Melting again

The soles of my feet are now a bit sore because I watered the tomato and pepper plants in my bare feet.  That concrete is hot even when sprayed down.  It's supposed to get up to 39 C today.

Saturday: I did my third hour + run of the week: 5.14 miles in one hour.   The third Zwow workout didn't happen.  I did rows, clamshells, and deadlifts instead.

The interesting part of this treadmill run was the absence of music.  There was a thunderstorm outside so I opened the window and put the fan in the doorway facing out to draw all the cool O3-charged air inside, and then I started running.  I didn't want to subject the neighbours to my choice of music--I appreciate not hearing theirs--and the TM is loud enough already.  To my disappointment, I couldn't even hear the thunder.   My hopes of a storm soundscaped jaunt were dashed.  So I made a new mental game.  At first, I decided to break the run down into six minute intervals because six minutes goes by pretty quickly at an easy pace, but I could not forget this time that the first interval was 1 of 10, the second was 2 of 10, and so forth, which defeats the purpose of doing smaller intervals.

Then I thought of assigning a colour to each interval.  For example, blue.  It's just blue.  It's between purple and green on the colour spectrum, but progression to either is not mandatory.  Rather, six minutes of blue is just six minutes of blue, floating in the sunlit depths of an ocean, or in a clear deep sky.  After six minutes, maybe a new terrain, be it kelp forest green or fiery orange or whatever, or nothing.  No obligations beyond blue.

This worked amazingly well!  I ended up plotting a spectrum of sorts, and as I ran on, the colour I was approaching would start to bleed into the colour I was in, in my imagination; it was satisfying to visualize each colour and imagine being immersed in each colour.  Time became immaterial and it skittered away neglected.  I would never have dreamt that an hour-long treadmill run could be so mentally easy without music or tv or whatever.  The cool storm air blowing through the window next to me certainly helped.

Today: I slept blissfully for 9.5 hours!  Since I went to bed before my husband, I put earplugs in, and thus wasn't roused, but I took them out during the night while asleep.  This has happened before.  One was back on the nightstand, and the other got away and was on the bed.   The quality of sleep was not impaired by this, though, and I got up feeling refreshed, though it still took me a while to wake up fully.

That is a quirk of this house that I've been trying to improve.  I almost always feel drugged when I wake up.  The house was powered by gas in the past and there is a gas spigot or light fixture in the bedroom--I'm assuming that the tank is bone dry, but maybe there are still fumes?  Geez, why haven't I yet checked it out, give it the ole righty-tighty?   Or was it built before that became standard? Is my imagination running wild?!! I've been opening the windows regularly to air the room out, and I open the blinds at night so that morning light can enter; I suppose the next step would be to get a spider plant or an ion filter, or both.

Anyway, I thought about snoozing but no snoozing is allowed!  I wasted about a half hour waking up slowly and then I wasted more time purchasing and burning a new album.  Confession: after more than eight years, K-pop finally got its hooks into me.  I somehow came across a boy band song that I couldn't let go, and I previewed the album a few times and finally caved in and clicked Buy. I blush to say more.

It was an excellent purchase.  The first few tracks made me giddy, what with the K-rap and the sprinkling of random English words and phrases--I like this about electronic/dance music too.  "Uncle Eric is helping the police with their inquiries."  It makes me giggle.  An accent makes it even better.

Pumped by my recent wise purchase and the thumping first song, I decided that today was the day to roll the TM over, I think.  I refer to the timer.  It has four digits: beyond 99:59, there is nowhere else to go.  Would it stop at 99:59?  Would it return to zero? Or would the entire machine halt?  I've been wondering about this for a while (my guess was zero), but the prospect of running for an hour and forty minutes on the treadmill was appalling.  I've run over an hour on the TM maybe five times in my entire life.

There isn't much to say about the run itself.  It went well.  When I started to feel fatigue, I upped the pace slightly, and then dropped it slightly less after a while.  There were a few slower songs on the CD which weren't as energizing, but still ok.  After about eighty minutes, fatigue seemed to settle more, but it was close enough to the end to not matter.

And, I was right: 99:59 => zero!  at that point, I'd run 8.75 miles.   Outside, and perhaps on a normal TM, that would be 10-11 miles.  The most I've run in 1:40 is a shade under 13 miles in a half marathon (1:41).  But, hey, I've got nothing going on, and the initial shock of the slow "miles" has faded.

I jogged and walked it to 9 miles: 4:43.  31 seconds per mile!!!!