Week Notes 2021/33+34
Tue Aug 31, 2021
Introduction
Notes for the week of 16th through 29th of August 2021.
A double week note because I spent the middle weekend away with the Cairngorm Club.
The Notes
- I have been writing a lot of documentation and reports for work, which is pretty dull.
- One consequence of getting stuck into writing documentation was trying to find some decent Markdown editors in an attempt to place things in one place. I had hoped that Obsidian would be a good solution (it’s very pretty and well designed), but it has an overly restrictive license for commercial use, which makes it pointlessly difficult for me to use in either a professional setting. (I have no idea how to get software approved and bought at work, but can only imagine the process is awful.) The compromise I’ve made is to experiment with a similar, but open source, program called Zettlr for work and use Obsidian for my person things.
- My life is pretty dull at the moment. Most of my time is spent either running, working, or sleeping. There’s not a lot of writing happening at the moment, which is why these notes are very late.
Reading
- Use of Weapons (Iain M Banks, 1990)
- Finished this on Thursday 19th & Friday 20th Morning. Fucking amazing!
- 334 (Thomas Disch, 1972)
- Started this the day after finishing Use of Weapons. It’s pretty awesome so far.
Running & Adventures
- On Tuesday, August 17th, I did hill repeats. Five sets of three minutes up hill at a hard effort followed by three down either jogging or walking. This was really tough. In the first two sets I went too hard and ended up dry heaving at the side of the road.
- On Wednesday, August 18, I had a strength and conditioning session with a personal trainer.
- On Thursday, August 19, I went for a ~8km run on the usual out-and-back route at the sea front. My pace was faster than usual for a little more effort.
- On Saturday, August 21st, & Sunday, 22nd, I was in the Caingorms hiking with the Cairngorm Club. We covered approximately 30km in distance and climbed 1210 meters. This is something I should write about separately.
- On Tuesday, August 24th, I went for a recovery run after the weekend trip and didn’t feel great while running. However, looking at the data on Strava shows a pace of 6:17/km with 90% of the time spent in my Z2, which is a clear indication that some sort of physiological adaption has taken place, because, for me, that’s fast and easy.
- On Thursday, August 26th, I went to the gym at lunch for a strength & conditioning session all by myself. It went well.
- Also on Thursday, August 26th, I headed out in the evening to do some speed work, which had me covering ~6km for the session, but doing ten lots of thirty seconds hard followed by 30 seconds of recovery jogging. This is a pretty classic interval workout designed to improve one’s VO2 max, but also just one’s general ability to run faster for longer.
- On Saturday, 28th August, I went to my second Parkrun and set a new personal best for the 5km distance. My watch time was 24:07. My Parkrun time was 24:32. I’d recorded 24:31 over the 5.05km I actually ran since I started quite a distance behind the start line. Really happy with this as a result. To quote what I wrote on Strava
“I honestly did not expect such a large jump in my time there. Last week was pretty rough with the Cairngorm Club trip on Sunday and a pretty intense day on Thursday lifting weights then doing a speed session. Really happy I’ve finally broken the sub twenty-five minute mark for 5km, as that’s been a long standing goal. And to see that reflected in both my watch time and the course time is pretty nice.
“Honestly, I think the strength and conditioning work I’ve been doing with free weights has made a difference in helping me be able to work harder than before and for longer, so I was able to keep a consistent pace of ~5/KM.
“This morning was fueled by a trek bar and a mug of tea about forty-five minutes before the start. Last night I ate a relatively light lentil dahl with flat bread because I was testing a recipe for backpacking.”
- On Sunday, August 29th, I went for a ~15km run, I shared 10km of it with Jen, until we reached the Cairn Coffee trailer near Footdee. After having a filter coffee from Cairn and a cinnamon bun from Foodstory we went our separate ways. She walked back. I ran the 5km up to Bridge of Don and back to the house. On this run I noticed that my pace to effort ratio had massively improved with the pace at about 6:15/km and the majority of the time spent in heart rate Zone 2. It feels really good to be getting noticeably faster.
Watched
- Cowboy Bebop E2 “Stray Dog Strut”
- Cowboy Bebop E3 “Honky Tonk Woman”
- Archer S11E1 “The Orpheus Gambit”
- Archer S11E2 “Bloodsploosh”
Played
- Quake
- This was rereleased for all major platforms and it has been good to go back to my eldritch roots.