2025-10-07 9:55
At the orthopedics place there are close handicap spaces, then these less-close, but still central spaces. But really shouldn’t there be distant spaces “Reserved for persons with unlimited mobility”?
At the orthopedics place there are close handicap spaces, then these less-close, but still central spaces. But really shouldn’t there be distant spaces “Reserved for persons with unlimited mobility”?
I haven’t been running enough, so I went for a run today. The metrics are kinda funny, by which I mean my Fitbit thought it was an insanely hard run. I thought it was interesting enough to post about.
Fitbit calculates heart rate zones based on your “heart rate reserve,” which is your maximum heart rate minus your resting heart rate.
Your resting heart rate (roughly what you’d get if you checked your heart rate right after you woke up, before you started moving around) the device actually measures. My resting heart rate, according to the Fitbit, was 56 bpm. (It actually hit 44 bpm at some point while I was asleep, but your lowest resting heart rate is a different number.)
Your maximum heart rate, though, isn’t measured. Instead, it’s estimated as 220 minus your age. I’m 66, so that comes to 154. So my heart rate reserve is 154 minus 56 equals 98. Then my various zones are calculate as a fraction of the reserve plus the resting rate. Zone 5 (peak activity) begins at 85%, so my zone 5 begins at (0.85 ✖️ 98) + 56, which comes to 83 + 56 = 139. All the parts of my run shown in red in the map above were run at a heart rate at or above 139.
In fact though, my maximum heart rate is way higher than that estimate. I have in the past been somewhat dubious of the maximum readings shown by my Fitbit during a run, because all the wrist-worn devices sometimes sync up at your foot-strike rate, so you get anomalous readings around 180 (a common foot-strike rate). But I also check my heart rate doing other exercises, such as kettlebell swings, where foot-strike rate doesn’t matter. Plus, I get heart rate readings from my Oura ring, which is not wrist-worn, and which doesn’t seem to have the same syncing-with-foot-strike problem. So I know my max heart rate is much higher.
On this run, for example, the maximum heart rate as measured by my fitbit was 169. My Oura ring thinks the peak was 166 (but it averages over 5-minute periods, which smooths out the peaks quite a bit).
Anyway, if you take 166 as my actual maximum heart rate, then my heart rate reserve is 110, 85% of it comes to 94, so my zone 5 range ought to begin at a heart rate of 150, rather than 139.
I find that a lot more plausible. If the Fitbit is right, then I just spent 36 minutes in zone 5, which seems very unlikely. It was kind of a hard run, because I haven’t been running enough, but I not only could have talked while I was running, I actually did sing, which is one of the markers for being in zone 1. (I was listening to and singing along with some Kpop songs.)
So, I think much of that run, even some of the bits shown in red above, were in zone 2 or 3, not zone 5.
Whatever the heart rate metrics, it was a rather slow, rather short run: 3.15 miles in 58min 10s.
Much better than not running.
Updated next morning: I slept great after my run, and woke up feeling great. Legs not sore at all. Overnight heart rate right back down to my current baseline.
For an athlete, being explosive is good. You can jump higher, run faster, hit harder, and (the point of this post) thrust a sword more quickly. Sadly, I’m perhaps the least explosive person around. This is very frustrating when it comes to sword fighting, because my thrusts aren’t quick enough to hit my opponent, whereas their thrusts are quick enough to hit me, before I can parry them.
I can obviously compensate in various ways. I can try and be very deceptive, and then launch an attack that is so surprising my opponent can’t react. I can get very good at parrying, so I can stop an attack with a very small movement that doesn’t have to be so quick. I’m working on these things.
But one other thing I can do is work on explosiveness.
This will have other advantages too. Explosiveness (roughly the same thing as power) is an aspect of muscular strength that disappears early as one ages, and it’s very useful. Just being strong is great, if you want to lift something heavy, but power (or explosiveness) is what you need if you catch your toe, and then want to get your foot out in front of you before you fall down.
I’m going to have to do some research on training for explosiveness, but one exercise that I already know that I can start training right away will be to throw my slam ball. Some people do that facing a wall, so they can catch it and throw it again. But I think I’ll throw it, and then spring forward as fast as possible to pick it up and throw it again, so I can train both explosive arm strength and explosive leg strength.
Onions, three kinds of peppers, and some breakfast sausage, sautéd, two scrambled eggs, a little taco sauce, then wrapped in tortillas.
I call the breakfast dish Wavy Rancheros.
Two things I’m allergic to are ragweed pollen (which is at its annual peak right about now), and household dust (which has been at a peak this morning, because I’ve been decluttering, dusting, and vacuuming in the living room).
Although wearing a mask is an obvious move to minimize getting household dust in my nose when I’m doing housework, I usually don’t think of it until my nose is all snuffly. Today though, I remembered. And it worked great! No snuffling at all!
I’ve finally started getting invited to fitness influencer events! I got email today offering me a chance to get early access to a new line of athleisure clothing if I attend their event!
Sadly, their event is in Los Angeles. And, based on the images, their clothing line is for women. I’d look funny wearing their short skirts and tight tops for skinny girls.
Still, once I show up on one brand’s radar, surely other brands will start noticing me.
Note: I have no interest in being a fitness influencer or a brand ambassador, or getting early access to athleisure clothing. I don’t even really have any interest in free athleisure clothing, although I’m not sure I’d turn it down, because that’s just the sort of ethically ambiguous guy I am.
Pictures of me in exercise clothing, so that future firms know what they might get:
If that doesn’t make you want me wearing your athleisure clothing in my content, well, I guess you probably don’t want me wearing your athleisure clothing in my content.
There’s a reason they call it the golden hour.
Me: You’re a good girl Ashley! There’s no girl good-gooder than you! You’re the good-gooderest!
Jackie: Good-gooderest?
Me: Do you know a girl that’s good-gooder? If not, she’s the good-gooderest.
I have long been a big fan of allegorical figures, such as these two outside the Chicago Board of Trade.
My education in such things was slightly deficient. I mean, every educated person ought to be able to look at such a figure and identify it by the signifiers, the way nearly everybody can recognize Liberty and Justice. These two are only slightly more obscure, so I was able to identify them. (Especially in context—they are particularly appropriate for the Chicago Board of Trade, where commodities are traded.)
There are many more that I can’t reliably recognize—Fame, Victory, Hope, Time, etc. I’ve looked from time to time to find a nice compact reference with pictures and descriptions, and haven’t found exactly what I was looking for.
In any case, it was fun to see these two, just across the street from the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, where we had gone to visit the Money Museum—about which I hope to write a post soon.
We scheduled this trip to be here for the opening of the tapestry exhibit that includes work by Jackie’s teacher. We were completely unaware that Lollapalooza would be here this weekend as well.
I must say though, I’ve really enjoyed the sidewalk views of girls barely wearing party dresses and glitter. Particularly amusing are the girls unaccustomed to wearing such short skirts and shorts—detectable because they keep trying to tug the garment down, in a vain effort to cover their butt.
Five stars. Would attend again.
Every time before, when we were ready for lunch after visiting the Art Institute, the Berghoff had a line, but this time not, so here we are. Both of us are drinking their session ale, called Globetrotter. Good. Refreshing. Jackie likes it better than All Day IPA.
Jackie and I are in Chicago for the weekend, staying in the Palmer House. We came to attend the opening of a tapestry exhibit at an art center in the West Loop, put on by the American Tapestry Association. The exhibit includes a piece by one of Jackie’s teachers, So Jackie particularly wanted to see it.
After a period where I was being a bit casual about them, for the past few months I’ve been doing pretty well at getting my workouts in, and I didn’t want to let that go, so I went to the fitness center here at the Palmer House. It’s pretty good!
I cranked through a slightly reduced version of my usual morning exercises, then went to the main room of the fitness center for the workout proper. They had an adequate set of kettlebells, so I did two exercises with those:
Then I found a barbell and loaded it up with a pair of 45 lb plates and did 2 x 5 deadlifts. I’m super out-of-practice with deadlifts, and would not have wanted to do more weight or more reps, but that much was okay.
Having done the tapestry thing, we’re looking to do some other Chicago stuff. Probably the Art Institute. Maybe one of the boat tours where they talk about the architecture. Maybe the Field Museum. Maybe something else! We’ll just see.
Two days ago, and again today, we had a lilycount of 1, and this appears to be the end of the lilies for this summer.
Penultimate lily:
Ultimate lily:
Jackie reports that there is just one more lily bud, making this one the penultimate lily.
Me, thinking about how to season today’s fjord trout: Cumin and turmeric and maybe Kashmiri chili powder or hot smoked paprika? One of these days I’ll cook fish without cumin, but today is not that day.
Jackie: Why would you cook anything without cumin? I mean, maybe something… Maybe brownies?
Me: I dunno. Brownies with cumin sound awesome. Maybe spaghetti sauce?
Jackie: I dunno. Spaghetti sauce with cumin sounds pretty darned good.
So, I guess we’re just going to go on putting cumin in everything, until we think of something it doesn’t go in.
I didn’t look closely enough to see if there were any more buds to bloom over the next few days. Usually at about this time we get a day with no lilies, and then another one or two flowers a couple of times before they’re all gone.
Sometimes there are raindrops inside the blossoms, but today they were outside!
These aren’t the last lilies, but there’s probably only about 4 more after today. Hopefully one a day for the next few days.
I resisted the urge to write about this a few months ago, when it was first published in the New York Times, but instead of the urge passing, it has persisted. I’m finally giving in.
The article is about things you can do to hurt your back, beginning with this thing to be avoided:
“… what we euphemistically call the B.L.T.,” or the bend, lift and twist, said Dr. Arthur L. Jenkins III, a neurosurgeon in New York City who specializes in spinal surgery.
Doing all three actions at once, whether by shoveling snow or extracting a child from a car seat, “maximizes the stress on the disc, making it more likely to rupture,” Dr. Jenkins said. “As a spine surgeon, I would never do it.”
Source: The Worst Habits for Your Back, According to Spine Surgeons – The New York Times
I have never met Dr. Jenkins, but I bet it is false that he never does a bend, lift, and twist movement. Everyone, everywhere in the world, does this movement all the time. And it is almost always harmless, especially when the weight is very low.
The odds that you’re going to hurt yourself by bending and twisting to pick up a tissue that missed going in the trash can are pretty small. Perhaps not zero—if you are out of shape, or overweight, or have a pre-existing back injury, it does become possible to injure yourself that way.
Obviously, if you’re going to pick up a heavy weight, you always want to do that mindfully. Set yourself up facing the weight, so you don’t need to twist. Instead of bending at the waist, hinge at the hips. Then lift.
However (and this is the first half of my main point): You’re going to repeatedly do this, over and over again, over your whole life. It’s simply unavoidable.
If your toddler is about to run into traffic you are going to bend as far and twist as much as necessary to snatch him up. If you need to get your child out of his car seat, and the only parking space you can find doesn’t leave you with anyplace to stand where you can reach in and get him without twisting, you’re going to bend and twist. If there’s something heavy in the back corner of the closet, maybe you’ll spend 10 minutes shifting all the clutter in front of it so you don’t need to twist to reach it. But if there’s something light back there, you’re just going to bend and twist.
The other half of my main point is this: If you’re going to do something repeatedly, over and over again, over your whole life, you should train for that thing.
I do not mean that you should start doing your deadlifts with a bent, twisted back. I mean, you should build habits, movement patterns, and appropriate strength to do what you need to do.
I would recommend starting with videos by Mark Wildman. For this action in particular, here are two. The first is a non-twisting version of this movement, that you can use to safely build the strength:
Once you’ve got some strength, move to a lighter weight and then do this version, which first adds some rotation, and then adds more rotation:
Note that the ideal version of this exercise avoids both the bend and the twist! Instead of bending, you hinge. Instead of twisting, you rotate. But in the real world, you’re go to end up bending and twisting all the time, because nobody can be perfect about this stuff all the time.
Avoiding a whole category of movement simply makes you less ready—less capable—of doing that movement when you do it accidentally, or when it becomes necessary to do it on purpose.
There’s a dog under my chair, under my desk. 🐕
When I was 40 or so, I suggested to Jackie that it might be time for my midlife crisis, and she said, “Too late! You had your midlife crisis several years ago and married me.” So, for some time now, I’ve figured that was it.
However, my current plan is to live to eleventy-one, like Bilbo. This morning I was thinking, “Hey! Maybe that means my midlife crisis comes much later! But simple arithmetic suggests that my midlife crisis should have been when I was 55 or 56. So I went back through my photo library to see what I was doing in the second half of December 2014.
Mostly it wasn’t anything of particular interest, but I did rather like this photo:
Doesn’t that perfectly capture a midlife crisis?
Having had my midlife crisis back then would be for the best, I guess. If I want to have a midlife crisis now, I’m going to have to plan to live to 132 or something, which doesn’t seem so likely.
(Aside: I have tags for “energy crisis” and “mortgage crisis,” but none for “midlife crisis,” even just “crisis.”)
Ashley and Roxie chewing on a stick.
Usually I count multiple times, until I consistently come up with the same number, but this time I just went with the first count. It’s about right.
The brats aren’t cooking quite as fast as I’d expected, probably because I didn’t do a great job of getting the bed of charcoal burning evenly.
But soon it’ll be time to put the veggie skewers on anyway.
I’m watching a video on how chronic stress reduces your adaptation to things like exercise. It’s down on passive coping strategies, such as “seeking out alcohol, watching TV, procrastinating, talking to friends, [and] moaning about the problem.” Instead the video recommends “active coping strategies, such as “actually deal[ing] with the problem,” and recommends such things as “if you have a problem with somebody, talk to them.”
And I’m like, “Okay, that’s a big nope.”
I mean, it’s not wrong… “This is what the stress energizes you to do. So you want to take advantage of that fight-or-flight mode? Seek out what the root cause of your problem is, what it is that is giving you stress, and then tackle the problem head on.”
Except I do not want to take advantage of that fight-or-flight mode, except that I do want to flee if at all possible.
And those passive coping strategies? I’m all-in. I mean, moaning about the problem is like 90% of my whole personality.
Ashley, on the other hand, is totally down with both fight and flight responses: