Who needs Springer on TV?

It is a sad commentary on my life that I know who Jerry Springer is, and that I've see chunks of his "program". Or whatever it should be called. However, there is a mitigating circumstance, and it's called a month in Fox Creek. Twice, for my sins. Of my readers I think only Susi, and maybe Leana have been to Fox Vegas, as it's called. (All losers, all the time.) Susi stayed with a buddy, so she managed to eat real food, and not have to worry about what else you were sharing the bed and shower with.

This is a town where the best place to eat was the Husky House restaurant. By far. For those unfamiliar with Canadian gas stations, well,  it's a gas station with a restaurant. Not a classy place, when many of the regulars wear their work coveralls and steel toed gum boots to the table. I've been to much worse and several of them are a short walk up the road. Several times during that month our crew seriously contemplated driving 45 minutes or so one way to Whitecourt to get some real food. One night when talking to Linda I cried "I want a salad!" It was a real heart felt cry that wrung Linda's withers.

This morning as we were getting coffee and thinking about what to do today, a little white car zoomed up to the bottom of our next door neighbour's driveway. Joe is from Hong Kong and gets a Chinese newspaper delivered so this is no surprise. Before they even get out of the car we can hear two guys yelling at each other. They scuffle a little while swearing at each other in at least two languages. Oddly enough, neither was Cantonese or Mandarin. After a few minutes of this, the driver hops back in and zooms off. The other guy slowly walks across the road to the big green space. A minute later the little white car zooms up again, and the driver tosses some stuff out at the other guy, stops, and they yell at each other some more, then he zooms off. The walker collapses and looks like he's about to throw up. We're guessing he's just been fired. But they aren't done. A few minutes later the white car zooms up again and stops at our drive way. The driver holds up a small black thing, maybe a notebook, shows it to the guy, and puts it down on our driveway. They swear at each other again, and he zooms off for the last time. The other guy wanders around fora  bit like he's been gut shot, then I lost sight of him. I think he caught a bus. I know no more about the story.

You can appreciate with this going on I was a bit slow to get on the bike. I haven't been this amused by the goings on outside our front window since the kid on a skateboard was terrified by being pulled along by a good size dog at a full out run. He was flailing all over trying to keep his balance while not letting go of the dog. That performance didn't look like it could go on much longer, but it went on long enough to get out of my sight.

While out checking the weather and chatting to the neighbour one more house down, there were snow flakes. Not many, but some. I decided with those clouds, and a temp of 3 C (37 F) I wasn't going to ride outside. I picked a harder workout and got started inside. At the 1:45 minute mark my legs starting going to pot so I finished up that set, then cooled down for a good strong 2 hour ride. My legs felt good till the very end, though one hill set had my right knee and left calf complaining a bit. Standing was no problem. I am cautiously optimistic that the biking mojo is within reach.

After about 4 minutes to dry off and change I headed out for a 30 minute run around the block. It took about a K to find a stride, and settled in for a nice run. My legs felt good and I let them pick the pace. We ended up mid zone 3, I'm guess based on effort and breathing. It turned out to be 31 minutes for 5K, which I'm very happy with. (10 minute mile pace) That used to be an all out pace. Today I could have kept going, maybe another 5 K at that pace.

Weekly summary
Swim 3.0 hrs
Bike 3.5 hrs
Run 2.75 hrs
Walk .5 hrs
Total cardio 9.75
Core 1.5 hrs
Total 11.25

There's one process at work where I click a button, and there is a time between 1 second and 1 minute where the system does stuff. Doing anything else during that time is a bad idea. I have decided during that space, and there are lots of them, I'm going to be doing some shoulder stretches to help loosen things up and keep them loose. So far it seems to be helping.

I'm pretty pleased with the swim these days, even though I was a bit off for one of them.

The run is back to where it was before the Hypo Half, I think. It's feeling good, I'm finding a stride fairly quickly, and I'm relaxing the rest of my body while still keeping my arms going. I'm paying a lot of attention to my shoulders to make sure they are not paying unauthorized visits to my ears.

The bike has been a real struggle, but there's been several rides lately that have been pretty good. I'm hoping that's going to continue, especially as we get outside pretty quick.

The core. Sigh. The core has been brutal since I started work. Plank and pushups are right out when your shoulders are in pain even before you start. The core has been paired with bike, and when the bike isn't going well it's harder to get into the core session. Still, I've been working with what I can.

I simply have to keep on top of my sleep. Once I get behind things go to pot pretty quickly.