Short, intense: So not me, but

The weather here lately is just amazing! I am loving it.

Wednesday was another strong swim. 1 K, 19 minutes exactly, not even trying particularly hard. Some intervals after, and my swim ended early because they were swapping some lanes around. Very pleased.

Then tonight is another great evening for a run. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I'm trying to work on consistency, so out I went. The RunMeter graphs are way better on the new phone. I don't know if that's because the phone sensors are better, or the software is better or what. Although the very beginning of the elevation line isn't right, I was going uphill at first. Here's the graph.

For whatever reason I really felt like running fast once I got warmed up. Even at the fastest I didn't feel like I was running really hard. It still felt natural and I could have run at that pace for a little longer. Not much, but some.

In the end I decided that if was going to go faster, I'd better also stop sooner, and not over do it. I'm loving having happy legs and don't want to get them cranky again.

Right at this moment I'm struggling with a large orange literary cat. He is insisting on "helping". This is getting difficult. His grasp of grammar is very poor, and spelling isn't his strong suit either. Or working a keyboard, for that matter.

We all know I love reflection shots. I got this the other day just after arriving at work.

Still in shorts, outside, running

Calgary has had a whole lot of snow already this winter, to the tune of a million dead trees. The pruning and removing branches is still going on, and will be until next year. We've had several nights of frost already.

And you know what I found while running today? Bugs. Swarms of little bugs. Annoying. But that's the only annoying thing about the run. It was a lovely evening, high teens or so with a light breeze. I headed out to run whatever my legs wanted to run. Most of the run was regular deep breathing but no gasping. For those that don't want to squint at the chart, just over 6K, 41:30 minutes, feeling great.

I'm not sure if I'm on a different version of RunMeter now, but this elevation line is much more believable. The app interface has changed a bit, and I'll need to see if there are any new options to play with.

On the way back in I grabbed a couple shots of the garden. There is still some colour there, mainly in a bright blue plant. No idea what it is, though Linda will know. These photos are completely unretouched.

Still domesticating the new phone. The ordinary ring (old phone) is a little tinnier than on the 4, and I'm not sure I've got notifications all worked out. I've got it all set up to work with my ear glasses, so I"m happy about that.

I found the burst mode in photos by accident, and holy cow does it ever capture a lot of photos in a second. I haven't played with the video yet.

But there was no gratuitous trampling!

The weekend had a wonderful beautiful run with buddies, well up on the list of best runs ever for me. Monday I swam, and felt great. Did 1000 m in just under 20 minutes, then 3x50 m on 60 seconds. That's feeling better too.

Tuesday morning I felt great! Then I sat way too much at work, and during one meeting I was sort of twisted looking at the whiteboard, and the guy that was speaking much of the time. I limped home. Still, I tried running. That might have been a mistake. There was walk breaks. It was short. It was slow. Add very to those statements. Mega very. Well up on the list of worst runs ever.

Massage Wed afternoon, where my wonderful therapist put 1.5 hours into pummeling my thighs, with a bit of butt and calves. They felt much better after. Then a really good yoga class. My head attended this time, which was good.

Then a really nice run tonight. 4K, 29 minutes, gradually building, though the pace line for Runmeter is all over the place. The graphs for RunKeeper are much better.

And I was smiling, sort of. And as you can see, it's October 9th, and I'm wearing shorts and tech shirt.

Then I had some errands to run. It started with Rona, then Coop. Then Rona has moved the light bulbs, and someone scrambled the display. Then to Bulk Barn where I overdosed on the sugar smell. Then the Dollar Store for a few Halloween decoration.

Then, at last, Coop. I was braced for geezers. I was ready for the pre Thanksgiving crowd. I was going to go in, get 4 things, and get out. If a gratuitous trampling happened because someone didn't get out of my way, well, that's life.

Except they didn't have the granola I like, and nobody got in my way. I was almost disappointed. Other than a poor hapless grocery clerk bamboozled by Linda so he didn't know if he was coming or going, there was no chance. Maybe just as well.

Swim tomorrow, at some point. Let's see. Should be nice weather all weekend. Happy Turkey everybody!

What running is about

So one reader described yesterday's blog as "kinky opening". If you haven't read it, here it is, complete with explanatory lust inducing photo.

I hope I didn't overdo it today. The plan was to join Michelle and Jenn at Glenmore Landing. They were going to do two loops, and I was going to do an out and back for maybe 10 K or so. Well, life is complicated sometimes.

Michelle was a bit flustered what with one thing and another, and it was so cute listening her explain the story. From my point of view, we started running. About the 4 K mark we found it was going to still be a little while till Jenn could join us. We could have turned around. I was feeling pretty good, though, and decided that I could carry on all around, and if we sent Jenn the other way we would meet up. And so it was.

Pardon me for burbling a little bit here. It's early October, and it was a perfect day for running in shorts and a tech shirt. Sunglasses were de rigueur, as was a hat. As you can see in the pace graph below, running with Michelle keeps me honest at a steady pace.

Even better than the perfect weather was to chat and get caught up. The distance melted away and I didn't even think about it. We had a few little pauses. One for her to take off her jacket as I hummed the Gypsy Rose Lee song. One for a flurry of texting about 4 K and decide to go or come back.  A quick bio-break just before 7 K. We power walked up the hills out of the Weaselhead. More texting then we met up at the 11 K point. There was a short walk break about 12 K, which I didn't mind in the least.

This is what running is about for me. I still haven't had this mythical runners high that some people talk about, but this was close. I could feel my legs working, and I've got a bit of a quad ache at the end of the day, but it was wonderful. For some reason I hadn't remembered meeting Jenn at the VIP event at the Calgary Tower, and in any case, it's tough to translate from all gussied up to dressed for running.

Other than that, today was nothing extraordinary. BBQ some bison burgers for lunch. BBQ a huge rack of lamb for supper. Lamb in a commercial dry rub called Herbs de Provence, all sorts of herbs, and it was wonderful. Cat cuddling. Wine drinking. Working on novel to expand a new scene I wrote on vacation. Thinking about NaNoWrimo, and getting some ideas of where to take the sequel.

So here's all the photos and screen shots that the number's geeks are dying to see. Photos of people first. Michelle getting her hydration pack on again. Not the most graceful pose, but such a nice smile.

Jenn and Michelle caught by surprise at the end of the run. Supposedly there is a photo of all of us taken by a bystander. That may show up on Michelle's blog.

So here's the route, counter-clockwise, and cheating along 66th to cut a bit of distance off.

I am totally loving this pace line. Nice and steady.

I think it was the pizza and chocolate

You guys have broken the roll Curtis was on. Blogs that feature him usually do quite well in readership, but not yesterday's. And he's repressing an iPad, what more do you want? Hint, scroll down a bit.

I was scheduled into a training course at the last minute today. You don't want to know for what. They served pizza lunch and yummy goodies for dessert. Let's just say I nibbled my share, shall we? I even split the brownie with Patricia rather than gobbling it all myself. The treats were surprisingly good.

It's still a beautiful day out, much the same as earlier this week with the lovely run. Still the same lovely scenery. I headed out with the new Altra zero drop shoes and felt good right from the start. I'm so happy my legs have unlocked and I can bend my knees again. I just wish I'd known what did the trick.

This is a fast pace for me these days, yet I wasn't trying to run fast at all. I was just trying to run at a comfortable pace, somewhat faster or slower depending on how I felt. My feet felt light and happy, and I settled in right away. I don't think I could have done the chat chat chat thing the full time, but certainly for parts of the run I could.

So either I'm just doing better for the run, which seems unlikely at my age, or pizza and chocolate is good fuel for running. What do you think?

Almost as nice as doing it on a beach

I'm sure missing running on a beach. But today is what running is all about for me.

Picture this.
It's a beautiful sunny day without a cloud in the sky.
It's warm enough to sweat, but not hot enough to be cooking or regret not bringing water.
The trees are starting to change colour. In Calgary that means the russet colours, yellows, oranges, golds.
The mountains have snow on them already.

There I am running down the 37st path, looking at all this. Drinking it in. Enjoying a relaxed nice and easy run. Not many other people out and about. My legs are feeling good, I'm feeling relaxed. About the only thing lacking was sand.

I was trying to keep a steady easy pace but it seemed like every time I heard an update from my phone, I was running too fast and eased back. I'm not so good at a steady pace without my run buddy. Who, I might add, was off doing her first 100 K ride, and totally nailed it!

So lets see, since I started with fitness stuff, let's carry on. Water ran about 40 minutes with my buddy Katie on Wednesday. I'd started swimming, but because I can't see very well I was halfway down the lane when I recognized her churning along. So nice to chat! I swam a little after.

Thursday I was out for a short 3 K run in my zero drop shoes. I could have gone further but didn't. Nice pace, felt good.

Friday in the pool again, 500 m swim, some kick, and some intervals. I felt bad for the girl swimming next to me. She was being coached, and he was kicking her ass for not meeting some standard. I was sure happy with my swim though.

I'd promised a photo of the 12.9 pound souvenir from Nova Scotia. Lots of stuff in this photo. It's hard to read, but that's a bottle of coffee flavoured port wine made by Janet's husband Ron. We had some from another bottle while we were there, and it's amazing.

I'm sort of surprised blackberries are still in season, and these are wonderful. I'm sort of surprised there's any left.

This is the 12.9 pound chopping block made from Nova Scotia maple and other more exotic hardwoods around the edge. It's 7 cm thick, and 32x34 cm. Did I mention it was heavy?

It was also a perfect morning to zoom out to the Millarville market, where we picked up a few odds and ends. The fun part was chatting with Nancy, who does the coffee roasting at Crickle Creek coffee. It's wonderful stuff, and I'm looking forward to my first #coffeechat in several weeks tomorrow morning.

I hadn't known there was a winery near Millarville. We had a few samples and enjoyed. This is how much we enjoyed it, we bought a bottle. Imagine that, a guy that makes and likes his own wine, buying a bottle. Take a look at Spirit Hills Winery if you're interested.

We took the scenic route coming and going. Loving it. The Foothills are beyond beautiful this time of year.

Ok, so I screamed like a little girl

This morning I didn't really think about the cupping my massage therapist did yesterday. There was a small tender spot on the back of my thigh that looks like it had been scraped. I thought about it very loudly after getting into the shower this morning! I hope I didn't wake the neighbours. Like nipple chafe, only worse. This evening it's much better, seems to be fully scabbed over. The other spots just look like they got a bit of sun.

My legs felt good enough to try running in the new Altras again. This time I really did shut off the WiFi in my phone and got a much more reasonable looking pace line on my graph. My legs felt great during the run, with only the smallest of twinges. Normally I'd have kept on running, but with breaking in new shoes I want to take it easy. I could feel my feet getting a bit tired, and some of the twinges were in odd places. I really do have trouble running at a steady pace without my run buddy.

Afterward I stretched and used my new gear roller. Feels so good, and digs so deep!

As I was walking home I discovered that either one of my neighbours has won the lottery, or has rich friends. In the photo this looks like a nice yellow, but in fact it's a neon green. I'm reasonably certain that If the top was up I couldn't get into it, and with the top down once in, I wouldn't be able to get back out again.

gears and zero drop

Is this not fearsome looking? How could I not buy it?

It already has the Linda seal of approval for how it worked over her shoulders.

Believe it or not, I went to a shoe sale the other day. One of these things is not quite like the others.

Mine were samplers in the $50 box. I don't have especially wide feet, but my little toes sometimes feel the pinch. When I saw how roomy the toe box was I had to try them. These are zero drop shoes, meaning the distance between both the heel and the ball of my foot to the floor is the same. Most shoes have a built up heel.

I've done a bit of barefoot running. A very little bit. It's good for reminding yourself of what a mid-foot stride is, since it's essentially impossible to run on your heels barefoot. Of course, that exposes your feet to anything that might be on the ground or path. Let's not talk about that.

I had thought I'd like to try a zero drop shoe, but was unwilling to bet full price on liking them. At less than half I'm willing to go for it. Today was actually my first run in them, and I don't have the first idea how far or long I went in them. Just knowing the neighborhood, I'm thinking not quite 2 K.

The GPS was terrible today, both apps lied their faces off. In 25 minutes running, they both thought I'd done nearly 7 K. NOT! I started with my Asics and ran maybe 2 K, just enough to feel warmed up. Then I changed into the Atra's and headed out. I was astonished how light and stable my feet felt. My quads were a bit tired but that's a typical thing these days. Toward the end I could feel the very beginning of a calf twinge, but if I hadn't been paying attention I probably wouldn't have noticed it. Then it was back into the Asics for maybe another K or so, which was almost a bit of a shamble at the end. My feet felt really clumsy in the Asics.

Throughout this I was getting the most amazing pace times, but I didn't believe a word of it. At the time I thought that whatever it was measuring, it would at least measure consistently, and I'd be able to tell where I changed shoes by the big change in the pace line. Tell me, can you see where I changed shoes?

Thought not. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Here's the crazy map. Linda thinks it looks like a savage dog.

Friday was another swim lesson. My buddy is doing great! The biggest problem to overcome now is learning to roll to breathe. We did some exercises there, but I'm really pleased at the progress so far. I got kicked out of the teach pool for a bit, and I managed to get in some hard sprints.

Even when I swim I'm one of the first people into work these days, and I got this neat reflection shot just down the hall from my office.

And lastly, one of the more adorable photos of Curtis and Celina. How can I not publish this?

Celina was grumbling at me while I was writing, complaining that Curtis gets all the photo action, and that she's much the prettier kitty, so I should include more of her. So here she is.

The tool that horrifies the Velominati and Estela

So there I was yesterday, on a wonderful ride with buddies, coping with a bit of chain Grrrr. I think this was Estela's way of telling me I'd been neglecting her too long. I was pretty sure the problem was sticky chain, old broken down lube caked with dust and other noxious substances.

After another layer of stain in the lodge I set Estela up on the bike rack and started working on the chain. I remembered the chain as coming apart very easily. Push the right two links together and it pops apart. Not today. I don't have the right plier thingies that would do this, so I had to improvise.

Are you afraid yet? This is not even remotely the right tool, but I got'er done. That's what being a guy is all about. Red Green would be proud of me, even if he would think Estela is a bit of a sissy bike. I say she's a classy bike who has never let me down.

Chain off, cleaned, I didn't even lose the two little link pieces I needed to put it back together. Cleaned the gears and gear changer thingie. My spelling is the first thing to go and I'm not even going to try to spell derailers. Put it all back together, then spent a while looking for chain lube. Eventually I found some, but it's not what I wanted to use. Better than nothing. A quick ride around the cul-de-sac had the gears going whir instead of Grrrrr. So who's up for a ~ 50 K (hopefully more than 25K, and for sure  less than 100 K) ride our 22X?

Then came the fun part. Getting the remnants of stain and chain lube out of my hands. It's still not all gone.

But no, the fun part was getting sunscreened up and heading out for a run in the heat of the day. I was in the mood to run. My knees have been feeling pretty good even with all the kneeling for the stain. I started easy, then headed up towards the reservoir and back. I was hoping to go for an hour, and in this heat, that's excellent for me. I ended up going an hour exactly, 8.4 K, working just a bit harder than chatchatchat pace, but not so much I was gasping and working. It was one of the best solo runs in a very long time. Why?
-It was short enough that I felt pretty strong throughout.
-It was long enough that I got a great workout, and had to talk to myself a little bit to keep going the last few minutes.
-It was the right level of exertion; I could feel my legs working, but no complaints.
-It was a hot sweaty affair, which was exactly what I wanted.

After some stretching and a shower I fired up the BBQ. I haven't done rack of lamb for a while, but my touch has not deserted me. It was awesome, even by my standards. Rack of lamb is just about my best thing to BBQ. Needless to say, we ate out on the patio. The weather was perfect.

So now I'm finishing off the glass of wine, and letting my meal digest in peace as I write this blog. I know there is Stampede chaos and people out there trying to get drunk and/or laid, but I am serene. It's almost bedtime, though I'll write a little longer. Writing on the patio is so peaceful. Good thing the wine is done, or I'd be pouring more.

If you want to ride, tweet me or email me, that's the best way to reach me. I suppose you could comment here too. I don't have a departure time yet, but it's not likely before 9am. Normally on these I try to leave after cool, and before baking hot.

A fun bike with buddies, and stuff

I'd forgotten how much fun it was to get out on a bike with buddies and just enjoy the ride. No pace, no time requirements, no distance goals, other than getting to where we wanted to go. Chat along the way. Explore a detour or two.

Michelle organized this ride to Lake Chestermere. Earlier this year she ran it as part of her training for the 50 K run. She wanted to see it in summer, but didn't want to run it again. Now she's working on bike distance, so it was easy.

I took Estela, even though she is too much bike for the bike paths, and I was pretty sure we'd be on a gravel road for a detour. My hybrid needs some work. We met up, and drove to where the path and canal cross Glenmore trail. A bit of getting sorted out, and we were off. Turns out Estela needs some work too, I think the chain needs cleaning. Tomorrow.

It's a beautiful flat ride. The canal had lots of bird life on it, and there were always interesting swirls and ripples in the water. We just rode along, no rush at all. Michelle and Antje were on hybrids or mountain bikes so they had to work a little harder. You have to pay attention during the detour near 52nd St, but other than that, it's follow the path and enjoy the ride. I won't talk about how Michelle ended up in mud up to her ankles, that's a story for her blog.

Here's some photos, in whatever order blogger puts them.

This is from Michelle's phone, an obliging bystander took it for us.

If the photos don't make it clear, it was a perfect day. Warm and sunny, almost no wind. We couldn't have asked for a nicer day.

Even though I wasn't really paying attention to pace or anything, I did turn on run meter. I wanted to see what the map and pace lines actually looked like. Here you are for the number gurus of you. I can understand the pace line being all over the place. We sped up and slowed down quite a bit. But that elevation line is WHACKED. This is a seriously flat path. Just at the end I rode to the actual detour to see what work they were doing and to see if there really was a reason to close the path. There was. I rode back fairly briskly to catch up, well above 30 KPH for a while. But look what the elevation did; it dropped way off, and trust me, that path is flat. Maybe I should have had the other one going too, just to see what it said.

It felt pretty good. I could feel my legs talking to me a bit after the 5 K sprint at the end, but my butt was still fine. Maybe Sunday I'll go out for 50 K or so. Who's up for a ride out 22X from my place Sunday?

Once they dropped me off at home we had an iced coffee on the patio and chatted more. Lovely. No Stampede parade could be this enjoyable, and being in an office isn't even in the same universe.

Then I got to work. There were some spots where pressure washing the rocks had blasted out the sand and it needed to be filled in again. Lots of hands and knees, tamping bits of sand in, and spraying it with enough water to activate the polymer.

Then a nap, lying on the grass beside the lodge. More lovely. Then staining parts of the lodge. We've got a food grade clear stain for the inside, on the wear surfaces. I did the floor, benches, the food trays, bowls. Another layer tomorrow. Here's what it looks like empty. That white pipe is the air intake for the grill just above it.

I can't believe vacation is almost over, and there some things I really must get done before going back to work. For as long as that lasts, anyways. But it's too nice right now to worry about that.

Oh, the SQL joke in yesterdays blog? I'll try to explain. Usually a SQL statement starts with the word SELECT. This tells the query what data fields to get. Then there's a WHERE clause to tell the query what table the field is in. It usually looks like this:

SELECT fieldname1, fieldname2, fieldname_n
FROM tablename;

There can be much else, but this will work. However, if you're good, you can start a query like this:

WITH
a AS (SELECT blah blah blah FROM goo goo goo),
b AS (SELECT glug glug glug FROM gah gah gah)
SELECT field names
FROM a, b, maybe other tables
Where (explain join conditions)
maybe other stuff;

This lets you join together several queries as a sub-queries, and their results are like a temporary table that you can use in an overall query. But it's more complicated to write, and there's more things to go wrong.

Hello, are any of you still awake? Did I just cure your insomnia?

The big hot sweaty run

Sometimes I think that being on vacation is harder than working. At work I just stand there, and think of clever things to say in SQL, then even cleverer text to explain the whole thing. I even thought of a meme for the Most Interesting Man -- I don't always write SQL statements, but when I do, they begin with 'with'. (Yukyukyuk, yeah I know. I think two of my readers get the joke. If you do, please comment so I know who you are.) But on vacation who knows what I'll get up to?

Tuesday I should have turned on Runmeter for our Canada Day walk. It was a long one. Really long, in a fairly hot sunny day. Then a long wait for the fireworks, just about freezing my tail off. When we were planning the day, I forgot how cool it was likely to get. It was lots of fun. Here's the selfie, and some of the nice bikes parked at Village Ice Cream.

Wednesday we slept in, big surprise. I had some stuff downtown to do, doing the things that a spooked herd member needs to do. All that went very well.

Today Linda was setting up for some buddies to drop by, so after a short swim and a long water run with the champ Katie, we got all ready. It was smoking hot out, bright and sunny. While getting set up I decided I hadn't been out for a good hot run in a long time.

It used to be, once upon a time, that I could barely walk in the hot weather. Then I started doing this fitness thing, and got better at dealing with the heat. So today is high 20's, and I wanted to run. I wanted to get hot and sweaty. So I did. No expectations about time or pace, just out for a run. It ended up behind a bit more overcame and more humid than hot. Humid for Calgary guys, work with me here.

I felt comfortable and strong, running just sub 7 minute K's. That lasted till I started coming up out of Fish Creek. I'd sort of thought it would be cool and shady down there, but no. There were lots of hot and humid spots. I started slowing down a bit, and walked up part of the hill. Even after the top of the hill I wasn't settling down into a run again. I could feel the heat and my legs were starting to get a bit tired. Rather than push it, I took what I'd done, about 6.5 K in 45 minutes, and was really pleased.

Stretched after, and settled in on the patio to write and generally relax. This part of vacation is good.