End of term ... where art thou?

Not much is happening around on this side of the pond, except that we're slowly clawing our way towards Christmas. Work sometimes does seem long if you're teaching kids who refuse to engage their brains and allow basic knowledge to pass through their minds. It's torture for me to relive the memory, so I'll let Kurt tell you my student jokes - he seems to like a particular "fill-in-the-blanks" one.

Running is down to two-a-weeks, which - I hate to say - is actually great. I have more time for other interests. I don't have to worry about squeezing in running between other things, and - touch wood - I haven't caught as many colds as I did last year when I insisted in running at this time of year. (Although I know my colds this year lasted longer.) I don't really care about speed, although I comfortably did that loop of 1.678 miles in 12:27 as part of a 30-minute run today. That's less than 8-minutes per mile, and I can live with that - particularly if it comes with the affordable price tag of running just over 60 minutes a week.

I wonder how this dog's diet would affect its speed. You can also find more weird news from across the pond here - the daily London subway paper.

Happy running everyone!

forced out

Cold, cold day. In more ways than one.

The weather's been like that for the past few days, and I didn't fancy going running - I'm even getting into the habit of staying inside during my Wednesday lunchbreak instead of facing the elements. But the voice at the back of my head had been nagging me for about three days, so I reluctantly went out for a short trot today.

The paperwork was formalised this week. My parents have to move. They had hoped to grow old gracefully in the house they had lived in for the last 22 years, but that's not going to happen. They live in a nice estate of 34 terraced three-storey houses, all arranged in a U-shape around a small little pavilion, badminton courts, playground and swimming pool. Four generations have lived in their house, along with animals that just happened to wander in and never left - a tortoise, three cats, a mynah, a starling, a kingfisher (believe it or not). It must be that exotic forest of a garden my mother created. After they move, it will take some time for my family to get used to not being there, and certainly it will be a bleak day, when the greedy developers - who pulled off an en-bloc sale by convincing a majority of over 80% of the owners to sell - bring in their bulldozers. They are going to build higher-storey condos in place, to generate more money.

We went back in October partly to get remnants of my stuff out of their place, so they wouldn't have to move it over to their new house. They already have enough junk hoarded away in the fourth-storey extension that they built. It never became the study they envisioned, just an e-bayer's 501K plan. We also went back partly to say a sentimental "goodbye" to the house where I'd spent most of my life. (My parents live on the other side of the world, 13 hours away, and it was the last time we'd see the place.) We'll temporarily ignore the fact it's a house - that at certain periods of my life - I couldn't wait to get out of.



Many nights spent staring out the window pondering the meaning of life. As day breaks, the delightful sounds of birds filters into the room.



Messing around while on leave. It's only a camera tripod, by the way.



Patrick Roy tribute/I need to join an art class.


And learn how to work Photoshop properly.


"Don't take a picture of my bottom," she said. So I did.


Part of the forest at the front of the house.


Exemplifying the creative streak that runs in our family, this cat was called "Meow".


Near the house there is a lagoon where you can hand-feed tortoises.

Come March, the house will be nothing more than rubble. But it's the warm memories that make the place.

Goodbye, no 23. Thanks for the memories.

Crunch Time

It's that time of year again.

The time of year, when you're out and about, to look out for shrivelled leaves, so curled up, that they make a delightful sound when stepped on. Sometimes there are really good ones that release a slow sustained crunch like an angry baby crocodile. If you're really lucky, you get leaves so shrivelled up, you can step on them more than once, then watch them disintegrate into dust.

Anyway...

After Thursday's run was rained off, there were plenty of such leaves this morning along the trail. In between grocery shopping and chores I squeezed in a short run using the same route as the last time. I was a little concerned and irritated with myself at not having run for a week, but in any case, I upped the pace a little - effort level, perhaps a 7 out of 9 compared to 6.5 out of 9 previously - and noticed I reached the markers slightly quicker. (Useless trivia for the day.)

Last run:
3:30
6:45
19:00
30:00

Today's run:
3:00
5:45
17:00
28:00

Stat geeks might note I've cut two minutes off last week's run by not running. If only it were only like this. It was more likely the fact that there were a few people out and about for me to pick off. And the fact that I didn't stop to crunch leaves.

On Thursday instead of running I did weights and pressups in the house. I wound up with a sore neck on Friday. I've decided it's something about the way I do pressups. From now on I'm not going to do more than two sets a day. I know conventional wisdom states that doing three sets every other day, followed by a day of rest, is preferable to doing a set every day - but not for me. I find there are more results doing a set every day. I suppose I've always been one to go against the grain.

Happy running everyone! Look out for crunchy leaves.

Run....check!

I did my 30 minutes of running on a chilly morning today. I would have preferred to have gone later, when it was warmer, but there was just that continual nagging thought at the back of my mind telling me to run and get it out of the way. I was glad for my thermals, even though thermals in November sounds ridiculous. I did out-and-backs on a 500m length of road for most of that 30 minutes, and only peeked at the watch on one occasion: 2:30 for the out, 2:10 for the back. Effort-wise, that particular out-and-back was 7 out of 9; the rest of the run was perhaps 6.5 and hence probably slower. If I'm lucky it was 8 minutes/mile. I am resisting the lure of speed, holding it back for the other side of the year and instead focussing on running consistently.

I have been doing some weights in the evening, trying to fit them in my daily routine. Cooking? Stir with one arm, curl with the other. Both arms in use? Do calf raises. Watching TV? Do some pressups when the adverts come on. Something like that. One set of each per day is probably enough.

Apparently beer is a good post-exercise drink. Make what you will of this discovery.

Have a good weekend everyone.

surprise

Today I got off work early, and reached home at the exceptionally kind time of 3:30 instead of the usual 6 or 7 in the evening. Despite the sniffles hanging over me, I went running on the trails behind our house. The sun was setting as I started, but I did manage to get 30 minutes of continuous running followed by a ten-minute cooldown. You'll note I'm not quoting any statistics on speed or distance run - suffice to say it was slow, agonising, probably less than 8 minutes per mile pace (whoops - there's a stat there) - but I was happy just to keep going. I'll probably keep doing these "keep moving" runs until we're on the other side of the year, when there's more light and more time to run, and more impetus to work on speed.

I'm trying also to work more consistently on weights and static exercises. I'm not too concerned about how many sets I do. With pressups, for example, I just focus on getting 10 quality reps - 2 seconds each on the concentric and eccentric phases. I always end up doing more, of course, but 10 reps a day is laughably easy to achieve.

Next run is Saturday. I hope I keep that appointment.