In March I picked up my running mileage considerably, in spite of spending a week of it on a western Caribbean cruise with Melissa. As for speed walking and swimming, I didn't focus on them as much, though. I ran two 5K races in the month, both at Gainesville's Depot Park on Saturday mornings and with good (for me) finishing times. A couple of weeks ago I signed up to run a full marathon on April 7th...it will be my second attempt ever at that distance, the other race having taken place in Ocala in January, 2011. This race, dubbed "Run Your Buns Off" and located in Hawthorne at the eastern end of the Hawthorne Trail, has the exact-same course as the Mary Andrews marathon which the Florida Track Club offered back in January. I know I can cover this distance if I run a strategically-smart race, the weather is decent, and my health holds up. After it's over, I plan to spend some time recovering and then embark on a spring-through-summer, more balanced regimen blending running, walking and swimming. As for swimming, although I did get some practice during the cruise in their salt-water pool (much preferable to freshwater), I still need a lot of pool time to improve my form...that's going to be a major project. As for actual races, after this upcoming marathon I don't have anything else planned for the next few months except for regular weekly forays to Deport Park, where I would like to mix up running the 3.1 mile course with some more stints at speed-walking...along with walks with Melissa and some volunteering. I'm still trying to figure out how to get the best use from the local gym of which I'm a paying member...it always seems to be excessively crowded and uncomfortable, and there's no telling when I get there whether the pool for swimming laps has any open lanes. Of course, that's not the only pool (or gym) in town, and maybe it's getting time for me to explore possibly better options...
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Saturday, March 30, 2024
Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning
Just at sunrise, when the weekly Gainesville Depot Parkrun began today's 5K (3.1 miles) event, it was 46 degrees with 97% humidity under clear skies. I was there at Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown, but Melissa had to be at work. My intent for this race was to just run/walk it as I have been doing for the last few months and see how I felt at the end. And in the end I felt fine, finishing with another sub-30 minute time at 28:18...then I promptly drove back home. As I was sitting there in my car before the run, looking at all the assembled humanity around the starting line, I thought that it would be much better for me were there a system where individual runners could go somewhere, run a specific distance, and be "officially" timed and recorded as having publicly accomplished it instead of having to go through all this mingling and crowding in a race setting. I must be out of my mind to actually be considering running in a future big-city distance event when this much more subdued one irritates me so, but there were a lot more people than usual out there this morning. In any event, click HERE for today's results...
Friday, March 29, 2024
Quote of the Week...from Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) in The Godfather
Thursday, March 28, 2024
About Our Recent Cruise
After writing recently about Melissa and me scheduling another cruise this year, it occurred to me that I hadn't much discussed the one we were just on. It was a March 2-8 Royal Caribbean Western Caribbean cruise, and our stops had us in Mexico (Costa Maya/Mahahual, Cozumel) and Honduras (Roatan). Our ship was called "Enchantment of the Seas"...it is reportedly an older model and smaller than the "Allure of the Seas" we took in February, 2020 on the eve of the COVID era. I wasn't thrilled about the foreign excursions we took this time, but I guess they do bear discussing in some future article. I liked more the time we spent on board the ship, with our outer balcony overlooking the water, as well as the food, pools, and generally relaxed ambiance. My favorite destination was the 9th Deck Solarium, restricted to adults...although truth be told I liked having the kids on board this cruise. Since the Royal Caribbean ships have similar structures, I'm interested in comparing the one were just on to our next one to Alaska...necessarily so since it will be moving through a much colder climate...
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Weekly Short Stories: 1995 Science Fiction, Part 9
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Just Finished Reading The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Monday, March 25, 2024
Stepping Back from Manipulative News
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Alaskan Cruise Planned for July
Melissa and I have decided to have another go at a summer Alaskan cruise after last year's came to naught when both of us fell ill just before leaving. The itinerary is similar, with Seattle, Washington figuring heavily into the travel as well as is stepping onto Canadian soil, in British Columbia. It's the same line as our last two cruises, and we're looking forward to hashing out the final details of on-shore excursions and hotel reservations. We really enjoyed our western Caribbean cruise at the start of this month...that ship was much smaller, though, and with half the passengers of the one we're taking in July. Having never been to the American west coast, that should be an experience as well...and I've always wanted to visit Seattle...
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Just Finished Reading Something Borrowed, Someone Dead by M.C. Beaton
Friday, March 22, 2024
Quote of the Week...from Pablo Picasso
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Signed Up to Run Marathon Race Next Month
I recently signed up to run the 26.2-mile marathon in an upcoming race, held in Hawthorne...or, more precisely, the outskirts thereof...a few miles southeast of Gainesville. With the theme of cinnamon buns in mind (to be provided on race day by Panera Bread), it's called "Run Your Buns Off" and offers 5K, 10K, half-marathon and marathon choices...all to take place on the exact stretch of the woodsy-but-paved Hawthorne Trail on which I ran the Florida Track Club's Mary Andrews half-marathon back in January. If you read my article from back then, you'd note that I was originally going to sign up for their marathon instead, but they were stuck on capping finishing times for it at five hours...very elitist of them in my view. So I'm going nearly three months later for essentially the same thing, although I'm not too enthusiastic as to the probably warmer and possibly wetter weather conditions come April 7th, when the race is scheduled to happen. The course is about as basic as you could make it...unless you do what ultra-marathoner Dean Karnazes once did in his youth and run a marathon by going 105 laps around his high school track. It's a four-cycle out and back, taking place on the same 3.27 mile stretch of trail...yawn. Yet I do have an imagination, and my idea is to take whatever stage of the race I'm in and pretend that it's that same place in the New York City Marathon, which I've watched (and trained) to on YouTube many times to the point that I think I know the layout of some streets better than a lot of the natives there. In any event, I see this race for me as an experiment as well as a fork in the road about what direction I will subsequently go with my running, as well as walking. Should things work out as foreseen, this would be my second official marathon run, the other occurring back in 2011 and "highlighted" by me having to slowly walk its final seven miles while suffering from a very painful leg strain...
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Weekly Short Stories: 1995 Science Fiction, Part 8
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Voted in Florida Primary, Among Few Others
Monday, March 18, 2024
The Players Championship Golf Tournament Was a Classic This Year
The Players Championship golf tournament, played in nearby Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (just south of Jacksonville is one of those PGA events that attract attention beyond the sport's regular adherents. This past weekend we saw Scotty Scheffler, perhaps the greatest golfer of this current era, struggling to defend from behind his previous year's title in the event. Starting the final round yesterday, Scheffler was tied for sixth place, five strokes behind leader Xander Schauffele. It seemed that only an incredible final round, combined with more restrained performances by Schauffele, Wyndham Clark and Brian Harmon, the last two only one and two strokes behind, respectively, would enable Scheffler to repeat as champ. But events unraveled exactly as Scotty would have preferred and he won dramatically by a single stroke at the end as opponent after opponent missed their achingly close birdie attempts on the 18th hole...it was a classic to be remembered. I've never played "regular" golf before, only mini-golf, but I've enjoyed following the professional golf tournaments in recent years. Before yesterday's action, I tuned in to the Golf Channel to hear their commentary and was dismayed to discover that they only seemed interested in setting up betting odds on the probable winners. The only time I ever bet on spectator sports was in high school when I went in on an NFL pool for one weekend. I came close to winning it with my predictions but, fortunately, narrowly lost to another kid...who ended up having to hassle many of the others in the pool to pay up. I say fortunately because it helped to further steer me from gambling money, something I was already on guard against because my father, although a responsible provider who saved money and kept us all financially floating, had a weakness for betting the dogs at many of South Florida's tracks and seemed often preoccupied on a mind-numbing level with his various betting systems which he often changed around. So no, whatever vices I have, gambling away money isn't one of them. On our recent cruise there was a casino and Melissa and I passed through it on the way to somewhere else...the folks there were so intensely involved with their little machines and games that it frankly kind of freaked me out. A couple of days later we were seated for breakfast at a table where the other two couples couldn't stop talking about their casino adventures and systems. Well, I suppose if you're helping to financially prop up the cruise industry with your gambling so that I have better options with it, then go for it! Besides, the more in the casino, the fewer clogging up the pool and deck...
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Congrats and Condolences for UF Men's Basketball Team
Saturday, March 16, 2024
Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning
Friday, March 15, 2024
Quote of the Week...from Will Self
Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea forever. ---Will Self
Will Self is an English journalist and writer...no, I've yet to read any of his output (other than the above quote). I already follow his advice to carry a notebook...well, in my case a memo pad as well as a slew of folded-up pieces of paper that tend to get misplaced. I think I have a reasonably good memory, but it frustrates me when I am searching my recent past for details of experiences or thoughts that seem to have slipped away from me...can I ever retrieve them? For example, the cruise that Melissa and I went on earlier this month started in the early afternoon of the 2nd, on Saturday, and ended a week later in the morning on the 9th. Let's see...today's the 15th so my experiences should still be fresh in my memory. But, of course, some memories tend to quickly fade while some others tend to undergo some distortion. Today I'd like to see how much I can remember about what I ate during this Royal Caribbean cruise from Tampa to the western Caribbean and back. Turns out there was a lot to remember...
Sounds like a lot, but I know there's a lot more food that I stuffed into my mouth during this outing but simply cannot remember. But I wonder if, had I not stopped at this juncture today to recall as much as I could, would most of these memories also have slipped by the wayside. I don't know if I'd like Will Self's writing...maybe I'll venture to find out before long. But since I wrote about him on this blog it is tantamount to using a notebook, isn't it, and that makes the reference to him much less likely to be forgotten. On the other hand, I can't just go around constantly writing down everything I experience, either. By the way, my favorite dinner on the cruise was on "Italian Night", when they served minestrone soup for the appetizer, lasagna as the main entreé, and tiramisu for dessert. Nothing I hadn't had before, but the ship's kitchen produced the very best of each of these I had ever eaten...
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Just Finished Reading The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
The Art of Racing in the Rain is a 2008 book written by Garth Stein, adapted eleven years later to film with what I've read were mixed reviews. The premise of the story, narrated by a dog, is his affection and bonding to his owner Denny, a budding race car driver whose in-laws connive to legally extract custody of his young daughter following his wife Eve's death due to a brain tumor. It's very sentimental and cute, and Enzo, named after a famous race driver Denny admired, knows everything, including all about auto racing. But being a dog, he is unable to express himself. After reading the book through, am I motivated to go see the movie? No chance of that, but I always respect an author like Stein who skillfully and coherently put together this story. Would I recommend it to you? Well, the only reason I read it in the first place was because it was one of the "Playaway" MP3-based audio books available at the time at my local public library, it caught my eye, and I checked it out. I wasn't all that interested, frankly, in the domestic goings-on between a dog, his master and the master's family...no matter how compelling Enzo made it all seem. Maybe it will work for you...I've read much worse, and this book wasn't bad...
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Weekly Short Stories: 1995 Science Fiction, Part 7
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Discrepancies Between Workout Settings
I've been writing on this blog off and on about my struggles with developing efficient swimming form and endurance...it's going unevenly, to say the least. My main stroke is the freestyle American crawl, while I'm working on the fundamentals both of it and the breaststroke. The pool at my local gym, Gainesville Health and Fitness, can seem daunting at 75 feet of length as well. On our recent cruise we had access to a smaller pool that had an unexpectedly positive feature: salt water, which provided much more buoyancy and aided with my brief swimming practice there. That would have been a good pool to be able to swim 75 feet in! In one setting I feel like Mark Spitz while, in the other, just little old me thrashing around awkwardly. It's not only swimming in which the setting can make a difference. Naturally, treadmills tend to give the user better mileage and speed scores than if they were running on the ground or road, and they tend to be gentler on the legs and feet. But there are differences between them as well. At GHF I can get to a sustained walking pace (no inclination) on their treadmills at 5.0 mph, but the treadmill at home we recently purchased can go up to 5.4 and it seems easier than the slower gym treadmill pace. I've come to believe that whether I'm swimming, walking or running, it's a good idea to vary the setting a bit while not getting hung up on how fast or far I'm able to go...consistency is the watchword here. Of course, with swimming my variables are pool availability, pool size and water salinity, factors I have much less control over now that I'm off the cruise ship. Melissa suggested that maybe it's time to get a pool in our backyard, one that is conducive to swimming laps. Interesting, but I'm also thinking of that salt water: maybe the beach is a good idea, too...or another cruise...
Monday, March 11, 2024
Dutch is My Improbable Third Language, In a Manner of Speaking
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Meaningless Florida Primary Ongoing with Early Voting
Saturday, March 9, 2024
Back in Gainesville from Cruise
For the past week, Melissa and I have been on an ocean cruise on our vacation break. We took the Royal Caribbean ship Enchantment of the Seas out of the Port of Tampa on a Gulf of Mexico/Western Caribbean cruise with stops in Mexico and Honduras before coming back. It was the first time in my life that I actually set foot on land outside the United States, although the two excursions in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and the island of Roatan in Honduras were largely under "cruise control"...still, they count and I'm now up to three countries...whoopee! I took a break from a lot of things during this outing, including this blog and my cell phone...and especially social media. I'm guessing that from time to time in the days to come, I'll be discussing some of my reactions to this thing or that from the cruise. By and large, I have a positive take from it and some pretty interesting memories. But for the time being, I'll just let it go at that...good to be back!