Return to the Valley of the Jogger: The Sequel

And unlike many sequels, this one is actually better than the first!

Conditions for my second run after the long layoff were decent. The temperature was 7ºC with little wind and an overcast sky. I wore a long-sleeved t-shirt and shorts and probably would have been fine with a regular t-shirt. My hands did not feel like frozen blocks of ice this time.

There was a hard, steady rain yesterday and the trail at the park showed the effects — several large puddles to be dodged, the southern stretch particularly boggy in several places and more exposed roots poking through than I’ve ever seen. I did a walk around first to size things up before the run proper.

By the second km I was feeling a cramp but this time in my stomach. I maintained my pace and within another km or so it eased up, allowing me to better hold my pace. I was faster at each stage of the run than a week ago and finished by shaving seven seconds off last week’s run, bringing my pace down from 5:44 to 5:37. Not bad!

I could feel my left knee a bit during the run but it never hurt and didn’t slow me down. For a few moments there was a twinge around my ankle/lower left shin and that spooked me but it went away quickly and did not return.

Although my performance was better, the improved pace meant that by the time I hit 5K I was happy to stop and recover rather than feeling all, “Haha, whee! Let’s keep going!” That’s okay. In time my stamina will be back where it once was and I shall run not unlike the wind. Or at least a strong breeze.

Chart:

km Jan. 25 Jan 18
1 km 5:04 5:07
2 km 5:20 5:26
3 km 5:31 5:36
4 km 5:36 5:42
5 km 5:37 5:44

Like shrinking comics of yore, so goes Facebook

Back in the 1980s — you know, that decade that started over 30 years ago — Berke Breathed via Bloom County commented on how the comics section of newspapers was steadily shrinking. He didn’t mean fewer comics were being run. If anything, even more were being showcased. You can only prop up the section with Blondie and Beetle Bailey for so long. No, what he meant was the physical space being devoted to them was shrinking, resulting in strips that were smaller and more difficult to read. The logical conclusion he reached was that the comics section would eventually disappear into a black dot of illegibility.

As it turns out, newspapers will probably vanish before this can happen. Thank you, Internet, for helping save us from unnecessary eyestrain!

But wait, for as the Internet giveth, so does it taketh away.

As per usual Facebook has done another one of its seemingly arbitrarily updates to its site, making it ‘better’ in ways that may elude common folk. The biggest change is apparently the profile page. I check mine so infrequently I’m not sure exactly what is different except it has a strip of photos slapped along the top of it now. I do not understand the purpose or value of this. The other more noticeable change for me is a universal shrinkage of the font size. This doesn’t make the site more readable, it goes against the demographic trend of an aging population and it doesn’t really allow for more information to be displayed. It just makes all the text a bit smaller. I can easily simulate the old look reasonably enough by using the old CTRL-mousewheel trick so it doesn’t particularly affect me. Sometimes I wonder if Zuckerberg dictates these changes just because of the irresistible power to affect 500 million accounts all at once (quibble to journalists: Facebook has 500 million accounts, not 500 million users. I could go out and create 100 new accounts if I wanted to, each one setting the default size of the font to something different using the nigh-amazing CTRL-mousewheel trick). You may be thinking to yourself, “Is this just a real roundabout way of saying I’m getting old and I would prefer sites on the web to not shrink their fonts so my eyes don’t need to squint so much to keep reading them?” and my answer would be “No, haha, of course not!” Because the font is just too damn small for no good reason. And I went jogging last week, anyway. And I didn’t fall down and break my hip. So there.

Also while I’m here, the Royal Bank cartoon businessman mascot they use (I think his name is Arby — get it? LOL!!) is creepy as all get-out. Tip: You do not make your monolithic, billions-in-record-revenue-generating banking enterprise more cuddly and personable by creating a mascot in a BUSINESS SUIT. Especially one with no neck. Creepy.

Damn snow/rain mix

I got up this morning and thought, “Gee, my legs are still pretty sore!” Then I looked out the window and also thought, “Gee, the frost sure looks heavy today.” Then I realized it was not frost, but snow, it was sticking and already piling up.

Damn snow.

The temperature rose enough later to change it from snow to rain and by the time I was homeward-bound in the afternoon most of it was gone, as is usual in these parts. I predict this is the end of the local snow shenanigans this winter. If I’m wrong I promise to take a picture of myself eating a snowball.

WriteQuest 2011!

2010 was a moribund year for me as far as writing went. I flamed out halfway through National Novel Writing Month, the writing group fell apart and my output slowed and then pretty much stopped for most of the year.

I’ve vowed to make 2011 the start of my writing renewal and part of that has been taking the writing group and exercises and moving them off a couple of scattered subforums and onto their own website, thenwrite.com. I’m hoping it will keep me and the other participants inspired and excited about putting words to page (and screen).

If not, I vow to become a pole dancer.

Return to the Valley of the Jogger

Four months later and I have finally completed another jog. Woo!

My plan was to complete 5K.

Conditions were favorable for the time of year, with the temperature ranging 3-4ºC, only a slight breeze at the start and partly cloudy skies, with the sun actually poking out a few times. I walked a circuit at China Creek Park first to check out the path and while there were no puddles the trail was rather mushy in spots, about what I expected given the recent rain.

I dressed in shorts since my manly tree trunk* legs don’t feel the cold much, wore a t-shirt with my jogging jacket and eschewed gloves, remembering all the times I’ve overdressed on previous runs. After the first km my hands still felt like blocks of ice so I was wondering if I’d made the right call but they warmed up a short time later and were fine the rest of the way.

By the second km I was beginning to feel some cramping in my chest and my legs suddenly gained roughly 300 pounds each. At this point the only other jogger out sailed past me. He was something like four feet taller than me so I figured he was fast due to his huge, hill giant-like stride. It couldn’t be because I had lost every trace of my conditioning!

As it turned out, I only lost most of my conditioning. My first km came in at a perfectly respectable 5:07/km but the rest of the run fell off the cliff, with my time plunging to 5:26 by the second km and continuing lemming-like for the next two km before leveling off as I finally hit my stride in the last stretch. By that point I was fully warmed up, the cramping had diminished and the legs, though still heavy, didn’t feel quite as burdensome.

Afterward, I felt fine and recovered quickly. My knee did not bother me at all and my legs are otherwise fine. I think my left shoe is a bit wonky up front so I will probably look for a new pair soon. I’ve put in probably over 700 km on these ones, so they’ve served me well.

Chart:

km Jan 18
1 km 5:07
2 km 5:26
3 km 5:36
4 km 5:42
5 km 5:44

* haha, no

My blog post, Volume 2 of 12: The Blog of Dreams

This post will be 10,000 pages long.

Fortunately, the pages have been shrunk through the science of something I just made up and they are now small enough to fit on the head of a pin, unlike the collected books comprising The Wheel of Time, for example, the weight of which could serve to batter down doors or stop a runaway cruise ship (like in Speed 2. I never really watched that movie but I did manage to catch the ending on TV once and I stood there staring at the screen, baffled and amazed at the sight of an actual runaway cruise ship. It was a definite ‘What were they thinking?’ moment. Good call by Keanu to bail on this sequel. That good call was subsequently offset by the many other terrible movies he went on to appear in, unfortunately, but a boy’s gotta eat).

I did not jog today due to spending a little more time with Tim getting and setting up his shiny new computer with patented* Harry Potter** interface, but I am rescheduling for tomorrow. Since it was also windy as all get-out today and I hate running in the wind (not to be confused with running like the wind) I am not too upset about putting it off for another day.

* it probably isn’t actually patented but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was
** seriously, the opening steps on initial startup that HP (Hewlett-Packard) forces the user to go through looks like some weird Harry Potter-esque thing with weird disembodied hands (Tim called them jazz hands)

My blog post, Volume 1 of 12: Blog of the Daggers of Sharp Thought

Just kidding! This blog post is entirely self-contained. Once you get to the end of it you will have complete closure and no need to read a follow-up post to find out how it all ends.

Sometimes I think I am the only person out there who prefers to read novels that begin and end in the same volume instead of being laid out over the course of 10 books and 10,000 pages, half of which are probably unnecessary. Maybe this is why I read so little fantasy. Or maybe I just hate elves. Or I’m simply jealous because Steven Erikson can write hundreds of pounds of books per year and I can only manage maybe half a pound at best.

Kneedful things

A good pun is hard to resist. A bad pun, moreso.

My left knee has checked out A-OK and the doctor says I am good to resume jogging, which I plan on doing this Monday. When he seemed a bit evasive on the cause of the soreness in my knee I asked, “Is it one of those ‘getting older’ things?” He immediately started in with, “Well, I wouldn’t want to put a name on it…” which seemed like a polite way of saying, “Yes”. But he was polite, so no dirty look for him!

Here’s hoping my Nike+ sensor still has some juice in it. Here’s also hoping I don’t collapse face-first into the mud after 200 meters.

This year is #11111!

Today is 1/11/11. It’s either the highest-scoring day ever or the lowest, depending on the scale you use.

Only 11 years, 1 month and 1 day until until 2/22/22 rolls around! (Did I do the math right? I hate math. Barbie was spot-on there. The old dumb Barbie, I mean, not the new computer scientist version that fools no one.)

Damn snow update: January 11, 2011

And speaking of snowflakes…

After a few instances of being the proverbial boy who cried wolf, Environment Canada correctly forecast the first real dump of snow for Vancouver this month, as it began piling up a few hours ago. It’s expected to get warmer and turn to rain by morning but it looks pretty enough right now. Best of all, no shoveling!

I wonder if this will be the last blast of traditional winter weather. My famous* weather intuition is not getting a clear picture on this. I’m going to guess we’ll see at least one more notable snowfall. In March.

Technically it will still be winter when it happens.

* famous in the sense of “I just made this up now”

Snowflakes: Beautiful under the microscope

How can something so stunningly elegant and pretty be such a pain to shovel?

New Scientist magazine has about a dozen images of snowflakes captured using a unique snowflake photomicroscope. The images can be viewed here. The symmetry and grace of these tiny things helps remind me that sometimes the earth is a pretty cool place (no pun intended).