Run. Beach. Shorts. November

This run map makes total sense, right?

When I was shooting some sunrise photos I found this bit of trail right down by the water. No idea how far it went, but my run buddy (best ever!) was keen to explore. We got down the only way I knew to find it, ran past the canoe club and turned around at a little inlet I hadn't known was there. We ran back along the shore, past the picnic area, and almost into Weasel Head. Scrambled up a slope, then back and forth a bit, and around a wetland I hadn't known was there.

I wished I had the good camera.

As always, we had a good time chatting, marveling at the warm weather. I wore shorts, she wore capri's. We found lots of new stuff we'd never known was there in North Glenmore park. The trail was a mix of stuff, lots of packed gravel, some clay, a bit of almost bog, all very nice to run on.

We went 10 K, 1:22, but we didn't care about the time. It was so nice to run along the water and enjoy the changing views, and just be outside when it's so nice out.

Linda is putting the final touches on putting the garden to bed. Believe it or not, there is still some bloom!

Here's part of the garden a little more affected by the cold weather.

Finally over 5K words! At this point I doubt much of will make it into the final edit, but what the heck. I think this is one of the places I need to blither a whole bunch of words to find out what is going on and how they get there. Then I can figure out the best way to tell that bit. It won't be the first time I've written myself three sides around the square, then later figure out how to do it better.

Here's a little snippet, just because I'm so good to you guys.

The room was larger than he remembered, and he didn’t see any of his own people, not that he would have sat with them. He picked out a tall chair at a long counter where he could watch most of the room. He enjoyed every sip of coffee. It just wasn’t this good at home.

“Been a long time. Join you?”

Regan was a little startled. How does he do that? He hadn’t noticed Davenport approaching and gestured to the next chair.

Davenport settled himself and took a sip of coffee. “I love how they do it here. Always just right.” He smiled the affable smile that he knew irritated Regan.

“Yes.” Bastard. He’s doing it again.

“Now you’re wondering if this is a chance meeting. Perhaps it is. The other possibilities you’ve probably already considered is that I knew you were coming and have been waiting, or that someone was watching for you and told me.”

Calm. Calm. “It matters little. As you say, it’s been a while. I thought it would be nice to escape my office and visit old friends.”

Davenports eyebrows went up a fraction. “Your influence must be growing if you can persuade your Chairman to counter sign your travel authorization, just to visit old friends.”

“Perhaps it is. You’ve probably already considered that I knew you would hear of my coming here, and that I was sent in expectation of that.”

“Your people are big on sending, I have to admit that.” Davenport waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “We both know we can both dance around the small talk all day, and we’re both busy people. Shall you get to the point, or shall I finish my coffee and be about my business?”

Autumn gardening in Calgary, and a rant

The plants have had a big year, growing tall, developing their roots and bulbs, and blooming their little faces off. That takes nutrients. Linda has noted the soil level has fallen quite a bit since the garden was planted, and has a plan. The delivery guy was helpful in dropping the big bags right where they were wanted. It saves me much wheelbarrow work. I am thankful.

Plus we are starting to get frost at night. The white fabric is cheap. The pelicans help to protect the plants.

Here's some more plants all draped up. We have plans for Halloween to use this fabric. Hopefully there will be a little breeze, and we can send billowing clouds of the fabric towards the little trick or treaters.

Others plants are still working on their blooms. I call them optimists. I'm not sure if they're behind because of recovering from the many hail storms, or they are late bloomers anyways. I am rooting for them, being a bit of a late bloomer myself.

The big event this weekend is the photography course put on by the famous Neil Zeller. I'm so eager to go I'm already packed.

Lets see, what haven't I talked about. Oh yeah. Running. Last you heard we ended the 26 K run at 22 K. I've been hurting in an achy way ever since.  Twinges in hams and calves. I woke up the other day to spasming muscles in the back of my knee, extending down into the calf, and up into the thigh. Not hard and painful like a charlie horse, just little contractions that I didn't ask for. My resting heart rate has been elevated, and my sleep has been crap the last several nights. I suspect over training, or my body not recovering from the last workout.

Doing easy mobility work has twingy moments. The Tuesday swim was ok, but the water running after didn't last long. Fighting off a runny nose cold hasn't been helping.

The Saturday schedule calls for 28 K, and I'd been thinking of moving that to today. I don't think I can cope with staying up late (for me), doing a long run, and then going out for another late night, and then spending all day working with the images.

Now that today has arrived, I'm asking my legs what they think. 28 K is right out. In fact, I'm dubious about 10 K. Stay tuned.

I was into Chinook mall to check out the screen on the new 27 inch iMac. Along the way I saw this totally incongruous sign.

(Rant on!)
What's wrong with this picture? To start with, there isn't a lot we can do about the adults addicted to tobacco. I feel for them, and I weep for the impact it has on our so-called health care system. But we should be doing everything in our power to prevent people from getting the habit in the first place. Tobacco is a foul, noxious product that has absolutely no redeeming societal value, and should have no place in the modern world. None.

That said, it's been legal, and we need to deal with the consequences for much of the next human lifetime. Places like Shefield should exist to supply the unfortunate, under strict conditions. That should be the only place to legally get tobacco in any form. And those places should not be next to a child oriented store. They should be regulated similar to the places selling alcohol.  Test them by sending in underage kids, and if they don't check the ID, they are shut down.

I was thinking about the health care system as I woke up this morning. There is a whole wave of pre-geezer people that are going to be putting increased demand on the system as their bodies fail them. I'm one of them, healthier than most, but the path is inevitable. All we can do is manage how steep the decline is, and how many rocks are in the path. The health system should make this easier, and keep people out of hospitals.

Let's take automobile collisions, or as I like to call them, demonstrations of driver incompetence. DDI for short. One of the unfortunate side effects is cluttering up the medical system. People don't get killed nice and clean, oh no. There are whole teams of highly trained people devoted to getting the injured out of the mangled vehicles and delivered to a hospital. Some of them die sooner or later., how sad for them and their families. Some are injured to a lesser degree, but might take up a bed for much longer while they recover, and many never recover fully. In some ways that's even sadder. Even those not injured will likely be assessed, which takes valuable medical resources.

I've said it before, I'd like to see car simulators built to objectively test people's driving skills, and measure the lack. And boy do I see a lot of skill lacking, or the willingness to employ the skills, which comes to the same thing. You see it too, don't lie to me. Such a test every 5 years or so upon license renewal seems fine, and of course, after a DDI. We should be doing lots more to reduce the number of dead an injured, not just for their sake, though that's reason enough, but to lessen the burden on the health system.

We should be looking hard at people that are involved in any sort of a DDI. Those single vehicle "incidents" we hear about on the radio so often? If it's not a medical event, it's a DDI, unless you convince me the driver was distracted by some amazing event like a meteor strike nearby.  Changing weather doesn't count, this is Canada, the weather changes abruptly so drive that way. After a DDI the driver(s) involved should have to justify why they should be continued to be allowed to drive, and should have to pass an advanced driver safety course. The course and following drivers test should be marked by the infamous Russian judge.

Just yesterday I watched a woman trying to get out of a tight parking spot in a big vehicle, while holding a phone to her ear. I was watching carefully so I didn't get run over. I caught her eye, did the phone holding gesture, while shaking my head at her. She just got angry and revved the engine more. Fortunately I was beside the vehicle, not in front or behind, but I was beginning to worry about the surrounding vehicles. What could be so important that she couldn't complete the call while parked, then devote her full attention, such as it is, to the difficult task facing her? I don't think she had completely grasped the concept of turning the steering wheel this way, while backing, to make the front of the car point that way. Sigh.

I wish I knew what caused people to make choices that they know are bad for them. Driving is one of the most dangerous things a Canadian can do. The manufacturers have made cars ever safer, yet people are devoting less thought to driving. They know they can't (not in the legal sense, but that it's nearly impossible to) text and drive, but seem compelled to pick up the phone.

People know that smoking tobacco is a disgusting habit that will damage their health, and that of the people around them, yet they continue. Worse, they somehow start.

People make poor food choices, sometimes because that's all they can afford. I've been asked at work where I get the food I bring for lunch, it smells so good. I tell them it's often what we had for dinner the night before. Yes, they say, but where did you get it? Umm, Linda cooked it. They don't get it. Many of the people I worked with over the last while not only don't cook, they can't cook, unless heating up canned contents counts. Not.

Trinkets like the iPhone are all very well, but there's lots of days I think there are some fundamental things wrong with our society. Do you agree? Stories you can share?

A 4 lens comparison

August 28th was overcast, so I dug out all my lenses for a comparison. Overcast is good because it's nice even light that doesn't change much throughout the shoot.

The idea here was to set up the tripod and exchange the lenses, shooting at both ends of the zoom, with the lens as wide open as it goes, adjusting shutter speed for consistent exposure. I didn't play any games with focus, just let the autofocus do it's thing. The centre cross hairs were aimed at the lily just below the house number, just above the red geraniums. I exported them from Lightroom without doing any manipulation to the image.

The iPhone does this.

The order I shot the lenses was the Tokina 11-20 f2.8 wide angle, then the Canon 18-55 mm kit lens, then the Sigma 17-50 mm f2.8, then the Canon 100 mm f2.8 Macro. I was mostly interested in comparing the kit lens to the Sigma. Here they are.

11mm This is a great setting for a big landscape shot.

20 mm

kit lens 18 mm

Sigma lens 18 mm (to match kit lens)

 kit lens 55 mm  (should have dialed back to 50, but wanted to give it every advantage.)

Sigma lens 50 mm

Canon 100 mm, at f2.8. The autofocus picked up on some of the flowers in front of the central lily so things are subtly out of focus, as to be expected with such a shallow depth of field.

Here's a tiny piece of the above photo, showing what's in focus.

Canon 100 mm, at f32.  This should have the effect of increasing the depth of field, and bringing everything to the same focus.

Here's those same little white flowers, and you can tell the white flowers aren't quite as sharp, but the orange ones are sharper. I may have rushed the autofocus.

So you've scrolled through. Big deal, you think, I can't see much difference in photo quality. Here's the money shot, comparing the kit to the Sigma at max zoom. Kit lens first, then the Sigma. This is zoomed 3:1 into the photo itself. Keep in mind the camera was about 28 feet away from this flower. Now do you see why photographers shell out for better lenses?

Here's the Tokina at 11 mm, using lightroom to zoom in 3:1 like the above two shots. No surprise that it's starting to pixelate.

Just for fun, here's the Tokina at 20 mm, with the same 3:1 zoom in Lightroom. Now scroll up and look at that kit lens again. I'm surprised at this.

The other thing I discovered happened as I was playing with different ways of doing things. I had displayed photos on the big TV to show Michelle and Amy the triathlon photos, but I hadn't compared the tv to the laptop.

Tonight I had the bright idea of displaying the photo on the tv, with the laptop having the various Lightroom screens. I thought maybe that would be better use of screen real estate. That doesn't work in any practical sense because of the lag between changing the controls and seeing the change on the screen. Oh well.

I took Linda through the last bunch of shooting I and compared the two screens across flowers, clouds, buildings, a river, and other shots. Holy crap! The laptop (a Macbook Air from mid 2013) looks washed out compared to the tv screen. I succumbed to the lure of Apple porn, and scoped out the new iMac. Holy doodle. $4K or so, tricked out the way I want it. I'm afraid to go into the actual store and look.

The long run glow

Todays long run brought to you by the Nose Creek path, from 32nd ave beside the Rockyview building, all the way up to the Huntington Hills golf course. We had turned around there during an 18 K run with Patricia, so this filled in my map further north.

It was cool overnight so we started a little after 9. The start was good. Maybe too good, as we discussed on the way back. There was a reason for the discussion. My legs were still feeling a little tired from the Wednesday run that I haven't told you about yet, and the massage.

So lets rewind a bit. I hadn't been sure how my last day at work would go. Perhaps I'd be told to not come in at all. I had hopes...

I ended up having to go in, so I planned for the 15 K hard run for the morning. I dropped Linda off at the LRT and came back to get changed. I got started at dawn, and it was lovely. Every time I looked the sunrise was a little different. The plan was to warm up, and then do 5 x(1K at 5K pace and 1 K easy). Except I goofed and that's not what the phone told me. I ended up doing it by keeping track myself. You can bet I didn't go over.

There was some thought of doing it around the reservoir, but decided that if I needed to bail out for some reason, that would make life difficult. I chugged a loop the loop pattern around the neighbourhood and it all went well. 15 K, 1:40:33, average 6:42 pace. The fast K were all just over 6 minutes, so I'm pretty pleased. All the easy ones were about 7 minute K pace. Overall felt pretty good, glad it wasn't any longer.

Then the last day at work. Then the massage. She worked me over pretty good, but she could have done ever so much more. The right ham needed it so bad.

Thursday, my first day of official "retirement" started busy. Swim. Donate some nearly perfect blood.  I was disappointed to see that the main donation clinic has the same crappy cookies as the mobile clinics. The chairs are more comfortable. My nurse had a beautiful singing voice going along with the oldies station, in between their memorized patter. 72 donations. Run some errands on the way home. Nap. BBQ.

Slept in, drank coffee, ran some more errands. Scoped out a starting place along the canal for the 32 K run in a few weeks. I want that one to be FLAT. As in, no hills. Started getting a nose sniffle after eating a spicy lunch. Watched Love and Friendship and loved it. I just love movies with witty dialogue.

Saturday the schedule says 26 K run. We started about a 7 min/K pace, and I felt great! I was happy running along looking at new scenery. The sun was up, and surprisingly warm already. I was sweating, Michelle was glowing. We followed the path, though it got a bit confusing, and we turned around where we would have ended up going into some northern neighbourhood. I was nervous. The customs might be different there.

Back and then up beside the golf course where there was a scenic lookout. I got some iphone photographs.

Up to about 12 K it went really well, then it got a bit hilly and we slowed down a little. I did, at least, I think Michelle was still ready to bound along. Walking up the hills felt pretty good. The wheels started coming off my wagon about 19 K. My legs, especially right ham were sending stiff notes of protest upstairs. 20 K was 7:35 pace slowest yet, 21 slower yet at 8:02 and several walk breaks, half marathon time of 2:32:34, and at 22 hearing 8:14 pace I was done. I figured no point in running myself into an injury, and I did not want to suffer through 4 more K taking nearly a half hour. Yuck. If it had been a 23 K run, maybe, but who does 23? Nice walk back to the car to cool down, and stretch. (As of later my legs are feeling better.)

Overall I'm pretty pleased. We discussed if we'd gone out too fast, but my legs were happy with the pace, and we were chatchatchat. (why are none of you surprised?) Sometimes I find running slower to be harder. It was all good till my legs got tired of the game. I'd had good nutrition all along, drinking about a litre of energy drink, plus eating maybe half a cliffs bar.  The hydration pack is working out really well.

The recent reads are

I am not an advanced marathoner, but it's Katie's bible. I think my training course is based on it. My difficulty with many non-fiction books is finding the sweet spot between "subject x for dummies" that doesn't tell me anything I don't already know just from being a breathing adult at least somewhat aware of the world. Some of those authors should be ashamed of themselves. The other end of the spectrum is "everything under the sun about subject x.1.2.3 (and not x.1.2.2 which is outdated as you should know) by and for experts." The info I might want is in there, but I'm not likely to find it, buried as it is under mountains of related material.

This is on the subject expert side of things, especially the training plans. I don't have it in front of me as I write, but I think the base plan was build around someone who routinely does about twice the weekly milage I do. I had slowly worked myself up to 100 K per month, and felt pretty good about that, although I fully realize there are some who do that nearly weekly. I figure I'm just barely at the point of being fit enough to get through a marathon, and with any luck I won't get sick or injured. Being able to sleep extra this month should be a big help.

The problem with the retirement book is that it's old. Not sure it's outdated, but it's from  almost 10 years ago. Our financial advisors are telling us this stuff and more beside. I zoomed through it, not finding anything I didn't already know. If you are new to the subject it's pretty good. I've covered some of the basic basics earlier in this blog. Spend much less than you earn. Debt is an emergency. Some of it is long term manageable debt, but work on getting rid of it. Credit card debt is an all hands on deck adrenaline fueled emergency. Until you've taken care of most of your debt, you don't need this book.

I'm not sure what's next on the reading list.

Several firsts!

Once upon a time I got on my bike, this was long before Estela, and from home rode all around the reservoir and back. It was an epic journey for me. The hills were like cliffs and were higher than the Cliffs of Insanity. It took a really long time. The route looks like this now, and was slightly different back in the day.

Gradually I got faster, but it was always a big ride for me. Then I got Estela and discovered the hills weren't really that big and trying to ride her along that route at speed was not a good idea. Somewhere along the way I actually ran around the reservoir for the first time.

Today was a run from home, around the reservoir, and back to home. There was a walk before and after. 22 K, 2:42:49 run time, 7:24/K pace. I only remembered after I was supposed to negative split the distance, but I was pretty tired the last few K and couldn't have pushed much harder. The first 11 K was 1:20:14, so I was just over 2 minutes slower. Oh well.

I was working really hard to get last Wed run out of my head and succeeded. I didn't run or swim Thursday or Friday, and went to bed early both nights. Today I felt a bit tired going in, took a K or so to find a pace, and settled in fairly even, hills slowing us down a bit.  Although we passed a couple of people on the way up to North Glenmore. (Yay us!) We stopped for a bio break in North Glenmore, and I checked out a possible photo vantage point (nope), but otherwise it was a steady run. Well, aside from the third first. (keep reading.)

So I'm pretty pleased, in case you hadn't noticed! First time I've done this route as a run. (first first.)

Yesterday I got some good news I can't talk about yet. Soon. Afterward I was shopping through MEC and picked out a hydration pack. Usually for long runs I put a little aid station on the front porch and do loops, but this time we were talking about doing a long point to point run down in Fish Creek. What with one thing and another we decided not to, and went around the reservoir instead. I didn't want to try to carry everything in pockets, so pack it was.

It has lots of pockets, including a pocket in a pocket which is always neat. 2 L capacity, which seems about right. One of the pockets is waterproof and my phone fits in it, so that's good. It fit comfortably right from the start, and once Michelle showed me the trick of getting all the air out of the bladder, I was good to go. (I had a whole bunch of bladder jokes going through my mind during the run for inclusion in the blog, but I'm over that now.) I'm really pleased with how it worked out. No shifting around, no chafing. (second first.)

I know that some of my readers have their special run buddy, but sorry guys, I have the best one in the world. Really! We've run together in cold and hot, rain and dry, chatting about everything under the sun. But today was a first, showing that special bond of trust between long time run buddies. She trusted me to gently dig around in some soft moist folds of skin, removing an irritant she couldn't quite deal with.

What's that you say? What??!! You perverts. We were on a public path, and her pants were on. I dug a bug out of her eye. You guys! Sheesh. Anyways, that was the third first. All in one run! We even saw some friends heading into Heritage park, and chatted very briefly.

It was a nice run, legs feeling pretty good, even toward the end. They were tired of course, especially hip flexors, but we chugged along. Long walk afterward checking out the new pedestrian bridge. Showered, nibbled some cold pizza, and the cats graciously gave me a recovery purr on the quads. Such a sleepy little face.

Hope the weather holds for a photo walk with the famous Neil Zeller tonight.

Bagged

Me, that is.

Wednesday after run, tired, bed.

Thursday, bailed on water run, and stayed in bed till the last second. Went to bed early once home again.

Friday, puttering around the house, then downtown for an evening photo shoot.

This is unedited. I started working with a couple of the shots, and didn't like any of the results. I think the manipulation was making things worse, so I've put it aside till I'm more awake.

I was astonished at the traffic downtown! The people who say it's empty after the office workers go home don't know what they're talking about. It took a long time to drive from the above shot to the bluff just north of downtown, and got some nice shots there. Watching two guys get into a fist fight over a parking spot (there was another a few yards along) was the highlight of the evening.

Then over to another spot for more shots. My eyes were getting tired, and the focussing wasn't going so well. Between shots I could just see the Globalfest fireworks. Home to bed. Once I edit the shots and clean them up I'll post the best of them.

Saturday up early for a 24 K run, 2:58, 7:26 pace, which is much slower than last week. Not sure why, but maybe having no gas in the tank was part of the reason. Good thing Michelle was there to keep me going. Waffles, shower, then a nap for a while, and I was good for not much the rest of the day. The loop the loop course probably doesn't make much sense now, but it did at the time.

Sunday, good for not much for the day. Relaxed, read, and was a cat bed for much of the day. A bit of MCK and stretching out tired hamstrings, and a sore lower calf.

Back to work tomorrow. Only a few more days. I can do this.

She who spanks bison

Tuesday was a short swim, about a K all up, mostly nice and easy, feeling pretty good.

Tonight was the first interval run in the marathon training program. It leads to an interesting graph. 3K warm up, 10 x(1 min FAST, 1 min recovery) 3 K cool down. The fast ones didn't all get faster, but they were quicker than I thought they'd be with my feet feeling heavy and tired.

What was interesting was programing iSmoothrun to talk me through it so I wouldn't have to remember which interval I was on. That made life so much easier, I just did what it said.

Once upon a time I was called the cow whisperer. Read about it here.

Just south of here on the Road to Nepal there have occasionally been bison grazing on the other side of a very flimsy fence. Grazing implies bucolic. Nothing could be further from the bucolic truth than a grazing bison, especially a suspicious mama bison. Did I mention the flimsy fence, and the massive stink eye that had my liver shifting in my chest as I rode past? I would never dream of spanking a bison.

Linda is made of sterner stuff. While I was getting ready to run, she was hard at it, dominating the bison. Molding it to her will. Spanking the recalcitrance.

After the run was over I had no trouble barbecuing the repressed bison. It was tasty.

Run stuff, before I forget

Or I get too lazy to look it up on the phone.

The tough part of the weekend run was fitting it into the When Words Collide schedule. Fortunately there wasn't a MUST ATTEND on Saturday morning. I had time to get up, do coffee and a light breakfast, and get ready to run.

22K, 2:34:16, 7 min/k pace, with almost exactly 2 minutes of pit stop time. I'd thought of going up and around the reservoir and back. Once upon a time that was a long  hard bike ride. The problem with running that far is I would have to carry everything I'd need, and I don't have a hydration pack yet. Then I remembered some of the long runs back in Ironman training, where I used the front patio as an aid station.

I made up my energy drink mix the night before, and left it on the front step in the shade. The first loop was just under 9 K and went by pretty fast. The second loop ended right on 19 K and was a bit of a struggle right at the end. It was hard getting going again after that, and 20K was one of the slowest ones, both pace and cadence. Then I got in the groove again, but I was happy to stop at 22 and walk back to the house for a good cool down.

All in all it went really well. My legs were a bit tired at the end, but nothing was hurting. My pacing was pretty good, slower going up hill of course. Cadence was pretty steady, 83 overall, varying between 85 and 80. The morning started off cool, nearly the perfect temperature to run, and was warm on the way to hot by the end.

There was second breakfast when I got home, then off to the conference.

Monday we planned a date night out. The Guild in the Bay building downtown is super food! But I knew I wasn't going to be able to run when we got home, so I planned ahead and ran from Talisman.

8 K, 54:30, 6:38 pace, though there is a bit of uncertainty there. The map shows the first K with a big dogleg that didn't happen. The first K felt a bit clunky, then into the groove running towards the Bow. I goofed and went under a bridge I should have crossed, then I ran into traffic on 9th that I didn't want to cross. Back, then past Talisman, and back again till I ticked over 8 K. It all felt really good, with my feet feeling mostly light and fairly strong.

Running first thing in the morning is nice, though it was a bit tough to go back into the humid air of Talisman. Something about running during and after the conference has triggered lots of writing thoughts in my head. Let's hope I can capitalize on them in September and after.

I'm really pleased with how the running is going, but I can feel the need for a bit of extra sleep. Mostly I'm getting it. My weight is still going down slowly, and I'm tracking my heart rate numbers. So far the lowest resting rate is 45 bpm. Even Sunday morning after the long run it was only 50 or so, and that was after a late night. I was expecting it to be higher.

The MCK has suffered a bit, I have to admit. I need to get back on that again. The good photos have slowed down a bit, but never fear, there are lots in the camera waiting to be processed. Here's an iPhone shot to hold you over.  I've thought of an experiment to try, and that will be worth a blog post.

The sloggiest slog yet

Tuesday was photo stuff. You may recall I'd taken a great many photos at the Chaparral triathlon. I finally got together with my victims I mean subjects. I was happy to discover they liked 58 of them enough to tweak them in Lightroom, and send the resulting jpg to them. I'm part way through doing the processing. The big step will be cleaning all the stuff out of my dropbox so I can put the folder there for them.

Here is the difficulty. Curtis not only insists on 'helping' me work on the novel, he also wants to 'help' with editing photos. Such a talented kitty.

Along the way I sent a photo of a smiling buddy to her by posting it on her Facebook wall. Holy doodle she is a popular girl! About 200 likes later the torrent in my notifications thingie subsided. I sent her a couple wetsuit shots, and yes she both looks good and swims like a torpedo in it, and she got a bunch of Instagram likes.

Then there was a run on Wednesday. I wasn't looking forward to it. My legs have been grumbling since Saturday's run. Even with the mostly subsided grumbles, and the threatening clouds, and the weather statement about the weak funnel clouds, I was hopeful enough to head out. There's lots of runs and bikes and swims where I've started feeling crappy, and ended up having a good workout. I ain't made of sugar so the minor sprinkle didn't bother me. I was home about a minute before a torrential downpour. That wouldn't have been fun.

So 2 k warmup, 14 min. This was about what I expected. A bit clunky, not finding the groove, but gradually feeling better.
6K tempo tracked as 3 x 2K, 39:49 overall. This surprised me. As soon as I picked up the pace my legs were happier and I ran better. These were pretty consistent, 6:36, 6:38 and 6:41 pace per K over each of the 2 K segments. Breathing was fine. My legs didn't want to go any faster, but would have gone further. This actually felt pretty good, better than I had expected.
2K cool down, 16 min. One advantage of the iPhone is the little emoticons, namely the turd one. The cool down was dreadfully actively horrible. My legs felt like they wanted to fall off. I'm pretty sure I could walk faster than I was "running". That was a struggle to finish.

Thursday is an hour water running and a bit of water core after. Plus the hot tub! Yay! Hung out in that for a while.

I spent some time during lunch trying to get a grip on my schedule for When Words Collide this weekend. So far the schedule looks like this, plus more on Sunday.

And then there's a 22 K run this weekend. Alone. I was figuring out what time the first bit of programming I wanted to attend on Saturday started, and it turns out to be 11 am. I figure 22 K will take about 2.5 hours. Anyone want to be my run buddy, starting about 7am? Not sure where yet. Hmmm, 22 K will almost get me from Anderson, around the res, and back. Or if I do loops around the neighbourhood I won't have to carry anything, just leave water and snacks in the front patio, and treat it like a pit stop. Hmmm. Plus a bathroom. I think that's the decider.

Mostly photography

Sometimes you have an image in your head. I found a place that might be the starting place for that. Let's just say it didn't quite work out like I expected, but it was still a learning experience.

What I'd hoped for was a photo of downtown, nestled like a jewel against a dark sky, with a bit of light in the foreground. What I got was this.

I hadn't known the tower would have the flame going. Opening ceremonies, duh! It was shot from here, which is a very long way from downtown.

Where to start? It wasn't dark enough yet. I've cropped in close on it, maybe too close. But really for where I am I don't have enough lens happening. Still, I had fun playing with different exposure settings. Several shots had long streaks of light where an airplane or helicopter flew past.

From there I went to scout locations for shooting the Perseid meteor shower this coming weekend. Disappointed there. I need to be further out of town. Way further. I'd hoped being on the lee of a big hill south of town would work, but no. Calgary is really, really bright.

While there I got my first lightning shot! Yay me! It was a really long way away. You can see the exposure was long enough to get a bit of star trails.

I tried a few star shots off to the SW where it was dark, but that didn't work out so well. I haven't figure out the knack of focusing on stars yet.

But the big learning from the night? Bring bug spray! Also a low powered flashlight would be nice. I don't know where all the controls on my camera are by touch yet, and ended up using the iphone to light things up a bit. So not-pro!

From there was the small thing of a Saturday 18 K run. 2:14, gradually slowing down throughout. Otherwise it went well. Maybe more details later.

Sunday was fun! Several of my buddies were doing the Chaparral triathlon. I hadn't known that had been a place for 18 years; I thought it was new. But no, the announcer said several times this was the 18th.

In addition to being paparazzi for my buddies, there were a few other victims as well. How can you not photo such happy smiling people? I enjoyed keeping track of where my 3 subjects were, and where I had to be at various times for the races. Out of 320 or so shots, about 75 are worth showing to them with the possibility they might like them. There's another 200 or so where there is a recognizable person in the shot, but let's just say it might not be the most flattering pose and leave it there. Let's see which ones they are willing to have published.

This might be the best shot of the day.

And mama looking for a quiet place to be away from all those splashing humans.

Lastly, I'm not sure if my swim buddy is in this shot, elbowing for space. Everybody is so well dressed in their dark wetsuits and swim caps, don't you think?

One of the unexpectedly interesting things about carrying a nice camera at events is that you start noticing other people carrying nice cameras. I chatted to a couple people about photo stuff, which was fun in it's own way between photos.