Sunday, May 17, 2015

Sorry, no clever title today. But cats!

If you're late and missed the party, you can catch up here, where I get all ranty on one particular famous Canadian.

But back to everyday stuff. The Wednesday swim was 2K 38:10, working hard. Today was 2K, 37:20! I'd hoped for 37, and the first K was on track at 18:30, but I lost my focus a bit during the second half. The main difference was a bit more discipline in my kick (for much of the swim), and a stronger flip turn. It's funny to say that I was feeling strong, but relaxed for almost all of it.

My inner shark showed up briefly and cruised along, telling me the news about a conference he's been to. The sharks have statistics showing they're getting a bad rap. Cows kill far more people than sharks, but do people fear them? No! They want to work up a PR campaign to set the story straight. So far the smiling for the camera isn't working so well.

Afterward we watched the divers warming up for the provincial championships. I've jumped off the 10 m tower once, and dived off once. Never again. Being so short sighted, I don't really see the water.  The pool is 5 m deep. That means I'm looking down almost 17 m, or about 55 feet straight down. That's a long way. These kids ran up the stairs, took their turns with no lolly-gagging, up to the end and off! Flipping and turning and twisting to end with a neat splash. Then up and again. Holy cow. I am impressed!

Did I mention it snowed last night, just a little? Enough for us to cover the plants. Once I got home it was nice enough to have to think about what to wear for a run. Shorts yes, but long sleeved top or short? Decisions decisions. In the end I went with long and that was probably right.

I headed out thinking I'd maybe do 4 or 5 K, nice and easy. Then I missed the various iSmoothrun announcements because of traffic, up till 5 K. I was a bit surprised when I heard that one; I thought I was at 4 K or so. Ran to bring it up to 6 K, 39:22 or a 6:34 pace. This is a really good run for me! My feet felt light, and my legs felt strong. I didn't have to think about my pace at all, though I didn't get another chapter in my book written. Other things are distracting me at the moment.

Running has been really good lately. Going about 5 K has been a good distance, and without really pushing hard I've been going at a good pace. For a long time running much faster than a 7 minute K would mean trouble later, as would going much over 10 K. My plan is to sneak up on 10 K this time. I think I'll do some easy and relaxed runs around the 5 to 7 K distance for a while, and see how that feels. My run buddy would keep me honest and on pace. Sigh.

I haven't been on the bike since the fit, but I'm hoping the weather is nice enough tomorrow. It sounds funny, but even the little spin I did during the fit felt good, and it's like some of the muscles in my right thigh have reset themselves. I can feel the run a bit, even after a stretch, but it's not the normal thing. This is more of a balanced feeling of tiredness, than one muscle ready to give up.

Here I am, trying to write, with the cats being terminally cute. Such a distraction.

Even with uncooperative weather Linda is making excellent progress on the garden. Probably just as well it's been raining, or she'd work herself into a puddle of exhaustion. Here's one of her supervisors.

Ahoy! The white wine! The white wine! Off the starboard bow! No, wait, wrong genre. I boiled up some Sparkolloid and added that. I was beginning to thing this wine was never going to clear. But 24 hours after, it looks like this. Still not clear enough to bottle, but I'm at least hopeful again it will get there. I've had a couple other whites that took a long time to settle, but at least with them you could see progress.

Oh and I almost forgot. The pace graph from today's run. I'm too lazy to put it up with the rest of the run stuff. So sue me. I figured out what the drop in cadence is. It happens when I take the phone out of my pocket. I was trying to keep a higher cadence, and it worked pretty well for the first half of the run.


1 comment:

  1. your cats!!! they distract me with their cuteness!! IT is nice to get THOSE runs in ...where they feel good with strong legs. hurrah

    ReplyDelete

Looking forward to reading your comment!