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.

My take on WWCYYC2016

When Words Collide, a Calgary readercon is wrapping up as I write this at home, huddled under the weight of so much stuff.

First of all, if you are part of the reading, writing, publishing, editing world, you need to be part of this. Follow the link, sign up for next year. I have already.

I suppose that tells you all you need to know about what I think of it, but I'm going to unpack it a little more. There are many reasons to attend this conference, but the primary one is contacts. You get a chance to meet the people all along the transaction chain that starts with a crazy idea, and ends up with a reader telling their buddy, "this is the most awesome book ever, you have to read it!"

It doesn't matter if you are like me, struggling to bring together a mass of words into a coherent story, or a pro writer with some writing credentials, or a publisher, or an editor, the chance to chat with your peers is invaluable. There's a saying, "at the top of the pyramid, everybody knows everybody." Conferences like this are one of the major ways it happens, and it doesn't matter if you are competitors, technically speaking. You all have an interest in making the industry bigger and better.

There are 11 streams of programming, across 20 hours for about 220 different sessions in two different buildings. Some are sign up in advance, some are short pitch sessions or other private editorial interactions, but almost all are open to all Colliders. If you can't find something of interest in all this, you are in the wrong place. For most people, the difficulty is in choosing between conflicting programming choices.

Of course there is a banquet, which I've never attended so I can't comment. Plus awards, and guest of honour speeches, and all that stuff. Autograph sessions. Guest readings. Many book sellers. Plus all sorts of stuff that happens along the way. The organizers have done a stellar job putting it all together!

Last year I had something going each day, all day. This weekend I wasn't feeling up to that much activity so I scaled back a bit and attended only 11 sessions over the weekend. Some were brilliant! I was a little nervous when the first presenter started with a slide show, but it was good. He didn't read from the slides, which is the cardinal sin in presentations. He was well organized, cogent, and brought some energy to the presentation, which just happened to be one of particular interest to me. This is all gold for me, and was worth the price of admission. You rock, Adam Dreece!

I won't go through all the others one by one, but I know one that I didn't get much out of was raved about by a group I overheard. Fair enough. Some of it was me, in that I was feeling a little run down and anti-social this weekend. Maybe it has to do with being at work a month longer than I expected to be.

There are people who live here in Calgary that rent a room so they don't have to waste travel time back to their home. This also gives them a place to flop in the unlikely event of a quiet hour. I haven't done that yet, but if I had a novel to find a home for, or was on a bunch of panels, I might consider it.

Each year I say I'll get that novel in shape to pitch next year. Next year. I'm going to have a lot more time starting in September, so here I am, saying I'm going to have something to pitch for next year. Wish me luck, and see you there!

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.

7:15 or bust

How times change! For a long time I ran at about 7:30 per K. Recently I've been getting faster and it feels great!

But training for a marathon is weird in some ways. Consistency is huge, of course. But so is doing your easy runs slow. The point is to make them easy and relaxing, giving you time on your feet, learning to run more smoothly, getting your mind used to the idea that you're going to keep going. Part of it is to stay aerobic, getting your body to burn fat without building up lactic acid in your muscles faster than they can deal with it.

The problem is that once your legs know how to run faster, it becomes difficult to run slower. So tonight, for example. My legs are still feeling the Saturday run a bit. This was to be a recovery run, slow and easy, 8 K. Things were clunky to start, and stayed clunky the entire run, excepting a few times, for a few seconds, where my legs escaped and picked up the pace. I ended up taking 58:08 which is 7:15 pace, which is about what I was aiming at.

What's funny is that I clearly remember the first time running that distance in that time, and practically turning myself inside out doing it. I was perilously close to the retaste zone. Now I'm hardly breathing for much of it.  The work is to keep my legs turning over in what feels like a plod.

The Saturday run I wore my heart rate monitor for the first time in a while. Normally about 129 bpm is a chatchatchat pace near the top of zone 2. I was told I should be a little slower than that, hence the monitor. Blue is pace. I started about 7 min per K, and gradually slowed down. Heart rate is red, and you can see it gradually rises with a couple little burps for hills, where I really slowed down. So yes, for much of the run I was mid zone 2 which is success in my books. As I slowed I was running less efficiently, plus it had started to rain. That last half hour was brutal. You can see where my heart rate jumped up and stayed up.

Swam this morning and that was a bit of a plod too for much of it. 1K, 19:15, which is slow for me. First 250 m felt ok but was slow, slow, slow, next 500 m struggling to keep it together, and the last 250 m was a bit of a  slow flounder. Plus, (and Talisman I love you but you're killing me) the hot tub is STILL out of service. It's full of bubbly water, just to taunt us. Sigh. I'll be there on Thursday, Talisman! Just saying.

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.

If this is retirement, bring it on!

Thursday, water ran an hour, doing slightly different variations. The straight-legged one with toes pointing up is tough. Remember, no float belt. Short work day, with people bringing stuff for me to do, and me frantically trying to prod Maximo into doing it before I had to leave. For a super-duper program it's awfully slow.

I've been meaning to get out onto Estela again. I had some rides early in the year, then I started focussing on the run, and we had all that crappy weather. But today was the day!

I'd been thinking of scouting some photo locations, and decided to work that into my bike ride. Turned out to be 65 K in 3:14 mostly just riding along. Lots of stops along the way to enjoy the scenery. Here's one of them, I think we all know where this is, plus the most photogenic bike ever!

It worked out pretty well, but I goofed on hydration and nutrition. I figured I was only going a couple hours so I took only one water bottle. Shortly after that above shot I had to decide which way to go home. I could have gone down Elbow, or the Bow. I chose the latter knowing it was a longer ride. By 50 K was getting a bit hungry and if the ride ended then it would have been perfect. By 60 K I was out of water, getting hungry, and my legs and butt were getting tired.  Home to hydrate and a quick snack. Then Linda got home and we had a big lunch.

Stupid blogger, upside-downing that photo and not letting me fix it. Or maybe it's Apple's Photo whatever. Grrr. Sorry.

No, that isn't a little baby dessert plate. These are the tomahawk cut from the Italian Store. Pretty darn tasty! Yes other things were added to the plate.

After a big meal it's nice to torpor in the shady patio, then I went for a power nap.

My swim buddy graciously invited me to come along as her spotter for an open water swim. I was a bit unsure at first, then decided what the heck! The worst that would happen is I'd vomit from the exertion of trying to keep up, and I could swim away from that, and besides it would be a first experience. No doubt the lake has had worse. I try not to think about it when I'm swimming open water. We scoped out the swim exit and transition, then called it an evening.

Closer to sunset I zoomed out to one of the spots I'd scouted for a sunset shoot. BUGS! I'd forgotten about bug spray, and that detracted from the experience. I had a picture in my head of what the photos would turn out like, but I didn't quite get there based on what I've seen on the back of the camera. Later today I'll put the chip in the laptop and find out for sure what I've got.

From there I scouted for locations for the Perseid shoot. Holy cow Calgary is a bright city. My thinking was to go south a bit and try to find the lee side of a hill, but it didn't work out that way. The light bounces off all the dust and crap in the air.

Since I was there I tried anyways, then shot some of a distant lightning storm, then some stars off to the SW, since it was dark in that direction.  This is a learning experience so I don't expect much from any of these.

All in all an active happy day! I'm not sure I want to be that busy all the time, but there's lots to do and a limited time.

So, that marathon training thing

That officially started a few days ago. So far so good.

Monday, run 8 k 57:45. This was to be easy. No, easier than that. Except my legs were insistent on running about a 7 min K pace, slower going up out of Fish Creek, then falling back into that pace. Breathing was easy, and trying to run slower wasn't working so well.

Tuesday. Swim 500 m easy, getting back into the swim groove.  20 minutes of water core. For my newer readers you can read about it here.

Wednesday. The plan called for a warmup run of 2 or 3 K, and a cool down the same, with 6K of tempo run at half marathon pace, which is sort of about 6:30 to 6:40. It turns out the outside lane at Talisman is 224 m long, which is an awkward number of laps per K, but 9 laps is 2.16 k, rounded to 2.2. Close enough. 9 laps per interval, 1 interval warmup, 3 of tempo run, 1 of cool down. I can keep track of that sort of stuff.

I deliberately set the phone so I wouldn't hear the data chirps. I wanted to run by feel, and look at the numbers after. Warmup pace turned out to be 6:56, running what seemed to be really slowly. I was barely breathing, and hardly popped a sweat in the warm muggy Talisman tent.

Interval 2 was 5:56 pace. 3 was 5:48 pace. All this was running smoothly, breathing evenly, feeling comfortable. Interval 4 says 5:36, but I wasn't trying to run any faster. I suspect that some of the time should come off interval 3 and get added to 4, the distances are a bit funny.

Interval 5, cool down was 6:35 pace and it felt like I was going to break into a walk. Not that my legs were tired. My breathing completely recovered, the sweat started to dry off, and it felt like I was running really slowly. Not a plod, my feet felt really light. Walked another 2 laps to cool down some more.

Overall was 11 k, 1:09. Really pleased. Why indoors you ask? Morning thunderstorm. Not thrilled about rain, but can cope. Ain't made of brown sugar! I do not want to be out running when there is lightning. I thought about waiting, but if it rains in Calgary it's usually in the afternoon. I figured get'er done. It turns out that if I'd waited till 7, I'd have had a warm run, but then I probably wouldn't have slept well. Exercise wakes me up.

Here's some of the flowers before the most recent hailstorm.