Went out for my run and blog. I have no idea what I’m going to say during this run. Funny, because I had all of yesterday. And a bit of this morning to figure it out. And believe me, there were a lot of things I was saying to myself.
What should I talk about? Should I edit anything out? What if I can’t speak as I’m trying and struggling to run? Will I continue doing these? Why am I doing this in the first place?
But this first one. I guess I will just have my voice memo audio transcribed as-is. And maybe edit out any kind of extra words or something like that. Keeping the content flowing the way I am speaking it.
Zone
I’m definitely very rusty when it comes to running. I took it seriously at one point. Watching YouTube videos of elite runners. Of people describing various techniques of how to strike the pavement with your foot. What kinds of macro and micronutrients you should ingest before, during, and after your run. A whole bunch of stuff. There was something in common that everyone said. Something that I haven’t been able to get right. And that was… running and staying in my Zone 2 heart rate.
A pace at which you’re supposed to be able to have conversations, they say. I was close to doing it one time. But I was running, or closer to walking, at an unnaturally slow pace. That’s how it was supposed to be, they say.
It’s hard to get a sense of this when your only sense of reference are people running much faster than you can run — and that’s just their warm-up speed.
I suppose an added benefit of me doing this as I’m trying to (as I’m struggling to run and talk at the same time)… it’s a forcing function for me to keep myself in check and make sure that I can stay relatively in Zone 2, which would then allow me to talk. It’s not going well so far.
The heart rate is climbing. And I’m going pretty slow. Maybe it’s that tiny bit of coffee I had right before this run. Probably shouldn’t have done that.
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Sidenote: My Garmin says my performance condition is minus nine. Whatever that means.
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Gear
This morning, I was gearing up. I was trying to find the right microphone for this experiment. Based on my experience and based on my gear, I only really have two things available to me. I can either use a wireless lavalier microphone of some kind, or a scrappier version is to plug in a pair of wired earbuds and tie the headphone part around my neck so that the mic stays around my neck.
I tried the lavalier stuff. Haven’t used it in a while. Batteries probably died on the microphone. Spent about five or ten minutes trying to get it working this morning. Seemed like it wasn’t able to sync. That’s my only guess. The bane of wireless technology.
I switched over to a pair of wired headphones. I don’t usually use wired headphones for my iPhone, which means I don’t have anything compatible with a Lightning port. Looking at my storage bin system of electronic stuff, I have a bin specifically for Apple headphones. There it was. A pristine pair wrapped around its paper tray. I opened it, plugged it in, and gave it a shot.
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Sidenote: 179 heart rate. With a pace of 9:30 minutes per kilometer. Are you kidding? It feels like I’m pretend running at mall speedwalk speed. But that doesn’t matter. Back to the post.
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What was I saying? The downside of not being able to read text to reframe your context…
I tried the Apple headphone setup, tied it around my neck, started a voice memo recording, and it was surprisingly quiet. Too quiet, probably not usable. Then I just tried talking into my phone directly. That works. Hopefully iPhone audio cancellation technology is good enough these days. And that’s what I went with.
Now, running around my park, yell-talking into the butt of my phone, moving at an uncomfortably slow yet difficult speed, with every step reminding me how bad I’ve become at doing this thing. All in slightly hot, but otherwise perfect, no-excuse weather.
Distraction
I noticed in doing this… all the internal voices screaming how much this sucks kind of goes away, because I’m more focused on what it is I’m trying to say. Is this distraction? Or is this focus? I guess that’s something I’ll have to think about for a while.
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Sidenote: Heart rate is at 180. Pace is at 9:00 minutes per kilometer. I need to slow down even more. I really don’t want to. But I’m gonna do it.
Back to the post.
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Perception
It’s been 14 minutes. 14 minutes of exercise I would have otherwise not gotten.
Currently moving at a pace that’s slightly faster than when you’re trying to walk a crosswalk and cars are waiting for you. Move your arms and pick up the pace a little. To signal to the drivers: “Hey. I see you. I’m moving!”
(Stole that bit from Demetri Martin.)
Why is this pace thing bothering me so much? If I were to be honest with myself, I don’t think it has anything to do with how I look in public.
Walk-running around my park with super reflective, ultra-bright pink shorts and an old Twilio-sponsored JS Conf t-shirt from over 8 years ago. (Also pink. That was a coincidence today.)
Talking to myself, with no pair of headphones in sight. Something that becomes obvious and strange after examining what I’m doing for more than 3 seconds. It’s not that either.
I think it’s this nagging feeling of “I know I can do better. I did better once before. So why can’t I do it now?” And you know what? That’s just something you have to accept.
If it’s important enough for you, then you’ll put in the time. To practice. To put in the reps. You’ll be able to calibrate reality with your expectations — versus a distant, once upon a time ago, “things were this way” view of the world and of yourself.
Expectations
I experienced that recently. I wrote a blog post about how I learned to play guitar.
After sharing that, some point later on in the day, I opened my closet to pull out a Squier Telecaster, something that I had traded for a much more expensive guitar right before the pandemic happened.
It was out of tune. Of course. (Not blaming the guitar.)
I tried to play some songs that I used to be able to. To my surprise — but also not really — I was rusty (to put it kindly). Missed notes. Buzzing strings. And fretboard finger placement that once felt so instinctual, so natural, now felt laborious and foreign.
“I suck at this,” I remember I said to myself. And after about ten minutes of pretend playing… back in the closet. Waiting for the next time I feel inspired to pick it up in who knows how long.
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Sidenote: Heart rate at 184. Pace 9:10 minutes per kilometer. What happened to slowing down? Well, I guess I’m able to talk to myself, okay? There’s a lot of breathing. But I’m able to do it okay. Heart rate is just unnaturally high for this pace.
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Is it the coffee? I guess I can blame the coffee.
Note to self: Don’t do coffee before you run. Doesn’t matter what the people on the internet say. I guess caffeine just doesn’t work for my body in this way.
Back to the post.
How long am I going to do this for today? Usually, in the past, when I was able to do this well, each run was 5k. And would take between 30 to 35 minutes or so. I don’t think I can do that. It’ll take a month of training to get back to that point. But maybe that’s what I’ll try for.
Today, I think 30 minutes is good. I would have at least gotten 3 kilometers down. And several thousand steps. Steps that I would not have gotten otherwise if I was sitting at my desk. Sitting comfortably with my coffee. Pondering and speaking into my microphone. As I pretend to be someone with a one-person podcast show. As my AI-powered workflows transcribe my nonsense into words that I can work with.
Optimism
Maybe it’s this exercise of talking and running. Maybe it’s my lack of coffee. Maybe it is coffee taken at the wrong time. But I’m starting to feel some optimism.
I wonder what day two of this will be like. If I keep this up. I wonder how my blog posts will change. I wonder what it’s like to edit the transcription of one of these things. Will MacWhisper subtitle the panting? (I know it does stuff like that sometimes.)
It’ll save me a lot of time for sure. That I know. My morning writing routines, as much as I love them and dread them sometimes, I gotta say, are taking up quite a bit of time in my mornings. At least an hour per post. One hour of effort for three minutes of reading time. Sounds about right.
It reminds me of my video editing days. How an hour’s worth of effort, of planning, of shooting, of editing, equates to about a minute worth of footage. We’ll see how this goes.
Hopefully I didn’t mess up and accidentally press my screen to cancel this voice recording. (Goodness, I hope that’s not the case.)
That’s the thing I fear about touchscreens sometimes and why I prefer physical buttons and things that are wired. There’s less chance of you doing something wrong. Of you making a boo-boo that blows up the workflow.
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Sidenote: Heart rate 190. Oh my goodness. Pace is 8:45 minutes per kilometer. At the 30-minute mark.
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Let me keep going a little bit more. Let me slow down. Mall-walker pace. With a bit of upper body movement to show that I mean business.
Back to the post.
Almost there. Almost at 3.5 kilometers. Not the most impressive. I’ve definitely been able to do more before. But the thing that counts is…
Yesterday I said tomorrow. And tomorrow is happening right now.
