A day later than expected due to being busy with other activities that went on longer than anticipated, today’s run was done under a mix of cloud and sun with a light breeze and the temperature around 17ºC. Due to the frequent rain of late the trail was rather mushy in a few spots, exacerbated by ruts from a parks board tractor driving along the trail when mowing the field.
I was concerned that my lower left leg would hurt so even though I technically planned for a 10K run, I knew a 5K was more likely. The run itself was a mix of good news/bad news.
Bad news: my left leg did start feeling sore.
Good news: It wasn’t actually painful and didn’t affect my pace.
The soreness in the leg dissipated fairly quickly after the run, even without using ice, so I am hopeful this is nothing serious. Still, I am planning on seeing a doctor or sports therapist next week to get a better handle on what’s up.
The final bit of good news is I knocked another four seconds off my average pace. I’m getting closer to where I once was, so maybe that 10K run isn’t too far off now.
Chart (bolded numbers are overall average time/km):
In this thread on Quarter to Three Tom Chick asks for random questions for a gaming podcast he does. A question is asked during the podcast and the first person to correctly answer wins a game of some sort. It seems this week he was drawing a blank, hence the seeking of suggestions. I am compelled to answer some of the random questions being proposed, specifically the ones in posts by Wade42 and Jason Cross.
Random Answers to Random Questions, Part 1
Do you sing when you’re alone (in the shower/in the car/etc)?
Yes. Many years ago I shared an apartment that had hardwood floors and pretty good acoustics. My roommate once came home early and heard me singing from outside the apartment door. He said I sounded pretty good!
What’s the state of your sock drawer?
Remarkably organized, right down to color and size (the ankle socks I wear with shorts on one side, the longer socks on the other).
What did your parents do for a living, and does it at all relate to what you do for a living?
My dad was a logger and owned his own logging truck until he retired early. My mom was a housewife and had her hands full raising five kids. The closest I have come to logging is chopping wood for a fireplace. I’ve pretty much been my own housewife, though.
What time do you generally go to bed/wake up?
These days I am usually to bed between 11 p.m. and midnight. Getting up depends on where/if I’m working but generally between 7 and 8 a.m. I don’t sleep in on weekends.
What is the last new food you tried?
I can’t remember this one. I don’t shy away from trying most new foods but it’s been awhile since I had something truly new and different.
Boxers or briefs? (Wait, do we really want to know?)
Boxers, but the modern kind!
What was the last live music performance you attended?
Not counting something outdoors and free, probably a Morrissey show back around 1998. Yeah, it’s been awhile.
Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met?
I once served coffee to David Duchovny.
What would you like them to print on your tombstone?
“This wasn’t the kind of immortality I wanted.”
Which is your favorite Muppet, and why? (Don’t even PRETEND that there isn’t at least one Muppet you like.)
Rowlf the Dog. Easygoing, friendly, plays the piano, doesn’t pee on the rug. What more could you want?
What is your favorite alcoholic beverage? I don’t drink much. When I do, it’s usually an apple cider and I’m not hung up on the brand. After two my face is numb and I’m done, anyway.
If you could make yourself a little more attractive or a little smarter, which would you choose? A little more attractive. I think I’m smart enough to get by but I’m just vain enough to want to look a little better. Smaller ears or better hair, please!
What is your worst bad habit? Procrastination.
What is the oldest thing in your wallet/purse, besides a birth certificate or social security card? Everything in my wallet is no more than a few years old. I recently cleaned it out, so all the old junk got tossed.
Does your phone number spell something? If so, what? My phone number does not spell anything except gibberish.
What was your first computer? An Atari 400 with 16k ram, purchased in 1982.
Who is your favorite relative (besides wife/children/parents)? I don’t have ‘favorite’ relatives. They’re all pretty decent, for the most part.
When you’re hanging out at home, do you prefer it to be dimly lit or brightly lit? Why? Watching a movie or TV, dimly lit. At the computer, eating/cooking or reading, brightly lit. For movies and TV, the picture is more vivid and immersive if the room is dark. For the rest, bright light just helps to see things or reduce eyestrain (in the case of the computer).
Once again I started with the plan to run 10k but ended up doing 5k. Amazing how much stamina you lose with a month off. I think I may finally be ready for a 10k on the next run, though.
Conditions today were very nice — a rare sunny day and warm, nearly 20ºC. There was a wind gusting occasionally but it died down shortly after I started my run.
Curiously, my first km has been getting progressively slower, though not by much. I’m not sure why. Maybe I am subconsciously trying to pace myself. I felt like I was dogging it for the last few km. A woman jogging ahead of me slowly began gaining ground as I flagged. There was a time I would have turned it on to catch up and pass her. I’ll get there again someday!
Average pace was 5:28, six seconds better than the previous run and breaking the 5:30 mark I was aiming for, so I’m pleased there. Left leg felt a little sore after so I iced it for half an hour and it feels fine now.
And Tiger Woods congratulated me yet again for another 250 miles. According to him I’ve completed about 5,000 miles so far. Thanks, Tiger!
More chart fun below. Except for a slightly slower start I improved across the board but am still off my normal pace. Still, progress.
Still, I have purchased the ebook version of Learning C# after seeing a post about a one-day sale O’Reilly was having where you could get any ebook for $9.99. Books on programming are always tricky to use because you have to constantly refer to them while trying to, well, program, so you end up picking the book up and setting it down over and over or start devising creative ways to make the book lay open and flat by using whatever you might have on your desk to weigh it down — staplers, spare keyboards, your cat. The ebook version by design is always flat. In fact, it’s perfectly 2D! This should make my programming efforts a smidgen easier.
I really like non-sweetened cereals now. To keep my sugar intake low I look for cereal with no sugar. This eliminates nearly everything you’ll find on the shelves of most grocery stores, but there are a few brands out there, most of them of the puffed wheat variety (you know, the cereal that came in those gigantic plastic bags you could stuff the pet dog into). The one I prefer most is Grape-Nuts. I quite like its crunchy texture and nutty flavor — and I mean nutty in the sense of “it tastes like nuts” rather than “the flavor is clinically insane”. I have an occasional bowl with unsweetened soy milk when I get that breakfast cereal craving. The fact that it satisfies me, that I actually look forward to the bowl is somewhat remarkable considering I grew up on Cap’n Crunch (the shredder of mouths), Count Chocula and Lucky Charms (I always saved the marshmallows for last, so I’d have a bowl half-filled with pastel-colored milk and spongy yet still strangely kind of crunchy marshmallow bits at the end).
Kids really are amazing. How did I eat all that crap and not balloon up to 300 pounds? Oh yeah, metabolism, that thing that left me in a huff around the time I turned 20.
This is the best album R.E.M. has put out since the group became a trio with the departure of drummer Bill Berry in 1997 and a dramatic turnaround from the slow, keyboard-driven sound of their previous album, 2004’s Around the Sun.
Some of the tracks here recall the freewheeling performances on 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant, particularly “Man-Sized Wreath” and “Supernatural Superstitious”. On the former, Michael Stipe offers a cynical view of celebrity death, opening with “Turn on the TV and what do I see?/A pageantry of empty gestures all lined up for me – wow!/I’d have thought by now we would be ready to proceed/But a tearful hymn to tug the heart/And a man-sized wreath – ow!” putting particularly cheeky emphasis on the “ow” and “wow” as punctuation. The song captures everything that makes Accelerate work so well: the percussion is no longer buried deep in the mix, as if in deference to Berry’s absence; instead the drums drive the song forward. Buck’s guitar also returns to the front, aggressive but clean, unlike the muddy play and excessive distortion found in efforts like New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Perhaps the most welcome return is Mike Mills’ soaring background vocals (even getting a brief solo at song’s end). Unlike the sometimes labored and typically downbeat tracks of Around the Sun, the band here seems to be just plain having fun.
On first listen, the album is bound to leave you feeling a bit out of breath despite its short length (under 35 minutes) due to the relentless pacing of the bite-sized songs, but further listens reveal more texture and depth. “Until the Day is Done” is a mournful reflection on America, characterized by Stipe as “an addled republic” and backed by Buck’s acoustic guitar and “Sing for the Submarine” is a weird number that features call-outs to past R.E.M. songs and a suitably submerged organ playing behind the chorus, along with more of Mills’ terrific backing vocals. It is perhaps ironic that the titular song is probably the weakest on the album. It’s competent but never quite realizes the urgency of its lyrics, as if the music is stuck a half-beat behind what Stipe is framing with his words.
Despite its brevity and some quibbles with pacing, Accelerate remains a well-crafted rock album, a worthwhile addition to the R.E.M. catalog and an easy recommendation to anyone who enjoyed the band but may have been put off by its last few efforts.
As someone who has lived his whole life in the southwest corner of BC, I am used to rain and I really don’t mind it.
Come June, one expects mild to warm temperatures, more sun, some clouds and occasional showers. So far we have been seeing mostly the latter. If I was still running the Locarno concession I’d be in full panic mode now.
Dear Mother Nature: cut it out! Make with the sun. (Please!)
This is the conversation I had with my legs two days after my first run in 31 days:
Me: How you doing down there?
Legs: WE HATE YOU.
Me: Aw, you’re bound to be a little rusty and you were kind of slow, but that’s to be expected.
Legs: HATE. YOU.
Me: Pfft, it’s not that bad.
Legs: You remember those upper thigh muscles? I’m betting you do now because they are as stiff as roadkill at the North Pole.
Me: I’m pretty sure there are no roads or roadkill at the North Pole.
So yes, my legs were quite siff but today they were feeling a lot more limber so off I went on my second 5k run, my only real goal to improve on the sluggish time three days ago. Success!
With a light breeze, mild temperatures and a partly sunny sky I was able to shave 11 seconds off my average pace, bringing it from 5:45 down to 5:33. This is still pretty slow but it’s moving in the right direction. I again had a major drop-off at the 2km mark but it leveled off much more smoothly after that. The legs protested but not in a painful way, just in that “we’re not used to being exercised” way.
After swearing I’d never do another time travel story, I went ahead and did one anyway for the May 2010 writing exercise. You can check out all the exercises in this thread. My submission is my third story featuring the superhero group Chicago 8, not to be confused with the Chicago 7 or Chicago’s 8th album (I think they got up to 47 or so).
I ran for the first time in 31 days today. I had neatly skipped the entire month of May.
The good news:
– it was actually sunny, a rare thing of late
– I finished a full 5 km
– while I could feel the ghost of my injured left leg, it never actually hurt during the run
The bad news:
– slow as all get-out
– cramps
– did I mention slow as all get-out?
The trail was damp from recent rain but no puddles, so conditions were fine. It was breezy but it’s been freaking windy all spring, so nothing new there. I had optimistically planned on a 10K run but after a few km knew I’d be better off starting with a 5K instead.
What’s funny is how my first km is actually pretty decent — 5:03 — but it absolutely plunges by the second km to 5:21 and keeps falling off a cliff after that. I guess after a month off I had exactly 1 km of energy in me. 🙂
Here’s a little table showing how this 5K run compares to the last one from April:
Distance
June 1st
April 30th
1 km
5:03
5:03
2 km
5:21
5:06
3 km
5:33
5:09
4 km
5:40
5:12
5 km
5:45
5:16
On the all-thumbs part: After initiating the Nike+ sensor, I put the iPod into the left pocket of my shorts. The first few attempts at this seemingly simple task resulted in me accidentally swiping the click-wheel with a finger and turning the volume up to Spinal Tap levels. I finally got it to a point where it wouldn’t burst my ear drums, but I’ve never had that kind of trouble just putting the thing in my dang pocket. I guess after a month off, even my hands are rusty. 😛
Recently I recounted how I had dreamed that I was thrust back into working at the Locarno Beach concession, something I last did 12 years ago. My brain or more specifically, the subconscious part of it, has apparently decided to use sleep time to revisit all of my previous jobs in chronological order.
Last night I found my dream-self back at the store I used to work at. At one point I asked about the schedule, to which the assistant manager of the computer department gave a coy, non-commital answer I did not care for. I had visions of barely getting enough hours to make ends meet. And Ramen noodles. I suddenly found myself outside, in a gravel parking lot, looking toward the ocean, except blocking the view was the Locarno Beach concession, with the stand opened up facing toward the road and not the beach as one would expect. It was clear that I was still working there, too. The joy of 11 hour days covered in grease and the happiness of working a low-paying retail job, together at last!
I woke up shortly afterward. If things keep on track my next dream job will take me back to my days of telephone technical support. I can’t wait!*
* yes, in fact, I can wait. More to the point, I would like sexy dreams of daring adventure and not the dregs of my past jobs. Dear Brain, please comply. Thanks.
How can you look at an image like this and not get goosebumps over the simple, raw fury of nature? As a kid, there were a few things I could never get enough of — fire trucks, sharks (thanks, Jaws!), dinosaurs (original, I know) and then volcanoes.
This is the Tungurahua volcano, which has begun erupting in Ecuador. Story and image in this cbc.ca article.
