Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Sightings
I have not timed things right to have a run today - I will sort out the running schedule properly when I am back in New York. But I have two amazing sightings to report!
First of all, we saw Stumpy twice, and the second time managed to document his health on camera. Stumpy is the northern curly-tailed lizard, distinguished by his missing limb, who used to live in the "lizard palace," a.k.a. the water-heater closet outside Brent's condo; Wendy provided an excellent portrait of Stumpy here. But Stumpy moved elsewhere after the hurricane in November - namely, to another water-heater closet one floor down! Brent tracked him down there, but I have not laid eyes upon him until today.
The sequel:
January 11, 2009, 3:30pm, in the SUV heading towards the condo parking spot:
JMD (meditatively, summing up): We saw Stumpy - twice!
Brent: And you saw sea turtles...
JMD (plaintively): But no iguanas!
Brent: What about that one?
And it was like magic - I turned my head, and there was the most enormous iguana right downstairs from Brent's place!
I have never seen an iguana right by the condo, though there are several spots they hang out locally (these are the green iguanas, not the rare indigenous blues).
It must have been three feet from tip to tail!
Fortunately the camera was still in the car from earlier Stumpy stalking - I took a few shots for the record, until the magnificent creature scuttled off. We were amazed when it reappeared right next to the garages - Brent got some amazing pictures from close up - what wattles! Click to enlarge.
All photos courtesy of Brent!
First of all, we saw Stumpy twice, and the second time managed to document his health on camera. Stumpy is the northern curly-tailed lizard, distinguished by his missing limb, who used to live in the "lizard palace," a.k.a. the water-heater closet outside Brent's condo; Wendy provided an excellent portrait of Stumpy here. But Stumpy moved elsewhere after the hurricane in November - namely, to another water-heater closet one floor down! Brent tracked him down there, but I have not laid eyes upon him until today.
The sequel:
January 11, 2009, 3:30pm, in the SUV heading towards the condo parking spot:
JMD (meditatively, summing up): We saw Stumpy - twice!
Brent: And you saw sea turtles...
JMD (plaintively): But no iguanas!
Brent: What about that one?
And it was like magic - I turned my head, and there was the most enormous iguana right downstairs from Brent's place!
I have never seen an iguana right by the condo, though there are several spots they hang out locally (these are the green iguanas, not the rare indigenous blues).
It must have been three feet from tip to tail!
Fortunately the camera was still in the car from earlier Stumpy stalking - I took a few shots for the record, until the magnificent creature scuttled off. We were amazed when it reappeared right next to the garages - Brent got some amazing pictures from close up - what wattles! Click to enlarge.
All photos courtesy of Brent!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Saturday run
5 warm but easy miles, very relaxing (the number is possibly mildly inflated, but I would prefer not to contemplate the likelihood of this just now!).
I didn't go quite as far as we usually do on this route - there is a first bit where it turns into more of a shoulder than a sidewalk and I have a natural impulse to turn back there - I'm not crazy about running that close to traffic, even though it is perfectly safe - and I figured that after the rather stressful run the other night, I had earned an easy one - I followed the impulse!
(That run, too, is entirely safe - really, mom! - and we were wearing reflective strips and blinky lights and things, but the last few miles are in the dark and on sidewalk or very narrow shoulder right next to fast traffic coming from behind - not good for the Triaspirational nerves...)
Also nerve-racking: got an e-mail from the Antarctica folks reminding us that there really are only seven weeks of training left! Hmmm - I will have to count on general fitness to get me through - I am incredibly looking forward to it, I must confess - it is hard to say - I have not really been tested, I am not an outdoorsy type! - but I am much better suited to the windy blustery snowy sort of conditions than to the warm ones (esp. warm ones involving bicycles), it seems much less daunting than either of my triathlons this past year.
Mantra for times of Antarctica-related-worry: BUT I DO NOT HAVE TO RIDE A BICYCLE!
5 miles
I didn't go quite as far as we usually do on this route - there is a first bit where it turns into more of a shoulder than a sidewalk and I have a natural impulse to turn back there - I'm not crazy about running that close to traffic, even though it is perfectly safe - and I figured that after the rather stressful run the other night, I had earned an easy one - I followed the impulse!
(That run, too, is entirely safe - really, mom! - and we were wearing reflective strips and blinky lights and things, but the last few miles are in the dark and on sidewalk or very narrow shoulder right next to fast traffic coming from behind - not good for the Triaspirational nerves...)
Also nerve-racking: got an e-mail from the Antarctica folks reminding us that there really are only seven weeks of training left! Hmmm - I will have to count on general fitness to get me through - I am incredibly looking forward to it, I must confess - it is hard to say - I have not really been tested, I am not an outdoorsy type! - but I am much better suited to the windy blustery snowy sort of conditions than to the warm ones (esp. warm ones involving bicycles), it seems much less daunting than either of my triathlons this past year.
Mantra for times of Antarctica-related-worry: BUT I DO NOT HAVE TO RIDE A BICYCLE!
5 miles
Friday, January 9, 2009
Friday strength
Did a version of M.'s core workout, which I have been sorely missing, plus a bit of upper-body stuff. Very nice, too! As of Tuesday, I am signed on for a month-long twice-a-week pilates-based core strength class, so I am hoping to get back in the routine. Meant to swim afterwards, but realized I am excessively underfueled, it is time for a meal I am thinking...
45 minutes core
45 minutes core
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Thursday sea swim
I saw a really big sea turtle - I wanted to follow it, only with just a few idle twitches of its front flippers, it was swimming away far faster than I could follow...
1400 yards
1400 yards
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Tuesday run and swim
OK, that was good. This cold is irksome but if I keep on doing moderate workouts I will not lose fitness, and surely it will go away soon. Wrote some honest-to-god novel pages today, too, so that is good too....
Treadmill workout:
I am determined to make more intelligent use of the local resources. I decided to do an interval workout on the treadmill instead of slogging away at slow hot miles. Swim notation makes more sense for this than the usual way of describing run stuff!
(Conversion chart for mph/minutes per mile!)
Warmed up for 1 mile at 5.5mph
2 x (1:00 run, :30 rest) at 7.0, 7.5, 8.0, 8.5
2 x (:30 run, 1:00 rest) at 9.0, 9.5
1 x :30 run at 10.0, just to see what it feels like to run at a 6:00 pace! Answer: fun, but the leg turnover is a slight challenge, I didn't do a second one because I sort of felt like I might shoot off the back of the treadmill at any moment!
Ran a bit more to cool down - I will log it as 3 miles, though that is overly generous. Then cooled down with a bit of a swim; will count as though each length is 25, then add on a third to account for the dog-leg effect (probably also overly generous, but better for counting morale).
100 free, 100 breast, 100 free, 100 breast, 50 fly drill-swim
Call it 600 yards total
Treadmill workout:
I am determined to make more intelligent use of the local resources. I decided to do an interval workout on the treadmill instead of slogging away at slow hot miles. Swim notation makes more sense for this than the usual way of describing run stuff!
(Conversion chart for mph/minutes per mile!)
Warmed up for 1 mile at 5.5mph
2 x (1:00 run, :30 rest) at 7.0, 7.5, 8.0, 8.5
2 x (:30 run, 1:00 rest) at 9.0, 9.5
1 x :30 run at 10.0, just to see what it feels like to run at a 6:00 pace! Answer: fun, but the leg turnover is a slight challenge, I didn't do a second one because I sort of felt like I might shoot off the back of the treadmill at any moment!
Ran a bit more to cool down - I will log it as 3 miles, though that is overly generous. Then cooled down with a bit of a swim; will count as though each length is 25, then add on a third to account for the dog-leg effect (probably also overly generous, but better for counting morale).
100 free, 100 breast, 100 free, 100 breast, 50 fly drill-swim
Call it 600 yards total
Monday, January 5, 2009
Monday masters swim
Ugh, really I just have a cold - not a terrible one, but no cold is a good cold. I would rather have had both sides of sinus at once - the time lag between the right side and the left side just spreads the whole thing out over many more days!
Swim went along these lines - and in fact I felt very good while swimming and very good while eating dinner afterwards, and then it was a resurgence of the ailment...
250 warmup
5 x 150 as 25 kick + 50 pull + 75 swim
4 x 100 as 25 head up + 25 catch-up + 25 6 kick 1 stroke + 25 swim
4 x 100 as 25 underwater, 25 fast
50 easy back
1850 yards total
Swim went along these lines - and in fact I felt very good while swimming and very good while eating dinner afterwards, and then it was a resurgence of the ailment...
250 warmup
5 x 150 as 25 kick + 50 pull + 75 swim
4 x 100 as 25 head up + 25 catch-up + 25 6 kick 1 stroke + 25 swim
4 x 100 as 25 underwater, 25 fast
50 easy back
1850 yards total
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Sunday toe shoes outing
It was very good - I am sorry to say that I woke up on Friday morning with an acute right-nostril congestion situation that I swore was allergies but whose subsequent development soon informed me that it was a sinus infection. Not bad - now subsided into sort of low-level cold-type congestion, but I am trying to take it easy for recovery.
I wore the toe shoes! Which I am happy to report were scorpion-free, despite the fact that I had left them outside overnight as a sand reduction measure...
Ran 20 minutes out and 20 back; I will count it as 3.5, though it may have been closer to 4, I wasn't running that much slower than I would on pavement - the toe shoes mean that I can run on the packed sand near the water. Very sunny and hot out there, a bit too hot for me perhaps!
Then I took a dip in the pool to cool off, and it was lovely. I did do some actual swimming, though it is a bit of a conundrum how to count it - the really funny thing about this pool isn't so much the fact that one has to do a sort of dog-leg swerve in the middle as that the bridge over the slender middle bit of the dumbbell-like shape gives you the impression that you are going to whack your head on something! Turns out that breast stroke is the best suited to swimming under a low overhang...
(This picture gives you a bit of a sense of the shape! Click to enlarge.... Stroke count suggests to me that really once one does both joints, as it were, of the dog's leg, it is more than 25 yards, but I will count it as 25. I realize that the compulsion to enumerate is slightly absurd - I could just call this 60 minutes exercise and leave it at that! - but I always feel that a workout unlogged and/or unblogged is hardly a workout at all!)
2 x 100 free, 100 breast, 2 x 100 free = 500 yards total
One reason I really had to get out for an hour's exercise is that we are having the buffet dinner at Fidel's and I needed to work up a proper appetite!
I wore the toe shoes! Which I am happy to report were scorpion-free, despite the fact that I had left them outside overnight as a sand reduction measure...
Ran 20 minutes out and 20 back; I will count it as 3.5, though it may have been closer to 4, I wasn't running that much slower than I would on pavement - the toe shoes mean that I can run on the packed sand near the water. Very sunny and hot out there, a bit too hot for me perhaps!
Then I took a dip in the pool to cool off, and it was lovely. I did do some actual swimming, though it is a bit of a conundrum how to count it - the really funny thing about this pool isn't so much the fact that one has to do a sort of dog-leg swerve in the middle as that the bridge over the slender middle bit of the dumbbell-like shape gives you the impression that you are going to whack your head on something! Turns out that breast stroke is the best suited to swimming under a low overhang...
(This picture gives you a bit of a sense of the shape! Click to enlarge.... Stroke count suggests to me that really once one does both joints, as it were, of the dog's leg, it is more than 25 yards, but I will count it as 25. I realize that the compulsion to enumerate is slightly absurd - I could just call this 60 minutes exercise and leave it at that! - but I always feel that a workout unlogged and/or unblogged is hardly a workout at all!)
2 x 100 free, 100 breast, 2 x 100 free = 500 yards total
One reason I really had to get out for an hour's exercise is that we are having the buffet dinner at Fidel's and I needed to work up a proper appetite!
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Saturday run
6 miles easy. Easy but warm!
The last couple miles felt very good - I don't know why it takes me so long to warm up when I'm running fairly slowly, but I should try doing some pickups early on to get the good running chemicals flowing!
I was annoyingly aware for almost the whole run of having eaten a too-large and slightly indigestible lunch - I was ravenously hungry in the late morning post-swimming, but really any large meal earlier in the day before a run comes to seem regrettable. And the annoying paradox of running is that I have now gone (turned on a dime!) from feeling too full to being quite hungry again! However I am looking forward to dinner at Decker's this evening, so perhaps it is just as well that I have worked up an appetite...
The last couple miles felt very good - I don't know why it takes me so long to warm up when I'm running fairly slowly, but I should try doing some pickups early on to get the good running chemicals flowing!
I was annoyingly aware for almost the whole run of having eaten a too-large and slightly indigestible lunch - I was ravenously hungry in the late morning post-swimming, but really any large meal earlier in the day before a run comes to seem regrettable. And the annoying paradox of running is that I have now gone (turned on a dime!) from feeling too full to being quite hungry again! However I am looking forward to dinner at Decker's this evening, so perhaps it is just as well that I have worked up an appetite...
Swim bits
I had just a very short dip last night, some swimming in the sea and then a few 'lengths' in the pool (which is non-rectangular in a way not entirely suited to doing laps, though I think I will do some there this week, if you ignore the undulating sides and the funny little bridge in the middle it does quite well!); call it 600. And then a very lovely real sea swim this morning, fifteen minutes out and fifteen back from Sunset House (not as much as a mile, but getting up there). Saw a sea turtle and lots of beautiful fish...
600 yards
1400 yards
600 yards
1400 yards
Thursday, January 1, 2009
In the news
A great story about a fellow who runs the Boston Marathon course every year on New Year's Day starting at 6am. Thanks to Becca for the excellent link!
Hmmm, I am strongly wanting to run that race one of these days myself - but I agree with the story's drift, that the solitary run through empty streets is far more enjoyable than the one with throngs of people...
Hmmm, I am strongly wanting to run that race one of these days myself - but I agree with the story's drift, that the solitary run through empty streets is far more enjoyable than the one with throngs of people...
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