I'm rereading More's Utopia and going over notes and such. I'm reminded that I'm very much a plot person. Please, More, make something happen!
I ran a half an hour today. I walked on one little bit for a minute, and then stopped to turn on the oven for the break I was rising (and then went back out again for the last 5 minutes).
Do you ever use "map my ride"? It's a web thing that let's you map where you've gone and then gives you measurements. So I could tell that I ran just about 2 miles. (Yes, I'm the slowest runner around.)
And the part I walked? It's a Cat 5 climb on a bike. (That's the lowest category they bother to label. It was a short (but over 500 meters) 6% grade. And I couldn't make myself run up it. But I've biked up it.
And at 6%, it's REALLY hard. So when you see the pro biker folks riding FAST up 15% grades, it pretty much reminds me what a whuss I am!
But there will be hot oatmeal/wheat bread out of the oven soon!
A question! You might have mentioned this a while back, but I recall you were working for a while on running in a pair of those FiveFinger shoes. How is/was that going?
ReplyDeleteI love them!
ReplyDeleteI haven't been running lots: mostly because right before school ends I get physically lazy. And then there's a ton of yard work to do. And then my bike calls out. But, I really have fun with them, especially when I go out on a trail, because you can really feel the softness of the trail and such. (Gravel isn't fun.) They're not quite as fun on asphalt (when I run from home), but still way more fun than shoes (during winter, because, BRRRRRR).
Hmm, intrigued by this, I tried entering my own morning's ride in mapmyride.com. It was a short one with a hill, in a well-known city full of cyclists. But "There was an error retrieving the elevation." Does this normally work for you?
ReplyDeleteAh, evidently a transient problem -- it's working now. Nice. (It was also a Cat 5, which is no doubt why I was wheezing so hard.)
ReplyDeleteHmm, glad it worked. I don't use it a lot, because most of my rides are pretty much familiar, and I have a computer to give me distance, and no hills that pretend to be categorized. But I wanted to see how far I'd run, and as long as the elevation thing is there, I used it. I would have thought the hill would have to be longer to be categorized. Maybe it's just a program thing and not how it actually works on bike races?
ReplyDeleteNot sure, but they say that Cat 5 is their own addition -- evidently they've extended the system downward for mundane use. Just as my daughter's swim lessons honor micro-accomplishments too subtle for real swimmers to perceive, there's value for the occasional rider or runner in naming the little conquests that are within first reach.
ReplyDeleteThat's why all my students hate More's Utopia. Nothing happens in this book, they say. But -- but -- but -- I sputter. He BUILDS A WORLD!!
ReplyDeleteI'm a sucker for utopian novels. I once designed an entire class (Utopian/Dystopian Literature, it was called, and every Goth kid in Pocatello, Idaho signed up for it, all eight of them) just so I could teach nothing but. Sigh. Good times.