Inglorious Basterds is good. If you’re a Tarantino fan, you should see it. If you’re not, you should see it, anyway, because it’s a fun ride that doesn’t feel anything like its 2 hour and 48 minute running time.
While a lot of the Tarantino trademarks are in place — talky characters, explicit violence — the WWII setting and lengthy subtitled exchanges give the film a texture that sets it apart from the likes of Pulp Fiction or Deathproof. A number of scenes expertly play off the tension of what the characters aren’t saying, pleasant conversation masking the fear of spies being exposed or plots getting unravelled. And how can you not like a movie that introduces Hitler wearing a flowing white cape like some kind of comic super villain?
Brad Pitt is terrific as the smart and calmly sadistic leader of the Basterds, approaching his tasks with a laid back, down home charm — right up until the scalping starts. His scene in the lobby of the theatre where he attempts Italian is hilarious, one of the few where the tension and comedy come together.
Without getting into spoiler territory, I had no idea how the final scene was going to play out. There comes a point where the story must turn one way or the other based on historical events, and the way Tarantino chooses to go is interesting, to say the least.
Today’s run was around 11 a.m. on a cool but sunny Saturday (around 12ºC). I opted to go with just the usual short and t-shirt and will confess my hands felt like a pair of ice mitts by the time I got to the park. I resisted the urge to overdress and rightly so — I was sweating lightly within a few minutes.
However, in my rush out the door I had forgotten to make a stop in the loo and by the time I was at China Creek, my bladder was pointedly reminding me of this fact. A port-a-potty had been placed at the northwest corner of the park as part of a pilot project (a sign explained that it might be removed at the end of the month, based on public reaction).
Now, portable toilets are one of those things that are gross. No one ever says, “Wow, that sure was a nice port-a-potty!” You hold your nose, go in and do your thing as quickly as possible and without touching anything. I braced myself and opened the door. To my surprise, there was no odor at all, despite evidence that the toilet had indeed been used. I speculate the chemicals used to completely remove all trace of foul smell must be the kind powerful enough to bore straight through to the molten core of the planet and the toilet itself must therefore be made from the fused material collected from said core. There is no other explanation.
As usual, the start of the run was good but I was feeling a little logey by the 15 minute mark. It was also then that a shoelace came untied and I had to pause the workout to tie it, lest I stop running and do more falling on my face. There was a soccer practice/game underway and at one point an errant soccer ball made its way onto the path ahead of me. Today I would need to be vigilant not for delinquent girls but rogue sporting equipment. I continued on and right near the 5-minute mark a fellow jogger passed me. As you know, this is the official sign that It Is On. He widened the gap between us a little but not by much. I turned it up a notch, closing the gap and then passing him.
At the 2-minute mark The Competition passed me again. At this point in the run I am on my final lap and usually pick up the pace for the finish. The Competition was increasing his position ahead of me and it flickered through my mind that I may have to cede him the victory. But then I looked to the fountain by the path and realized that I was within reach of it — something I had never done before on the final lap. The Competition’s pace then flagged slightly, perhaps due to being comfortable with the lead or maybe due to tiredness. It didn’t matter. I turned on the afterburners. I intended to pass him and reach the fountain before the nice lady in my iPod announced the 35 minutes was up.
I felt good at this point — my stamina was easily keeping pace, the second wind having kicked in a few minutes earlier. My calves were holding up. The space between us began to shrink. I entered the final bend at the southwest corner of the trail, the fountain mere meters ahead on the right. I caught up and then strode ahead of him, reaching the fountain as I did so. A moment later, as if on cue, the iPod lady announced 35 minutes up, run complete. I came to a halt, allowing The Competition to pass me. He probably thought I was dicking around with him at this point. Just a coincidence, though — this time!
I went to get a victory drink from the fountain and found it wasn’t working. My one defeat.
I achieved a raft of personal bests on this run and Lance “I did not take steroids” Armstrong came on the offer his congrats. In all, I had my:
fastest km — 4.54/km (previous: 4:58)
fastest average km — 5.19/km (previous: 5:23)
greatest overall distance — 6.6 km (previous: 6.53)
Overall I have to say I’m pretty pleased with how it went. I feel pretty good tonight, too — none of my body parts are screaming at me.
After over-exerting my calves with last Friday’s run, I opted to delay Monday’s run to Tuesday morning. It was cool and a bit showery so I wore a jacket for the first time since starting. Across from the park a truck was unloading at a warehouse, so coming around the northeast corner of the trail I was met with the smell of diesel. Bleah. That was soon replaced, however, as the big metal doors were rolled up to accept delivery. As mentioned before, it’s a fish warehouse, so the ripe smell of raw fish was soon wafting over into the park. Fortunately with little wind to move it, it mostly hung to the one side of the trail. The run itself was deliberately low key to insure I did not re-injure my tender calves.
I had an annoying pain in my abdomen that had plagued me Tuesday night. It seemed unrelated to running since it didn’t hit until after I was in bed, which leads me to wonder how exactly I sleep. A webcam could shed disturbing and possibly amusing light on this but I think I’ll not go there. The pulled abdominal muscle delayed my usual Wednesday run to today (Thursday) but with the muscle no longer bothering me, I decided to push myself a little harder. Success came as I clocked my fastest km, breaking my previous mark of 5:01 by coming in at 4:58 and also my fastest mile, which my iPod informed me of at the end of the run via the voice of Tiger Woods. As we all know, golfers are pretty hardcore athletes. My overall distance was 6.52, a shade off my best of 6.53 and close enough to be a draw. I am going to try to do my usual Friday run so we’ll see how it goes with 24 hours between runs instead of the usual 48 or so.
Regarding the midgets and mud: the trail was a bit soft in a few spots due to earlier rain but it didn’t present a problem. Likewise, the wee lads playing soccer for the first half of my run did not punt a ball at my head, so all was well there. At a glance they really do look like midgets in their striped uniforms and shorts. Given that it was cool, cloudy and threatening to rain, I was the only one out on the trail jogging, though a few people were walking their dogs, none of which ran in my way and threatened to knock me down. Good boy(s)!
You don’t need to spend $150 or so on the shoes as a number of companies sell pouches that attach to the laces of whatever shoes you own, allowing you to insert the sensor in a secure fashion that prevents your wallet from crying, a definite bonus.
I have a nano and found setup very simple. I opted for the default female voice who perkily counts off the time in five minute increments and kept the distance to kilometers since I am working around the idea of 5k runs. My first run, set to 30 minutes, went without any hitches last Friday. This week I moved up to 35 minutes and created a few unofficial goals for myself based on Monday’s run. On that day I ran 6.48 km at an average pace of 5:27/km. My fastest pace was 5:12/km. On Friday I improved the distance to 6.53 km, the pace to 5.23/km and fastest pace to 5.01/km, just missing my goal of 5 minutes even.
Nothing comes without a price, though, and my calves, already stiff going into the run, were what scientists call “really really sore” even before I had completed the run. I definitely exerted them in a way I didn’t intend to, but now I have a much better idea of where my limits are and I can begin working toward improving my speed and time without yoinking my muscles silly in the process. On the plus side, my stamina held up nicely and if I had been running at a consistent pace instead of bursting the first and last few laps, I could have kept going without any problem.
I find one of the best motivators when jogging is to have someone on the path ahead of me. I always want to pass them. In most cases I do, so yay me. On Friday a guy started jogging ahead of me and I was already a good six or seven laps in, so not exactly bursting with energy. I decided to at least keep pace with him but eventually decided to pass. About half a lap later the cheeky bugger then passes me and it was on. If you pass someone and they later pass you, you are now dueling. It’s like the law of running. I picked up the pace, opting to get close to judge whether he would start flagging or not. He kept moving steadily along and we neared the northeast corner of the path where it dips down into a bend and then back up. There was a woman ahead of us doing the equivalent of Grandma driving below the speed limit. She was on the right, he was on the left and the gap between them was rapidly closing. I made my move and burst ahead into the dip, picking up speed and putting a little distance between myself and my duelist. I didn’t check back but I think he stopped not too long after. It didn’t matter. I had won. Woo!
This is what endorphins do to you.
I’m undecided on next week’s course of action, but will likely continue on the 35 minute runs, looking to improve my performance while avoiding injury. A summary of my last five runs is now available on the right side of the blog near the bottom. It looks just like this (and for some reason seems to gently inflate the results):
On Friday there were more dogs at China Creek Park than I’d ever seen in four months of jogging there. It was weird, like it was some sort of Take Your Dog to the Park Or Else day. I always keep my eye on dogs when I’m running, especially the ones not on leashes (about half of them, typically) because, like gravel-throwing little girls you never know when a dog might do something you don’t expect. As it turns out, a chocolate lab came running up from behind and on my left and I didn’t see him until he was cutting in front of me close enough for a little dog-human contact. If he’d been a toy dog I probably would have crushed him under a foot. Unintentionally, I mean.
The actual jog went fairly dismally even if you don’t count dog collisions, as I checked my time at only 19 minutes in and called it quits just short of 23. I’d skipped the previous jog due to tender muscles around the shins and man, even skipping one run is noticeable.
Today’s went significantly better, however. I ran for 31:46 and have decided to add an extra minute onto each run for awhile and see how it goes. I have some plans for tracking distance and time that I may be implementing soon.
A strangely packed week of movies, as I saw three (!):
District 9: This gorily violent science fiction film starts with a mothership containing a million or so “refugee aliens” parking over Johannesburg, South Africa. Defenseless, the aliens (derisively referred to as prawns) are put into a camp below the ship known as District 9. 20 years later the district is a huge slum and a private military contractor is tasked with moving the aliens to a new camp 200 miles away from the city (and conveniently out of sight). The movie starts with the mass eviction and follows as the head of the eviction plan gets a little closer than he’d like to the aliens and ultimately finds himself sympathetic to their plight.
Shot in a pseudo-documentary style, the movie is brutal, at turns funny and pulls off the neat trick of engaging and holding the viewer when none of the characters initially are even likable. Smart and incisive (especially in its portrayal of the ugly world of private military contractors and their ethics — or lack thereof), the only criticism I have of the film is the way it relies on a few “in the nick of time” moments to keep things moving along but these are quibbles. Highly recommended.
9: This animated post-apocalyptic film features an alternate history where machines built for war turn on their human masters, Terminator-style, wiping out all life. The only “survivors” are nine small burlap dolls who are strangely sentient. The movie follows as they fight to survive against the few remaining machines and ultimately explains how they came to be. Each of the nine is a stereotype — the set-in-his-ways old leader, the cruel, unthinking muscle, the “crazy” guy (voiced by Crispin Glover, naturally) and so on — but by movie’s end the stereotypes are actually explained in a way that works. What may not work for some is the somewhat esoteric ending that veers toward metaphysical, leaving a lot up to the viewer to decide. I actually found myself agreeing with a fairly solid criticism of the ending and yet it didn’t hurt my reaction to the film overall. The world it creates is dazzlingly presented and the machines are a nightmarish blend of mechanical and organic, with spiders, skulls, scissors and sinewy red string leading the way. Any parent taking a young kid to this film probably guaranteed the little bugger having nightmares for a week. 😛 Recommended.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: (some spoilers follow, if you care about that sort of thing) I have not read the books so I don’t know what’s been left behind in adapting them to the screen, though I understand with each successive novel getting longer, the writers are being more challenged in what to keep in the films to present a coherent story. Since the title mentions a Half-Blood Prince, I figure he’s going to be prominent to the story. Eventually there is a scene where Harry grabs a potion book and the inside cover reveals it is the property of the Half-Blood Prince. A-ha, I think! I wait for an elaboration on this. Late in the movie Snape, waving his wand all nasty-like at Harry, reveals that he is the Half-Blood Prince. And that’s pretty much it. It felt like a major chunk of the story went missing and we got a Quidditch game thrown in instead. Dumbledore’s demise was also telegraphed so blatantly I almost expected to see a bullseye painted on his robes. The least-satisfying Harry Potter movie to date. It’s not horrible, though, and the young cast remains capable and engaging.
I always sucked when playing Risk as a kid. It’s not a complex game but it does involve some math and I’m like Barbie when it comes to math — I’d rather go shopping. And I don’t even like shopping. The worst part is probably the Machiavellian maneuvers required to form and break alliances with others in order to conquer and achieve ultimate victory. I’m a nice guy, I just want to get along. The mentality doesn’t fit a war game well. While this quote from Quarter to Three’s gaming forum doesn’t reflect my own personal experience playing Risk, it does nicely cover how the game affects some people:
I have been so traumatized by Risk, I don’t even know where to begin. Games never ended without someone in tears. The last game of Risk I played, I was getting pummeled by my 10 year old cousin. In a huff, I started crying and threw my cards at her and quit.
I was 21.
On the flipside, I have fond memories of Careers, though I can barely recall any details of the game. I do remember we had the groovy version that included the Ecology career. Oh, those nutty 70s! boardgamegeek.com has an image of it here.
I decided to ditch the Gallery2 plugin for my photos as it was a bit bulky and I didn’t care much for the way it integrated into WordPress. I’m now using NextGEN Gallery which is simpler but for my needs is more than sufficient. All of the old photos have been moved to the new system and I should have a few new galleries up soon™. You can check the existing photo galleries by clicking on the link cleverly named Photo Galleries.
No, not some sort of sushi dish, it’s Yet Another Jogging Update.
I completed the Couch-to-5K plan on schedule, running about 6.38k on the final day. I then took the next two days off as the muscles around my shins were a bit tender and I wanted to avoid shin splints. The jog after the days off was a wee bit harder, as a result. Perhaps slightly more than a wee bit.
Today I jogged for 30 minutes under the influence of a head cold and it was surprisingly not that bad. Stupid cold.
My ambitions for the rest of the week are modest — just run 30 minutes. This coming Saturday I may try hooking up with the FrontRunners group for their Saturday morning jog. Can I be at Stanley Park by 9 a.m.? We’ll find out!
Last week I went to four films at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and as one might expect, it was a mixed bag (or fruit basket, if you prefer). Below are my reviews.
Ciao
Here’s the description from the VQFF website: “When Jeff’s lifelong best friend Mark dies, he is left in charge of handling Mark’s possessions and tying up loose ends. Through a trail of Mark’s email correspondence, Jeff learns of Mark’s secret online romance with Andrea, a handsome Italian who is scheduled to visit the United States and meet Mark for the first time. With the trip already booked, Andrea decides to come anyway and learn more about his recently departed friend. In the midst of grieving, these two strangers share a single night of intimate conversation, good old American country music and sexual tension that leads to perhaps what is the most tender (yet still steamy) brief encounter ever portrayed in queer cinema.”
And my take: The premise is interesting but the execution is thwarted by stiff acting and a script filled with wooden dialogue and lots of not much happening. There are three main characters: Jeff, his adopted Asian sister and Andrea, the man from Italy. Jeff is an earnest but bland character and Adam Neal Smith’s portrayal isn’t bad per se, he just shows no real emotion until the very end and I suppose it’s meant to be seen as a cathartic release but it falls flat instead. Alessandro Calza fares better, perhaps because he can hide behind the facade of a character handling a non-native language. The sister has some amusing lines but again the acting feels rather wooden. As the tone is consistent across all actors, I wonder if it may have been an issue with the director’s handling of them.
Another negative was not that the film was low budget but that it didn’t acknowledge that and work within its limitations. There is a scene with Jeff and Andrea driving to the cemetery and apparently the production could not afford to have the car towed on a trailer. Instead the camera is placed in the backseat. While Calza is seen in profile while chatting, Smith never looks anywhere except at the road — which is understandable because he is actually driving — but as a result you never see his face for the entire scene. Why not shoot the scene with them walking in the cemetery instead or somehow frame it so you could properly see the actors? There were also a series of long framed shots or tracking shots of the city skyline at night that didn’t serve any purpose but to pad out the film’s length.
Perhaps the highlight of the film came during that “brief encounter”. When Jeff and Andrea started kissing some guy in the audience began applauding loudly, as if this heralded a great moment in gay cinema or something. Definitely the best laugh in the movie. 🙂
The Coast is Queer
“This year’s local shorts program could have been renamed The Coast is Brave and Outrageous due to the bold and shameless stories, like lisa g’s look at women in Riverview Mental Hospital in the 1940s and Clark Nikolai’s exploration of foreskin ‘docking’.”
My take: This is a collection of 13 shorts. I’ll highlight the ones I found most memorable (for better or for worse). Asylum is a surprisingly sympathetic look at the long-closed Riverview mental facility narrated by a former staff member, ending with a “twist” as a lesbian inmate checks out with one of the female staff, a rather surprising event during the 1940s. Another tale set in the 1940s (1948) is Caught, a silent look at two high school students — one a member of the drama club, the other a Bible group — whose innocent sleepover ends up being not so innocent. This is a wistful and well-shot drama, combining moments of comedy with the crushing pain of a love — and life — denied. Withchrave struck me as a pointless visual exercise, showing “witches” in various states of dress and undress cavorting, smoking and doing “witchy” stuff. Did I need to see a full frontal shot of a nude woman peeing? No, I didn’t. But hey, one more thing to scratch off the list of “things I never planned on seeing but saw anyway”. I guess this film was meant to evoke a feeling of sensuality or something so it’s perhaps not surprising that it didn’t click with me.
Galactic Docking Company was a rather randy but very funny short that combined stock NASA footage (mainly from Mission Control) with dockings involving rockets and love rockets, if you know what I mean. The combination of music and perfectly timed editing showing the reactions of the various NASA engineers made this a bawdy ol’ good time. Swans was essentially penis worship set to music that I found uninteresting despite being a personal fan of the subject. The lowlight of the collection was Cindy Doll. Before the shorts began, a number of directors spoke about their films and the director of Cindy Doll warned that her piece tackled a taboo subject and it might offend or make people uncomfortable. She invited people to discuss the film with her afterward. I correctly pegged it as a take on child abuse before it started. The film consisted of the director naked in a bathtub with the titular Cindy Doll. As the horrors of child abuse were depicted with the doll being stripped and spanked among other things, loud, discordant noises would occasionally blare out for some kind of effect (maybe this was the uncomfortable part the director referenced, as my ears were not experiencing what I would call pleasure). The director would regularly begin pleasuring herself with the doll, looking up at the camera with (guilty?) eyes. Um, symbolism! Maybe. The whole thing came off as self-indulgent twaddle. The only part that offended me was knowing I’d not get back the time I’d spent watching it. Here’s my advice: If you were abused as a child, see a therapist, don’t make a short film about it.
I’ll end with the highlight of the show, Coffee. This was one of the few professionally-shot pieces (several were done specifically for a Super 8 competition or by high school students as part of an anti-homophobia campaign — and those were well-done for what they were). The premise is simple — a lesbian and gay friend are having coffee at a cafe and it quickly becomes apparent that the woman’s recent failed relationship has pushed her off the deep end, as she has become obsessed with Kate Walsh from “Grey’s Anatomy”. The writing is sharp and funny and the two actors deliver their lines with expert timing. It was inspiring enough to make me want to finish “The Famous Polka”. It’s one of 10 different vignettes culled from a longer piece and can be viewed here. Highly recommended.
Otto; Or, Up With Dead People
“Film theorists claim that the zombie genre is a form of social commentary, relevant to our consumerist and apathetic present times. If so, then what comment does Bruce LaBruce make with his gay zombie flick? Attack the heteronormative establishment? Fuck your brains out (then eat them)? Whatever social messages might be gleaned from LaBruce’s work, the Canadian director brings us a perverse and satirical cinematic original.
Otto is a young neo-Goth loner and pretty hot for a dead guy. Wandering the streets of Berlin, Otto stumbles upon a casting call for a zombie film. After seeing his half-hearted audition, radical lesbian filmmaker Medea Yarn not only becomes convinced that Otto will be the next big underground movie star, but forces the lead actor, Fritz, to take Otto home with him. While Medea and Fritz struggle to finish their film, Otto searches for the human beneath the zombie.”
This was both a send-up and an affectionate (?) homage to zombie movies, gay porn and pretentious art films. Shot in Germany with a local cast, Otto features plenty of gore (mostly disembowelment and entrails, as one would expect in a zombie film), fleeting but explicit sex scenes and at times a hilarious take on the self-styled film auteur personified by Medea as she works to finish her underfunded “masterpiece”, “Up With Dead People”, a film chronicling the rise of gay zombies. Into this comes Otto, who fails to convince the director that he is in fact an actual zombie but gets cast in the lead role, anyway.
The film starts rather slowly and for the first 20 minutes or so felt more like a clumsy homage to art films than anything else but when the various characters intersect it pulls together and the rest of the ride is pretty enjoyable. There’s a graphic scene of zombie penetration that will likely put you off your lunch for a week or so and a sex orgy that is the film-within-a-film’s conclusion also has some very naughty bits that, while enticing, seemed gratuitous in the given context. I found the ending a bit confusing as it strongly suggests Otto is no longer a zombie, then seems to revert him back to a more undead state. As expected, the film’s ending is not exactly happy but appropriate. The actress that played Medea was probably my favorite, if only because she was so appropriately over-the-top with her views on the terrible capitalist society she is part of. She also gives a small girl eating chocolate the what-for in what may have been the film’s funniest moment.
Boycrazy
“Everywhere I go there’s a guy to catch my eye. It makes me kinda crazy, like I’m back in junior high.” Is Corey—the dreamy lead in Boycrazy—singing your song? If so, there are plenty of guys to catch your eye in this lineup of men’s short films.
Serving up the first piece of eye candy is Zak, an underappreciated topless waiter in Dinx. Filmmaker Michael Mew treats us to some homegrown guys, co-starring local drag diva Symone, in his new science fiction romance Q-Case. A chorus line of “show bears” dances in King County. And the quirky musical Boycrazy explores the pros and cons of single life.”
As noted above, this was four short films. Dinx features a cute and short protagonist who seems to suffer a dimensional rift that takes him back to his childhood while still dressed as a topless waiter. Much like that character, this film was cute and short, amusing but not laugh-out-loud funny. Q-Case is a parody of the X-Files with a definite queer twist. Perhaps not surprisingly, the central premise centers around anal probes. This was a solid effort, although the acting of several of the characters was leaning more toward the amateur side. The love interest of the alien/clone handled his part well and reacted perfectly to his precious shoe collection getting vaporized. I admit I also enjoyed the idea of the Mulder character getting a giant black drag queen as his temporary partner and voice of reason. King County is a series of scenes centering around a theater group auditioning actors for movies turned into stage musicals. Among some of the entries: Mommie Dearest, Fame (with bears) and most hilariously, a musical version of Top Gun featuring “butch lesbians” that has Maverick and Goose (or was it Ice?) singing and dancing on the flight deck. The actress playing Maverick looked similar enough to Tom Cruise to be somewhat disturbing. The final and longest piece was Boycrazy, featuring James May, an actor who could be Neil Patrick Harris’s younger brother. This is a musical about dating and relationships (online and otherwise) and is done in a style very similar to Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. The singing is uniformly excellent and the dance numbers, though not flashy, are energetic, as is the film as a whole. I really enjoyed this funny and sometimes insightful look at the trials and tribulations of men dating men — and not just because I have gone through some of my own recently (none set to music, alas).
I am in the final week of the Couch to 5k program (Week 9) and on Monday I did my first run in wet weather. The path at the park had a few puddles along the edges and was a bit squishy in spots but overall the experience was fine. Pretty much anything is better compared to the 30°C weather we’d been having (I will revise this after the first snow of the winter). I completed the mandated 30 minutes but something seemed amiss.
Going with how the plan equated time and distance I early on concluded that one circuit of the path — which takes about 3 minutes to run — equaled about 1 km. The final 30 minute runs in Week 9 would therefore require running 10 laps.
I started my run and by lap 7 I was thinking it was going faster than I expected. I decided to check the time after the 9th lap, which would put me at about 27 minutes in, more or less. Instead, I found only 18 minutes or so had elapsed. I kept running until I hit the 30 minute mark and by final count had done 14 or 15 laps instead of the expected 10.
Either my pace was significantly better than expected or my math sucked. Knowing how this whole thing began I suspected the latter. I was compelled to find out for certain and purchased a pedometer from MEC. My first task was to measure my stride length. To do so I took the tape measure to the walk in the backyard and marked out a 10 m section. I then walked it twice and verified 11 steps. 10×10= 100m and 11×10 = 110 steps, therefore my stride length is 100 ÷ 110 = .90 m or 90 cm. I set the pedometer to this and set off for a walking tour of the path at China Creek Park.
One full lap of the path gave me a distance of .58 km, which is more than I thought. 10 laps would equal 5.8 km, not 5 km. (8.5 laps would be just under 5 km.)
Since I had run about 15 laps in the half hour, I’d actually covered 8.7 km — 3.7 km more than the program expected of me. I am fairly boggled by this. I knew my pace was definitely faster but I had no idea it was that much faster.
In a few weeks I’m going to try to run a full 10k, which should work out to 17 laps. I’m going to recalibrate the pedometer tomorrow to match my stride length while jogging (8 steps vs. 11) and see how far it says I run in half an hour. More to come!
