Couch to 5K: Week Four Recap

Again with the complexity. I'm sure glad I had my smartphone and could use the app this time around.

June 13, 2014

Day One: Brisk five min warm-up walk. Jog 3 min, walk 1.5 min, jog 5 min, walk 2.5 min, jog 3 min, walk 1.5 min, jog 5 min. Five min cool-down walk.

Stats: 31:30 min, 1.79 mi, 17:40 mpm

June 16, 2014

Day Two: Brisk five min warm-up walk. Jog 3 min, walk 1.5 min, jog 5 min, walk 2.5 min, jog 3 min, walk 1.5 min, jog 5 min. Five min cool-down walk.

Stats: 31:30 min, 1.8 mi, 17:30 mpm

June 18, 2014

Day Three: Brisk five min warm-up walk. Jog 3 min, walk 1.5 min, jog 5 min, walk 2.5 min, jog 3 min, walk 1.5 min, jog 5 min. Five min cool-down walk.

Stats: 31:30 min, 1.78 mi, 17:41 mpm

So apparently no commentary this week either. 

And no really interesting links. So I'll share some of the lolz.

Murder bears. Rawr.

Couch to 5K: Week Three Recap

Gets a little complicated this week. In more ways than one.

June 9, 2014

Day One: Brisk five minute warm-up walk. Two repititions of the following: Jog for 1.5 minutes, walk for 1.5 minutes, jog for 3 minutes, walk for 3 minutes. Five minute cool-down walk.

Stats: 28 min, 1.85 mi, 15:08 mpm

June 11, 2014

Day Two: Brisk five minute warm-up walk. Two repititions of the following: Jog for 1.5 minutes, walk for 1.5 minutes, jog for 3 minutes, walk for 3 minutes. Five minute cool-down walk.

Stats: 28 min, 1.8 mi, 15:33 mpm

July 29, 2014 (yes, that's right)

Day Three: Brisk five minute warm-up walk. Two repetitions of the following: Jog for 1.5 minutes, walk for 1.5 minutes, jog for 3 minutes, walk for 3 minutes. Five minute cool-down walk.

Or that's what it should have been...BUT...Way back in June, when I was doing this week, I accidentally skipped over day three and went right to Week Four, Day One for the next workout. But on the C25K application on my phone the program isn't finished until you have officially logged all the workouts. So I logged the damn workout. I did it after I'd finished the rest of the program so I didn't bother with the walk segments. I just jogged it straight through.

Stats:  28 min, 1.92 mi, 14:35 mpm

Weekly Interesting Links:

Why did humanity invent pants? Because horses. And these pants are stylin'.

Really old pants. No, like...REALLY old pants. Don't put those in the washer.
Photo Credit: M. WAGNER/GERMAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

 

Yeah, one link. That's it. What a boring week.

Couch to 5K: Week Two Recap

Okay...sort of a boring week I guess.

June 2, 2014
Day one: Five min. warm-up walk. Alternate 1.5 minutes of jogging and 2 minutes of walking for a total of 21 minutes. Five minute cool-down.

Stats: 31 min, 1.84 mi, 16:50 mpm

No comments recorded.


June 5, 2014
Day two: Five min. warm-up walk. Alternate 1.5 minutes of jogging and 2 minutes of walking for a total of 21 minutes. Five minute cool-down.

Stats: 31 min, 1.84 mi, 16:50 mpm

No comments recorded.


June 7, 2014
Day three: Five min. warm-up walk. Alternate 1.5 minutes of jogging and 2 minutes of walking for a total of 21 minutes. Five minute cool-down.

Stats: 31 min, 1.75 mi, 17:42 mpm

No comments recorded.

Weekly interesting links:

Lifespan Fitness Stretching Machine - I want one! I used to use them at the Lifetime Fitness center. I love them.

Image credit: The Oatmeal

Beat the Blerch 10K/Half/Full Marathon -The Oatmeal is...well, he's The Oatmeal. He's wonderful and funny and he runs and he wrote a comic about the terrible and wonderful reasons he runs long distances.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Hunt for Source of All Matter Continues- Neutrinos! Total Annihilation!...Or not.

Couch to 5K: Week One Recap

May 27, 2014
Day One: 5 min warm-up walk. Alternate 1 min jogging and 1.5 minutes walking for a total of 20 minutes. 5 minute cool-down walk.

Stats: 30 min, 1.59 miles, 18:52 mpm

I don't like Constance. Not at all. She's too effing perky. I'm using Sarge on Thursday.



May 29, 2014
Day Two: Five min warmup. Alternate 1 min jogging and 1.5 minutes walking for a total of 20 minutes. Five min cooldown

Stats: 30 min, 1.75 mi, 17:08 mpm

No comments recorded.


May 31, 2014
Day Three:  Five min warmup. Alternate 1 min jogging and 1.5 minutes walking for a total of 20 minutes. Five min cooldown

Stats: 30 min, 1.75 mi, 17:08 mpm

Myself: "I've had it with these motherfucking bugs on this motherfucking run! Dammit, they are all up in my face!"

Self: "There's a solution to that, Dave."

Myself: "My name isn't Dave, it's Jessica. Which you know. And that's the wrong movie. And you can't be Self and Hal at the same time. Stop with the Hal."

Self: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. I think you know what the solution is just as well as I do."

Myself: "Yes, yes, yes. Drag my ass out of bed at four a.m. and run before sunup. I hate you!"

Self: "Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to stretch, drink some water, and think things over."

I'll need a reflective vest at the least and maybe a headlamp. And some pepper spray. More worried about wild animals than people though.

Weekly interesting links:

Picture property of Holy Clothing.
Go to www.holyclothing.com to buy this gown
 and lots of other beautiful clothes.

Do your lungs heal after you quit smoking?

Procrastination for Creative Writers

Romeo and Juliet Gown

Interactive Star Chart for Chicago Time Zone
Find out what stars will be above you tonight!

Hello, where the hell have you been?

I've been out. Well...I was here. I just wasn't writing. So...this and that has happened. I've been away from my blog long enough to forget how the everything works.

I restarted and subsequently finished my Couch to 5K plan. Go me! I wasn't blogging during that time, but I did recount some of the journey on Facebook, which I will transcribe to this format.

Let's see...what else has happened?

I quit smoking. I still want a cigarette every single day. But I keep not smoking. I want one right now. I'm not smoking. Smoking is expensive and very, very bad for my lungs and I'll never gain true speed and endurance in my running if I smoke.

I still want a cigarette.

I was able to start taking the martial arts class in June. We got through close quarters combat which consisted of wrist breaks (meaning someone grabs you by the wrist and you break their hold), two leg sweeps, and several submission holds. I passed the cycle check for that.

This is NOT an example of close quarters fighting.
It's just amusing.

The next (and current) cycle is ground fighting. Yes, where you learn how to roll around on the ground and try to get the upper hand. I promptly hurt myself...not rolling around on the ground trying to throw off my opponent, that would feel far too awesomely badass. Nope, I hurt myself trying to practice a shoulder roll. Because I'm apparently just that clumsy. Torn deltoid tendon, crunched ligaments on top of glenohumeral joint, and strained supraspinatus. I was off work for a week, recommended eight weeks of PT (but I'm healing fast and may be done in four) and six weeks no martial arts class. At least not my combatives class. I can still take the Saturday Family Karate class, it's mostly forms which the doctor said was okay to do. I still take my step-daughter in for her class and I watch what her class is learning and take notes. She's in the 10-13 class, they learn almost the same thing the adult class goes over.

I still miss class. Sometimes I don't want to go in and watch my daughter's class, because I know I can't stay for my class and I really want to be out there.

I've been trying to find some pictures of the ground fighting holds they've been learning, the guillotine choke and the kimura. Well, there's plenty of pictures but most of them just look like a tangle of limbs and you can't really tell what's going on. A great many of the pictures fall into two subcategories: horrifyingly painful and/or gory or tediously near-porn.

So instead I will leave you with this.

Credit: Unknown
If this is your picture and you want me to take it down, you have but to ask and it shall be done.

Iranian female ninjitsu trainers. Boom!

The sound of silence

Sometimes I fear the only thing I'm going to be known for is quoting Dorothy Parker. And not even one of her really good quotes, just some little throw away thing.

When certain people search for a certain quote, this page of mine comes up in the results. I edited it to explain the quote and the who the author was. I hope people aren't disappointed.

So I've been quiet for a while, I know. Trouble is...when writing I tend to be an all or nothing person. I find it very difficult to put down anything on the if I can't analyze and edit it to death and it's difficult to do that in the 30-45 minutes I have every morning. So I'm not really accomplishing my goal of making a habit of writing.

I have been doing other stuff though. I found a martial arts studio for my step-daughter and I to take classes. The studio space (I believe it's properly called a dojo) has a good vibe, the instructors are a former police officer and his sons who have all taught at the YMCA for years (so they know how to be patient with amateurs) and they've taught a number of womens' self-defense courses (which means they focus on confidence and self-defense first). Unfortunately her registration was more expensive, she's in a younger class and they need padding equipment. So she gets signed up this month and I get to join next month.

I went to a baseball game a couple of months back. A minor league baseball game. My step-daughter had earned a free ticket to a Kane County Cougars game. It was on a cold, drizzly Thursday night so the stadium was maybe a 1/4 full and it was not a very big stadium. So it went a lot better than I expected. And I enjoyed the game itself more than I thought I would, despite it being very slow at the beginning. Baseball is the only sport I sort of understand. Plus...there's that America's past time thing. I love that historical shit. We had to leave at 8:45 pm because we had an hour drive home and she had school the next day. It looked bleak anyway. The Cougars only had 2 points and the other team was barely ahead of that. So we leave just at the end of the seventh inning and get home to find the Cougars came from behind, scored seven runs in the eighth and won. Dangit. And we missed it.

See, this is what I'm talking about...I have to get ready for work now, I HAVE to...and I'm not even near finished with this.  I had more stuff to tell and I wanted to find a couple of pictures to illustrate stuff. God damnit.

Is this like quitting cigarettes? Two weeks to purge the nicotine (facebookotine?) out of your system?

On Saturday, April 5, 2014 I took a sabbatical from social media and temporarily deactivated my Facebook account.


Wow, I am so addicted. Seriously. So very addicted. Today is the eleventh day off Facebook and I still really, really, really want to post things. And have I done the writing I wanted to do, which was the impetus for getting off Facebook? Not yet. I have done ONE exercise from a book titled What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. I've made two blog posts and this will be the third. I should be doing better than this.


I'm having difficulty figuring out how to block web pages from my browsers. I want to block my other time wasting sites: Slate, Brainbashers Daily Nonogrids, and Goobix Nonograms. I thought I had it figured out but I have still have access to the sites. Must work on that.


Tried to find the science fiction book club at the library...looks like they aren't meeting right now. The last meeting was in January. This winter was bitterly cold so if they suspended the meetings until spring I wouldn't be surprised, but I thought they would've started back up by now. I really need something to get me out of the house.


I'm looking into the SCA group in the next town. I'll be attending an event in Bloomington on the 26th. I'm nervous and scared and excited all at the same time. I think this will be a very good experience for me, the one friend I had in this area has moved to Minnesota, so I'm kind of lonely. I guess I'm just not a small town type of person. I don't know where to go to make friends. Also? I'm not good at making friends, being painfully, horribly, cripplingly shy.