Running is therapy

I just finished the book Wizard’s First Rule . I have to say, it was an excellent ride. Never ending adventure. If you like fantasy at all, I highly recommend it.

Just finished my 3rd day of week 7. This week was the same as the last day of last week. 5 minute warm up, 25 minute run, 5 minute cool down. It was a great run. The first 4 minutes I teetered back and forth between tiring legs and dread at having to run…after that, as usual, I found my groove and glided along with ease.

In honor of completing 7 weeks of running I thought I would post some of the things I have learned over that time.

1. You can recover while you run. Meaning, some parts of a run will be harder than others, you can keep moving (albeit slower) and let the legs and lungs recover.
2. Running in snow or rain or [insert undesirable condition here] can be enjoyable. Anyone can run when it’s 60 degrees and sun is on their face, if you want to be committed, you just have to take it in stride that it won’t always be ideal, enjoy that you have the roads to yourself.
3. No matter how bad the run is, afterward you will be most pleased you did it.
4. Some runs will suck, but a bad run (tired legs, panting breath, no motivation) doesn’t have to propagate to the next run. I don’t think I have had two bad runs in a row.
5. Rest is important. Most of the bad runs I have had were the day after I had run. My body is still pretty new to this and I really shouldn’t be running back to back yet.
6. Your schedule is what it is. Sometimes you will have to run when you don’t feel well or are tired.
7. I have stopped caring about my minutes per mile. Whatever, I am not trying out for the Olympics. I would rather get out there and find my groove and still be running this time next year than breaking a personal record and being miserable the whole time.
8. You don’t look stupid running slowly. Most of the people that pass you on the road in their cars are fat crass Americans…you are already in better shape then them for having tried.

I have some more, but I think I will save them for the big celebration in two weeks when I complete the program.

Happy running and hacking!

To the Boundary and Beyond!

Similar to David’s pipe for Freakonomics, I made one for PennyArcade…since I don’t read the news entries there, I wanted to filter them.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/

Yahoo Betrayed my Husband via Reddit.

I just read that article. I am unsympathetic to Yahoo as a result. I understand their point

“We are required to follow the laws of those countries and that’s what we’ve done”

However, I can’t absolve them of guilt. China is a tantalizing market indeed. I would love to invent a web app that appealed to the American market, and then subsequently to the Chinese market…there is money to be made there for sure. I gotta think however, much like the Hippocratic oath, we ought to first “Do no harm”. It’s a idea I judge many of my actions against already. We ought not make money at the expense of others freedom, we need to uphold the ideals that made (make?) America great. Yes it’s projecting our ideals on them, yes it’s not the current way things are done in China…no, that doesn’t make it wrong.

First and foremost we are humans, second we are citizens of our respective countries, third we are corporations. Stop divorcing companies from the people that make them up. Take responsibility for the actions of the people who act as corporations. Discuss.

I was just reading an article on running, and they were talking about pace, and that the marathon pace is the slowest (for obvious reasons)…so that is my new story to explain why I run so slow…I am at my marathon pace :)

Today was the last day of week 6.

A couple of notes.
1. I can’t believe I have been running for 6 weeks.
2. Using this program was MUCH easier than going out the front door and trying gauge things myself.
3. Holy crap, I just ran 25 minutes non stop and I don’t feel bad at all. In fact there were only maybe about 3 minutes total on todays run where I was running on will power; the rest of the time I was moving along and not minding it a bit.
4. I feel pretty confident that I can finish the program without problems now. I could have run 30 minutes today if I had to…I am just glad I didn’t have to :) Hopefully the intervening 2 weeks of buildup to it will make it as pleasant as today’s run.
5. I am perhaps the slowest runner of all time.

I went out to my favorite place to run, the golf course at the Army War College. It’s a two mile loop on stone dust. It’s super easy on the legs, and just twisty enough to keep you from getting bored from the looks of things. Not to mention, it’s right by my house.

I walked 5 minutes (roughly from my car in the parking lot to the 1/4 mile marker) then I ran through the worst snow ice and slop I have ever seen over there. I am sure it made the run harder…my legs were telling me that over and over again. I ran the whole way around and past the 1/4 mile marker again, so a little over 2 miles (12ish minute mile pace) for 25 minutes.

So, here I am at the beginning of week 7, and since I have stuck it out this long, I am treating myself to a pair of new running shoes today…welp gotta go, time to try on some new shoes! (/me makes sure there are no holes in the socks).

Again tonite I find myself trolling various Emacs and Vi(m) sites. I was struck a bit by something I saw over and over…namely that Vi(m) has a steep learning curve because it’s modal. I don’t think I find that to be true. Is it just me or is modality more intuitive? I think it makes a lot of sense. Of course it made a lot more sense when the ESC key was closer to home row, but since I almost exclusively use a laptop keyboard, ESC is easily touchable without moving my hands. What say you?

I am not ‘in the loop’ as the kids say. I hadn’t heard of John Mayer until this morning. Then a buddy sent me a link to his blog. It’s really some of the funniest stuff I have ever read.

Excerpt:

Here’s the only way you should be allowed to incorporate the phrase “to add insult to injury” into a conversation:

“Gary socked me in the nuts with a glove full of coins. And then, to add insult to injury, he called me an asshole.”

Thank you.

In reading all I can about GNU/Emacs, I have run across a few vi references. The one, that I would have known worked if I thought about it but never did, is `ddp`. Basically it swaps two lines. `dd` deletes the current line, and then `p` (put) that line. I gotta remember that one.

C-k is similar in Emacs, though it deletes the current line forward. On the emacs list it appears that lo these 21 versions later, a `dd` replacement must be coded for you…though a delete current line does exist in version 22.

The RIAA has set up a nice website for you to easily settle claims with them. Ya know…if you need it.