First tusk pic of the winter

Here's the weather page when I started my run.

I would have thought it a bit warmer than that, but ended up dressing just about right, or maybe slightly on the warm side. There was just a skiff of snow on the ground, not even 1 cm. Very little wind.

I had a nice run, going one hour, covering 8.85 K. Started really easy, took about 15 minutes to warm up, ran 2 parts quite a bit quicker, really working on turnover and trying to stretch out my stride a bit. Ran the last bit easy to cool down a little. It was a super nice night for a run, just as the sun was setting.

Cool down is tricky at these temperatures. This isn't particularly cold, but when you're wet and it's dry out, it's easy to get a chill. Stretched afterward, and did the feet in the air thing for quite a while.

Linda had made a wonderful lamb stew, with yams in it. (Control yourself Julie!) That and a glass of wine, followed by some cookies were a great post run meal.

This was the first cool/brisk run of the winter, and I hope it's the first of many more. Oh, and I almost forgot. Here's the obligatory tusk picture. I've had better.

Hastyzzzzzz

A quickie tonight. First, last night. So much fun with these people.

No need to name names. If you know their names, you know who they are, and if you don't, telling you their names won't help. At least 4 of them are famous. You are looking at about 2 dozen Ironman race finishes here. Sorry about the poor quality, I'd forgotten to turn the flash on, and had to play with the photo a bit. We were at the Highwood for dinner. So yummy!

I was nicely full after. Rack of Lamb was pretty good, but I can do better on my own BBQ. The other courses were super. Duck foi gras. mmmmmm. There was so much chitchat and laughing and having a good time. Slept like a rock once I got home.

Tonight I'd planned to get on the bike, but we were late getting home. Plus it was so weird. My office recently has been just the right temperature, or even slightly warmer. Nice. Today mid afternoon, I started feeling cold. I wrapped my scarf around my neck, and was thinking about putting on a sweater. I was feeling a bit headachy, and just wanted to end the day.

So when I finally did get home, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to spin, and I didn't. I had some comfort food, tried to give our cat a lap and WAS SPURNED by the rotten mammal. Washed dishes and knowing my faithful audience was waiting eagerly for me, pounded out this blog. It's about 8:10, and in about 10 minutes I'm going to be in bed.

Calgary is going into the deep freeze for the first time this winter. Check out THIS forecast you temperature weenies! -20 C is -4 F. And that's the HIGH.

I'm planning to run tomorrow. I'll post a photo of the 'mo tusks, if they develop properly.

I've missed the ice and snow

I like running in the snow. There. I've said it out loud in front of everyone. Why? Because if there's snow it's cool out, so overheating typically isn't a problem. Plus, the possibility of ice hiding under the snow that your neighbour's haven't shoveled off the sidewalk means you have to run well.

I like snow anyways. Not so much the idiot drivers that can't cope, but I don't blame snow for that. Sunny but cool days (say 0 to -10 C) are perfect for so many outdoor things in the winter. I'm going to try to get outside for more of them this year. Snowshoeing for sure, though I've been saying that for a couple of years.

If you run by sticking your leg way out in front, or with great long loping strides by pushing off with your toes, you're going to have a problem with ice. The trick to it is to land with your foot squarely under your centre of balance, and pick it up as your centre of balance moves forward. You have to be aware of your balance and posture. You have to be controlled, but relaxed and ready for anything. In short, you have to pay attention.

Tonight I went out for an easy run, the equivalent of an easy spin on the bike. I wanted to keep my turnover fast, and my feet light. I kept my breathing easy, and wasn't working too hard. Because of the possibility of icy sidewalks and crosswalks in the dark, I was running like every step was on ice.

There was some stretching and joint warmup, then 45 minutes easy running, and a few minutes walking to cool down. A little more stretching after. It was nice out, maybe -8 C (18 F) with very little wind. Long sleeved tech shirt and a light jacket, toque, and gloves.

No yoga tomorrow night. I'm going to play with some of the buttons at the bottom of the blog to see what happens.

Fate

The snow finally arrived. Well, sort of. I missed it falling, though I heard about it from co-workers. Not much snow, all things considered, a cm max on the driveway. So little that I didn't even count shoveling it as part of the workout.

I got on the bike a little bit later than anticipated, side tracked by blogs, and writing a really long, really creative comment. Blogger and the stupid character limit on comments totally broke the flow and made me post it in two parts. So if I don't win, I'll blame Blogger for breaking the mood.

One the bike. 20 minute warm up. 2x10 min at 1.9 watts, with 5 minutes easy in between. 15 minute cool down. Felt great!

I've been thinking about the life map metaphor I brought up a few blogs ago. We go through life blithely making decisions as best we can on incomplete knowledge. Some of them we recognize as big decisions at the time, and some not. Sometimes small things have big consequences that we only understand in hindsight. Once you get to a certain age you start thinking about the what ifs'. You might be perfectly satisfied with how things have turned out, and still wonder about those paths you didn't take.

Life is so fragile. There are so many ways we can die, and that's in modern day North America, which is one of the safest societies ever to exist. Sometimes, even worse, is almost dying. Lingering on in a coma, or after a bad stroke, to become mentally incapacitated in any number of ways, to become a prisoner of the medical system seems almost worse than dying. I earnestly hope when my time comes that it's quick and painless.

The medieval Norse society had a strong belief in fate, that our destiny was decided by forces beyond our control. Twist and turn as you might, you couldn't escape your fate. Oddly enough, this did not lead to a passive acceptance. They took the attitude that if you're going to bite something, bite deep. This led to great ferocity in battle, under the assumption that if it was your time, it would happen, and if not it didn't matter what risks you took.

I sometimes wonder about this. Are there other possible worlds where people very like me are living lives perhaps very like mine, or perhaps very different? Are there worlds where different decisions led to different lives, or do we share the same fate? I think about that poor woman who was killed under the wheels of a truck while riding her bike. What would have happened had she driven; would she have been run down walking from the car park to the store? Or walked the entire way; would she have had a heart attack or some other fatal accident? What about the driver of that truck? If it hadn't been her, would it have been someone else? It's a certainty they didn't plan to kill someone. Their life must be hell right now.

It hurts now to read about bike crashes, or bike collisions with cars. People have talked about getting a flat, or hitting a patch of bad pavement, or losing their concentration for a moment, with a variety of outcomes. Riders have done everything right and still been killed or injured. I've been faster than 90 Kph (56 mph) several times on my bike, and it's a complete exhilarating rush. It's also likely to be fatal, or at least extremely painful if anything goes wrong. I just make sure my bike is as mechanically sound as I can make it, and that I'm totally focussed on the task at hand.

There are many fictional stories about people being told of an outcome of an action, taking action to avoid it, and yet still succumbing. Perhaps the most famous example is A Death in Samarkand. We don't choose our lives really, we essentially make them up as we go along. And would we make better choices if we could see the future better? I don't know. Would I really get on a bike, knowing I was going to crash no matter how careful I was, and maybe also knowing I'd meet my one twue wuve (per the bishop in Princess Bride)  during physiotherapy? What if I was already married? Or would you get on the bike knowing that the training would take you to the age group podium at Kona (or the Boston Marathon, or whatever) but you die young alone and childless because you didn't go for a walk instead of the bike ride, and therefore never met that right person who would take of you?

So many choices. Maybe it's better we make them blind, and don't know about the other choices turn out. All I know is that my choices so far have led me to a life that I'm enjoying. And appreciating my good fortune, because there are sure some times it was that and not good management on my part. I've done some very stupid things in my life, but that's another blog.

What are your thoughts about fate, or Fate? Have you been lucky and you know it? Whats the story there?

A brief moment of panic

The much anticipated snow never arrived. It was a actually a nice morning, though it clouded over during my spin session. I was down into the basement in good time, after coffee, newspaper, and breakfast.

Easy warmup for 20 minutes. I've pretty well got myself calibrated on watts, and this was to test it out. The watt numbers are watts per Kg for my goal weight.
20 minutes at 1.7. Breathing easy, legs liking it, heart rate low 120's, light sweat. The limiter here is how long my butt will hold out. 5 minutes easy pedal.
15 minutes at 1.8 Working harder, heart rate high 120's, moderate sweat. Could have gone longer. 5 minutes easy.
10 minutes at 1.9. Working hard, not quite maintaining 1.9, breathing fairly hard, legs feeling it, sweating a lot. 5 minutes easy
10 minutes at 1.8, having to concentrate on staying up to the mark, then 5 easy
10 minutes at 1.7, feeling relaxed, legs feeling tired.
15 minutes easy spin cool down.

That should be 2 hours of good solid bike workout. You have no idea how happy I am about this, after so many crappy painful bike workouts last year.

I've noticed it doesn't take much variation in cadence to produce a bit of a swing in the watt numbers. Keeps me honest. My plans now will have the warmup building up to 1.5 watts or so, with the last bit at 1.7. Then get stuck into learning to put out 1.8 watts consistently, with some time at 1.8 and 2.0 to build intensity.

I really appreciate reader comments, and have been responding to them more by commenting myself. However, the original blogger format just sucks for that. Leana (note the new URL) found Disqus, which is essentially a comment engine that plugs into many blog platforms. It looked neat so I installed it. The brief moment of panic was when it looked like all my comments had been eaten, but there is an import feature that took about 15 minutes to run. So you can look for me to respond to all comments now.

Thanks for the comments on my foot question, if you haven't commented yet, feel free to do so.

It looks like I had to open up comments to everyone to have it work properly, so I may have to start filtering out the spam again. I think I've got it set that people can flag suspected spam, and it sends me an email.

Oh, and here's a recent sunrise, just because.

Feet. Toes. A question.

I consider myself fairly body aware, in terms of how I'm feeling during a workout. I can usually tell my heart rate within a few bpm, and I'll know a run time to less than a minute either way. But every now and then, something sneaks up on me.

When I bought the most recent pair of shoes I noticed that the middle pad of my left foot seemed a bit tender. I just assumed it was getting used to new padding in the shoe, or that the padding was a fraction thicker than in the old shoe. My shoes are quiet loosely laced. Since then I've noticed my left toes do not like being curled down towards the sole of my foot. I nearly shrieked one night at yoga when we were doing the roll the toes under the foot thing because I hadn't expected it to hurt that much.

It doesn't bother me to bike or run. I can put all my weight on that foot, even raising my heel and standing on the balls of my feet, though if I go high enough the left starts to complain about it. I can poke quite hard at various places on the middle pad of my foot, and I would describe the sensation as uncomfortable or tender, but not as shooting pain.

Before my run today I spent a bit of time warming up my ankle and foot, exploring what ached, and the limits of motion. I found it hurts more on the top of my foot, right here.

Sorry if I've set off anyone with a foot fetish there. That toe and the next smaller one are very sensitive right there. There's a few sensitive spots further up the foot as well. Has anyone ever had this sort of thing? Any suggestions as to what it might be? I figured as long as I could run and bike, and there wasn't any actual pain, it couldn't be anything too serious. I thought maybe I'd strained something. But it's been a while without improvement, so I think the time has come to start doing something about it.

As I said, before my run I warmed up my ankles and feet much more than usual, and stretched a bit. I started easy and fell into the groove fairly quickly. It was nice out for running, maybe 4 or 5 C (40 F) and I ran my C shaped route out to Anderson and Wood something. It's 5.5 K. Running easy, mid zone 3 or so, but not working too hard, it was 34 minutes out, and 36 minutes back, running a bit easier as I got sloppier. Lots of thinking about form during the last part of the run. I'd get into the groove for a little bit, and fall out again. Much of the time my feet and legs felt light and happy.

All that was after a busy morning. My brother and I had arranged a FaceTime chat since he just got a new iPad. That part worked just fine. Our friend Vicky showed up during the call to drive out to the Millarville Art Market with Linda. My phone rang during the chat, and I ignored it, but it turned out to be the furnace guy. We asked them to come over to check out some fan vibration. He was phoning to see if he could come earlier, and he ended up arriving at the same time as Vicky. So I ended up cutting my call with my brother short. We'll have to try that again.

Turns out the brand new furnace has a fan that is out of balance and they have to replace it. The first time it fired up with the guy there he was shaking his head, saying it was noisier than it should be, and I was telling him this was quiet. So that has to get done when the part comes in next week.

Since I'd already had to set up FaceTime I spent part of the afternoon going in and updating software, and playing with settings to better reflect what I'm doing with my iStuff. I'm trying to fix a problem with Mail logging out on my main computer whenever I check my mail on the iPad or iPhone.

Dinner was a simple affair, pasta and wine. Yes. We are settled in for the evening, waiting for it to start snowing. Tomorrow we don't have to go anywhere.

Sleep sweet sleep

I was more than a little cranky on Tuesday because of work. Still, I had a really nice run, and headed off to bed at a reasonable hour. I was up a couple hours later, thinking about work. A couple things with work. One of which was really annoying me, and another that I couldn't figure out what I was going to do about it, and another thing that is out of my control but affects me.

At least I gave a cat a lap for hours, as I read and surfed the internet. About 4 I turned the light off and snoozed in the chair, only to be woken up at 5 by a puking cat. It was a really long day at work, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Good coffee, and a really good home made carrot cake made me feel better.

Still, the day lasted a really long time. I wasn't really in the mood to go to Yoga, but we did anyways. I was a total slacker through it. I fell asleep sitting up during the meditation, then again during Savasana. Linda says I snored gently, but she wasn't sure it was me. I won't deny it, but at least nobody else complained. I went to bed nearly instantly after getting home, and slept like a rock.

Thursday was a slow start because I was still sleepy. I could have rolled over and slept more. At least it was a quiet day at work. And so warm out! I was putting on my scarf and jacket when someone told me it was 12 C (53 F)out, and I'd look like a wimp walking down the street as if it was winter or something. It supposed to be warm tomorrow as well, so I might be able to run in shorts and a tech shirt. In mid November people! What's not to like about Calgary?

Once home I nibbled a little bit, put on a DVD, and hopped on my bike. I'd been feeling a little creaky so I did a good warmup gradually building. Then into a 25 minute set at a steady cadence and watt output, with only one short break standing to stretch my legs a bit. Then some easy spin and cool down, for a 1.25 hr ride. Stretched a little bit after.