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Friday, April 3, 2009

Need to find the running mojo

I skied Oak Hill today - but more on that later...

I've had a hard time this week finding my running mojo. I did run twice, on the roads, on Tuesday and Thursday. A little over 5 miles each. But I've not been too motivated. Part of this demotivation is due to the dreary spring weather we've had this week. Not a good excuse. Part of this demotivation has resulted from biking to work this week (since I get excercise biking, why run?). Still not a good excuse. Most of the demotivation, though, is the direct consequence of my motivation to program. A little background. From about age 22 to about age 39 I spent most of my waking life sitting in front of a computer programming the code necessary to compute some statistic or simulate small insect flight or visualize shape differences. I didn't get out much.

But I programmed in Pascal, a thriving language in 1990 but the Latin of computer languages by 2000, when I started my job at USM. Fortunately, I was able to keep programming in pascal and re-purpose my old code because Apple did a bang-up job simulating the old system 9 OS in Mac OS X. But the times they are a changin' and I wasn't changing with it. Starting in about 2004, I had effectively stopped programming, because I was too resistant to really dive into a new language. So my research productivity dropped sharply after 2005 and, not coincidently, my outdoor recreational activities rose sharply! But my trip to Colorado last week re-motivated. I'm now using R. And I'm now sucked into the vortex of my programming life and can't get out to run. Just like 1995.

So, back to the ski. Yeh, 5+ miles on Oak Hill. The snow was surprisingly hard and icy - not so good for skiing but I guess ok for running. It took me a while to get into into but once I decided that my rock skis really are rock skis and I could lightly jog across the bare spots without de-skiing, it became much more fun.
M - nothing
T - bike 2X 6 mi, run 5 mi
W - bike 6 mi, bike 10 mi
Th - bike 2 X 6 mi, run 5 mi
F - ski 5 mi

2 comments:

  1. That spring spirit will hit you like a ton of bricks soon!!! Your legs will just plain start running and your mind will have to catch up....it will happen

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  2. The bricks may come in the form of the Mt. Washington auto road. Hopefully, I'll get hit before then!

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