Rusty's Blog

I ran at about the same time today as I did on Monday, but for my ‘Wednesday’ schedule it was significantly earlier. I heard a Ham mention that it was raining pretty hard where he was as he was going to the gym, and knowing that it is supposed to rain today, I decided that now would be a better time to go for the run than latter. I ccan always take a nap later on and get rested up for my overnight at work. I’ll only have one sleep cycle between now and my next run, but it will be about 44 hours away, so that should work out ok.

I grabbed the foretrex gps today, somewhere in storage I have a forerunner 201, but I have never gotten a good sync to a computer with it, which I do get out of the foretrex. The down side is that the foretrex really isn’t designed around exercise, but I’ll at least be able to get the tracks and hopefully be able to post a link to a .kml file with an embeded google maps page as well. We’ll see.

I started on mostly the same path today as I took on Monday. However when I came out of the General Mills nature preserve, the first place I could take a right, I did. It wasn’t quite as much help as I would have liked, because that street immediately turned back to the left. Oh well. I took another right at the next intersection, which put me back on Monday’s route. However where I turned left to start my path back on Monday, I continued on for another 2 blocks before turning left today. When I got to the end today, I was pretty much at the same point that I ended on Monday. Which means that I ran just a bit further today than Monday, which I think is a good thing. I’m not about to go out and run the route a second time, but I’m begining to feel like I could possibly go a bit longer, perhaps run one more 3 or 4 min portion. In other words, I’m feeling OK at this point.

I got in and immediately walked the dogs, then fed them.Yesterday I took each of them out for a walk around the block. The one that people immediately think of as likely to be a good running companion, my lab, probably never will run very well again. She was hit by a car as a pup, and tends to drag her left front foot. She’s also 11 years old, which puts her pretty close to the end of her expected lifespan. She’s still bouncy when she gets excited, and the foot dragging really only happens when she’s tired, so I’m hoping to get her in a bit better shape by walking her on my off days. We only went around one of the neighborhood blocks, and she was pretty much worn out for the next couple of hours. Not to say she wasn’t willing, but I knew that she needed to get some rest.

My other dog is an American Eskimo. We took a longer walk, for a number of reasons. He’s smaller, so while he is 2 years older than my lab, he’s still in better shape age wise. Mostly though he was nearly always running the retractable lead out to it’s full length. We ended up walking about a mile, and he was still ready for more. Once I’ve finished the 9 week course, I’m thinking of adding a couple of build up days into the mix for me to bring him up to possibly being a running companion. During his walk before he ate this morning, he did something I haven’t seen either of them do in a long time. He took off running pretty much the length of the dog run, looped at the end and ran nearly half the way back then walked back up to the end to wait for us to get there to go in. It’s pretty good to see him get excited like that. Perhaps the walk did them both some good.

One difference about today’s run, vs. Monday’s, is that I didn’t think much about next week during the run. When I started the workout, there was a very light rain. I wouldn’t even call it a drizzel. The rain drops were larger, but very infrequent. Lot’s of dry spots where tree leaves had caught the rain, and no pooling at all. As I was approaching the General Mills preserve, even that died off, and by the time I got to my turn around, I was running on dry pavement. As I got to the end of the workout it was doing the light rain thing again, and I was wondering how things are going to work out weather wise on Friday. I guess I am at the point of saying that Next week will take care of itself.

Ok, after playing around with things, here is the map with my route for today. Ignore the first 4 points, I assure you I never got up to 45 miles per hour. Wordpress apparently does not like iframes, so feel free to follow the link, or not. If you would rather, you can paste the kml url from my sebsite to maps.google.com’s search field, and will get pretty much the same thing. http://www.beresourceful.net/~rusty/c25k/April29.kml
View Larger Map

This past Sunday I helped with the operations of the Iron Man Bike Ride in Lakevill, MN. Things didn’t go quite as planned. It wasn’t a complete failure byb any means, but it was obvious from early in the day that the weather could have been a lot more cooperative And then some.

As for myself, I knew I wouldn’t be in quite as early as I would like to have been. My work schedule is such that Saturday night I got to work at 7:00 PM to work through till 7:00 am Sunday morning. If this were any other company, I would have asked for and gotten a vacation day, but someone decided that my employer should run the department I’m a part of at the bare minimum, and if someone want’s a weekend off they can just trade with someone else for it. Well, considering what I do at the moment, that would be a bit rough, as the people I might trade withare not as ready or interested in trading as we would like. So it didn’t happen. I hear some good things are in the works related to that for the future, but I’ll wait and see on those changes.

In any case, as I was walking from my car to work Saturday night I rememberd that I had not put my HT on the charger before I left for work. While the battery was not dead by any means, it was far from being as fully charged as I would have liked. Where I was going Sunday is notorious for having bad radio coverage. They added a new repeater this year, which provided somewhat better coverage, but it ws still far from perfect.

In fact I ended up setting up a radio in my car as a cross-band repeater. I need to add a small box to my trunk now to add in an ider for when I do that. As it was, I picked the same repeater, and a non-local repeater pair on a different band, and set the radio in the car on the second band to reverse the rx/tx pair on that band so that I didn’t need to do anything ’strange’ on my HT. With the exception of when another radio was in the area using the same repeaer, I pretty much had no problems at all on the net. I’ve heard a few people crossbanding, and all you end up with is the low frequencies, or something like that. In my case I was very happy with the results, and heard no complaints on my transmitions.

One of the things that we do at the rest stop is take down the rider numbers for any rider who drops out of the event. While there are riders who treat the event as a race, you’ll not that this is not a triathalon, and ‘race’ is not in the name of the event. The vast majority of the riders are in it simply to demonstrate to themselves that they can. And when it comes down to it, a surprising number of riders can ride 100 miles. (162 km for the rest of the world.)

The stop I was supporting is at the 70 mile mark for the 100 mile route. as a quick estimate, I would say that between 200 and 300 riders passed through the station and about 40 riders dropped out there. The number of people who dropped out is easier to estimate, simply because we had to report the rider number for each rider who dropped out. That number goes back to our network control operator, who passes the number on to the ride officials who can use that number to let friends and family members of the rider know where the rider is if they drop out. This also helps to prevent any uniquely identifiable information about the rider becoming known by people not involved in the ride. This is done for most races and events where Amature Radio operators are involved.

One problem that occasionally comes up is where one person reports a number, and the next person in the chain notes that that number isn’t in their list of numbers to report. So one or the other person has invalid information. I’m not really sure what can be done about that, but one of the things that I would like to see is an improvement in the reporting process. Riders should be able to present their rider number in a way that is pretty much self confirming. We’re getting close. Bar codes migh do it, or some form of RFID as runners use in marathons. However even those present problems with disapearing and the like. So we do the best that we can.

And we are looking at making improvements. A few years back APRS got to a point where it is inexpensive enough that almost any ham (amateur operator) can add the equipment to their car that allows them to show exactly where they are. Likewise the hardware is portable enough that you can set up a vehicle temporarily so that it can be tracked at any time.

So for events like the Iron Man Bike ride, it makes sense to add a tracker to support vehicles.

One of the things that can be done with the same service however is to be able to send other messages. Location information is simply numbers. Usually it is the latitude and longitude with an accuracy down to about 20 feet. There is no reaso to restrict the content of a transmission to location information though, another option would be to send the rider numbers via APRS.

One of the reasons that we were so busy with reporting rider numbers this year was the weather. At least one rider declared that he could handle the cold, and he could handle the rain, but the combination was just too much. We badly needed the rain, and I agree that if the temperature had been similar to that of the previous week, it would have been a very different situation.

For some 4 hours (and then a bit) I helped provide information to riders and get help for riders as well. I finally was able to get to sleep last night a bit after 9 pm. All in all, I think it was a good day.

Very late start today. Most Mondays I like to get out and run either before sunrise, or along with the sun rise. However I didn’t really even wake up much before 9 today because of my weekend. (I worked Saturday night, 7 pm to 7 am, then after a quick run home to put radio batteries on the carger, feed and walk the dogs, throw together an extension cable for a radio in the car, and grab a few things I drove down to Montgomery and worked to provide radio assistance for the Iron Man Bike Ride 100 mile leg from 11 am to 3 pm. I may blog more on that later, but not right now. I got to sleep around 9 pm last night and apparently needed it.)

Last Friday I felt like I was fighting to run the entire way, so I was a bit concerned that I would have some of that this morning, but after feeding and walking the dogs, I decided that there was no sense in putting the running off any further. I am glad I did the walking the dogs first however as it was much cooler than I was expecting, and the experience suggested changing to something a bit warmer than a t-shirt and running shorts. I do need to pick up some sweat pants this week though.

I could feel that my body wasn’t fully stretched out when I started. I had to cross a couple of intersections at a light jog to reduce my impact on traffic, and my legs did protest. However after the first 5 min warmup walk when the cue happened to switch to jogging, I pushed and away I went. Of course today’s ‘route’ had me running up hill for this first run of the day. No, the ‘rest’ of the run was not all down hill, but most of the warmup walk had been. About the time the cue came to switch back to walking, I had gotten almost all the way to the top of the hill, and my first ‘turn’. I don’t quite run a square, but running mostly on streets, you kind of go where the roads are.

A short walk to catch my breath and realize that the jog hadn’t put me out of my misery, and that I would probably be OK, and the second cue to run came up and I was jogging down that hill and into the General Mills nature preserve. I’m not entirely sure how much ‘nature’ is preserved with paved walkways, but it may be a lower impact to the environment than having people walking through the mud and so on.

Just about the time I got out of the nature preseve, the second jog ended, and I was back to walking. I could hear traffic ahead of me, and thinking I was pretty sure I hadn’t gone far enough to be hearing Winnetka traffic, I started looking for landmarks. I spotted a tower, and thought, “I don’t recall anything like that being over there” looked around a bit more, and finally spoted the water tower close to home. “Ah, well, we’re too early in this run to be heading for home yet today.” So I back tracked a short distance, and took a right from the path I had been traveling. At the same time I was cued to go back to running.

This time I was going up a much more gentle hill, and to tell the truth, other than seeing a couple of people with dogs, or being followed by a dog, I have to admit that I don’t remember anything specifically memorable about this jog. About the time the jog ended, I made the turn that pointed me back at my route home. So for a short walk to catch my breath again.

Finally the last jog started, and within a block I was on the sidewalk on the road home. I would not say that I ‘felt good’ on this block, I could definately feel that I had been running, and there were quite a few instances where I would have been more than happy to stop and end it, but I have to admit that the fight about running that I felt last Friday wasn’t there. I could go on during this portion of the run. And while there was no ‘cheering’ related to the end of the running portion, and the walk out, I felt pretty good.

I have not run ‘competitively’ since high school. Even then I would not consider my running to be very competitive. I know I never ‘won’ an event, and dead last was not exatly an unusual experience for me.

For the 10 years or so that I was in the army, I went through various experiences related to running. However as far as the army is concerned, you really don’t compete. Oh there are track and field events that the Acadamy has, but I didn’t go to the Point, so those didn’t apply.

That said, the aftermath of Desert Storm did give me the opportunity to get into running a bit more than otherwise. I was stationed at Kobar Towers for about 3 months while they figured out what our priority was for getting back to the states. And there I got into a habit of jogging every morning and night, around the compound. There was an impromptu race held, but I had decided some time back that ‘races’ really were not something I was interested in participating in. I was doing my running, mostly because I didn’t like the idea of sitting around doing nothing but reading, and I wasn’t particularily interested in sitting on top of the towers getting a tan and working with weights.

I’ve never run in an event longer than 3 miles. 5k may only be .16 miles longer, or another 800 feet or so, but from a competition point of view, it is ‘longer’ than 3 miles. And to tell the truth, from my perspective, I don’t need to compete with anyone. I’m already reaping rewards from the workout. Aches and pains I’ve had for several months have been going away. Clothing that has been too tight to wear, is beginning to fit again. (It’s still to tight, but not quite as tight as a month ago.)

And catching the bus last week was only ‘bad’ in that it was definately too cold to be standing around as long as I did.

More on Wednesday.

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I work a 12 hour shift. I got home on Thursday morning a bit before 8, and found a note in my door. According to the note, I hadn’t paid my rent yet, and if I didn’t pay the full amount along with a $45 late fee, various not so friendly things would be happening, as was outlined in the rental agreement.

I was a bit confused.

To say the least.

Now my memory is not quite perfect, but it was my own recollection that I had stopped at my regular bank branch last Friday, attempted to purchase a money order, ran into a bit of difficulty as the branch’s check printer had just gone out of order. As a result I had to go to a branch that I normally do not use, as they are a little bit out of my way, purchased a money order there. Hence I drove to my apartment, walked over to the management office, handed the money order to the property manager who asked if I had included my apartment number, and name, noted that I had, and handed the money order to the lady who handles the payments.

Several things there should be keys that should indicate that payment had been delivered. Granted you have to be aware that either the rental agreement allows for the rent to be paied as late as the 3rd, or that I had included the late fee already.

As I say, I was a bit confused, and while I had been up since 10 am the day before, I figured that it would probably be a good idea to check into what was going on. First up the property management office does not open till 9, so I have a bit of time to check into things with my bank. So I called them up and ultimately was directed to an automated system that took my money order information, and verified that they had not processed my money order yet.

So I waited. About a quarter to 9 I walked over, I was going to wait at the front door for the office to open, but the property manager was walking around the office, and invited me in, expecting I was going to bitch and complain. I explained that I wasn’t here to do that, more concerned that we figure out what had happened and see if we can get things cleared up.

There may be truth to the statement that you can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word, but my experience is that having a gun involved in these situations tends to leave people with a really bad feeling about you, and tends to escalate negatively pretty fast. A variation that I think is much more improtant is to be aware of where you are comming from, and have a positive attitude. No, I don’t have any pieces of paper that says that So and so received the original of this negotiable instrument at 9:50 on April 3 2009, but I do have documentation showing that I purchased the money order, and let’s start with that and verbally describe the proocess of handing over the instrument.

As an aside, I got the distinct impression that my property manager has been getting a lot of complaints from people who were very angry.

In any case we discussed what should have happened from that point on, and the lady who processes the payment brought in the instrument noting that they had received notification on Tuesday that the instrument was rejected for non sufficient funds.

That’s interesting. It’s a money order, not a personal check. On the off chance that the term does not mean anything to you, it’s issued by the bank from an account that they only allow me to have the money order generated if they get the money from me for the money order in the fist place. I.e. It’s supposed to be secured funds. and there should be no chance of it being drawn against an account that has non sufficient funds. At the value my rent runs, it’s a toss-up whether I pay with a money order or a cashier’s check, which is the next level up, but that’s not really important to this situation.

Somehow it became my problem to check with the bank. So I drove over to the bank that I had purchased the money order through, and spoke with a personal banker, and we checked with the money order department again, and they verified that they hadn’t had any indication that anyone had attempted to cash or tender the money order. So back to the property management office, where the suggestion was offered that perhaps a routing number had been submitted incorrectly, either scanned wrong, or. well, let us call the central office and we’ll see what they show as having happened.

So I waited. Went off and got some sleep, and about 3:30 in the afternoon got confirmation that yes somewhere along the line a routing number or something had been entered incorrectly. They were going to follow up Friday morning and get the money order transaction taken care of, and so on.

I stopped in Monday morning, which I was going to do anyway, but had a package to pick up. I confirmed that they had taken care of the rental payment, and asked if the letter was still in my file. A quick check and they found that yes it had been, and pulled it out.

I tend to be a fairly easy going person about most things. Enough so that some people wonder what gets me upset. When I got the letter initially I was very upset. First of all, it is not a letter that says the payment was rejected for some reason, it simply stated that I had not made any payment, and that I would need to make such payment along with a late fee by such and such a time. It then outlined what would happen if I did not, and the consequences are fairly severe. I strongly suspect this is a standardized letter that goes out to any tenenant that pays late. From the text of the letter I have received one before, though I don’t recall when. I suspect it was very soon after I moved in here, and I’ve been spending a significant amount of time recovering from some of what I was going through then. It’s not entirely over, but I think I have it pretty well under control now.

At any rate while I note that I was rather confused, that’s really just a part of what I felt. I was actually pretty angry. What I was reading, and my recollection of events left me feeling like I was being lied to and possibly stollen from. The reality is a little bit different, but because of the nature of rental housing, the job market, and people’s finances these days, there are a lot of people who are very frustrated, and trying hard to do righ, with less than they really need.

In my case I was pretty sure I had all my ducks in a row as they say. I had my portion of the money order, which was dated with when I had purchased it. I didn’t have a ‘receipt’ for the payment from the office that they had received the payment, but I wasn’t expecting to need on, and I will be making sure that I do get one going forward. That said, my description of the transaction of turning over the money order was sufficiently detailed and friendly enough that the proprety manager allowed that she remembered things happening pretty much the same way. The fact that my payment was with a money order allowed me to be pretty sure that the status of the payment could be checked on. And I found that yes it could be, and no they hadn’t seen the payment.

The explanation of why the payment was rejected suggests that there is a potential infrastructure problem with the payment process. While this should not be a problem for me, I suspect that this may be a problem for some other people. I know that a large number of people pay bills with checks from their checking accounts. If the equipment involved can mis-identify a routing number, or account number on a money order, I suspect that the same is true for checks. The actual piece of paper has the same variety of markins for routing and account numbers. From what I recal, neither the routing number, nor the account number contains any form of error checking. If you look at a standard UPC code, there is a string of numbers with it. The bar code actually represents the same sequence of numbers. One of those digits, usually the last, is not actually part of the number that the computer looks up to find the related content. It is what is known as a check digit. If you apply some function to the remaining digits, than what you end up with is either this digit, or a number that added to this digit results in some other ’standard number’ that validates that the UPC (or ISBIN, or a number of other sequences of numbers) has been entered correctly. Whether the entry mecanisim was the bar code, or someone keying in the number on a keyboard. Based on the function involved, you can reject transposed digits, or miss-keyed digits. So if the number is supposed to be 4586, and it gets keyed as 4526 (look at a phone keypad and a computer/calculater keypad for how this might happen) the system will reject the number because it does not ‘check’ correctly. It’s not foolproof. You could mistakenly enter enough wrong digits that just hapens to result in a valid checksum, it’s just a bit difficult.

It is possible that bank routing numbers or account numbers do have the ability to include a check digit. Or they may be able to be built to be self checking while still all digits being necessary to uniquely identify the accounts involved. It’s just that I don’t think that’s happening today. And unless something like this happens to people who are very influential, I don’t really expect things to change. Actually, I’m a bit sad about that, as I think that this is not a good state of affairs, but it’s the way that things are at the moment.

Oh, and the entirely missing thing from what was sent to me, and such, Because of the NSF, they wanted to charge me a $20 nsf fee. We got that worked out, but I’m in that variety of situation where an NSF fee should never have hit my account. I suspect that others may run into problems liek that where they never should have been hit for the fee.

I really think that the fact that I went in with a positive attitude, eing pretty sure that things were handled correctly on my part, but being willing to work with the property manager, and even being willing to go otu of my way to resolve the issue, had a lot to do with the positive outcome. My experience is that people get defensive when people come at them bitching and complaining. You start otu with the motivation that ‘I’m right, and I’m not going to take this behaviour sitting down.’ As a result, even if it turns out that you are wrong, or that something you hadn’t accounted for makes you look bad, you tend to reject that, because it is foreign to the state of ‘I’m right!’

The apropriate response is to approach them with a friendly attitude, and note that you want to figure out with them what happened, and let’s work together to resolve this situation in a way we both can ‘win’ from.

I think I needed that hour to get back into my ‘laid back’ position and be willing to work with the property manager to resolve the situation to everyone’s satisfaction. My hope is that comming out of this, my property manager has a much more positive opinion of me. I’m far from a perfect person. Knowing that I’m more than happy to work with people to resolve concerns.

We learn to walk, because we’ve found that by walking we can do more.
while crawling we can get around,
but it’s difficult to go fast, or to carry something.
So we stand, and see further. we step, and we fall
And for a time we return to crawling. For a time.
But we’ve seen more, so we get up again.
And again we fall. It’s the way of things.
But in time we take steps, and we cheer.
We see we can go further, and better, and we learn to carry.

Factories make tools and toys, and cars, and stuff.
Parts are molded, and carved, formed by fire and frost.
Each part is designed to be part of the whole.
Lines of assemblers, fit each piece together.
But not every part is just like it’s peer.
And some of these parts, just won’t fit in.
The parts are rejected, they’ve failed.
It’s not something personal, the parts just won’t do.

Until we are five, we learn by trial and error,
Parents sometimes fear us falling, but with success cheer.
For we all know that there really is no failing,
falling is learning what does not work well for us now.
But it seams we forget, when we reach 5 years of age,
and seem to think that each dhild can now be molded.
That we should just “know” what we are told
simply because some one up front says so.

Is it really a wonder that so few can create?
That our movies and entertainment seems so often repeats?
That we find it so hard to build a romance,
when our schools lead us to believe there is only one chance.
That’s all I shall say, about this life that wee lead,
for who knows quite what, tomorrow shall bring.
All we can do is plan for contingencies
and boldly step forward, and get up when we fall.

This past winter, I’ve dealt with an arm that wouldn’t function properly, and a back that got sore shortly after I had to chase down one of my dogs. For about a month and a half, getting out of bed in the morning has involved rolling over on my side, and pushing myself up.

“Oh, that’s all part of aging.” I can hear some people saying. And while those are some things that do happen as on gets older, it’s not strictly aging as I see it. A little over 8 years ago I made a commitment to loose weight. And I went from over 250 lb, down to 180 lb and possibly lower. I did so through a regime of walking 4 times a week and taing an over the counter ephedrin supplement. One of the reasons I chose to loose the weight was that two uncles and an aunt on my dad’s side, all suffered from and may be considered to have died from, the side effects of type II diabetes. I was hoping to avoid that.It didn’t quite work out that way. After I lost the weight, I noticed some vision problems, and knowing that it had been several years since I had last had a physical, I made an appointment to see a doctor, and one of the outcomes of that visit was a diagnosis of diabetes. Along the way I also was diagnosed with heart problems, and elevated (if not high) blood preasure.

Since I was diagnosed with Diabetes, my weight has gone up again. I’m up over 220 now, and that is where I consider the source of my pains and displeasures of late to be. I would love to say that wasn’t the case, but I’m a bit more realistic than that.

While there is not a defined link between Ephedra and heart problems, as was the case with PhenPhen, there is enough of a correlation that even though it is now legal to be sold over the counter, I won’t even consider it today. Especially as I have had a reduced function in my heart.

I’ve tried to get back into the walking, without much in the way of a positive outcome. I have to admit that I’ve usually thought of it as a way of loosing weight though, not as a way of just getting into better shape. The reality is that it is a great way to get into shape. And I encourage anyone who is concerned about their lifestyle to start walking. You’ll find it to be a great way to find out what’s going on in your neighborhood, what’s happening at the mall, or wherever you choose to walk. The reality is that it’s one of the few aerobic exercise routines that you can do pretty much any time of the year, in almost any weather. I’d advocate not walking during huricaine and blizard events, but you get the idea.

A week or so ago, one of the people I follow through one of the RSS feeds I monitor, anounced that he had just met his goal of 100 kg. For those of us in the US with the unfortunate side effect of not using the global standard metric measurement system, that turns into 220 lb. He has just started going to the gym, but had already gone from 110 kg to 100 kg following the c25k program. For a more detailed explanation of c25k, go to http://www.c25k.com and look into the program. As an overview the idea is to go from being a couch potato to being able to run 5 kilometers. (About 3.1 miles.) The general principle is very much like what I was doing when I was walking, though there are differences.

The process I used for walking was to break my routine up across a week, with each week being a little bit more strenuous. My work schedule at the time was 8 am to 6 pm on Wed, Thur, Fri and Sat. I would ride the bus in to work, then ride out to a local shopping mall after work, and walk, followed by going home. I started on New Years Eve the year after my mom died, and because I was very much out of shape, that day I walked around the mall once on one floor. It turns out the distance is about .4 miles. (.64 km.) The next day I walked around each floor once, and did that for the next two days, and the first day of the following week. The second day of that week I added a second trip around the first floor, going in the opposite direction. The third day of that week I went up to 4 trips around, then back to 3 on the final day. Three trips around the first day of the third week, a fourth on the second, a fifth on the third, then back to 4 on the fourth. And so on. Ever week on Wednesday I would start with the number of trips around that I had done the Saturday before, then add one on Thursday, another on Friday, then back down a lap on Saturday. This continued until I was doing 10 laps around, or 5 turns per floor. At that point I switched to 10 laps on Wed and Saturday, and 12 laps on Thursday and Friday, and stayed there for a while. That’s about 4 miles on Wed and Saturday, and almost 5 on Thursday and Friday. I could have added more, at least on Wed through Friday, but the mall closed at 7 on Saturdays then, and I was walking around an empty mall by the time I was done on Saturday. Which gets a bit old.

Along with the Ephedra, I lost 70 lb. to get some perspective on that, the largest bag of dog food I can get at the grocery store I shop at is 17 lb. I lost the equivalent of more than 4 bags of dog food. I also ended up having to spend entirely too much money on new clothing that  now doesn’t fit.

But that’s not why I am starting a workout regime at this time. Yes, I do weigh more than I want to. By a lot larger margine than I like. However my real concern right now is that through all the walking, and in the years since then, I’ve never regained my ability to run or jog.

Over the years I’ve ridden public transit from time to time, as noted by how I got to and from work above. Oddly enough, I’ve noticed that the areas I have lived in have always had a mixed reputation for having usable bus schedules. Shortly after I bought my first house, the bus route that I was riding which picked up litterally 3 blocks from work, moved 2 blocks over, to being 5 blocks from work. Where I live now has no Saturday/Sunday service, so while it pics up a block from work and drops off a block from home, I really can only ride it to and from work twice a week. (I work a different schedule now.) I’ve tried a few alternatives, but at best, I’m looking at an hour (or more) between rides that will take me home, so when I see a bus that I need to catch, it seems reasonable to me that I may have to move quickly to catch it.

Only, during all this time, I haven’t been able to. I get about half a block into chasing a bus, and I’m winded. Note that reduced functionality of my heart. It has had a lot to do with that. As has my excess weight at other times. I want to change that. So now I’m following the c25k program. I strongly suspect that I will make some changes to it for my own benifit. Specifically if I see myself not progressing as I would like, I may double up on some weeks.

The c25k program starts out as a 9 week program. You start by walking 5 min to limber up a bit, then jog a minute, and walk a minute and a half, alternating that for 20 min. You do this three times the first week. Preferably Mon, Wed, Fri, to give your body a  day to recover between exertions. That said, if week 2 ends up being too much preasure on Monday, I’ll happily revert to repeating week 1. What happens in Week 2 is a reversal in the times for jogging and wallking after the 5 min warm up walk.

My real goal is not to be able to compete in a 5 km race. In fact I have to admit that I’ve already seen some of the benifits this first week.

Remember how I described how I have been getting up in the morning? Well for the first time in well over a month, when I got up today, I pretty much just sat up. No rolling over on my side, and looking for purchase to push my way out of bed.

It’s nice to be able to get up and go.

Mostly clear. would have been a good day for taking pictures, though with my having worked last night, and needing to get some serious housework don, wasn’t in the cards today. Mud from the melted snow this AM.

Hey, got it in under the wire I think. Above freezing most of the day, a bit after noon, most of the snow that fell overnight was gone. A few patches of speckles was all that was left.

Sorry slept a good part of the day yesterday. Slight accumulation of wet snow in the early morning, but by the time I took the dogs out for their morning walk, had turned to drizzel. Drizzel on and off through the day. After sunset, snow again, accumulation of less than an inch.