I had the worst school lunches growing up.
Apparently, my mother had been raised in a somewhat affluent home, surrounded by a doting mother and sisters, which meant that she got to grow up indulging her bookwormish tendencies and became an adult who didn't know how to pack a lunch for a neurotic kid. (Now, some of you may, validly, point out that my father could just as well have learnt to pack a frickin' lunch, but it was a different time, children, a different time.)
She tried at various times to pack a lunch of Korean food. However, as a child the last thing you ever want to do is stand out in a crowd, and the unbelievably rank stank that exploded out of my CHiPs lunch pail was the olfactory equivalent of a 6 foot tall drag queen belting out Ethel Merman in Times Square, only instead of high Cs there's garlic. Korean lunch not the way to blend in.
God bless her, the woman tried, she tried other stuff, like sandwiches. Only, for some reason she decided to toast the bread, which to this day I hate, toasted bread on sandwiches, because that stuff will cut up the roof of your mouth unlike a Michael Jackson video knife-fight, and then all you'd taste for the rest of your lunch was blood. On top of that, mom would wrap the sandwiches in aluminum foil, so everything tasted sort of metallic. And on top of that, her sandwiches consisted of, no joke, an inch of lettuce leaves and then one slice of bologna on the bottom. And then on top of that, instead of packing Kool-Aid or juice as a beverage, she'd include an 8 oz. can of V8 - listen, kids hate V8 (and if your child loves it, then he or she might be suffering from a condition called pica). So, day after day at lunch I'd glumly sit with my mouthful of blood-lettuce-V8, watching the other kids with their perfectly non-garlic lunches.
Everything changed, however, when the federal government stepped in, because then the school was required, nay, mandated, to give us what every child loves: chocolate milk. Every lunch period, a lady would walk by the classroom with a milk crate full of little cartons of white and chocolate milk which we'd buy; white milk was for suckers, chocolate milk was for those who needed solace - ur, for winners. Bliss! Finally, something to look forward to every day, something to take away the taste of blood and metal, the taste of shame and alienation, something besides rhubarb pie, which I also happen to love. Chocolate milk - savior of my grammar school lunches!
Graduating from elementary school (and my parents' divorce) meant that I'd graduated from those crazy lunches. Becoming an adult meant replacing chocolate milk with whiskey. Until now!
Because as it turns out, my old down gustatory homie chocolate milk is the best sports recovery drink around. So, the idea being that if you've had an arduous enough workout you've got to replace the glycogen in your muscles, as well as the other nutrients you've lost; although there are a host of recovery drinks available on the market it turns out chocolate milk has better levels of glucose, protein, fat, sodium, potassium, etc. etc. than any of the commercially available ones. You can find some of these articles here, here, and here. It turns out that you need to have worked out for at least 45 minutes before you need a recovery beverage, so now I manufacture reasons to keep going until I hit three-quarters of an hour, and although you're really not supposed to use food as reward or punishment, I figure it's a drink, which technically isn't a food, just like whiskey, right? Right?
Long lost friends, chocolate milk and me, reunited and it feels so good.
A Run That Earned Me Some Chocolate Milk
5.34 mi. 43 min.:41 sec. 8:11 pace.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
I Regret Nothing
And by nothing, I mean everything.
Today, the stars aligned and I was finally able to obtain a McRib sandwich for this brief return tour, for the first time in 16 years.
It was as messy as I remember. And as artificial. And as delightful.
It's 500 calories. I blew half of my Saturday 13 mile long run's calorie bank on a novelty sandwich.
And I regret nothing. Srsly!
Today, the stars aligned and I was finally able to obtain a McRib sandwich for this brief return tour, for the first time in 16 years.
It was as messy as I remember. And as artificial. And as delightful.
It's 500 calories. I blew half of my Saturday 13 mile long run's calorie bank on a novelty sandwich.
And I regret nothing. Srsly!
You Svengali!
I am by no means an excellent photographer. Now, that doesn't mean that I didn't have ambitions to become one; during the course of my travels I thought that why yes, yes I would become a great war photographer, Nachtweyan in my ability to move emotions through my lenscraft (wait, I think that actually means that I can sell retail eyewear for a low price). Like many of us, I even fancied up my gear, cameraed up (is that a word or saying? You know, like you better man up, cowboy up, lawyer up, camera up?) and bought myself one of those digital SLR cameras that everyone seems to have and knows how to use nowadays.
But like a lot of my pretensions to geekiness (and there are a lot of them, things that I always assumed that nerds knew how to do and that I therefore ought to learn how to do as well. Take comic book collecting, for example: classic nerd convention, right? Well, I got through about ten issues of "Space Beaver" - no joke, not a porn, sitting on my shelf right now - before I got bored of it. Or "Dungeons and Dragons" - I bought a bunch of the books, a couple of dodecahedrons, and then thought that having to do math to figure out if I killed an orc was boooooooring. I treat geekiness like other kids treat learning how to play tennis or the guitar) learning how to take photos kinda fell to the wayside, and now I just have a big fancy camera that takes better pictures than I am a photographer. But that's not the magic part.
Today my wife and I went to Seal Beach for the first time, and of course I bring along the camera so I don't feel like I've totally wasted my money on yet another hobby that's gone nowhere. Lovely day out, etc. etc., but when we got home and put the pictures up on iPhoto (yup, the Apple program - the fact that I'm using iPhoto, not Photoshop or even Aperture, should tell you what a rank amateur I am) I noticed a little fleck, a little blemish on many of the shots. Nothing huge like, say, a pigeon tapping on the screen or a spider crossing the background, but just a speck big enough to notice and irritate.
After reading through the manual (I find that I often read manuals - just not a dude in that respect) I figured out how to dust off the filter or something or other and managed to fix that situation, but I still had a bunch of pictures with a blemish on them, when I discovered the Retouch feature on iPhoto.
Retouch - sounds about right. What happens is that if you do find a blemish on your pictures you can use this little editing feature of iPhoto to basically make the thing vanish - it blends that part of the picture all together, a little iPhotoshopping of your picture - magic! But creepy, like David Blaine. I'd heard of these programs that can totally alter your photos, you can even edit entire people out of them, and I started getting really weirded out - aren't you supposed to have hard evidence when it's photographic? What in the world do we rely on? What if there is no objective reality (by the way, there ain't) (sort of)? What if there's a Retouch Abs function on iPhoto, and I totally can look like I have a six-pack?
Anyway, nice day today:
But like a lot of my pretensions to geekiness (and there are a lot of them, things that I always assumed that nerds knew how to do and that I therefore ought to learn how to do as well. Take comic book collecting, for example: classic nerd convention, right? Well, I got through about ten issues of "Space Beaver" - no joke, not a porn, sitting on my shelf right now - before I got bored of it. Or "Dungeons and Dragons" - I bought a bunch of the books, a couple of dodecahedrons, and then thought that having to do math to figure out if I killed an orc was boooooooring. I treat geekiness like other kids treat learning how to play tennis or the guitar) learning how to take photos kinda fell to the wayside, and now I just have a big fancy camera that takes better pictures than I am a photographer. But that's not the magic part.
Today my wife and I went to Seal Beach for the first time, and of course I bring along the camera so I don't feel like I've totally wasted my money on yet another hobby that's gone nowhere. Lovely day out, etc. etc., but when we got home and put the pictures up on iPhoto (yup, the Apple program - the fact that I'm using iPhoto, not Photoshop or even Aperture, should tell you what a rank amateur I am) I noticed a little fleck, a little blemish on many of the shots. Nothing huge like, say, a pigeon tapping on the screen or a spider crossing the background, but just a speck big enough to notice and irritate.
After reading through the manual (I find that I often read manuals - just not a dude in that respect) I figured out how to dust off the filter or something or other and managed to fix that situation, but I still had a bunch of pictures with a blemish on them, when I discovered the Retouch feature on iPhoto.
Retouch - sounds about right. What happens is that if you do find a blemish on your pictures you can use this little editing feature of iPhoto to basically make the thing vanish - it blends that part of the picture all together, a little iPhotoshopping of your picture - magic! But creepy, like David Blaine. I'd heard of these programs that can totally alter your photos, you can even edit entire people out of them, and I started getting really weirded out - aren't you supposed to have hard evidence when it's photographic? What in the world do we rely on? What if there is no objective reality (by the way, there ain't) (sort of)? What if there's a Retouch Abs function on iPhoto, and I totally can look like I have a six-pack?
Anyway, nice day today:
Treadmill
5.10 mi. 45 min. 8:49 pace.
Running Packt (cont'd)
A couple of athletes who embody the empathy of running and the ethic that comes from it (in terms of empathy for our fellow beings, not empathy in terms of they caught and ate something): Emil Zatopek, who gave away a gold medal, and Derartu Tulu, who stopped to help a downed runner during the 2009 New York Marathon.
Yes, most of the ideas I've written about so far are from Chris McDougall, and yes, I've not only swallowed the Kool-Aid, apparently, it's in my Camelbak.
Yes, most of the ideas I've written about so far are from Chris McDougall, and yes, I've not only swallowed the Kool-Aid, apparently, it's in my Camelbak.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Running Packt
So part of the idea is that humans are terrific runners because we're pack hunters. Being in a pack is much cooler than being in a herd; hearing about how a "herd is stalking its prey" just doesn't sound as interesting. One reason humans enjoyed a competitive advantage was our ability to hunt, and therefore access high-quality/concentration (animal) proteins which enabled the explosive growth of really big brains which resulted in the development of agriculture, civilization, computers, and "Hot or Not".com. (For the ethical vegetarians/vegans in the crowd, you could argue that we humans are now sufficiently advanced that we how have the moral obligation to use our technologies to find alternate sources of protein that don't exploit animals. Most everyone else is too busy eating porterhouse steaks to listen, but I hear you.)
The point being that not only are human beings great at hunting by running down prey, but that we're meant to run in groups, with each other, cooperating, challenging, encouraging one another. This morning I went for a distance-run with my church running group; well, we're kind of an unofficial group, about 7 of us who've decided to run the LA Marathon in March, a little like a cult - but I digress. At 8:15 this morning we assembled by Angels Stadium to take a quick run down the Santa Ana River Trail. Each of us eventually found a partner who ran at roughly a similar pace, or at least out of kindness agreed to buddy up at someone else's level of ability, and there we were, padding along.
One of the really curious ideas that has come out of the proposition that humans are persistence hunters (if you've never heard the term, you can google it, and youtube has some clips of interest as well, but it basically means that human beings can run down any land animal on the planet, not in speed, but in terms of distance; we eat because we're persistent) is that our pack hunting is, at least in part, the way in which we developed empathy.
In persistence hunting, catching a fleet-footed animal requires that a pack of humans run it to exhaustion; the problem arises when the relatively speedier creature temporarily outruns its human pursuers, and our ancestors are left scratching their heads, wondering where the animal went, or if the particular gazelle/wildebeest/neolithic-Big-Mac melted into a herd of its own kind, how to decide which of those creatures is the one that's been chased after and is slowly losing its stamina and therefore the one to continue to chase, rather than its rather similar-looking herd-mate (I'm not saying that all gazelles look the same - some of my best friends are gaz...) who's fresh and ready to keep our forebears running until it can pass the pack on to another guy who looks the same, an endless relay race of human hunger. But what does empathy have to do with hunger?
The idea (proper attribution: I read about it in Born to Run) is that humans began to develop a sense in which they were able to see through the eyes of their prey, feel what they feel, think what they think, and in so doing became able to anticipate what the other, the prey, was thinking and doing, and voila - empathy! Because they needed to eat, humans had to develop the ability to empathize with others in order to anticipate down which trail their next meal would decide to run, which gave us the ability to see things from the perspective of others which resulted in all of agriculture, civilization, "Hot or Not".com, etc. etc. Hegel would have a field day with this idea.
I played high-school football - surprise! Not only that, I played both offensive and defensive line - double surprise!! What should not surprise you, however, is that at 5'6", I wasn't very good at the sport (that, and I've never been very athletic, and no one ever taught me the rules - I still don't know how many downs to a pass okay, you get the point), but part of what makes one a great footballer (I imagine) is the ability to empathize with your opponent. Okay, not empathize as in you feel their pain when you get a good tackle, but to understand what they're thinking, to see through their eyes. The weird part is when you begin to respect the other, your opponent, as one with whom to empathize, which leads to kindness, love, and tackles. Or at least, my favorite part of the game, when an athlete lends a downed player from the opposite team a hand to get back up on his feet. And it may be derived from the fact that as humans we share the ability to run.
My favorite part of the day running with my church group: running in a group, chatting and getting to know my fellow runners better, headed toward the same goal.
I'm assuming that everyone else's goal is also to burn off enough calories to eat more pie...
Santa Ana Trail Run
13.03 mi. 2 hr:10 min:1 sec. 9:58 pace. 1,134 calories.
The point being that not only are human beings great at hunting by running down prey, but that we're meant to run in groups, with each other, cooperating, challenging, encouraging one another. This morning I went for a distance-run with my church running group; well, we're kind of an unofficial group, about 7 of us who've decided to run the LA Marathon in March, a little like a cult - but I digress. At 8:15 this morning we assembled by Angels Stadium to take a quick run down the Santa Ana River Trail. Each of us eventually found a partner who ran at roughly a similar pace, or at least out of kindness agreed to buddy up at someone else's level of ability, and there we were, padding along.
One of the really curious ideas that has come out of the proposition that humans are persistence hunters (if you've never heard the term, you can google it, and youtube has some clips of interest as well, but it basically means that human beings can run down any land animal on the planet, not in speed, but in terms of distance; we eat because we're persistent) is that our pack hunting is, at least in part, the way in which we developed empathy.
In persistence hunting, catching a fleet-footed animal requires that a pack of humans run it to exhaustion; the problem arises when the relatively speedier creature temporarily outruns its human pursuers, and our ancestors are left scratching their heads, wondering where the animal went, or if the particular gazelle/wildebeest/neolithic-Big-Mac melted into a herd of its own kind, how to decide which of those creatures is the one that's been chased after and is slowly losing its stamina and therefore the one to continue to chase, rather than its rather similar-looking herd-mate (I'm not saying that all gazelles look the same - some of my best friends are gaz...) who's fresh and ready to keep our forebears running until it can pass the pack on to another guy who looks the same, an endless relay race of human hunger. But what does empathy have to do with hunger?
The idea (proper attribution: I read about it in Born to Run) is that humans began to develop a sense in which they were able to see through the eyes of their prey, feel what they feel, think what they think, and in so doing became able to anticipate what the other, the prey, was thinking and doing, and voila - empathy! Because they needed to eat, humans had to develop the ability to empathize with others in order to anticipate down which trail their next meal would decide to run, which gave us the ability to see things from the perspective of others which resulted in all of agriculture, civilization, "Hot or Not".com, etc. etc. Hegel would have a field day with this idea.
I played high-school football - surprise! Not only that, I played both offensive and defensive line - double surprise!! What should not surprise you, however, is that at 5'6", I wasn't very good at the sport (that, and I've never been very athletic, and no one ever taught me the rules - I still don't know how many downs to a pass okay, you get the point), but part of what makes one a great footballer (I imagine) is the ability to empathize with your opponent. Okay, not empathize as in you feel their pain when you get a good tackle, but to understand what they're thinking, to see through their eyes. The weird part is when you begin to respect the other, your opponent, as one with whom to empathize, which leads to kindness, love, and tackles. Or at least, my favorite part of the game, when an athlete lends a downed player from the opposite team a hand to get back up on his feet. And it may be derived from the fact that as humans we share the ability to run.
My favorite part of the day running with my church group: running in a group, chatting and getting to know my fellow runners better, headed toward the same goal.
I'm assuming that everyone else's goal is also to burn off enough calories to eat more pie...
Santa Ana Trail Run
13.03 mi. 2 hr:10 min:1 sec. 9:58 pace. 1,134 calories.
Friday, November 26, 2010
In the T-Zone
Today's workout consisted of a 30 minute run on the treadmill at our community center's gym.
Amongst runners, treadmills seem to provoke fairly strong reactions, of the kind that suggesting to someone that we should eat kittens might.
Okay, perhaps that's a bit hyperbolic; let's say puppies instead of kittens.
But all provocations aside, it seems like many runners view treadmillers with a bit of disdain (but not a lot, since runners tend to be a pretty easy-going, live-and-let-live sort of a crowd). From my interpretation of the community's general mood, running is supposed to be the most basic of sports, the most back-to-natural; all one need do is start putting one foot before the other in rapid succession to be a runner. A treadmill, on the other hand, is an unnecessary piece of technology, the runner's equivalent of a tanning bed, a prosthetic trail that goes nowhere and keeps you from part of the point of running: connection with the world outside.
Which is, of course, part of the point of a treadmill. When it's too cold/rainy/hot to run outside is when a treadmill is supposed to be deployed. For instance, there are times when the only opportunity I'll have to run during the course of the day is when temperatures are peaking, and while it would certainly prove my machismo to run in 105F heat, it would also worsen the pretty gnarly farmer's tan I'm currently sporting, which makes me look like I have tan sleeves and I'm wearing a pasty white muscle flesh-shirt (sexy!).
Although I've always included some sort of jogging in my attempts to exercise since high school, the treadmill was how I first started testing out the idea of a midfoot/forefoot strike, and running distances longer that 2 miles at a sitting (no pun intended). The distance-thing is a bit ridiculous; I'd read Born to Run after hearing Chris McDougall on our local NPR affiliate, but I only started actually running more because my wife took a "Body Pump" class at our gym.
This past year, we started trying to exercise more regularly, and often we'd accompany each other to our workouts. We used to take 20 minute sessions on the treadmill together, but when my wife started her hour-long Body Pump class, I was left with essentially a half-hour of nothing to do (well, I suppose I could've always gone home, but when it comes to exercise and fitness for folks like me who have been pale and chubby for their whole lives, you cling to your exercise partner like you might the other survivor of a shipwreck. That shipwreck being your physique, your cardiovascular and respiratory health, etc.), at which point I'd sorta lamely say to myself, well, I suppose I could hop back on the treadmill. Since it was in a gym I was able to distract myself with CNN (or "The View"; what plays on the gym's t.v.s depends on the time of day, and I think I know Whoopie, Joy, Barbara Walters, Sherri and Elizabeth way more than any fully employed man ought); watching the news relieved for me the greatest single complaint that I hear about treadmill running, boredom.
I don't mind treadmilling as much as some, although, of course, if I can run outside in the fresh smog I'd rather. In redeeming the maligned treadmill's reputation, I've read recently that serious runners (pro-types with endorsements and the like) will use the treadmill to train safely for hill-running by cranking up the incline, which I've tried recently (to my regret). But besides learning that perhaps I'm best suited to the flat, plains sort of running, I was able to work my mileage up from 2 miles to 4, 4 miles to 6, and the rest is history - if you can count the past 7 months as historical. At least in terms of my running.
Camp T-Zone (as in, Treadmill Zone... although I heard recently that the T-Zone name may already be taken...)
3.4 mi. 30 min. 8:49 pace.
Amongst runners, treadmills seem to provoke fairly strong reactions, of the kind that suggesting to someone that we should eat kittens might.
Okay, perhaps that's a bit hyperbolic; let's say puppies instead of kittens.
But all provocations aside, it seems like many runners view treadmillers with a bit of disdain (but not a lot, since runners tend to be a pretty easy-going, live-and-let-live sort of a crowd). From my interpretation of the community's general mood, running is supposed to be the most basic of sports, the most back-to-natural; all one need do is start putting one foot before the other in rapid succession to be a runner. A treadmill, on the other hand, is an unnecessary piece of technology, the runner's equivalent of a tanning bed, a prosthetic trail that goes nowhere and keeps you from part of the point of running: connection with the world outside.
Which is, of course, part of the point of a treadmill. When it's too cold/rainy/hot to run outside is when a treadmill is supposed to be deployed. For instance, there are times when the only opportunity I'll have to run during the course of the day is when temperatures are peaking, and while it would certainly prove my machismo to run in 105F heat, it would also worsen the pretty gnarly farmer's tan I'm currently sporting, which makes me look like I have tan sleeves and I'm wearing a pasty white muscle flesh-shirt (sexy!).
Although I've always included some sort of jogging in my attempts to exercise since high school, the treadmill was how I first started testing out the idea of a midfoot/forefoot strike, and running distances longer that 2 miles at a sitting (no pun intended). The distance-thing is a bit ridiculous; I'd read Born to Run after hearing Chris McDougall on our local NPR affiliate, but I only started actually running more because my wife took a "Body Pump" class at our gym.
This past year, we started trying to exercise more regularly, and often we'd accompany each other to our workouts. We used to take 20 minute sessions on the treadmill together, but when my wife started her hour-long Body Pump class, I was left with essentially a half-hour of nothing to do (well, I suppose I could've always gone home, but when it comes to exercise and fitness for folks like me who have been pale and chubby for their whole lives, you cling to your exercise partner like you might the other survivor of a shipwreck. That shipwreck being your physique, your cardiovascular and respiratory health, etc.), at which point I'd sorta lamely say to myself, well, I suppose I could hop back on the treadmill. Since it was in a gym I was able to distract myself with CNN (or "The View"; what plays on the gym's t.v.s depends on the time of day, and I think I know Whoopie, Joy, Barbara Walters, Sherri and Elizabeth way more than any fully employed man ought); watching the news relieved for me the greatest single complaint that I hear about treadmill running, boredom.
I don't mind treadmilling as much as some, although, of course, if I can run outside in the fresh smog I'd rather. In redeeming the maligned treadmill's reputation, I've read recently that serious runners (pro-types with endorsements and the like) will use the treadmill to train safely for hill-running by cranking up the incline, which I've tried recently (to my regret). But besides learning that perhaps I'm best suited to the flat, plains sort of running, I was able to work my mileage up from 2 miles to 4, 4 miles to 6, and the rest is history - if you can count the past 7 months as historical. At least in terms of my running.
Camp T-Zone (as in, Treadmill Zone... although I heard recently that the T-Zone name may already be taken...)
3.4 mi. 30 min. 8:49 pace.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Guilty as Charged
This Thanksgiving, I'm making the turkey, as I do as often as I'm allowed - turkey's the one thing that I know how to cook. The secret is twofold: a turkey bag (a plastic bag that you use for roasting the turkey - it's miraculous. The bag doesn't melt, and by trapping in the moisture it kinda autobastes the turkey), and bacon (you layer bacon over the top of the turkey; while the fat melts, it autobastes the turkey).
Okay, so I just realized that I've overused the words "turkey" and "autobaste". And that I've given away my secrets.
What does this post have to do with running? Is it that I'm going to say that after overindulging on Thanksgiving that I had the sudden inspiration to go for an epic run?
Heck no - I'ma have another serving of this superb autobasted turkey. Happy Thanksgiving, errybody!
Okay, so I just realized that I've overused the words "turkey" and "autobaste". And that I've given away my secrets.
What does this post have to do with running? Is it that I'm going to say that after overindulging on Thanksgiving that I had the sudden inspiration to go for an epic run?
Heck no - I'ma have another serving of this superb autobasted turkey. Happy Thanksgiving, errybody!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Techmology and Its Discontents
So, like many of us, I read Chris McDougall's Born to Run and got the crazy idea that we could run ridiculous distances in a minimalist style. Minimalist in the sense that all I need to run is the bare feet that God gave me.
The bare feet which are shod in Nike Free Run+ shoes and socks (without the insoles for greater flexibility) (the commercials ends lamely, but the rest is pretty cool) (the music can be found here). And Champion technical shirts (from Target - inexpensive!) for when my cotton Ts began to... chafe. And a Fuel Belt Trail Runner with multiple water bottles and pockets for my cell phone, keys, and maltodextrin-based gels (it makes me look like I have a jet pack on, or perhaps what a well-hydrated Batman might wear). And Body Glide for where the belt chafes. And a Garmin Forerunner 310XT with a Heart Rate Monitor so I can map my run online, get a bigger tan line on my wrist, and advertise to the world that I am a running nerd. (I suppose I could've gotten the less expensive 305, but the 310XT has a much longer battery life - 20 hours as opposed to 10 - and I have ambitions to run ultras. Which I'll totally do based on the awesomeness of my watch.) And the four websites on which I log my workouts.
And the treadmill upon which I did my run today.
3.94 mi. 35 min. 8:52 pace.
Looks like I should write a book too... about maximalist running...
The bare feet which are shod in Nike Free Run+ shoes and socks (without the insoles for greater flexibility) (the commercials ends lamely, but the rest is pretty cool) (the music can be found here). And Champion technical shirts (from Target - inexpensive!) for when my cotton Ts began to... chafe. And a Fuel Belt Trail Runner with multiple water bottles and pockets for my cell phone, keys, and maltodextrin-based gels (it makes me look like I have a jet pack on, or perhaps what a well-hydrated Batman might wear). And Body Glide for where the belt chafes. And a Garmin Forerunner 310XT with a Heart Rate Monitor so I can map my run online, get a bigger tan line on my wrist, and advertise to the world that I am a running nerd. (I suppose I could've gotten the less expensive 305, but the 310XT has a much longer battery life - 20 hours as opposed to 10 - and I have ambitions to run ultras. Which I'll totally do based on the awesomeness of my watch.) And the four websites on which I log my workouts.
And the treadmill upon which I did my run today.
3.94 mi. 35 min. 8:52 pace.
Looks like I should write a book too... about maximalist running...
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Here we go again...
By my count, this blog is now my... fifth blog? One could say, I suppose, that I'm blogviating. Or that I've got blogorrhea. Blog much? Oh, this - is this your blahg?
I could keep going, but I won't.
The idea is that I'm an ER doc, I started running for reals this year, and now I'm jumping on the runners blogwagon (sorry, that one slipped out).
Okay, gotta go get me some readers now...
The Run During Which I Get a Brilliant Idea (actually, just another running blog):
5.39 mi. 46 min:01 sec. 8:32 pace.
I could keep going, but I won't.
The idea is that I'm an ER doc, I started running for reals this year, and now I'm jumping on the runners blogwagon (sorry, that one slipped out).
Okay, gotta go get me some readers now...
The Run During Which I Get a Brilliant Idea (actually, just another running blog):
5.39 mi. 46 min:01 sec. 8:32 pace.
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