore today but for the run it behaved and was not a factor.
The inevitable off-leash dogs behaved themselves. Cyclists provided a wide berth. All in all, a good run.
Writing prompt: The Burn (Part 1)
Prompt from Creative Writing Prompts:
After I nearly burnt down my house, my garage, and most of the trees in a five mile radius, I mostly stopped trying to light fires.
The Burn
After I nearly burnt down my house, my garage, and most of the trees in a five mile radius, I mostly stopped trying to light fires.
But mostly stopped is not the same as stopped. I was being driven by a man who showed up at my front door every other evening. He would knock once, softly, when he knew everyone else would be asleep, everyone but me. I’d open the door and he would stand there in shadow, a hat pulled low to further hide his face. The dark of the night seemed to not just surround him but infuse him.
Each visit he handed me a box of matches with simple instructions: light each match and toss it aside when it got close to burning my fingers. Do this until all the matches were gone before the next visit in two days’ time.
I had no idea who this man was or what purpose these odd bits of pseudo-arson would achieve, but it didn’t matter because he said if I didn’t go through the box by the next visit he would make sure those I loved would burn as the matches should have.
It occurred to me the guy might just be a crank but was I willing to risk the safety of my family to prove it? I was not.
I was on the third box of matches when I became aware of their control. Each time I took out one of the wooden matchsticks and scraped its head against the side of the box, the spark and smoke and flame did something to me. I could have just gone down the street and lit the full box of matches over a sewer grate and safely met the terms of the “deal” and yet I couldn’t. I was compelled to light each match in the worst possible place and release it only when the guttering flame threatened to burn the skin of my fingers.
When the man arrived late at night with the fourth box of matches, I asked him why I had to do this.
“Some men just want to watch the world burn,” he said.
I told him that was a line from the 2008 film The Dark Knight uttered by Alfred the butler, his summation of The Joker’s motivations. And that since then it had become a popular internet meme. And was pretty dumb, as memes go.
I expected him to step forward into the light of the front step and reveal himself to be wearing full Joker make-up. Instead he just shrugged a little.
I took a match out of the box and lit it. The man took a small step back, as if he was afraid of it. That seemed weird. I held the match before him, saying there was nothing like an early start. Then I flicked the match at him, its spell over me seemingly inert.
For a moment I saw the soft brown leather of the man’s jacket illuminated by the orange glow of the match, then, as it struck, the man’s jacket exploded into flame. When I say exploded, I mean that quite literally–the force blew me back against the front door. When I staggered forward the man was gone, nothing but ash and some ragged strips of clothing in his place.
I considered the box of matches and nearly pitched them onto the street. Instead I kept them and took them with me to the bedroom, placing them on my nightstand before quietly slipping under the covers, hoping my partner would not stir. I fell asleep with surprising ease and if I dreamed, I did not remember them.
[to be continued]
Run 503: The triumph of lead legs
Run 503
Average pace: 5:37/km
Location: Brunette River trail and Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 6:26 pm
Distance: 7.03 km
Time: 39:36
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 20ºC
Humidity: 52%
Wind: light
BPM: 158
Weight: 164.1 pounds
Total distance to date: 3909 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
I had some extra time to run tonight so I decided to do a combined river/lake run for a total of 7K. I hit the 7 km mark at a very convenient point, too, just a few steps off the bridge at Still Creek. That will make it easy peasy to compare future runs of the same distance.
The first leg (ho ho) of the run I felt a bit slow but not too bad (though the first km was a lot better than I’d have guessed at 5:09/km) but once I hit the lake trail my legs once again turned to lead-like things and the slog was on. Fortunately the last few km I got a second wind and felt more peppy. My average pace was 5:37/km, which is actually better than my 5K on Saturday so yay for that. My BPM was lower, too, at 158.
Even the feet were well-behaved, with the right heel pretty much a non-factor. I think it may actually be starting to heal up or something.
The trails were surprisingly quiet, the lake especially, with few pedestrians or runners encountered. It was a little strange, given how pleasant the weather was. But nice.
Overall, I’m pleased with tonight’s run. It could have been faster and I felt like I was struggling at times but I got through, felt fine at the end and bettered my previous (shorter) run.
Book review: Descent
Descent by Tim Johnston
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I found Descent well-written in terms of the actual prose–it is even lyrical at times–but the characters are relentlessly grim and worse, uninteresting. The story tends to plod and nearly everyone talks the same way, with the exact same–and I do mean exact same–speech affectations.
This is a simple story. A family vacationing in the mountains and already beset with issues like an unfaithful husband, faces the tragic loss of their 18 year old daughter after she is abducted by a man high up on an isolated mountain road while she is running. Her younger brother, accompanying her on bike, is struck by the vehicle of the man and left at the side of the road, injured and unable to help. The next few years play out with the husband and son looking for the daughter while the wife voluntarily checks herself into a hospital (and mostly out of the story) because she can’t bear it.
This novel could also be called Grim Men Who Smoke and Talk Like Parrots because these guys are completely devoid of humor (the occasional “jokes” they make are greeted with all the delight of witnessing a stillbirth), smoke relentlessly (but always thoughtfully blowing the smoke away from the non-smokers) and go about their daily lives with jaws set tight, all the better to clench their cigarettes.
The author abruptly chooses to refer to Sean, the aforementioned son, as simply “the boy” partway through the story and at first I thought it was meant to be a metaphor for how the guy was simply not growing into a man. Indeed, by the time he is 18 he is still making foolish, impulsive decisions that imperil his safety. But then he suddenly becomes Sean again in one scene, then reverts back to “the boy” and eventually to Sean yet again, so instead of a metaphor the whole thing ends up feeling more like a continuity error.
And while Johnston does write elegant, if occasionally overwrought, prose when describing the mountain scenery or the bleakness of a small town or a farm scoured by the weather, the dialogue spoken by nearly every character goes well beyond literary license (that whole “people don’t talk like this in real life, but real life talk in a novel would be awful” thing) to the point of absurdity and worse, utter predictability. It almost starts to feel like self-parody.
An example exchange might go like this:
“I thought of something about life.”
“You thought of something about life?”
“Yeah.”
They both drew deep on their cigarettes, exhaling into the wind.
Or:
“There’s four ways to skin a cat.”
“What are they?”
“What?”
“What are the four ways to skin a cat?”
He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke off to the side. “I’m not sure, really. I thought I knew.”
Or:
“That horse looks like it’s going to buck that man.”
“That horse looks like it’s going to buck that man?”
“I think so. I don’t know.” He lit another cigarette, tossing the stub of the last one on top of the other two hundred piled around his feet.
Also, while the men are off finding themselves on long, rambling road trips and getting into fights and drinking and smoking, the women in the story–few as they are–exist only as props and scenery and victims. The mother checks out early and returns only at the end, to no real effect, just another prop for the men to work with. The daughter, Caitlin, has some actual spark, but is kidnapped early and subjected to misery thereafter (there’s a pun there for people who have read a certain King novel of the same name).
Overall, I found the whole thing a bit shapeless. I’m all for a good family drama (the suspense here is definitely not the draw) but the characters aren’t that compelling, mainly because of the incredibly small set of emotions each has. They are so detached and wooden–even when supposedly acting out in passion–that you come to expect woodpeckers to alight on their heads and start going to town.
I suppose if you find the idea of watching the slow-motion lives of incredibly dour men play out while some out-of-left-field set of coincidences actually lead to the story wrapping up, you might find interest in this. I can’t say I regret reading Descent, exactly, but it was a ponderous thing.
Run 502: In before the Africa hot
Run 502
Average pace: 5:40/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 9:21 am
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:36
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 21-23ºC
Humidity: 44%
Wind: light
BPM: 163
Weight: 166.2 pounds
Total distance to date: 3902 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
The forecast high for today was 31ºC, which is not only Africa hot, it’s especially hot for June. It’s also way hotter than I like for running. I’m not planning on doing a desert marathon so I’m good with running under milder conditions.
My plan was to get out earlier so I could finish my run while the temperature was still bearable. I headed out around 8:45 a.m. and started the run at 9:21. It was already 21ºC and rose to 23ºC over the run but that’s a fair bit better than 30 or 31.
And I still saw someone running in a jacket.
I felt a lot more energetic today compared to Thursday and this was reflected in the first km, by far my fastest (5:18/km). But I bogged down over the next two km and by the fourth felt a bit like a baked potato, my energy leaking out like a slowly-deflating balloon wearing jogging shorts.
It was around that point that I opted to stick to 5K instead of pushing to 7K. On the one hand I kind of regret not going farther because the temperature only rose a few more degrees (it’s since gone up to 28 now that it’s past noon) but there are times when you know it’s better to listen to the signals your body is giving you and this seemed like one of them.
My pace did improve in the last few km, so overall it was a mediocre-ish 5:40/km.
The trail was not too busy, just a few small groups of walkers and the occasional over-dressed jogger.
Weirdly, I’m almost tempted to go back tomorrow to try a 7K. I’d have to get up super-early to do it before the writing group, though, and the odds of that are…not great.
Run 501: The first 7K of 2017 with bonus very slow
Run 501
Average pace: 5:52/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 9:44 am
Distance: 7.03 km
Time: 41:23
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 18ºC
Humidity: 52%
Wind: light
BPM: 163
Weight: 166.2 pounds
Total distance to date: 3897 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
My stomach was not feeling quite right so I ended up not going into work today. After getting up things seemed okay so I thought I’d risk getting the run out of the way in the morning so I could spend the rest of the day working on my couch potato skills.
When I got to Burnaby Lake I had to use the Jiffy Potty. I think it’s called that because you don’t want to linger. I mean, you really don’t. This was somewhat ominous but I ended up being fine during the run, though the stomach/innards protested a few times on the walk home.
Despite a quite early start for me at 9:44 am the temperature still rose quickly and it was 18ºC for most of the run. Not too hot, though in mid-morning it somehow feels hotter. My plan was to set for a 5K but push out to a 7K if I felt up for it.
I started slow, even slower than normal for a lake run. I felt off. Not bad per se, and the right heel actually behaved itself nicely, but the energy clearly wasn’t there. At times my legs felt like lead poles. The fifth km was actually my fastest, which is rather unusual.
The GPS tracking of the iPhone also was off. I started at the 0K marker and ran the regular loop, skipping the side trails. As I passed the 1K marker I checked the watch and it reported 0.91 km. At the 5K marker it reported 4.78 km.
I’m going to try a few runs without the iPhone, which will force the Apple Watch to use its built-in GPS. I’ll be interested to see how it compares. The iPhone is over two and a half years old so it’s probably self-destructing with the hope of being upgraded to the fancy models Apple will reveal in September.
Back to the run, I felt good enough at 5K to press on and managed 7K without any complications. I’m sure I could have gone farther still, but 7K is good for now.
Other than the pace being sluggish the run went decently otherwise. My BPM was not too high, sweating was minimal and the trail wasn’t festooned with lots of people due to the early weekday hour. It was nice. Not that I hate people, I just prefer having the entire trail to myself.
One guy passed me at about the 3K mark, he said hello as he went by. He seemed nice. I didn’t mind him being faster as I know I’m well off peak condition. He disappeared after a couple of km so he either turned off the trail, got kidnapped by a bear or fell through a hole in the time/space continuum.
My next run is on Saturday and the forecast is mucho hot–30ºC! I’ll either try to run early or late, though earlier is probably the better choice. I’m aiming for another 7K. It’ll be fun! Fun-ish!
The first day of summer, 2017: Perfectly cromulent
Today is officially the first day of summer and it defied expectations, given the weather we’ve seen so far this year. Rather than raining brimstone and fire or perhaps just letting loose with another monsoon, the day instead was a bit breezy but pleasant, with clear skies, sun and temperatures hovering just under 20ºC–right around seasonal.
It was kind of weird.
I took advantage by actually going for a walk at lunch. I admit I have a motive other than enjoying the nice weather, and that is a renewed effort to get the rest of the flab off me.
On that note, I make a solemn vow now: No more Goldfish crackers. These are like year-round shortbread for me. They are small and tasty and so it’s easy to eat five or ten or 5,000 of them before you know it.
No more.
Begone, Goldfish! You will be a lightly-salted memory from now on. As soon as I finish this bag, that is.
There’s no need to be wasteful, after all.
But anyway, the first day of summer was pretty nice.
Run 500: I’ve done 500 of these things? Yoinks!
Run 500
Average pace: 5:32/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 7:04 pm
Distance: 5.04 km
Time: 27:54
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 21ºC
Humidity: 47%
Wind: light
BPM: 160
Weight: 166.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 3890 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
I completely forgot this was run #500. Go me!
As runs go, it was better than Saturday’s pace by eight seconds–pretty good–but three seconds slower than the last river run, which is okay since three seconds is no big deal.
I again seemed to slip into a reasonable pace and didn’t budge from it until I gently put on the gas for the last few hundred meters. I didn’t see a massive collapse in the second km like on Saturday, just a more typical fall-off. Unlike the last few runs, the first km was actually the fastest at 5:20/km vs. 5:22/km for the last km.
My right heel and right foot in general felt a bit sore. Nothing painful, just painfully annoying. I don’t think it affected my pace but maybe it did, even if only a little. Toward the end of the run I was able to finally put the foot out of my mind. Er.
On the other…leg…the left knee behaved itself for the entire run. Hooray.
And now in celebration of run #500, a statistic:
I have run approximately 3890 km total over 500 runs for an average distance of 7.78 km per run. Not too shabby. This stat is boosted by my insane effort in 2012 when I ran almost 1,000 km and most of those runs were 10K or better.
Here’s to the next 500 runs and hopefully precious few of them will be tagged with damn [appendage].