I really like to gather and play with data from my workouts, but I dislike the way the tools I use to gather it tie me to their own websites for analysis and display—and in particular the way they always want to spin up their own scripts on my website when I want to display the data here. So, via Srikanth Perinkulam, I’m experimenting with WP-GPX-Maps as a way to display a workout with less use of closed software. This is a test:
That’s my run from Thursday, along my most common route for a short run: Out on sidewalks along Curtis Road and First Street (around “The Place), and then the rest of the way on trails back through the Lake Park Prairie (along what we call the High Road—on top of the berm along the north edge of the prairie), over the weir across the creek that feeds into the Embarras River, past the little pond and down along the west and south sides of the Lake Park Woods, and back again across the weir.
If you’re a reader of this blog, your opinion is earnestly sought: Is that better than the workout sessions I used to share via Endomondo? Or did you never object to the closed tools in the first place? If you simply have no interest in my workout tracking data, that’s okay too.
Here’s one more test, the hike Jackie and I took at Forest Glen on June 11th:
I ran 7.73 miles a few days ago. As best I can tell from my fragmented records, that’s my second-longest run ever, after an 8-mile run I did in 2004 while getting in shape to do the Lake Mingo Trail run that year.
In an email discussion, my friend Chuck lamented that he wasn’t currently in shape to match my feat, blaming part of his circumstance on trying to add mileage too quickly, leading to hurting himself. Looking at my running log, I was surprised to see how few runs I’ve taken this summer—I’m really just averaging about one run a week. I knew in theory that long walks would replace runs to a certain extent, in building and maintaining the fitness needed to go for long runs, but am surprised it replaces them to this extent.
One thing I don’t get enough of around here is hill climbing—it’s just too flat. However, there is one reasonably large hill close to me, in Colbert Park.
The hill at Colbert Park
I’ve long wanted to do hill repeats here—run up the hill hard, recover while jogging back down, and repeat. But it’s just far enough from home that on my previous runs to the park, I didn’t manage to do repeats—just up the hill, back down, and then home again.
Today, though, I did five runs up the hill.
Both to and from, I pass Prairie Fields Park, which has a pretty good playground, including a climbing wall.
Playground climbing wall and Prairie Fields Park
On the way to the park, I paused to do a short wall-traverse, just working my way around the corner there. After I did it, though, I realized that I’d cheated—I’d climbed up to where I could use the top of the wall as a handhold, which made it too easy. So, after my hill repeats, I returned here and did it again, this time avoiding using the top of the wall. I worked my way around the corner okay, but found myself stymied when I wanted to traverse the next segment, where there’s a gap in the bottom. I’ll have to try that again next time.
Back in Winfield Village, I visited one of our playgrounds, where there’s some bars set up for brachiating.
Bars for brachiating at Winfield Village playground
I’ve been working up to being able to swing from bar to bar, but had imagined that I’d need to be able to hang from one hand to be able to do it. Turns out, to swing from one hand to the next you only need to be able to hang from one hand for a moment, and I can already do that. I went from the ladder to the platform, turned around and went back about two bars, but didn’t make it all the way to the ladder. Next time, or maybe the time after.
From a different playground, the one right behind our townhouse, I practiced jumping down, first from a lowish level, about two steps up, and then from slightly higher, about three steps up.
All in all a very satisfactory morning of movement. Plus, in the afternoon, we got in a bit of a walk with Jackie’s mom in downtown Champaign.
Here’s the view from the top of the hill at Colbert Park. It looks like there’s yet another playground going in there as well!
Yesterday, I went on my first open-ended run of the season.
On earlier runs, I pretty much knew how far I was going to go and what route I’d follow. Occasionally there’d be a bit of room for variation—I might think, “If I’m feeling good, maybe I’ll add a second lap around Kaufman Lake,” or “Maybe I’ll add the leg out to Bradley and back.” But by and large, I knew to within a few tenths of a mile how far I’d run before I took my first step.
The reason was that every run would take me a large fraction of as far as I could run. There was no chance I’d just decide on a whim to go a few miles further, because I couldn’t run a few miles further.
So, it was a great treat yesterday, to head out for a run with only a general idea of where I’d be running, and with no specific plan how far I’d go.
I knew I’d run halfway down O’Malley’s Alley (the short bit of rail trail that I call McNalley’s Alley), and then cut over into the neighborhood south of there. But I’d had only a vague, somewhat aspirational notion that I’d continue on as far as the trail through Robeson Park. But I knew that the trail would cross several different roads, and that I’d be able to head for home on any one of them, if I decided that I’d run as far as made sense.
In the end, I headed home when I got to Crescent. On some future run, I’ll push on as far as Mattis, and maybe continue on down the Simon trail before heading home.
This run, according to my GPS thingy, came to 4.84 miles, which I ran in 54:15, for an average pace of a bit over 11 minutes per mile. And it was a great run. My feet didn’t hurt, nor did my ankles, knees, hips, or any other bits. I did get pretty tired by the end, but not over-tired. In fact, after a bit of a rest and rehydration, I had enough energy to bicycle 9 miles, lift weights, and do an hour of taiji. (The lifting, I must admit, was a rather feeble effort.)
At over 50 minutes, it was definitely a long-enough endurance effort to produce significant levels of endocannabinoids, which I presume is the reason that my memory of the run is mainly just a strong sense that I was having fun and feeling good. There are only a few spots where specific details are sharp and clear—the spot where I had to back up and run on the grass next to the trail, to avoid a muddy patch, the spot where I thought, “There’s a hill here? How did I not know there was a hill here?” and the spot where I slowed to a walk so I could look back over my shoulder and read a street sign, so I’d be able to make a map.
A couple of days ago, I was updating my running log and noticed that my cumulative distance for the month so far was 26.2 miles.
I tweeted it, mentioning that my cumulative time spent running that distance was 5:02:53, but my twitter followers are mostly not runners, and I don’t think any of them realized that, to a runner, 26.2 miles is a round number—the distance of the modern marathon.
It’s good for me to see that my short runs do accumulate to some significant miles. It’s been three weeks since I upped my long run to 3 miles, and I’ve started to get pretty anxious to stretch it out to 4 miles. But I once before pushed up my long runs a little too quickly at just about this point (so I could run in a 5.5 mile trail race), and in the process hurt my Achilles tendon—an injury that took more than 6 months to heal. Any little thing to motivate me to keep running the same distance until I’m ready to handle longer distances is good.
I am still boosting my overall distance, I’m just doing so very slowly. My weekly mileage for the last three weeks was 8.5, 8.8, and 8.9 miles. I’ve done 6.1 miles already this week, and will probably crack 9 miles (although I might not, because the forecast high for Thursday is 102℉, and I may just take a rest day).
