Taper madness strikes

Or maybe it's Maximo, the database I'm attempting to populate. Some days it's awfully fussy, and one of the functional analysts and I spent about an hour confirming that something failed because of a deliberate way things had been set up. On one page I'm offered a list of words to choose to search by. On the page where those are entered, or the list Maximo uses to compare values I try to insert, those two values are not there. Sigh.

Swam in the morning, trying to keep up with some speedy people in the next lane. Not. I was out of breath a lot, and not swimming as fast as I'd hoped. One of them, for my numbers buddy, 50 m short course, 44 seconds, 40 strokes, trying to turn over fast. I got up into the retaste zone a couple of times.

There is now a blob of hardened goo on my right upper bicuspid. Part of the tooth fell off earlier this week. The blob covers the sharp edges. I go back in August to have the permanent fix done.

That got me home early so I headed out to try the new shoes. Here's the view from the same spot. Looking north and east towards downtown.

Looking south and west. This one was rumbling my entire run. I hoped to make it back before getting wet.

Less than half an hour after getting back there was a light sprinkling of rain.

So, the new Mizuno's. Ran 3K, 19 minutes. I was feeling some weird stuff in my bammy, the muscle between my butt and my hamstrings. Not a pull, not a twinge, but something. The shoes felt pretty good. There is a bit of a pad between the ball of my foot and the toe pads that I'm still getting used to. Lots of cushion. I didn't feel fast, but I don't know if that's the shoes or just me.

I wasn't actually keen to get in the water today, or go for a run. It just worked out that way. Supposedly I'm tapering. The theory is that I should be recovering and soaking up all the fitness I've been bathing in. Any workouts should be short and intense. But taper is often a time of mood swings, and feeling out of sorts. So far I blame Maximo.

I'm a little surprised at how few readers I've had for yesterday's blog, Before it goes bad. I'm trying an experiment with my blog, and the first one who can tell me what it is, can win cookies, or a bottle of wine, depending on where you live.

Before it goes bad

Consider the life cycle of a piece of fruit, an apple perhaps.

An apple is an apple tree's way of making more trees. It starts as a bud, and the tree pours resources into the seed and the surrounding fruit. It grows larger. Eventually it drops off. If conditions are right the seed will germinate and start growing a new tree. The odds of any one seed growing to be an apple tree are trivial, yet the tree keeps on pumping out seeds.

Many animals nibble on the fruit in the process. Sometimes the fruit seed is carried by the animal a considerable distance, and is deposited in fertile ground. Or not. This is how evolution works. It keeps trying and it doesn't matter if there are a billion failures, as long as there are a billion and one attempts.

Us humans have taken advantage. We like fruit, and we pick it for us to eat. Mostly we throw away the seeds. Humans are a terribly wasteful species now.

But consider the apple from the human point of view. There is a small window where the fruit is ripe enough to eat, yet not over-ripe and going rotten. If you're going to eat it, you have to do it before it goes bad. Otherwise you've wasted the money spent on buying it.

Over the last few years we've been trying to eat better, looking for organic products, preferably from a farmer's market. We have several choices here, and happily pay a little bit extra to support local vendors and producers.

Part of the deal with fresh organic produce is that it can go off quicker than you expect, compared to buying products laced with "preservatives". Lately I've been indulging in blackberries. They're right at the top of my favourite fruit list, and the BC ones are the best. The best, end of story. Eating one brings me back to childhood, picking berries from the bushes used as cattle fences in BC, while helping relatives with the hay.

If they lasted longer, I'd ration them, and spread out the enjoyment. But they can get all fuzzy quickly, so you have to eat them before they go bad. I suppose I could buy more of them and make jam, but so far I've not been a jam making kind of guy. There are many vendors that produce wonderful blackberry jam, and I'm happy to support them by buying from them. Plus not having them much of the year makes me appreciate the season even more.

Other things can go bad too. Soft fruit is notorious. A slight bruise one hour, turns into a huge soft spot, and then  it goes rotten. I also worry about many other things going bad, such as wine, cookies, date squares, cake, and cinnamon buns. I tell myself that I'm doing us a favour by eating or drinking these things before they go off.

Take a step back. Life itself is like a fruit in some ways. It has to be consumed to be truly enjoyed. Once consumed it can't go bad. But if you just hold it, you could enjoy the scent, and how it looks, but do that long enough and you'll have a mess on your hands. Bad idea. Bite, and bite deep, though be careful of fruit with big seeds, like nectarines. Let the juice run down your chin, but don't let it drop in your keyboard.

People try to hold onto things in life, and yet all things are impermanent. Everything has a lifetime. Me, the house behind me, the garden I'm looking at, everything. Even the very rocks of the patio will eventually be broken up. We need to learn to enjoy things to the fullest while we have them, while it's good.

That's one of the reasons I like a house that looks lived in. I like to see things that have been used for their purpose. Not abused. Used as intended, slowly accumulating nicks and scratches. Books with the creased spine or scribbled notes. Records (the precursors to CD's (the precursors to MP3 files)) with scratches. Objects with the edges worn smooth. In the summer of 1980, I purchased a small inexpensive object just before moving to Calgary. Not only do I still have it, it's still in near daily use. Works perfectly. Other than a few books, I don't think there are any objects now in my life older than that.

In a sense objects are not important. Not that I'd like to, but I could lose or have every object taken from me, and I'd still be me. I could pursue getting more objects, or do without. What's important are the experiences I have with other people, my memories of times and places that aren't here anymore. Last Friday was a wonderful day of activities with friends that I'll remember for a long time, but it's in the past now. It's a memory. I need to seek out new experiences and continue to build memories. Creating new memories is one of the ways of keeping old ones fresh. You compare this occasion to that occasion. You tell the story of an old occasion during a new one, and it binds the two together.

All this is one of the reasons I'm seriously contemplating how much time I spend in the office, and what I'd be doing if I wasn't there. So far, I stay pretty busy when not working. I'd like to be busy doing something that I think is important, that might make a difference to other people. I'm pretty sure that what I'm doing for Penn West isn't going to be remembered like that. Eventually they'll say to me, "so long and thanks for all the fish." What's going to be important is what I do when I'm not in the office.

Or if you think of it another way, I've already got some soft spots. I'd like to think it's going to be a long time before they go rotten, but we don't know this. All of us know of someone who has been told to put their affairs in order, soon. I want to enjoy me while I can.

The dreaded ordeal

No, it wasn't the hail from the big thunderstorm last night. Linda was worried what might happen to the garden, but there was very little hail. The plants loved the rain. The worst that happened was that some of the white lilies had their blossoms a bit battered, but they were nearly there anyways.

There is a polymer sand between the slabs of patio stone in the back yard. The rain from the downspout overshot the catch barrel, and the force of it eroded some of the sand away. No biggie. I've got more, and I just did some repairs. Some places the sand is as hard as the stone around it, and some places are not. I guess it's exactly how much water the polymer gets, or something.

The dreaded ordeal was shopping. As my long time readers know, I hate shopping. I begrudgingly put up with buying. Advertising is beyond the pale. I've known my current run shoes, Asics Nimbus, purchased way back here, were slowly dying. There is just under 400 K on them according to my app, but I'm pretty sure I started the shoes before that app, and I can't remember if I started the clock properly. Plus I'm a big guy with lots of impact on my shoes. Now that I put the link there I realize those shoes are more than a year old. By running shoe standards that's even more ancient and decrepit than I am!

Enough teasing, here's the new shoes. Let's hope they last as long.

The important part of the day is that Linda made date square. A big pan of awesome datey goodness. I dare not post a photo of it for inducing paroxysm of ecstasy in my readers, and overloading the roads here as you all rushed over.

In the thinking department, I'm contemplating the raptures of taper. Yes, my big race is in a couple weeks! I can scarcely believe it. I wonder if I can get a swim lesson from Andy Potts while he's here. He's only usually the first guy out of the water at Kona, so I suspect he knows a thing or two about swimming in open water. In the mean time I need to think about how much I'll swim over the next couple weeks. I want to maintain my water feel and form, (such as it is), and yet not tire myself out. I want my taper to soak up and embed all that good fitness I've been working towards.

Aftermath. Hot, sweaty. Classy.

After the big day yesterday, I was delighted to get a great night's sleep, and woke up feeling like a million dollars. Maybe two million. Coffee and nice cinnamon buns on the patio as I worked on a new scene was a great way to gently start my day.

I'm not feeling the least bit stiff or sore. The only aftermath from the ride is this bruise from where a bug bounced off me during a fast downhill section.

It's a hot and humid day here, and my T shirt was soaked after doing the lawn. Nonetheless feeling itchy for more. More hot and sweaty, imagine that! Not so long ago I'd curl up in a little half melted puddle above 25C.

Michelle was happy to get out for a quick run as well, and we did 6K 43:37 at a chatchatchat pace in 25 C sultry weather. There were nice little gusts of cool wind from off the reservoir, then patches of humid. This is where running with a buddy is great. I probably would have called it at 5 K, or broken down and walked. But she kept me going. Not by encouraging or pushing or whatever. No, just by running along steadily, chatting. If I'd really needed to walk, I could have, but somehow didn't want to. So mark up some anti-weenie points for me!

She had to zoom off after the run, but I took a little more time stretching and walking around a bit. There was this classy car in the parking lot, and I grabbed some photos. I heard it start, this isn't a replicar, it's the real thing. Probably a very pretty penny indeed!

The office or a day in the mountains? Duh!

One advantage of my job is that to some extent I can decide how much I want to work. I decided earlier this week I wasn't going to work today. Instead I was going to do another open water swim, then bike, and if all went well, run. All out in Canmore. With my buddies Michelle and Antje.

I've swum in Quarry Lake before, here in 2008, and here in 2009. Let's just say I was very new to triathlon then. There was no moose today.

Last night I was swimming pretty straight. Today I was feeling a bit more tired, and was tending right. It's about 250 to 300 m from the beach to the far end. I did that lap, then practiced standing up in the shallow water, dashing out and around a woman, then diving back in a couple times. Then down to the end to collect Michelle and Antje, and back again. Let's just say a little over 1000 m, and no idea how long.

We did not set up a transition area. The bikes were still locked on the truck, so we headed back and did transition at the hotel where Antje works. They recently completed the Legacy trail between Banff and Canmore. We rode along that, not pushing, just riding along and enjoying a beautiful summer day. Warm to hot, but not smoking hot. At the last minute we decided to head up to Lake Minnewanka.

51 K, 2:26, nice and easy. Mostly it's pretty flat, then uphill to the lake. Michelle was a total champ on the way up. Left me in her dust! The trip back was into the wind.

We locked the bikes up again, and Michelle and I went out for a quick 2 K run, just to shake out our legs and to say we had done it. Without even trying we got a nice negative split. 2K 14:04. By the end of the run I was feeling better. I might have been able to do 5 K like this, but I doubt it. The heat was starting to get to me, and I'd made some deliberate nutrition choices that assumed a short run.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time since mid 2012 that I've done a swim, bike, and run all in the same day. My butt was getting a little tired of being on the bike by the end of the ride, even with the breaks we took along the way. Knees felt great. Low back was getting the little-est bit cranky during some of the uphill bits. My legs felt heavy and slow during the run, slow cadence for, as Michelle happily demonstrated a shorter quicker stride. I lumbered along.

Then out to Communitea for lunch/supper. It was awesome! I had a very nice masala spiced chicken burger, Michelle had an amazing salad, and Antje had a what looked like a ham and pesto panini. Their date square is in my top ten. The Fiasco Gelato called me, but I resisted. On the way home we scoped out the rest of the YYC 70.3 bike course, and stopped at the Coop liquor store. I had a hankering for a beer. Two of them, as it turns out.

Here's some photos for the day. The post swim fan dance with a towel and banana.

I'm surprised this one isn't blurred they were going so fast.

Preparing to dabble toes in the lake.

I know how many dollars I could have earned in the office today. But fun with friends and this view is priceless!

This blog is officially under the influence!

There were other photos taken, but they aren't on my phone. They might appear on certain people's facebook pages. Or I might get email.

All in all, a perfectly lovely day! It's ending with a nice pastel sunset as I finish the beer, writing my blog, enjoying the evening as it slowly cools off. My feet and legs feel good. If this is retirement, bring it on!

Oh, and more photos just showed up! My ride buddies.

How graceful!

All of us, me looking slightly demented, a thorn between two roses, or something.

Michelle's super awesome salad.

Crocodile eyes

No, that isn't me looking at the Stampede eye candy.

It turns out Michelle has a buddy that lives on a lake! She asked nice, and Dan invited us to swim. Thank you so much Dan! It's been several years since I've been in my wet suit, and just as much of a struggle as ever to get it on. I last remember it being sort of snug in the shoulders, but today I got it up further, I think, and was noticing it snug on my biceps and forearms. A bit tight in the chest.

What throws off a lot of people about open water swimming is how murky the water often is, and no lines on the bottom. (Duh!) That means you have to look where you are going, which is totally opposite all the swim training to keep your head down.

The trick is called crocodile eyes. Just after you breathe, rather than roll back into the water looking down, you swivel your head so that your eyes point forward, just above the water line. Fix on some big object and make sure you're still heading towards it, then nod your head down into the water again. If you do it right you don't even break your swim stroke. There is a little bit of a tug in your back as you do this because you want to keep your feet near the surface.

I'm really short sighted, so I have to pick a BIG object. A white lakeside house with a white roof is good. Bright yellow boats at a dock are good. The (usually) orange buoys they put in the water to mark the turns are usually pretty good as well.

I used to have to look every other stroke, and I'd already be off course. Today I was really pleased that I could go a dozen strokes and still be headed in the right direction. If you're really good at keeping track, you can breath to the side that is closest to the shore. The more often you look, the smaller your corrections are, and the shorter distance you swim. It's trivially easy to add 100 m or more on a half iron course, and there's probably 2 high effort minutes more than you needed to do.

The wetsuit will help your buoyancy enormously, and will streamline your body. Do a light easy kick to save your legs for the bike and run. This helps get you flat in the water, which makes you go faster.

In the pool drafting is a no-no unless you arrange it first. If you're that close polite people assume you want to pass, and if you can only swim that fast because you're drafting, your buddy will be pissed they have to pass you next lap. But in an open water race, drafting is the name of the game. Find a pair of feet that are going straight and just a hair faster than you would normally swim. Then all you need do is keep track of the feet, with the occasional look to make sure your buddy isn't heading into the weeds.

In the pool we often look for a long relaxed stroke. In a race you are surrounded by other people and you have to defend your turf. You swim with your pod, and a bit of bumping and banging is good. You take a shorter, choppier stroke, with your elbows up and out to defend your head.

Tonight I practiced the crocodile eyes, and I'm pleased about how that went. I did some surges to see how various effort levels felt. I was feeling a bit off at first getting used to the suit and swimming after a meal, but got into the groove on the way back. We swam about a K down the lake, stopping to chat a couple times. I did most of the way back all in one go, pushing hard, then relaxing, and popping up to keep an eye out for Michelle.

All in all I'm really pleased how it went. Some days I regret not shelling out the money to buy a house on one of the lakes as they were being built, but they always seemed stupid expensive at the time. After a smoking hot day here, a dip in the lake was a wonderful way to cool off.

LinkedIn photo rant

My LinkedIn usage goes in bursts. I usually take a quick look in the morning to see if there are any interesting articles. Every now and then I'll get some connection activity, then I'll scroll down the list looking for people to connect to.

My long time readers will not be surprised I have a policy for social media:

• LinkedIn: I have to have worked with the person, or interacted with them on a professional level. So I'm linked to some triathlon coaching people, my massage therapist, the guy that did the energy evaluation on my house, and some others. However I'm not linked to some family members because I've never dealt with them on a job level. I made a few connections before I was on Facebook but I won't delete them now. 
• Facebook: I'm dialing back on Facebook time because it's becoming unreliable at showing me what my friends are saying. Generally I'll only friend someone now if I know them personally and want to keep in touch.
• Twitter: I'll follow anyone that looks interesting. I will not follow back someone just because they followed me. (Hint, you can follow me too! Look for the button on the right of my blog.)

Today I was looking through the 'People You May Know' section. If you don't use LinkedIn, you see a grid of fairly good sized photos 4 across, with a name in bold under it, and a little blurb under that, usually a title and a company name. If the person hasn't provided a photo, you just see a head and shoulders outline.

The whole point of LinkedIn is professional networking. I am appalled at what people consider a suitable photo. Here's what's on my bad photo list, in the order I saw them as I scrolled through tonight:

• No photo at all. Come on people, if you're going to do this at all, provide a photo.
• A face that is only a small fraction of the photo, or a photo filling only a part of the available space.
• A face so large you can't see ears or hair.
• A weird angled photo with the person at 45 degrees, or worse.
• Multiple people in the photo. You might know which you are, but I don't.
• An icon or avatar. This isn't a game.
• People have varying degrees of attractiveness, and the camera loves some people more than others, but still, if the photo is not flattering to you, don't use it. Like you have friends that tell you what you look like from behind in those pants, have them look at the photo you're thinking of using.
• Too dark, or too bright to make out any detail.
• The photo has been resized so the proportions are all wrong, too wide or tall.
• Taken at a party.
• A magazine cover.
• What looks like a mug shot, lacking only the board with numbers on it.
• What looks to be the head of those CPR training dummies.
• Hat that totally shades the face.
• Seeing only the back of the person. Really!
• Seeing only half the face. Their right half, if you were wondering. Several have the top trimmed off.
• A welding stamp.
• Flowers.
• A solar panel providing power to something portable.
• A landscape with a lightning stroke in the back ground.
• A set of railroad tracks illustrating the laws of perspective.
• An art wall. I think. It could be an out of focus rack of shoes at MEC. I can't quite tell.
• Pets.
• A messy office.
• A poor sketch, though this is more nuanced. See below.

I could go on. That list took less than 10 minutes to compile. Scroll, write, scroll, write, repeat. It didn't take much scroll. Come on people, you can do better than this. Maybe you fear bland and inoffensive, but this is worse.

Let us review. What is the purpose of a photo? It's the first and best chance to make a good impression. We make judgements of people based on their faces. It's wired into our brains to look and make an instant assessment, friend or foe? The eyes are the window of the soul. Let them see your eyes. What can the photo do for, or to you?

• At the very best it's an up check, with your viewer thinking they like the look of you. 
• In most cases it's neutral, and that's fine. The viewer is thinking, yes, this is the person I just interviewed, not someone else with the same name. Thoughts like, owns a suit, is presentable, nice smile, or it looks like the lights are on, are all good things. 
• At the worst, it will turn people off. There's already enough reasons in your life for people to say no to you, and you want to defer that as long as possible.

So, how does your photo make the best impression? The first question is, what is your profession? I'm a business analyst. What do they wear? At the most formal, they wear a suit and tie, and women wear the business equivalent. They are generally well groomed because they interact with all kinds of people at all levels of an organization. Just for the record, here's my photo, taken at least 5 years ago.

I'm not one of the people that camera loves. I went to a professional and paid for this photo. It isn't the best one of me but it could be much, much worse. Depending on display settings my complexion sometimes looks a little ruddy, but it does in life too. Nobody seeing this photo, and then meeting me is going to be surprised. I can count on the fingers of two hands the number of times I've actually worn a suit to Penn West and Talisman, my two most recent gigs. Most places don't expect you to wear one now, but still, better to dress up than down.

Were my brother to create a profile, it's appropriate he wear his airline uniform, showing the captain's stripes. For an oil and gas field worker, a hard hat or nomex coveralls (both clean!). If you're a hunting and fishing guide, then something outdoors in the appropriate clothing is good. A chef wearing the white jacket and a chef's hat. You want to show that you fit into the expectations of your profession.

What makes a good photo? Here's my list:

• A professional head and shoulders photo, with you doing no further 'improvement' to it. Tell them what you want, and you'll get the right thing. It can be reused in many places, such as industry conferences, professional papers, and your current companies who's who web site, if they do photos. 
• The more comfortable in your skin you look, the better. 
• The more of your body that shows, the more careful you have to be of what you're wearing, your posture, and your background. The composition of the photo becomes much more important. It's much easier to do wrong than right.
• Usually a neutral background. You are the object of interest, not the background.
• If you have a nice smile, show it, but don't go all toothy crazy.
• Show your eyes. Some of my photos have manic eyes. You may have unfortunate wrinkles, or hair, or other issues. The photographer should be able to minimize these to get a good shot.
• The clothing seen in the photo should be profession appropriate.
• If your profession requires the use of breathing apparatus, be clean shaven.
• Look at the camera. This isn't an arty 70's experimental rock group album cover.
• Artistic professions have a bit more leeway. In an ideal world the photo should give a hint of the profession, but it's a tricky balance.

If it's not a photo you are walking a tightrope on a windy day. I've seen a couple of really good sketches. They follow most of the rules of a photo, but can add a little extra. Or subtract a lot. These are not doodles. I suspect they are done by professional artists.

Here's a nice drawing of me done several years ago during a Stampede breakfast. It looks like me, gives a hint of my sunny personality, and might be ok as Facebook profile photo (hmmmm), but I wouldn't dream of using it on LinkedIn unless I became a fitness instructor.

Some of you will have seen this one of me as a Facebook profile. I would totally use this as the author photo when I publish. It's the rare selfie that is a good shot, has not been retouched in any way, and it was all totally by accident. I couldn't do it again in a decade of trying.

Lastly, look at what else LinkedIn shows beside your photo. Name, professional designation, title, and company is perfect. Your philosophy of life, however admirable, is not appropriate here.

It used to be that if you became an employee you were there for life. About the only place that's still true is the City and other governmental organizations, but that's passing. People leave organizations much more often now, and there are only two ways for it to happen. One is by your choice, on your schedule, for your reasons. The other is for the company to tell you to go away. This can be traumatic. The company doesn't care if you just bought a house, or had a baby, or anything else. The only thing they care about is their bottom line and will spit you onto the sidewalk like used chewing gum in support of that.

So now we have to be out selling ourselves all the time. Contract people know this in their bones. They want to make it easy for recruiters and other job providers to find and hire them. Employees might not know it, but they have the same need. Even retired people might need or want to get back in the workforce again for some reason. A LinkedIn profile is just one of the tools, and a photo is a big part of it. Look at yours. Fix it if necessary.

Lastly, on a related topic. All this is closely related to networking, which is something I suck at doing. To change that I'm going to start going through my connections, and trying to meet up with local people for coffee and a catch up chat. Just today at breakfast I ran into a guy that I worked with at Skystone, EOS, and Talisman. Lots to chat about. What about you? Are you one of my LinkedIn connections? Are you a blog reader in Calgary that wants to meet up? Comment and let me know that. We'll work something out.