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ursamajorI ran an entire mile without stopping this week. And then after a 15-minute break for an iced chai because it was warm out, I turned around and did it again to go home. And then a couple of days later, I repeated the process with a shorter break, minus the chai, but also in slightly lower temperatures. !!! Haven't done that in multiple decades, since when I had to run in high school.
Of course, my mile time is close to twice what it was back then. But two and a half months ago I was struggling to string together intervals of 30 seconds of sprinting (because I didn't know how to just jog) and 2 minutes of walking because I didn't know how to do this in a sustainable way, and that I can actually go for 10, 12, 15 minutes at a steady jogging pace? Feels like a tangible improvement.
I'm far off the benchmarks for the official C25K (according to them, I should have been able to run 30 minutes in a row for an implied 5k distance as of a couple of weeks ago, whatevs), but the most valuable takeaway I have here is a better kinesthetic sense of what my body is actually capable of. That I'm learning the balance of breath control and muscular exertion that lets me do this for slowly elongating stretches. That actually running an entire 5k seems less audacious and more plausible than it did even three months ago.
Maybe not running a 5k in the time I want this year - my current pie in the sky long-term goal is to get down to a 30 minute 5k, but I understand that that is probably a next year and beyond aim. And maybe not even running an entire 5k in a row if I can manage a better speed overall by continuing to do intervals while working on increasing my pace during the jogging portions. But sub-45 feels within reach. I may or may not do the Pumpkin Run in Half Moon Bay next weekend, but maybe by the time I do Monterey in just under a month? (And I'm still debating signing up for Berkeley the week after; Jackie's doing it and I think Maria's doing the 10k, but the course is hillier than I'm used to. Plus all my qualms about the same people "organizing" the Berkeley race as the ones responsible for the San Francisco Marathon debacles this summer.)
And I am trending faster; I did the Mermaid Run at Crissy Field a couple of weeks ago, basically the inverse of the course for the SF Marathon 5k; 48:51, not quite as fast as I'd hoped, but I got my average mile pace under 16 minutes. Running a sub-45 minute 5k feels like a reasonable goal by the end of the year; if I keep putting these pieces together, maybe even sub-40?
I've also figured out that I am much happier running in 45-55F and foggy than 70 and sunny; the latter feels much more like a "let's hop on the bike and explore" kind of day to me. But I've gotten to do two races at Crissy Field, under cool grey skies and the misty refreshment of the fog weaving through the landscape, and that, that feels like something I can keep doing.
*
Speaking of fog, Karl the Fog totally overshadowed any possibility of seeing the auroras in our neighborhood this time, so I was posting some pictures and videos to Instagram to demonstrate the difference between May and last night. I appreciate the ability to post mood music with them, so I was scrolling through the options that came up when I typed "northern lights" into the search box. One of the choices was VOCES8 performing Gjeilo's Northern Lights:
I didn't know VOCES8 before this year, but earlier this spring, when we were preparing to do Elgar's Lux Aeterna for a concert, their recording of it was at the top of Spotify search results when I was looking for supplementary audio to help me learn the music quickly. And, well, wow. I would love to be part of a small, tight ensemble making music like this. (See them performing Lux Aeterna below.)
Continuing to bounce topics, at that same concert, we also performed Vienna Teng's Hymn of Acxiom, and GUESS WHO HAS NEW MUSIC OUT.
(Yet another sidebar: the style in which her video for Spark was done? When I saw Iron and Wine play earlier this summer, they had artists on stage doing that kind of paperwork puppetry LIVE. Amazing.)
Two songs, played separately and together, a "mashup by design," as she puts it. From her Bandcamp liner notes:
The individual songs available to stream on Bandcamp now; the whole shebang available for download November 1. And I'm still keeping something about that under my hat for now; can't wait for you all to see the results!
Of course, my mile time is close to twice what it was back then. But two and a half months ago I was struggling to string together intervals of 30 seconds of sprinting (because I didn't know how to just jog) and 2 minutes of walking because I didn't know how to do this in a sustainable way, and that I can actually go for 10, 12, 15 minutes at a steady jogging pace? Feels like a tangible improvement.
I'm far off the benchmarks for the official C25K (according to them, I should have been able to run 30 minutes in a row for an implied 5k distance as of a couple of weeks ago, whatevs), but the most valuable takeaway I have here is a better kinesthetic sense of what my body is actually capable of. That I'm learning the balance of breath control and muscular exertion that lets me do this for slowly elongating stretches. That actually running an entire 5k seems less audacious and more plausible than it did even three months ago.
Maybe not running a 5k in the time I want this year - my current pie in the sky long-term goal is to get down to a 30 minute 5k, but I understand that that is probably a next year and beyond aim. And maybe not even running an entire 5k in a row if I can manage a better speed overall by continuing to do intervals while working on increasing my pace during the jogging portions. But sub-45 feels within reach. I may or may not do the Pumpkin Run in Half Moon Bay next weekend, but maybe by the time I do Monterey in just under a month? (And I'm still debating signing up for Berkeley the week after; Jackie's doing it and I think Maria's doing the 10k, but the course is hillier than I'm used to. Plus all my qualms about the same people "organizing" the Berkeley race as the ones responsible for the San Francisco Marathon debacles this summer.)
And I am trending faster; I did the Mermaid Run at Crissy Field a couple of weeks ago, basically the inverse of the course for the SF Marathon 5k; 48:51, not quite as fast as I'd hoped, but I got my average mile pace under 16 minutes. Running a sub-45 minute 5k feels like a reasonable goal by the end of the year; if I keep putting these pieces together, maybe even sub-40?
I've also figured out that I am much happier running in 45-55F and foggy than 70 and sunny; the latter feels much more like a "let's hop on the bike and explore" kind of day to me. But I've gotten to do two races at Crissy Field, under cool grey skies and the misty refreshment of the fog weaving through the landscape, and that, that feels like something I can keep doing.
*
Speaking of fog, Karl the Fog totally overshadowed any possibility of seeing the auroras in our neighborhood this time, so I was posting some pictures and videos to Instagram to demonstrate the difference between May and last night. I appreciate the ability to post mood music with them, so I was scrolling through the options that came up when I typed "northern lights" into the search box. One of the choices was VOCES8 performing Gjeilo's Northern Lights:
I didn't know VOCES8 before this year, but earlier this spring, when we were preparing to do Elgar's Lux Aeterna for a concert, their recording of it was at the top of Spotify search results when I was looking for supplementary audio to help me learn the music quickly. And, well, wow. I would love to be part of a small, tight ensemble making music like this. (See them performing Lux Aeterna below.)
Continuing to bounce topics, at that same concert, we also performed Vienna Teng's Hymn of Acxiom, and GUESS WHO HAS NEW MUSIC OUT.
(Yet another sidebar: the style in which her video for Spark was done? When I saw Iron and Wine play earlier this summer, they had artists on stage doing that kind of paperwork puppetry LIVE. Amazing.)
Two songs, played separately and together, a "mashup by design," as she puts it. From her Bandcamp liner notes:
"This is a mashup-by-design: two songs written so that they each stand alone, but also work played simultaneously. I wrote it in the midst of pandemic and protests to convey what it feels like to hold two truths in your head at the same time. We are both broken and brilliant - and either way, we need other people at our side."
The individual songs available to stream on Bandcamp now; the whole shebang available for download November 1. And I'm still keeping something about that under my hat for now; can't wait for you all to see the results!
