The “week of lists” continues as I dive into my fitness hobby of choice: running. I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said so instead I’ll just point out some of the things I’m personally getting mixed messages about thanks to the vast array of clinics, books, magazines, websites, and anecdotal advice from fellow runners. If there is a metaphorical ‘fence’ for any of these, I’m pretty much on one side of each contradiction — so make up your own mind [...]

I made note of an odd confluence in my numbers yesterday as I was inputting my data. Since starting this training I have logged exactly fifty runs. And the sum total for distance on all those runs is nearly-exactly two hundred kilometers… well, 200.2 KM to be precise. So, for those not mathematically challenged, its interesting to note that my run distance average is exactly 4.0 KM per run. This, of course, was generously nudged up Sunday morning by that schmozz of a running [...]

I used to firmly hoist my flag inside the I-Love-Winter camp. I’m not so devoted anymore, though I have not quite left some aliegence behind: I love the chill of the air. I love the cozy, claustrophilic feeling of a world wrapped in a blanket of fresh and falling snow. I love the sound of the crunching pack underfoot and the effect of leaving a temporary footprint trail through an untouched expanse of refreshed whiteness. But as winter turns to spring and the chance [...]

The clinic starts tomorrow. Not that I’ll be going to ACTUAL clinic nights for a while. Those standard meetups are Thursday nights and that happens to be the same night and time when Karin dances. So, until her class concludes for the summer, I’ll need to be content with drop ins with my new group and solo dashes later into those spring and summer evenings. But it all starts tomorrow, even though I’ve been training for it for going on six weeks.. officially? Tomorrow. [...]

Today marks the one month — date-to-date — month-iversary of starting my official half-marathon training program. I marked the occasion by officially signing up for the clinic and then running a bunch of hills (also known as torturous strength training) with my group. This effort also puts me about half-way through “Act Two” (of Seven) in a twenty-one week — how’s that for a convoluted bunch of numbers — effort to (a) get in better shape and (b) prepare to run a currently-daunting twenty-one-point-one [...]

I’m not fast. I never claimed I was. And after slogging along like the proverbial “running penguin” for the last four-plus years I’m pretty much okay with that. For the last few weeks — twenty straight days as of today, in fact — I have uncovered some manifest truths about my past efforts that have left me slightly bewildered and reconsidering everything I’d been doing. Some of these realizations have come from external forces. I’ve been reading lots of running blogs and magazines for [...]

I thought I would check in again. Not that many people, I’m sure, are reading this blog to hear about how far I’ve run. But by the same token, I’m interested in tracking it and being publicly accountable. It keeps me putting one foot in front of the other. It’s been ten days since I started my new and epic half-marathon training program. I’ve run every day. And if you look at the map (which should be attached to this post as an image [...]

About two weeks ago I sat down and wrote out a plan for my half marathon training for the spring and summer. Most of that plan was based on a little bit of frustration that I’d been sick and hadn’t been running all that much this year. The plan kicked into effect one week ago today, with “Act One” taking the form of three solid weeks of strength-building training: in other words, the plan is to run every day for three weeks, fatigue my [...]

A “Hackable Me” post is a few words on incremental personal self-improvement: a personal hack to better myself. I’m actually very skeptical when it comes to the kind of DIY, fixer-upper, read-this-book-to-change-your-life sort of self-improvement one normally thinks about. On the other hand I tend to consider that (a) publicly scrutinized goals and (b) introspective evaluation of those goals through words tends to lead to making me a better person. This is just a thing to do with that. 001 { The Hackable Snackable [...]

Sometime this week — though I haven’t kept strict track of the date — I will reach approximately the one month mark since I’ve been running. Sad and unfortunate, but predicated on one of the golden rules of the sport I only stubbornly learned after a couple years of trudging around the streets: don’t run when you’ve got something really wrong. The flu is something “really wrong.” So I opted to get better first… then return to long jaunts around the neighborhood. But I’m [...]

A “reloaded” post is a quick-clipped summary of a bunch of small things from the past few days. I want to write them down, but I am either lacking in (a) details or (b) time. That’s just how it goes sometimes. Enjoy. On the Tick For the fourth year in a row, approximately mid-morning on New Year’s Day, I found myself standing in the start line of Resolution Run garbed in a brand new (blue) race jacket and in some state of freezing and [...]

It’s one of those Fridays when (thanks to my compressed work weeks) I’m off. So, I’m blogging. But sometime today — either later this morning or sometime tonight — I’m going to go out for the ninth of my thirty-two daily runs in December (plus January First’s Resolution Run.) And, about half way through that run, summing up all the klicks I’ve run in those nine days, probably not marking the moment with anything more than a cold shrug, I’m going to pass the [...]

As much as I try to deny it, I’ve always been a bit of a fanboy when it comes to the whole New Year’s reolutions thing. I can’t think of a year when I haven’t — even if it has just been privately — made some little life-altering goal for January first. But then I had a slightly different idea this year. The logic goes something like this: Every year we make a big deal about the year turning over, spouting off some nonsense [...]

So, here it is straight; I’ve had a really shitty year for running. I’ve run a lot, but out of the four full calendar years I’ve been running, this year, 2011, has ranked pretty close to lowest total kilometers. I’ve shirked. I’ve made excuses. I’ve… well… you know how it goes, right? I had set this fairly mediocre goal back in January, and — even though I thought I’d bust through it no problem — I’m (as of right now) about a hundred and [...]

A Random Find? I was poking through some old (Google Docs) documents and found this essay on running I’d written back in 2009 for a project I’d started and never completed. It’s not polished, but it’s complete, and I thought rather than hide it away in some dusty digital archive, I may as well hang it out for folks to read. It might be interesting for someone. Interface: a point at which independent systems or diverse groups interact. Let’s begin. The ambient air temperature [...]

I haven’t signed up for a running clinic for ages, but I’ll be starting again soon, joining the next round of the ten click clinic that kicks off next week from the local rec-centre. Winter is looming. I can feel it, so the lots-longer longer distances — those half-marathon distances — are off the agenda until spring pokes her shining smile from beneath the yet-to-fall snow. But, that’s a long way off, and I figured I’d better pump myself into a motivated routine for [...]

I must have been in some kind of post-run daze, having forgot to mention while prolifically spouting off in two blog posts last night, that yesterday was another experience in extreme weather running. Specifically — and I don’t know why, sitting here in the coffee shop at seven-thirty this morning I am reminded and compelled to share — an experience of running in the rain. Wednesdays are typically a run club night.  My attendance has been spotty at best, our weekday evening schedules either [...]

A “reloaded” post is a quick-clipped summary of a bunch of small things from the past few days. I want to write them down, but I am either lacking in (a) details or (b) time. That’s just how it goes sometimes. Enjoy. Walks in the Park Autumn arrived in a splash of colour, and with it the temperature dipped out of I’m-wearing-shorts-everywhere range and into the better-wear-a-hoodie-when-you-go-out range. Along with the changes in weather, the abrupt and familiar disappearance of usable daylight outside of [...]

I don’t know that you’d call it a win, but it was definitely a finish. The annual Melissa’s Road Race took place in Banff, Alberta this last weekend, and I went out for my third time running in the event. In 2009 I had run the 10K course, completing the race in a decent-for-me just-over-an-hour time, not exactly expecting to place in any way, but simply rewarding my summer efforts (having trained for my first half-marathon that summer) with an easy end-of-the-season jaunt through [...]

I’ve been lazy for the last month. Between random summery obligations, around-the-province travel, the Fringe, and other general laziness, I missed running for a few weeks straight. Couple that with poor eating habits, a mixed collection of sloth and gluttony, and a fairly slow month at the office (meaning fewer meetings, fewer sprints through the city hive, and spending most of my days just sitting at a desk working) and the whole running thing has taken a temporary backseat. Not good. Not good because [...]

I’m not much of a hot weather person. And actually I’d very much rather be a bit on the cool side, a couple of degrees below that standard definition of whatever room temperature happens to be. A little bit of chill in the air is just perfect for me. But the problem is that I live in a climate that has quite a bit of seasonal temperature fluctuation. At the extremes we dip to the bone-chilling, skin-numbing cold of the mid-minus fourties Celsius in [...]

It rained here last night.  No, it really rained. Poured. And standing at the window at five thirty in the afternoon watching the torrenting buckets of water fall from the sky, knowing I was due at a hill-training meetup a few blocks away, some little voice in my head ever-so-quietly assured me that it would let up. I dressed to run.  I navigated my car in severely-reduced-visibility conditions through a puddle obstacle course, wipers going full speed.  I dashed from my car to the [...]

As part of the aforementioned thinking and subsequent effort to put together a short presentation on the use of technology (things such as GPS-enabled watches or iPod-powered pedometers) in running training programs, I thought I would translate some of that thinking and those ideas into the context of a blog post. It might be interesting for anyone who eventually reads this blog. And I am going to list a few reasons — none of them telling the time — why one might want to use what I use every single time I run: a Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS training watch.