Not getting beat by a girl and other related tales

I may not be posting as frequently as I would like, but on the bright side by the time I get around to doing it, hopefully I’ll have some material.

My thursday run saw the return of the stairs. You may remember them:

By the time I reached the stairs, I figured I deserved a short rest. I decided to take a “before” picture while I waited for my heart to settle down from running:

The funny thing is, while I ran all the way up the stairs (okay,  i feel a little sheepish about describing what I was doing for the last few stairs as running, the real “take-away” here is that I didn’t stop to rest), by the time I reached the top I was so consumed with hatred of the stairs that I forgot to take an “after” picture. All I can say is it wouldn’t have been flattering.

I did take an “after” picture of the stairs though. Here they are from the top:

For all my hatred of the stairs, I loved this little stump which proved good for sitting on:

I rested there. For a little bit. And then a little bit more.

Anyhow the run was about 4.5k including the stairs. Let’s not worry about how long it took.

I skipped out on Saturday. To make up for it, I asked my girlfriend how far she was running today. She said about 7k. That seemed a fair way to compensate for my allowing errands to get in the way of running yesterday, so I offered to accompany her, despite her putting me to shame the last time we ran that same distance.

We went to Deer Lake. It was pretty today:

The plan when we left was to do one 5k loop and then take a short cut on the second loop to end up around 7k. The hiccup occurred when we finished the first loop, and girlfriend was distraught that we hadn’t traveled 5k. She suggested we do two full loops of the park. I laughed at first, but it turned out she wasn’t joking.

So the thing with testosterone is when your girlfriend says “hey do you want to do something physically challenging that I can do,” the inescapable conclusion if you say no is that she is tougher than you. Unacceptable. Even if its true.

So I agreed to do a full second loop of the park, which by my math was going to be somewhere between 8-9k. Also known as longer than I have ever run in my life. Hell, I’m pretty confident most years of my life I haven’t run 9k cumulatively.

Girlfriend’s training program involves ten minutes of running, one minute of walking intervals. I found that when we took our walking “breaks”, I started to feel my muscles burning, whereas when I was running I didn’t really notice it. At the same time, I felt pretty good by the end of the run, so maybe there’s something to it.

I felt a lot stronger on hills than I have in the past, perhaps thanks to the stairs earlier in the week.

And, most importantly, I never fell behind my girlfriend. I even sprinted the final distance.

So, long story short, I hit a new personal distance record:

Distance 8.45k

06:42/km

56:38

The downside here is that I now feel pretty confident that I could run a 10k in a half way respectable time. It may be time to register for another “race”.

Sigh.

Sunny Zombie Days

Okay. First, I’ve been working all weekend. This is not something which excites me. Particularly not when this has been the nicest weekend we’ve had in 2012. I can tell how nice it is out because my office, which is usually just a tad cooler than a 25lb block of ice, is hot, and I have the window open. On account of my having to work all weekend, I decided that rather than do my run this morning before going to work, I would do a mid-day run to break up the monotony of work and give me a little energy boost. While I can report I was glad to get out of the office, I’ll get back to you on whether it gives me an energy boost with which to tackle the next 6-10 hours I’ll be here. Today is also day 1 of my use of Zombies, Run!, the zombie roleplaying running app. Before I get to my thoughts on the app, here’s what the day looked like:

What a great day to be sitting at a desk!

So Zombies, Run! starts out with you in a helicopter, crashing. Someone in the nearby township is talking to you on the radio, but of course, you can’t talk to them, because your transmitter is broken, and because they are a pre-recorded soundtrack. They tell you where to go, and when the zombies are chasing you. They also tell you to bring them supplies, or they won’t let you into town when you get there.

The real soul of the game, in my view, is when the zombies are chasing you. You get periodic announcements that the zombies are getting close, and that you’d better run a bit faster. This actually works as motivation. The first time the message came on I actually caught myself looking behind me to see the zombies.

The flaw here is that you can’t set the speed at which the zombies are chasing you, so, if you’re a slow ass like me, they always catch you. Of course, by catch you, I don’t mean it in the sense that they grab you and start tearing at your flesh with their rotten zombie teeth. The game design allows you to get caught, you just have to give up some of the items that you’ve picked up during the course of the game. Apparently clean underwear is sufficient to distract the zombies if you just toss it behind you.

Basically the zombie chases are a form of interval training. The fact that you can’t determine the frequency of the intervals or the speed at which you run them is, in my view, a major design flaw.

Aside from that complaint, the game is kind of fun, and does add a new dimension to the run. I’ll keep using it for now, and let you know how things progress.

Oh, so on account of my being at work, my run took me to some new areas today. That meant exploring. Once I ran up some stairs:

I encountered this. which would have been nice to know about at the bottom of the stairs:

Then, not only did I get to dodge fake zombies, but some real ones as I jogged down Water Street:

Anyway, I think that’s about all I’ve got for you. First day back at the running in a week was fine. I took it easy, and did about 5k. My short term running plans are to focus on increasing my distance. I want to get up to 10k. I think I should be there in a few months, at which time I’ll start to consider another “race”.

Week 8, Day 24 Come to the Sabbath

Today was a weird one, and has become weirder still based on the heavy snow coming down outside my window.

I ran in the park. Here’s some photographic evidence of the wind yesterday:

I’m thinking someone’s already cleared up the larger branches.

Anyhow, I went off into the dirt trails shortly after taking that picture. I kept up a good pace til I had to walk down the steep hill. Everything was going just fine.

Then this happened:

Oh stairs, how I hate you so. I paused at the bottom til my heart rate was below 120. Given the last time I encountered these vile bastards, I ran more than two thirds of the way up, I assumed that today I’d be able to do the whole thing. Well, you know what happens when you assume…

You run up a giant set of stairs!

Okay, i should qualify that a bit. I did run all the stairs, but I took two pretty brief “I think I’m going to die and hate the world” breathers near the top. By the very end I was actually beginning to doubt whether I was, even through force of will,  able to keep lifting my legs and carrying myself up the stairs. Turns out I could.

I sat down for a bit at the top, then walked while I waited for my heart rate to decelerate from 185. Once it came down to around 120, I started a slow jog, and by slow, I mean SLOW.

Now, the interesting part of this story is that I have never felt so burnt out after a run as I did today. Runkeeper tells me I ran 4.18km. It took me 38:12 to do it, including warm up and cool down walks for a couple minutes each side. I don’t even want to tell you what kind of pace I was running at by the end. All I can hope is that somehow this stair running is making me stronger. Otherwise its really just self-flagellation and I think that would be more fun with chains or whips.

This is what I was listening to for the part of the run that didn’t suck.

On the bright side, Week 8 is over. See you next week.

Week 6, Day 18 One step at a time

Getting going today was officially a struggle. It was raining, and I put in a real effort in coming up with excuses that would allow me to avoid my usual Sunday battle with the stairs. I thought about how I should avoid the mud (cause all of a sudden that’s an issue), and in a less subtle line of reasoning, how I really didn’t want to run up the stairs again. I almost persuaded myself, and then I said to myself, self, are you going to let those stairs beat you? Clearly not.

So off I went. It was a good run. I’ve recently developed a concern that by consistently running for fixed lengths of time, rather than fixed distances, I might be setting myself up for a psychological breakdown when I run the 5k. On account of that reasoning, today I ran certain segments, regardless of how long it took, and I also made sure I got my heart rate down before tackling the stairs, and after I finished them. And if that meant I never ran for ten minutes straight, I was totally okay with that.

In the past few weeks, I’ve run one third segments of the stairs, and walked the rest. Today, I tried a new strategy. I refused to look up at how many stairs were left. I just looked at the next step. Eventually I started cursing out loud, which is becoming a common thing in my running journey, and quit. When I turned around, this is how far I’d gone.

I think next week I’ll be able to do the whole set of stairs. We’ll see.

After I cooled down from the stairs, I started running, and made a new friend. You don’t get a great look at him, because he was moving around, barking, and I suspect trying to herd me. Either that or he just thought going for a run was a great idea.

He followed me for about two minutes. I say ‘he’, but that’s on account of a patriarchal assumption I make that all dogs are male until proved otherwise, and I didn’t check to see if he had balls.

In other news, a couple of days ago I had dinner with my girlfriend’s mom and stepdad. Curiously enough, they are both runners. But they don’t run like I run. For example, I can’t imagine saying something like “I’m going for a three hour run tomorrow,” without being pretty confident I was going to be chased by zombies the entire way, and even then I’m pretty sure the zombies would be moving faster than me within the first forty five minutes. (Note: when zombie apocalypse does arrive, have weapons on hand.)

Apparently they (girlfriend’s mom and stepdad, not zombies) enjoy running in ultramarathons. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, I think I can sum it up by saying they’re for people who have run a marathon and decided it wasn’t long enough and they’d like to keep going. An upcoming 100k event warns on its website that the race “is not a beginner-level ultra and participation in the race should not be taken lightly.” 

Anyhow, like I say, not my type of thing. Her stepdad gave me confidence that it is possible to hate running and yet continue to do it for many years. When I repeated something I’d been told by other runners in the past, that once you get past a certain distance, adding more distance isn’t a big deal, he made it pretty clear he didn’t buy that, and that adding more distance is never “easy”.

I’ll save some of the fun running stories they shared with me for another day.

Zombie themed weekend is officially over.

Week 4, Day 12 Steps

Last night was fun times, despite hanging out with some degenerates. Started with watching people beat each other up on tv, then moved on to people pretending to murder each other with Machetes, and concluded with watching Lemmy Kilmister explain his collection of Nazi paraphernalia with a less than satisfying “they just had cooler uniforms”. Thanks Lemmy, but I think I’ll pass on your upcoming show in town, you nazi fuck.

Last night was also fun on account of dipping in to a new bottle of scotch. I call it scotch, despite it coming from Japan. It’s glorious, and if you’re a scotch drinker you need to try it.

Anyway, I fell asleep on the sofa watching Trailer Park Boys shortly after telling my degenerate friends to get out. My alarm went off at 8:30, which is half way civilized at least. I managed to get out the door just past nine.

I went back into the local park trails today. It was raining a bit, but nothing too offensive. I’m getting used to running in mud now so I don’t really let that phase me.

The most noteworthy pieces of terrain in the park are the steps I spoke about before (image to come), and this very steep hill.

I don’t run down that, no matter where I’m at in my 5 minutes run, 2 minutes walk program.

Now, the problem with going down the steep hill, is that inevitably it means I have to climb back up it. The route that I take brings me to a set of stairs that may kill me one day. Here is the view from the bottom.

You’ll note you can’t actually see the top from the bottom. Here’s the view from when you turn the corner.

The light off in the distance is where you hit more or less level ground again.

I hate these steps.

Today I ran about a third of the steps before I started sucking wind. I walked the rest, recovered by walking for two minutes once I hit the top, and then went back into the 5 minutes/2minutes interval.

I felt pretty good throughout today (feeling like I was going to die on the steps aside). No pain, muscle fatigue wasn’t bad, and I felt like I could keep going at the end of the five minutes.

I’ve also decided that Paradise Lost is my preferred running music. It’s melancholic enough to suit my running mood, plodding enough to match my pace, and absorbing enough to distract me from what I’m doing.

Well, that’s it for today. No running now til Thursday.

Week 3, Day 9 Sniffle

Yesterday, I mentioned that I had been experiencing some pretty severe pain in my hip/ass. I ran through it, in the hope that it wouldn’t aggravate the injury. Shockingly, it seems to have actually helped. At the very least, now the pain has moved from the hip area to my lower back, which I’m finding much more manageable. Particularly with the assistance of painkillers.

Fortunately I’ve now got something new to complain about. I’m coming down with a cold. For those of you haven’t run with a cold, it largely involves spitting phlegm out every minute or so in an attempt to avoid long streamers of snot from dangling out your nose. Lovely.

Anyhow, if I wasn’t going to let debilitating hip pain get in my way, I’m certainly not going to let a cold stop me. Today was alright. I stuck to the trails in the local park today, and more or less stuck with a pattern of 1 minute walk, 3 minutes run. I deviated slightly after climbing a stupid high set of stairs, which required a bit more recovery time, and which I counted as running despite walking up them for at least two thirds of the time. If I ever get to the point where I can run all the way up those stairs without suffering a heart attack, I’ll know I’ve made considerable improvement. Probably I should have taken a picture of the stairs. Next time I guess.

The weather was damp and windy, but being in the park protected me from most of the wind.

Oh, in other exciting news, my RMT appointment has been moved up to Thursday!

I’m finished week 3. Wow. If it wasn’t for you bastards reading this cursed blog it’d have been much easier to bail by this point.

Thanks.