Another fine winter’s run

With the temperature around 11ºC (normal high 17ºC) and the sky a sullen gray I headed off to China Creek, choosing to upgrade my run length to 25 minutes as I continue to move closer  to the realm of the 10K run.

Despite some rain the trail remained puddle-free, though the usual sections were rather mushy, meaning I did have to watch my foot placement. My time at the 20 minute mark was almost identical to my previous 20 minute run but as I shaved a second off my pace, I managed to pick it up for the last five minutes.

I later took photographic evidence of the deteriorating condition of the trail (one pic is below) but they all came out blurry for some reason, so I’ll probably have to take another batch. I’m hoping to get a response from the city on when or if repairs will be made to the pathway.

This was my first run since coming back to regular jogs where I could feel the shift between my stamina holding up and my legs getting tired. In other words, my energy level was keeping pace better and as a result my leg muscles were working a bit harder to keep up. This is generally a good thing. I may try a full 5K on Wednesday.

The Nike+ site is currently experiencing server errors but I have all the handy stats from iTunes, so here they are for today’s run. I’m including everything just because I can!

Time: 25:06
Distance: 4.54 km
Pace: 5:32/km
Calories: 308

Total workouts: 95
Total distance: 706.79 km

And in this fuzzy shot you can see how the bark mulch has been stripped away by the rain, exposing the soil and rock underneath. There are several sections of the trail like this, with others also having many new exposed roots coming through. Not so great for jogging and unpleasant, too, for walking.

In other running-related news, Jeff visited his doctor and found out he has tendinitis and is on a 5-10 day Advil regime to bring down the inflammation. He may or may not be able to resume running at that point so he is going to be out for at least a few weeks if not more. Not surprisingly, he is not happy about this!

Rain! Run! (in that order)

Because of the computer nonsense I had ot deal with yesterday I postponed my run to today. With the trail dried out from the rain and an extra day off I should have been faster but strangely I fell back slightly to 5.33/km. Not bad but a tad disappointing.

It was 12ºC and overcast as I headed to the park. One block away and a torrential downpour began. Figures. I hid under a tree and gave it a minute, thinking it might be one of those transitory cloudbursts. It quickly eased to a mere steady rain and I headed off. The shower stopped entirely halfway through and then started again promptly as I left the park, as if there was an invisible tripwire I was hitting that was turning it on and off.

I did feel a bit labored in the first half of the run but not overly so, with both stamina and leg muscles feeling it. The second half was better and my time improved in the last km, an encouraging sign. If Jeff is still out next week, I will probably move to either 25 minute runs or a full 5K for my runs.

I also hit a new milestone tonight, with the Nike+ sensor saying I have completed just under 702 km total distance run. Not too shabby for a guy who hasn’t jogged since high school!

Oh, mother(board)

Back in January I upgraded some components in my PC as it had been nearly four years and the itch to upgrade was no longer possible to resist. It turns out I picked a new Intel motherboard that had a nasty flaw in it and even though I never experienced the flaw and with the way my machine was configured, never would, I nonetheless took the opportunity to get it exchanged free for a newer revision sans flaw.

In the interim I also got a snazzy new case that was bigger because I hate working in cramped cases.

Yesterday at 2 p.m. I was back from NCIX with the new motherboard in hand.

When I went to bed at midnight I had:

a) missed my run
b) cut my thumb
c) missed dinner
d) was cramped and sore throughout my lower body due to all the stooping, bending, crouching and straining

and

e) did not have a functioning computer

I resigned myself to taking the motherboard back to NCIX today, explaining to them how it would not power up at all. Then I noticed I had inserted the power switch lead one pin too far to the left. I corrected this and the system powered up. Doh. Next I got a report that the CPU was too hot — 97ºC! And this after a few moment of being on. I eventually popped the motherboard back out and found that two of the four pins holding the HSF down had not gone all the way through the sockets in the motherboard, so it was slightly off-kilter and ‘hot’. I corrected this and the warning went away.

Finally, after hooking up the DVD drive and three hard drives, I discovered that I had forgotten to connect an SATA power cable to the DVD drive. The only way to fix this would be to disconnect and rearrange all of the drives. Or buy a $5 4-pin molex to SAT adapter cable and use that instead. Which I did.

So finally after numerous problems of my own making the PC is back together in its new case and working fine (for now). The fans are gigantic and a bit loud but I may tweak those later. For now, I am merely relieved to be done. No wonder people like iMacs. 😛

Couch to 5K: The Sequel, Part — er, no part this time

With Jeff out for the week due to a mysterious ankle injury, I’m no longer referring to these mini-runs as part of the Couch to 5K plan. Instead I call them the ‘getting my flabby out-of-shape body back up to speed’ plan.

Today’s conditions can be summed up in two images:

Summer in 41 days!

And at China Creek Park:

Nike hipwaders optional

I should point out that this isn’t as bad as it’s been, as here is the same view from a previous run:

However, the latter shot is from December 2009. When it’s, you know, winter. If the trees weren’t in bloom it could have passed as a day in February today.

The trail is eroding even worse now. The southern part has always been a bit dodgy when it rains, with large puddles and muddy stretches being typical. However, even the higher northern ground is getting soft and much of the mulch (say that three times fast) has been swept away by the numerous rivulets. It is a mess.

And it was part of the reason I fell back two seconds on my previous pace, coming it at 5:31/km. A couple of times I nearly lost my footing and my first lap was a bit slow as I staked out a path that would not leave me face down in the mud. No doubt only having a day off between runs also knocked me down a notch. I’m very much rebuilding my stamina at this point.

The run otherwise went well, though. I have managed to get past the mental hurdle of ‘oh god how much more before this ends?’, which is an important step! Here’s hoping Friday’s run is a little drier and warmer.

Couch to 5K: The Sequel, Part 10

I cheated again today as I was running solo and just did another straight 20 minute run.

The weather was very mild — 15ºC, overcast and a light breeze. The sun briefly came out near the end. I wore a long-sleeved t-shirt but found it too warm. Note to self: stop overdressing — again!

With the muscles in my upper legs still a bit sore from Friday’s run, I managed the first 10 minutes with a slightly better time but it felt much easier than the previous run. The last four minutes, on the other hand, were harder as I struggled to maintain my pace. It paid off as I finished with an average of 5:29/km vs. Friday’s 5:33/km, a four second improvement. Nice!

The trail has deteriorated to the point of silliness and I am really hoping the city will be putting fresh mulch on at some point soon. There are long stretches where the mulch cover has completely stripped away due to the rain, exposing the clay and stones underneath. The worst part remains the numerous exposed tree roots, which constitute a genuine tripping hazard for runners and walkers alike.

Also, the fountain is completely clogged. But it works! And no bees! (yet)

Couch to 5K: The Sequel, Part 9

As Jeff was in New Westminster today, I decided to skip the prescribed routine for Week 3 of the C25K plan, which is:

  • Jog 200 yards (or 90 seconds)
  • Walk 200 yards (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 400 yards (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 400 yards (or three minutes)

Instead I chose to simply jog for 20 minutes, only the third time in the past six months that I had jogged for this length of time or longer. It was mild out (12ºC) but a light rain was falling so I wore my subtle ‘n gray long-sleeved MEC t-shirt with my shorts. It actually does a surprisingly good job of keeping the rain off, unlike my jogging jacket, which acts more like a sponge. My Nike+ sensor is still ticking so I set out with a Beach Boys playlist to serenade me as I wheezed and struggled through the initial part of the run. Two things struck me: some of the tracks I was listening to are nearing 50 years old. Egad! Also, the surfing songs in particular really start to blend together when played back to back. I’m pretty sure you could mash them into one epic 60 minute ultimate surfing song. I’m less sure that you would want to.

I finished with an average pace of 5:33/km, which is actually better than my last two 5Ks, though in this case I only ran 3.63 km. After the first five minutes I began to feel the burn but adjusted my pace and made it to the halfway mark after going through a few moments of ‘Lordy, it would feel really good to stop now’. The second 10 minutes were easier and I actually picked up the pace a little toward the end. Given the weather, the park was fairly deserted. The trail was a little mushy along the southern side but didn’t require any real dodging to navigate. My initial 1 km came in at 5:09/km. Slow by my standards but not too shabby given how little I’ve been running this year.

All in all, I was pleased with the effort and I’m relieved to know that I’m already set for the end of Week 5, which concludes with a 20 minute run.

Newspaper editors gotta have fun, too

This composition is not accidental.

The mgic, the romance, the bullets

My personal favorite is from the West Hawaii Today, as seen in this this Poynter article:

West Hawaii Daily riverdancing and bullets
West Hawaii Daily: riverdancing, commando raids

The secondary headline makes it look like Bin Laden was taken out by a plucky group of riverdancers who just kept trying till they got ‘im. Maybe in the musical adaptation that’s how it will be.

Couch to 5K: The Sequel, Part 8

The thing I remember most about today’s run was during the second three minute segment when I kicked it up the proverbial notch, which was followed by a noticeable burning in my lungs, my body’s cute way of saying, “That’s fast enough, thanks!” Apart from that, the run went well for both Jeff and I.

Conditions were a bit damp, which has been the trend this week, but it was still mild. The weather seems to have gotten confused over the whole April showers thing.

Couch to 5K: The Sequel, Part 7

Today’s conditions were pretty dismal for early May — the temperature merely in the single digits at 9ºC and a steady rain falling. Fortunately there was little wind, so it didn’t feel cold.

Week 3 of the C25K program involves two reps of 90 seconds jogging/walking and 3 minutes jogging/walking. It went by fairly quickly and on the 3 minute segments it felt a bit closer to a regular run, completing an entire lap before ramping down to a brisk walk.

Apart from a dog walker or two, the only others taking in the park were two sets of other runners, one a trio of guys being led by a guy with a cap and a whistle (‘I’ll stand here and tell you if you’re running too hard, because watching you run makes me tired’ and a pair of women who seemed to be doing some kind of mixed run/exercise thing. Despite the proliferation of joggers on the muddy course, there were no collisions.

Jeff was keyed up enough that he kept jogging after the jogging part had ended but I told him to stick to the program and he grudgingly agreed. It will be interesting to see if his enthusiasm keeps up as the jogging stretches from 3 minute segments to 5 and 8 then to 20 minutes over the next two weeks. 🙂

Federal elections are now again like the Olympics

Which is to say that we will now only have an election once every four years, if Harper sticks to the election law (that he already ignored once).

With a frankly pathetic 61.4% of registered voters turning out and the Conservatives slightly budging their percentage of the vote up to 40%, the Conservatives won a majority, picking up the seats they needed when the Liberal vote collapsed in Ontario, with every Liberal defeat turning into a Conservative victory. With only about a 2% boost in the popular vote, the Conservatives picked up 19 seats. Such is the way of our first-past-the-post system.

The whole campaign was odd in how it started out with people predicting nothing much would change, though there was some thought given that the Conservatives might get a majority. As it turned out, a lot changed:

  • the Conservatives got a majority, passing the 155 seat threshold to get (with current projections) 167 seats
  • the NDP, thanks to a huge surge in Quebec, got a record number of seats (102) and for the first time ever will form the Official Opposition
  • the Bloc Quebecois collapsed, going from 49 seats to 4
  • Elizabeth May’s strategy to focus on getting elected vs. having a national campaign was successful, getting the Greens their first MP, even if their share of the popular vote dropped by half
  • the Liberals, going in with 77 seats, got reduced to a mere 33 and less than 20% of the popular vote — their worst showing ever

Ignatieff and Duceppe both lost their seats, with the latter immediately announcing he would step down. Ignatieff will probably quit or be given the boot shortly.

Mostly, though, I’m glad the ads are over.

UPDATE: As of the morning after, Ignatieff has announced his resignation as leader.

2008 and 2011 results side by side (charts courtesy of CBC):

Couch to 5K: The Sequel, Part 6

Spring returned!

It was about 12ºC today, which felt downright balmy after the ice-hands run on Wednesday, with the sun out and a light breeze blowing.

While the trail had dried out and the puddles were gone, someone had driven the mower along it, leaving deep ruts along the southern stretch. These ruts are deep enough to actually be a tripping hazard. I mostly ran around them, though the muck is still pliable enough that it’s easy to smoosh down the parts that stick up. I am still hoping that they add fresh bark mulch to the path, several stretches are in dire need of it after the relentless rains of the past winter.

The run itself went well. Unlike Wednesday I found myself with sufficient energy and Jeff maintained his pace for the first four of the six 90-second running segments before slowing. I inadvertently got way ahead of him in the second half when I glanced behind me, saw what I thought was him and kept going, not realizing it was another jogger and that the segment had, in fac,t stopped. Oh well.

Week 3 and 3-minute runs begin on Monday. Woo!

Couch to 5K: The Sequel, Part 5

Today’s run ramped up to 90 second running segments and conditions were pretty lousy for late April. It was raining, which in itself is not too unusual, but it was also unseasonably cool — only 6ºC. We donned our jogging jackets and set off for the muddy mire of China Creek Park.

I actually found myself not exactly struggling but definitely feeling the short distances more than I should have. I chalk it up to my energy level still being lower than normal after recovering from the flu bug yesterday. Jeff managed to keep up a decent pace and for some parts was able to keep ahead of me. My competitive side rose up just enough for me to not let him get ahead for long. He still beats me on the walking segments, though. He cheats by having longer legs.

And at long last I finally took a picture of the COYOTE ALERT sign (click image to enlarge). I cheated because the photo was taken with my phone when I was not actually running. Since mentioning the sign about two years ago the Parks Board has since added a no-smoking sign below it. On our run we did encounter one smoker — an older man with a large belly who stood out of the rain under the shelter of a pine tree just on the park’s edge. He knows how many cigarettes that $250 fine would buy (six or seven, I think)!

Bad dog

 

As you can see, years of weather or possibly coyote sabotage have left the alert sign largely unreadable. Since the photo has been sized down a bit, I can confirm that the instructions regarding coyote interaction include:

  • Shout in a deep and loud voice
  • Throw objects at the coyote
  • Do not maintain eye contact
  • Something else unintelligible but hopefully not critical to know, like ‘spraying a coyote with water will enlarge it to 5x normal size’

There’s also a short bit on how they moved into Vancouver in the late 1980s, no doubt as part of the big post-Expo boom. They’re probably living in condos on False Creek now.

I did actually see a coyote once, in an alley somewhere around West 10th Avenue, not too far from City Hall, now that I think about it. Maybe they came to lobby as official mascots for the city, trying to displace whatever it is we have now (an orca? black squirrel? Inukshuk?)

Anyhoo, back to running. Week 2 wraps up on Friday. Here’s hoping for the return of spring!