Monochromatic Outlook

5.6 miles this morn­ing, in 57:44. I kept my heart rate down below 165 for most of the run, although through the last mile it was hard­er to keep up a com­fort­able pace and so for the final sev­en-tenths of a mile I was up clos­er to 175. I think thanks to my hard run yes­ter­day I just did­n’t have as much in my legs today.

I’m try­ing pret­ty des­per­ate­ly to hit my goal for … Read the rest

Church & Mar­ket. Pret­ty soon this will be my neigh­bor­hood, or close enough any­way. It’s been a rough week at work and I don’t real­ly expect tomor­row to be any eas­i­er. But I’ve spent some time enjoy­ing what my city has to offer. What will soon be walk­ing dis­tance of home has good food and cof­fee shops where peo­ple I know are hang­ing out, hav­ing cof­fee and smok­ing cig­a­rettes, plan­ning their weekends.

The air is warm, the sky is clear, … Read the rest

7.90 miles this morn­ing in 1:34:25.

That’s a pret­ty slow pace, aver­ag­ing about 12 min­utes to the mile. But there are two mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors that give this the feel of glo­ri­ous victory.

1) Well, that is the third longest dis­tance I’ve ever cov­ered. I’ve done eight miles once before and ten miles once before. So this run was a chal­lenge on dis­tance alone.

2) It was a hill­climb. I went from my … Read the rest

Bad habit of mine: get­ting two tick­ets to an event and THEN look­ing for a date. It’s a low self-esteem thing I guess, where I feel I need to bribe oth­er peo­ple to spend any time with me. In my his­to­ry I’ve spent hun­dreds of dol­lars on events I did­n’t want to go to, and some­times got­ten two tick­ets for things I did want to see that then went unused.

In short, it’s a real­ly good way to beat myself … Read the rest

I went to bed at 9:45 last night, intend­ing to get enough sleep to get up ear­ly to run this morn­ing. I’ve got­ten pret­ty rea­son­able at wak­ing up, some­thing I nev­er was when I was younger. To bed before 10:00pm is real­ly what I need to do; in fact, if I’m going to get up at 5am I should real­ly be to sleep by 9pm, right?

Well, I slept right through to 7:… Read the rest

I spec­u­lat­ed ear­li­er at the ter­ror I would feel if I were a par­ent of a teenaged daugh­ter who lis­tened to H.I.M. or some oth­er sui­cide-glam­or­iz­ing satan­ic glam rock. But actu­al­ly, after a few min­utes of reflec­tion I real­ized that I prob­a­bly would nev­er have any­thing to wor­ry about.

I recent­ly read She Said Yes, the sto­ry of the girl who, in the library at Columbine, was asked if she believed in God. Her moth­er told of ear­li­er years where … Read the rest

Did­n’t run today at all. Instead, I made a trip across town to On The Run, a shoe store that spe­cial­izes in run­ners footwear. The store came rec­om­mend­ed by friends who run and I had decid­ed it was time to at least attempt to take bet­ter care of my feet.

Well, the sales­guy took good care of me. He actu­al­ly had real empir­i­cal­ly-testable-and-answer­able ques­tions for me about the fit. Usu­al­ly the process of try­ing on shoes is just “how does that … Read the rest

I count it a small vic­to­ry to wake up before the alarm goes off. As a life­time snooze-but­ton abuser and late sleep­er, I’m amazed and heart­ened when my uncon­scious mind grabs the boot­straps and pulls me into wake­ful­ness at the appro­pri­ate time. I won­der if that is a tes­ta­ment to the qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of the process­es that stay run­ning even in my sleep or whether I wake peri­od­i­cal­ly to look at the clock with­out remem­ber­ing. Either way, some­times I … Read the rest

So just after com­plet­ing the first draft of the first part of my Clark-Bruce fan­f­ic, I decid­ed to go look at canon mate­ri­als as research for facts. Seems I’ve got the facts all wrong and it’s both­er­ing me.

I’ve pos­tu­lat­ed that Bat­man would be active and fight­ing crime a few years before Super­man, and that he would be a few years old­er than Clark. Clark in the Smal­l­ville con­text is 16 or 17 years old, and I was fig­ur­ing Bruce at … Read the rest

Went run­ning again today for the first time in eleven days. 4.4 miles with some hills, in 43:46. The last time I ran Fish­er­mans Wharf-to-Fort Mason-to-Mari­na Green I hurt my foot and end­ed the run angry, dis­cour­aged, and in pain at 51:35. A few days lat­er I got back out there and gave up after two miles because of the pain in my foot. A week ago I came to the office … Read the rest