perspicaciousness

I felt it was time to have a new mix CD to sing along to in the car.  Some of it was because I heard Little River Band's "Lady" on the radio the other day and had it cranked.  Also I wanted to have a copy of "Don't Leave Me This Way" for my personal listening studio.  The rest of the songs were just whatever jumped out at me when I was looking.  I think I was in an "All Out of Love" kind of mood.

 1. Led Zeppelin - When The Levee Breaks (1971)
 2. Doobie Brothers - Listen To The Music (1972)
 3. Deep Purple - Woman From Tokyo (1973)
 4. Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion (1975)
 5. Orleans - Dance With Me (1975)
 6. Little River Band - Lady (1976)
 7. Carly Simon - Nobody Does It Better (1977)
 8. Thelma Houston - Don't Leave Me This Way (1977)
 9. Boston - Don't Look Back (1978)
10. Exile - Kiss You All Over (1978)
11. Supertramp - Goodbye Stranger (1979)
12. Air Supply - Lost In Love (1979)
13. Donnie Iris - Ah Leah (1980)
14. Kenny Loggins - I'm Alright (1980)
15. ELO - Hold On Tight (1981)
16. Styx - The Best of Times (1981)
17. Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World (1985)
18. Massive Attack - Teardrop (1998)

Today, I got a late start, but went to the gym and had an a great run on the treadmill.  My 3.1-mile time was 41:30, so not a personal record.  But, my first run was around 9 minutes!!!  Also I discovered that the heart rate indicator on the treadmill responds to the signal from my HRM belt. The watch was reporting screwy numbers, but the treadmill's report was right on target.  Max heart rate was 191, average was 156.

I just woke up from a dream in which a woman was telling me why we were never going to get back together again.  She said she realized it when she was drawing a picture of a purple bird and remembered that I was just going to be one of her adventures.  She showed me a sketch of a bird, colored in with purple crayon.  I am so confused.

Last night I basically passed out.  I must have been pretty tired.  Fell asleep on the couch and when I woke up I felt like I was using all my remaining energy to pop out my contacts and climb under the covers fully clothed.

Ran at the gym this morning, 5K in 41 minutes.  A new personal record.  Of course, since I'd only done 5K once before, that wasn't hard, but still it's a solid minute off of my old time.  My first run was 5 minutes long.  41 means my pace was around 13:13.  Shave 18 seconds per mile and I'll be below 40.

However, my left knee and my right ankle are a little ouchy this morning, so I'm exquisitely glad I'm not going to work out tomorrow morning.

Went to abs & spinning class today, felt really good.  I didn't like the instructor on Monday and Wednesday I was too tired to work out, but today was a great class.  All the regulars were abuzz because of Monday -- the gym uses a ten-level scale of exertion, and the instructor didn't give me numbers so I could never tell what level to be riding at.  She had the music turned up and I couldn't hear her voice well, but I got the impression she was describing the terrain instead of just saying "It's a 7" or whatever.  Finally I asked her for it and she got mad.   Friday, everyone was defending me and joking about it.  It's nice to have a group of acquaintances to exercise with, it makes it harder to skip.  I felt guilty about staying home Wednesday.

Tonight I went to a grocery store and didn't pay attention to the huge signs outside saying they were closing in 9 days.  I just walked in and noticed the shelves were all half empty.   While I've only sometimes shopped there, I'll hope they keep the clock outside.  Whenever I'm driving to they gym, I like to pass that clock at 4:55 a.m.  It makes the hands appear as one long line.  With a glance I can tell if I'm early or late.  I should take a picture of it for my photoblog I guess. 

The magic number for today is 42.  As in 42 minutes.  This morning I set the treadmill goal to 3.1 miles (1% elevation) and decided to run as much as I could muster and walk the rest.  It was definitely a tough workout, but I made it and I'm happy about that.  Of course, a 13:30 pace is not going to impress anybody -- I could probably beat it by just walking fast.  But it's still nice to have done a 5K this morning and to know how long it took.

Got to the gym this morning for a run.  Yesterday I did weights and spinning, so a run was just what the doctor ordered.  Though all morning I made some bad choices.  Didn't get up until 4:20, didn't leave the house until 5:00.  If I'd run and gone home it'd be fine, but instead I decided to have a dip in the pool and sit in the hot tub a bit, and that time plus the changing time made me a bit later that I'd like.  Got home around 6:20 and still had to shave, shower, get dressed, get my stuff together for work and try to eat something.  Oddly I opted to make a smoothie, which was tasty but always takes longer to make than I think it should.  Was about 5 minutes late for work.

Wish I could say I got four good runs in for four minutes each at 1% grade, but the last run I had to slow down around 3:30.  I made up for it a little bit by running for another minute near the end of my workout.  My run/walk total was around 4.2 km in 36 minutes or so, which means I'm a little slower than I thought but I still think my near-term goal should be 40 minutes for the 5K.  That'd be about a 13-minute mile, pretty baseline but a good place to start.

Tonight is spinning at the Bike Rack, and then I'll see if I really want to do spin class Wednesday morning, two spin classes within a 12 hour period.

One more thing... most nights I wear sweats and shiver under the covers.  Last night I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and was comfortable.  Certainly part of this is the warmer night last night, but I wonder if some is the resistance training I did yesterday morning -- maybe the muscles were keeping themselves warm with the repair work.

I heard about Project 365 today and I think I'm going to give it a try. The idea is to take at least one picture every day of the year and blog about it. LJ seems ill-equipped for that sort of thing so I set up an account on Photoblog. There's nothing there at the moment, but I hope to start filling it with pictures.

Last night I had a dream, and then I had another dream in which I was telling people about the contents of my previous dream.  How weird is that?

Do you ever have deja vu of dreams, like you think you've dreamed this before but you're not sure?  That happened as part of the first one.  I was riding in a bus, and the driver set the cruise control and got up and went to the back to talk to people there.  We were heading towards a curve in the road and I kept telling the driver about it and she was just saying (something), I don't remember if she didn't care or felt she had plenty of time.  In the nick of time I went up to the driver's seat, slammed on the brakes and cranked the wheel hard.  The rest of that dream was unremarkable except that someone was threatening me so I broke his neck from behind, that was very weird.

In the second dream, I was telling someone about the bus dream and they were asking, "Why are you always dreaming about that?"  When I woke up, it occurred to me that maybe my subconscious thinks I am not taking enough control of my life.  In other words, my conscious self is the bus driver, my subconscious self is the passenger, and the bus could represent anything: my work life, my love life, whatever.  My self-conscious doesn't have much power -- is it letting me know it's heading for the brakes?

I saw an article this morning that said that for a treadmill to do a better job of emulating running outside, you should set the elevation to 1%.  I did that today and while I can't say for sure if that was like running outside, it was definitely harder, more than 1% harder I am sure.

Six good runs this morning of 3:15 each, spread out over 30 minutes with about 5 mins each of warmup and cooldown walking.  So 19:30 running, give or take.  Based on my time and distance today, I think my current level (or goal) is about a 40-minute 5K.  That would have me finishing in the back of the pack for sure, but finishing nonetheless.  Plenty of room to improve, though, and if I set a goal to run a 5K on St Patrick's Day I've got almost exactly 3 months to train.