Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Quarterly Report to the Shareholders, Spring 2011, part II



Running

During April, May, and June, I ran 199.87 miles.  Obviously, I don't really track mileage by quarter or I would have added a few laps around the block there.  I'm now well ahead of pace for my "advanced" goal of running 600 miles for the year; in fact, I'm currently on about a 700-mile pace. And I've been really enjoying it.

I ran three organized events, a strange 10.4 mile run as well as a more traditional 10K and a 5K.  In all three of them I was pretty happy with my pace.  In the latter two I actually got ribbons.  In the fairly competitive 10K, this was simply because they were giving ribbons three-deep for every age, and I was the third of three 42-year-old men.  In the less competitive, they were giving ribbons five deep, and I was 5th out of 13 men 40-44.  That felt like a real ribbon.

A subsidiary goal was to have at least a four-mile 2011 minimum for every date of the month.  There's only one date left to worry about for this one; somehow, I've not managed to run on the 3rd yet this year.  A second subsidiary goal was to finish the year with at least a five-mile all-time minimum for every date of the month.  That has been accomplished.

Completing my "box" of streets is starting to seem surprisingly plausible:


Yellow represents streets that were newly run this quarter.  (I've been looking forward to the more visible orange of summer).

As the grid fills, my routes are increasingly odd.  Here's a little video that I tried to put together about how I've handled it.  The first half of the video is set to a perky little number by a band called "Hang Tan," but unfortunately the slide lengths are painfully long and the sound cuts out about halfway through.  This is due to Google Picassa's inability to correctly calculate the length of the exotic "mp3" file format.  (Not a joke.  I mean, I guess it's a little lame to complain about the free software that pours out of the Google machine, but a lot of it just doesn't seem to work very well.  Happily, this blogging platform has been much improved.  But I digress.)



Bicycling

At 97.8 miles for the quarter, I barely beat my January to March mileage.  I am WAY behind pace for my alleged 1000-mile year.  Did I mention that this has been one of the wettest and coolest years in recorded history in these parts?

Subsidiary biking goals:

(1) have "all-time" minima of at least 10 miles for every day of the month.
I pushed six minima over the 10-mile mark; 10 to go.
(2) set new records for monthly mileage for at least nine months this year.
This was not a challenging goal, since the biking spreadsheet is so weak.  So far, 6 out of 6 months have set mileage records, but in no case had the previous record been over 25 miles.

Gardening

I added time spent gardening to the physical fitness spreadsheet in April, figuring it might help motivate me to spend more time in the yard, which is after all very good exercise.  Naturally I quickly set a number of records, yet without really spending a significant amount of time gardening.  Gardening records will be tumbling right and left this week, however!


Caffeine and Cola

I am currently in full-blown addiction.  See work issues, yesterday's post.

Weight

I remain plateaued at just barely under 200 pounds.  I have shifted to a new and better gym, but have not got in the habit of attending and am not weighing myself regularly.

Tomatoes

I continue to successfully avoid the consumption of tomatoes.

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Any questions from the floor may be posed at this time.

7 comments:

Ben said...

Your video:

Toubab Krewe or Hang Tan?

Your Post-it note maps were reminiscent of circuit diagrams hastily sketched on coctail napkins while in an alcohol-induced state of hightened creativity. What sort of fantastic electrical device would these collectively make?

Jenners said...

You have the most complicated and complex exercise goals I have ever seen.

gl. said...

awesome! how are you adding the colored route lines to the map?

Michael5000 said...

Ben: Some sort of computational device, maybe.

Jenners: Yes! I do! Complicated AND complex! I am especially fond of the county/exercise mashup chart.

gl: I just overlay it in a semi-transparent layer in the excellent and excellently free "paint.net" image software application.

Aviatrix said...

Have you done a geeked out post on how you plan the runs and maintain the record grid? Is there any automation or GPS interfacing involved, or do you just find some streets you haven't done yet, copy them onto a post it, then draw the lines on the image when you get home? What percentage of the time set aside for exercise goes into exercising and what for recording?

Michael5000 said...

Aviatrix: It's nothing fancy. It takes maybe 3-5 minutes to plan a run, and then I do the number crunching and line-drawing right afterwards, while I'm drying off. I enjoy the entire process, so it helps motivate the running, which is the whole point. Relative to actual exercise time, it's maybe akin to the clothes-changing process.

Aviatrix said...

I may have to do this next year, somehow modified for my itinerant lifestyle.