Tuesday, April 30, 2024
My April 2024 Running and Walking Report
Monday, April 29, 2024
About the Recent LIV Golf Tournament in Australia
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Neighborhood 7.2 Mile Run/Walk Successful But Sometimes Annoying
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning
With the weather forecast hinting of morning rain, I woke up this morning to clear skies, and they lasted pretty much through Gainesville's weekly free, volunteer-run 5K (3.1 miles) walk/run event, held at Depot Park a few blocks south of downtown and appropriately called the Depot Parkrun. It's part of a worldwide network of Parkruns, having originated in England and spreading across the globe: Florida now has five of them. Today was my 40th Depot Parkrun finish, and unexpectedly was my fastest there, finishing at 27:10...it's also the fastest 5K I've run overall in more than ten years: click HERE to view the results. I had decided just before the race to forego the usual Galloway Method of alternating running with brief, regular walking breaks and sought to gut it out in the old-style way we used to run in high school eons ago. It worked: my endurance training paid off in the last two laps of the four-lap race as, although uncomfortable, I had plenty of energy to finish it strongly. The temperature at 7:30 race time was 62 with 98%...I doubt that conditions will be any better during the ensuing months of spring and summer...
Friday, April 26, 2024
Quote of the Week...from Zeno of Citium
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Yesterday's Neighborhood Run/Walk
Yesterday, Wednesday, I went on my second weekly "hump-day" running/walking outing in my neighborhood, again taking place in the late morning before I went to work in the early afternoon. My initial goal was to step up the distance covered from last week's 3.3 miles to 4.1 by adding an extra block to the run/walk, which I did to about a 2:1 ratio in time spent with each. However, as I progressed...the weather was perfect at 72 degrees and only 50% humidity...I decided to add another block to make it a 5 mile session...felt good, worked well and finished at 50:03. Along the way I met up with Jim, an old buddy from work who had retired a number of years earlier: he's doing fine, happy to say. Later on Wednesday after work I went to my local gym and walked on their treadmill at 5.0 mph for two miles...I think I'm handling that speed pretty well now. I'm looking forward to what this weekend brings, whether it's another Depot Parkrun 5K on Saturday morning or a lengthier neighbor run/walk...or both...
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 3
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
The End of the World as We Know It
Monday, April 22, 2024
Sports Coverage Biased Toward Faders over Finishers
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Using Own Blog Writing to Study Other Languages
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Walked Today's Gainesville Depot Parkrun 5K
Friday, April 19, 2024
Quote of the Week...from The Weather Company
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Making Wednesday a "Neighborhood Run" Day
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 2
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
From Own Experience, Work Settings Can Affect Social Attitudes
Monday, April 15, 2024
Podcaster Discusses Self-Disclpline
Sunday, April 14, 2024
Enjoyed Watching The Masters Tournament This Weekend
Congratulations to Scottie Scheffler for winning his second Masters golf title. The course in Augusta, Georgia seems nearly impossible to fathom, but Scheffler somehow managed to secure a four-stroke victory over young Ludvig Åberg from Sweden with an eleven-under-par final score. I had a great time watching Scheffler, Åberg, Collin Morikawa, Max Homa and other challengers shuffle around in the standings...and around the often confounding course. Although most of the contestants were in the mainstream PGA tour, there were some from the breakaway LIV tour as well...Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith doing the best among them. I'd like to watch some LIV events in the future...possibly I'll get to see them on the CW channel. In any event, I've come to enjoy watching golf on TV, although as I've stated before I never played the game beyond miniature golf and I don't think I'd ever want to count myself as one of the on-site spectators crowding around to catch some of the action...
Saturday, April 13, 2024
Ran Gainesville's Depot Park 5K This Morning
In Gainesville, Florida...as well as five other locations in Florida, every week we have a free 5K run/walk in which the finishers are timed with the results posted online. Here it takes place in Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown, and is appropriately called the Depot Parkrun. The Parkrun concept originated in England where it is much more strongly entrenched while it is growing in the USA. Volunteer-run, participation is free: you sign up online and they give you a barcode that you print and take to the race with you for scanning. This morning was my 38th finish since 2019 when I started doing Parkruns. The weather was pleasant at around 52 degrees with a tolerable 70% humidity. I had already decided to run the 5K (3.1 mile) course when weather conditions were hospitable and walk it more as temperatures and humidity climb along with the approach of late spring and summer. So while Melissa accompanied me today, she walked the entire course while I ran it, taking customary brief walking breaks at two different stages in the race. My finishing time was 28:47...not my fastest, but quite acceptable to me: click HERE to see the complete posted results. I'd like to get a Parkrun speed-walk in this month, so maybe I'll see if I can't get back here next Saturday to do just that...
Quote of the Week...from Soren Kirkegaard
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. Soren Kirkegaard.
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Masters Golf Tournament Ongoing
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 1
This week I began another year of short science fiction as I move on to another book in the Gardner Dozois anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, this one titled Fourteenth Annual Collection and covering 1996. His first selection for this volume, as is his apparent preference, is yet another long novella...
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
About Monday's Solar Eclipse
Monday, April 8, 2024
A Fork in the Road with my Running
Sunday, April 7, 2024
Body Tells Me to Skip Today's Marathon Race
Today was going to be my return attempt at a marathon race, but during the last two days I suffered from a great amount of insomnia...and sleep deprivation is not an advisable preparation for running 26.2 miles. So instead of arising at 5 this morning...with hardly any sleep...I decided to chill out and skip the event, precipitating a good, healthy night's sleep. I'm disappointed that, although I seemed to be preparing for the race the way others advise, my own body ended up casting the crucial dissenting vote for participating in it. I do like running, but at this stage in my life I think that half-marathons are probably going to be the maximum distance I'll be doing...
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Volunteered at Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning
Since I had already signed up to run another race tomorrow morning, I decided to forego my customary Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5K and volunteer there, in the singular role of standing at the scanning table sorting the plastic little finishing tokens as they came in. I've done it before and it doesn't require me downloading anything on my phone like some of the other roles do, so that's what I picked to do. It all seemed to go well, but I did notice...in accordance with some of the ideas in Greg McKeown's book Essentialism that I just read...that there is a psychology, or perhaps better stated, an ideology here in the volunteer sector that places unreasonable demands on people who are already volunteering to keep saying "yes" to even more demands. Something like this happened to me this morning, but I stood my ground and asserted my boundaries. I don't think the attitudes of some of the people here necessarily stand out as bad, and I see this sort of thing in other areas in other groups: once you're pegged as a contributor, then instead of just saying thank you and being done with it they keep going on guilt-riding you into taking on and giving more and more...I was glad to get out of there when my "service" had ended. Still, I get that fact that volunteers are who make events like the Parkrun possible and will most likely do more of this as the year goes on...
Friday, April 5, 2024
Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain
Golf is a good walk spoiled. ---Mark Twain
I've quoted Mark Twain on this blog several times before...I don't think I've used the above one yet. I have never played golf, not in the pure sense: I don't count miniature golf, which I think I'm reasonably good at (at least against others in my family). But I'd like to learn to play the big game...seems like it would be fun, as long as the players following me on the course have a lot of patience with me taking a lot of shots and time. But I get what Twain wrote about golf...and walking, for that matter. When I watch these major PGA golf tournaments on TV, most of the golfers seem way too intense and exhibit the utmost suffering when they miss a shot. I'm getting to where I'm supporting the ones (like Scottie Scheffler) who just smile and shake their heads when their shots miss the hole or go flying into the water...it's just a game, dudes! As for walking, I can do that just fine...it's WHERE and WHEN I can go on a nice, long walk that I'm a little hung up on. I still get a lot of cumulative steps in over the course of a day, but that's because my job and general lifestyle tend to be more active and ambulatory. But just briskly walking somewhere...I'll never tire of that...
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Looking Forward to Watching 2024 Paris Summer Olympics
Weekly Short Stories: 1995 Science Fiction, Part 10
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Just Finished Reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Monday, April 1, 2024
Muted TV Enhances Sports Experience
Since I haven't yet retired and have Saturdays and Sundays off, I've grown into the habit of watching armchair sports, enjoying golf, tennis, baseball, basketball, soccer...and even football from time to time. Yesterday I got so frustrated watching a baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals that I simply muted the sound: suddenly the game itself came more alive and interesting to me, and the lack of accompanying noise did nothing to detract from the suspenseful ending of an enjoyable, close game when Dodger third baseman Max Muncy slammed a two-run home in the bottom of the eighth to pull out an improbable come-from-behind win against the Redbirds. Improbable, I'm sure: I suppose that due to the heavy emphasis on sports betting nowadays, just above the screen's score they had posted the current odds that one team or the other would win. Just before Muncy's homer the Card's were favored with a 65% chance...immediately afterwards it drastically switched to Dodgers with 87%. Let's face it: they're simply bombarding us with too much stuff on the screen...it's as if the powers-that-be in the network have concluded that we're all attention-deficit challenged...