Monday, March 31, 2014

Strava & Instagram, I Am On You

Last week I gave in to peer pressure & finally joined Strava.


TA DA!! Also, why has the internet suddenly become
obsessed with circular profile pictures? Lame city.

I put the little "LATEST RUNS!" widget in the right sidebar over there, but so far in spite of my having logged a bunch of runs, it still says, "Angela has not logged any activities yet," which is weird and a bummer & *totally* false. (I will fix it if anyone can tell me how.)

Being pretty new to the whole thing, I don't really "get it" yet & am kind of hoping its many glories will become clear to me in the fullness of time. To be honest I'm a little hesitant to join yet ANOTHER social media platform and ANOTHER place to log my miles. I can't help thinking about how DailyMile was such the new hotness among recreational runner / blogger types 3-4 years back & now it's kind of become the Friendster of online mileage platforms, which makes me wonder if a few years down the road Strava will join it as, I dunno, the MySpace of online mileage platforms, once our mileage / routes / KOMs are uploaded automatically via Google Glass.

But hey. I'll totally try it for a while & see if it moves me. I haven't quit Twitter yet!

What I'm saying is if you want to Strava at me, you can go here. Don't ask me what to do once you're there because I haven't the faintest idea. I've been entering my workouts; the ball, as they say, is in your court.

Oh yeah, & Cathryn also inspired me to resurrect my defunct Instagram account!


Apparently I took one picture last year of a pile of meat
before abandoning this, so.....we'll see how it goes?

Also, I'd like to direct your attention to the fact that even though I never told a soul about this account, I have followers. Thirty-seven of them. Thirty-seven people saw that one picture of a pile of meat & were like, I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE. WTF, internet people??

Anyway, if that's your bag, you can follow me here. I can't promise it won't be all shots of food & booze. But at least they'll look #crappychic? Which I guess people are into now?

* * *

Grand Total: 58.8 miles

    * 8.8 running
    * 39.5 bike (easy)
    * 10.5 bike (speed)

Monday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 13 bike / p.m. karate

    What a difference good sleep makes. In spite of waking up at 3:45 and 5:10 worrying that I'd overslept, I woke up with my alarm at 6 a.m. feeling actually not like death & excited about getting to the gym for some strength training.

    Okay, maybe not excited, exactly. But again, let me emphasize, not like death.

Tuesday: a.m. 2.8 run / p.m. bike, 2.6 warm up + 5 x (5:00 @ 5K effort, 2:00 easy) = 13.1 speed

    Dead legs on the 'mill this morning, so my cadence was maybe not so quick at first, but I warmed up after a few minutes & things gradually got easier. On the other hand, it was encouraging to find that being tired and not really feeling it now results in pretty good/not terrible form, where as pretty-good-not-terrible used to be all I could do at the best of times & "tired/not feeling it" usually meant piss poor form.

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 6 bike + 3 run / p.m. karate

    Ugh. I don't really know what it was, but when I left work on Wednesday, I just could. NOT. face the thought of getting on the 'mill for 25 minutes & then on the elliptical for 20 (which was my loose plan). So instead I did ~21 minutes of hard-but-not-stupid-hard spinning, then did my 24 minute run when I got home. (I am guessing this does not technically count as a "brick" since I sat in my car for 45 minutes in between.)

    It's funny how the more strength work I do and the more targeted and focused it's gotten, the more I can feel it in my form. The leaning forward just gets easier & easier. Which in turn makes it easier to load up my hips & use my glutes & hamstrings well. Which makes it easier to keep up a good cadence. Which is all related to landing softly & quietly on my feet & keeping all my various bones & muscles & various other tissues comfortable & happy. It still takes a lot of effort, but I have to admit it's getting easier every day.

Thursday: 11.8 bike

    One of the advantages of keeping a weekly training log in narrative form rather than just the numbers is that over time sometimes patterns emerge that might not be as obvious otherwise. Apparently, Thursday morning rides / runs are just always tough. I'm sure the dead legs & falling asleep on the bike/treadmill is a combination of late-week accumulated sleep debt (though I have been getting better at going to bed early! I swear!) & general physical wear & tear and the fact that it comes on the heels of karate & our inevitably late Wednesday night. (I have no excuse, really, for not getting myself in bed at 10pm on Tuesday & Thursday nights, but on karate nights, we don't even get home until nearly 10, & then still have to eat dinner/clean up/get ready for bed/the next day/etc.) So I've kind of just accepted that Pathetic Thursday (Morning) is a thing & I just shouldn't sweat it too much.

Friday: 3 run + 6 bike.

    For whatever reason, I was just so incredibly unmotivated for this workout & wanted so desperately to just go home & pack for Paso Robles. Knowing I wouldn't get any running done in Paso, though, I dutifully marched myself to the gym after work and cracked the glass on my EMERGENCIES ONLY!!! training playlist. (Seriously, I haven't had to resort to music for motivation since 2006. Oy.)

    Thanks to a little help from these & others...

    ...I made it through 25:00 of running & 22:00 of spinning relatively unscathed. And, as per usual, felt a hell of a lot better after than before.

Saturday/Sunday: Rest/drink wine.

    This weekend was our twice thrice however-often-we-feel-like-yearly trip to Paso Robles for wine tasting/buying. There might be some lovely places to run down there but I would not know as I am generally too busy drinking wine.

The Future...

You guys, I totally signed up for another 5K this Saturday (Spring Forward in Mountain View). As long as I beat my time from Get Lucky, I'll be happy. There is no beer after, but on the other hand, it's not at 11 a.m. in wine country, so that's something.

15 comments:

  1. I am now stalking you on all the things. I have been on Strava for about a year (since I got my Garmin) and I am still not entirely sure what it and its weirdly aggressive content strategy (YOU'RE KIND OF A BIG DEAL) are for, but I like numbers and maps? So that's something.

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    1. Yay, someone else who's as confused as I am! :)

      I am instagramming you. I haven't figured out how to strava other people yet, so....yeah. Working on that.

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  3. I keep thinking I'll get into Strava and I keep really really not.

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    1. We'll see how it goes. Right now it kind of just strikes me as DailyMile on steroids. But I'm willing to give it a few weeks.

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  4. I have Instagram envy. I'm pretty sure you have more followers than me and I post regularly. Plus they're all amazing photos of the cutest dog in the world and cakes. Maybe I should just start posting pictures of meat.

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    1. Dude, the internet is OBSESSED with meat. Love it, hate it....Everyone has #meatfeelings.

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  5. Awesome on Imogen Heap, I've seen her 3 times in concert, always a good show.

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  6. I'm so bad at social media, too much to keep up with.
    Good luck on the 5K.

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    1. Yeah, me too....Seriously, the other day I went to post on Twitter from my phone & it took me like five minutes to figure it out. Not kidding.

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  7. So, I have to limit my social media accounts or I won't get any work done and Strava and Instagram haven't made the pre-approved shortlist just yet...

    But... YAY! I'm scheduled for the 10K at Spring Forward, so as long as you've got 10+ minutes to time to kill at the finish (I'd love to hit 56min, but may need to shoot for 61min+, will have to play it by my legs), we can definitely say hi in person. And, if you have any interest in post-race brunch, you are welcome to swing by my house and clean up (of course, if you'd like, you can go post-race non-clean-up awesome). Either way, if you'd like to meet some of the SVS track folks and/or just me, we can go grab quite a variety of post-race food awesomeness.

    Feel free to email me at tennille[at]gmail[dotcom] if you'd like to try to meet up.

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    1. YES, this should totally happen! I'm leaving town the next day so I can't stay out TOO too long (packing, etc.) but it would be awesome to meet up. I'll email & we'll figure it out. :)

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  8. I'm so glad you're on IG again ...I'm such an inspirational blogger :) I love IG and am very much looking forward to you IGing your way around Italy!!!!!

    But Strava has completely underwhelmed me. I really want to love it but frankly I don't. I've done four runs with it so far, and on one, when I checked in 2/3 way round, it mismeasured my distance so I ended up doing extra mileage (not a biggie but you know what I mean) and then assured me I had run across a long stretch of water by Crissy Field. I can assure you that I am not holy enough to run on water! It seems to be improving a little this week, but I'm THIS close to heading back to Nike Plus!

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    1. I haven't tried the tracking app yet, just been recording everything manually. There's supposed to be a way to upload activities from a Garmin, but so far I haven't been able to get that to work. :P

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