Recent Blog Entries (page 4)
23 January 2012 07:00am UTC
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Yes, another blog post about running and being active. What can I say? I'm a broken record!
I recently linked to a video titled 23 and a Half Hours about how walking 30 minutes a day can drastically improve your life in many different areas and statistically speaking add 3 years to your life. Seriously, if you haven't watched the video I highly recommend it! The last line could really change your perspective on making the effort to move around a little bit.
One of the facts mentioned that isn't given a lot of emphasis was that walking 30 minutes a day can help fight depression. Walking 30 minutes a day (and it doesn't even have to be 30 minutes straight, you could do it in three 10 minute chunks!) can make you happier! How can you say no to that?!
Now in light of my last post and a Facebook status update from this morning, I had more than one person make a remark about how running wasn't their most favorite activity. My friend Bruce (and I hope he doesn't mind me singling him out here) said, "You too? Everyone's into running these days! Well I am holding out. Just like I did with Harry Potter."
Now, don't be fooled, Bruce is a very active person and probably the most gifted athlete I've ever met (do you think he tires of people constantly going on about how athletic he is? Well, do you Bruce?), so he's mostly just being snarky. But I'll bite anyway...
Yes, me too!
But really, running is just my current preferred choice of exercise. In the past I've had lots of other preferences: soccer, roller hockey, ultimate frisbee, slacklining, backpacking and rock climbing to name some of the biggest contenders.
Really, what it mostly comes down to is that I'm happier when I'm very active.
However, running does have quite a few advantages over those other activities:
- First and foremost, the wifey loves to do it, so running is something that we get to do together. Often times the highs of my week were the runs I went on with her. Additionally, it seems like most of my friends like to run. So, it is an excellent way to bond with my favorite people.
- You don't need anything to do it, it is completely free and you can do it anywhere. As opposed to most of those which require equipment or special places like giant rocks or trees or large open areas.
- You can do it alone. While running for me is a very social act, it isn't always, and I really tend to enjoy solo runs.
But when it comes down to it, I think mostly physical activities like running, biking, hiking or climbing have an inherent beauty to them. I like this line from a comment by my brother-in-law on my last post: "For me running is not something I have to be distracted in order to endure. It is something I love for its own sake." There is something about getting out into the world and working hard that just makes you appreciate living more. I've said it before (but apparently not in a blog post, or at least I can't find a reference) but backpacking makes me feel alive like few things in life. But I'd add running, biking and climbing to that short list.
And running is just the cheapest and easiest of those options.
But there is something to be said for distilling being active down to a most basic element. Soccer, roller hockey and frisbee all involve running (mostly speaking), but running is just that: running. You can't take anything away from it. If you go slower it isn't running anymore it is walking. With cycling you have this hunk of metal between your legs. With rock climbing you have to combine so many physical and mental skills with having the right gear and finding the right place. With backpacking you have a backpack and all your gear with you. But running is just you and the ground beneath your feet. What can I say? I love it.
So, anyway, yes Bruce, me too. Running is amazing and has made my life better!
20 January 2012 06:41am UTC
Well, as you might all have guessed by now, I'm obsessed with running over here.
Seriously, it is taking over my life. I can't stay up late because it means my body won't be able to recover from today's run properly. I can't eat lots of junk food because I want to convert all these soft parts to hard lean running parts. I can't just go around willy nilly doing whatever I want because I can't injure myself and make it so I can't run (well, run and backpack for that last one). My vacations are planned around potential races.
And honestly? This might be the best I've ever felt. Well, that is hard to say, since when you are young you just feel great all the time. But I'm pretty fit these days. And only getting better!
Now, considering my stance on running and racing as recently as 2005, this is quite the flip! But I'm starting to agree with Christopher McDougal that we evolved to be runners.
Anyway, the point of this post is that I'm developing a race routine. Just like you are always supposed to do the same thing before you shoot free throws, I want to develop a routine for running. To get me physically and mentally prepared to race.
Now, I know a lot of my friends are racers or used to be racers, so I'm interested in what everyone's pre-race routines are. No detail is too small! When does the routine start? The day before? The week before? Do you eat something special the night before? What time do you go to bed? Do you have a morning eating and hydrating strategy? How much do you warm up? What do you do to warm up? Do you wear specific things? Tell me everything!
And in particular, I'd like to know if people have some favorite songs for getting psyched up to race. I'm going to make a race-morning-playlist. Any suggestions?
18 January 2012 02:42am UTC
Many websites around the internet are going on strike tomorrow, and I am joining them. The reason for the strike is something that means very much to me personally, so please take the time to read this post.
There are a few proposals in congress now that would drastically change the way the internet works and change who is legally responsible for content online.
As someone who has a website that links to other websites and has user submitted content (thescruffypirate.org), this would directly effect my ability to continue to do so.
And again, as someone who makes a living through the internet, these proposals will make it a lot harder for my clients to continue to have the websites they do and thus make it harder to employ me to work on those websites.
To quote Boing Boing:
On January 18, Boing Boing will join Reddit and other sites around the Internet in "going dark" to oppose SOPA and PIPA, the pending US legislation that creates a punishing Internet censorship regime and exports it to the rest of the world. Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren't in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.
If we failed to take this precaution, our finances could be frozen, our ad broker forced to pull ads from our site, and depending on which version of the bill goes to the vote, our domains confiscated, and, because our server is in Canada, our IP address would be added to a US-wide blacklist that every ISP in the country would be required to censor.
This is bad for the world! Please spend the two minutes it takes to email your congress-person about your opposition to these proposals.
7 January 2012 04:05am UTC
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I wasn't going to post a year in review since I sort of summarized our year right after Christmas but I did want to mention one thing...
Here's my list of my top 1 favorite things I learned this year:
- How to whistle.
I've always been able to make some sort of whistle-like noise with my mouth, but I didn't like the way it sounded and didn't have very much range. So, this summer I randomly started practicing the real thing.
And now I have a wonderful new hobby: whistling. I now whistle everywhere I go, boy is it a lot of work, my throat gets sore from whistling all the time. But it's a lot of fun too.*
I think I might be driving everyone crazy with all the whistling, but I'm not too concerned about them, and have no plans to slow down anytime soon!
5 January 2012 07:52am UTC
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Well, as everyone knows, a new year is upon us, and that means it is time for New Year's Resolutions.
Last year I kept my resolutions intentionally vague so they'd be easier to accomplish. Let's see what they were and how I did:
- Don't stay up as late. I'd say this one was a wash. I did no better or worse than previous years. Sometimes I'd stay up late, and sometimes I wouldn't. And in light of my last post, I don't think I'll be stressing too much about this in the future...
- Be better about working when I'm supposed to, so I can enjoy the time when I'm not supposed to be working. For the most part I did pretty well at this. I could be better though. But I was definitely much better than I have been in the past.
- Eat better. Another wash. There are two things that help us eat better in our household. A) planning meals ahead of time. If you wait until you are about to cook to decide what you are going to eat, you usually choose something easy. And usually if something is easy that means it is prepackaged and lacking in healthy goodness. B) having a clean kitchen. I'm in charge of the dishes around here, and historically I've been pretty bad about that.
- Be more active. Definitely succeeded here.
- Be a better friend. I'd say slightly better than a wash. I responded to more emails than past years probably, but was still an atrocious correspondent. But I think I did a pretty good job of staying in touch with people. I knew what most people were up to.
So overall I don't think I did all that great with my new years resolutions. And I think that was a direct consequence of having not been specific enough. Basically, I just plain forgot about them.
My new plan is to make new years resolutions with very clear rules. The only requirement about the rules though is that the resolutions have low barriers to entry. Basically instead of say, making it my resolution to
walk 10,000 steps everyday, I'd make my resolution to intentionally walk 500. That way it is easy to do and if I'm busy or stressed I can do it real quick and get it over with. But odds are, if I get out there and do the small requirement I'll over achieve and to go with our example, walk much more than 500.
Anyway, here goes:
- Do some form of core exercise every day. Requirements for core exercise are that I do one of the following: A) 10 push ups or B) 60 seconds of planks. Both of those are easy enough these days, that if I get to the end of the day and haven't done my core workout yet, I could easily do them right before I go to sleep. So, far this year, I'm 4 for 4 with this one.
- Run one race a month. I think having something to train for gets you motivated and keeps you on track. This is kind of expensive, so maybe make a part of the resolution to find cheap races.
- Do dishes every day we are in our home. Like I mentioned above, we eat healthier when we have a clean kitchen. Now, everyday might sound like a lot for someone who has historically been pretty terrible about this. But let me tell you, starting in mid-November I've been doing exactly this. If I do it before I go to sleep there usually aren't very many and it is pretty painless. I'm excused from this one if we're travelling somewhere. I think it is fair to expect that when other people visit our home, we'll do the dishes and when we visit their home, they do the dishes. That way, if either of us are on vacation, we don't have to do dishes. I really do hate doing dishes.
- Plan out at least two meals a week ahead of time. Doesn't matter what we plan, even if it is unhealthy, but at least two meals can't be decided upon the night of. Again, like I said above, generally we eat healthier if we do this.
- Make monthly saving goals. Start out by recording all money transactions so we have a means of measuring this. We've done a good job of saving this last year when we can, but haven't made any concrete goals. I think a part of being financially responsible is making goals about how much you want to spend and save, and sticking to them. That way you are held accountable and can't say, "oh just one more pair of Smartwool socks" every time you go to REI (what can I say, my S.O. likes pink Smartwool socks and I like spoiling her!).
- Be a better friend. Same as last year, but with a new requirement: respond to at least one email or message from a friend a week.
Well, there they are! Basically the same in spirit as last years (eat healthier, stay in shape, be a good friend, though minus the work stuff—I'm getting pretty good at that), plus some money stuff. With one notable exception: hard concrete requirements. Though the requirements should all be pretty easy.
I think the daily resolutions have a better chance of happening than the others, so we'll see how things go. I'll be sure to keep you updated!
What are everyone else's New Year's Resolutions?
Here's to a new year!
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