Don’t get me wrong, this was an amazing run. Unfortunately scheduling didn’t work out so that Katie and I could run together. We both suffered for it, because we didn’t have help keeping pace.

So I decided to put together a playlist of good running music, since running alone with no music would be boring. I’ll post the music below. I had Through the Fire and the Flames by Dragonforce and The Perfect Drug by Nine Inch Nails in the playlist, and both of those songs made me forget the meaning of the word “pacing.” When Dragonforce was playing, I noticed I was running really fast. I looked at the iPod, and I was going at a 6:30/mi pace. NOT GOOD. At least not yet. Similar happened later on with NIN, but I didn’t bother checking the pace, I just slowed down.

So my knees are hurting a bit because of it, but I figured out the secret to my shins: they’re cramping. It’s that simple. If I sit down for about 30 seconds when they start hurting, I’m perfectly fine. This will improve over time though; everything I’ve read says that these muscles are notorious for causing problems for new runners until they get stronger.

I also decided to start adding some resistance to my workout, as encouraged by some comments here and on Twitter and Facebook. The faster I can get some weight off, the fewer problems I’ll have running, and the quicker I can get to that 6:30 pace (because that was so much fun for the 30 seconds I did it, and I had a major runner’s high).

In other news, the Nike + website is buggy as hell. As you can see at the left, the Nike Mini has stopped working. This is the second time it’s done this. Still, it’s great to see the data to see where I’m improving. At least it *will* be once I have more than 2 runs in.

As promised,  here’s my playlist:

Metallica – The Ecstasy of Gold (A cover of Ennio Moriccone’s masterpiece from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly)
Marilyn Manson – Doll Dagga Buzz Buzz Ziggety Zag (Fantastic running music)
Kanye West – Stronger (the album version is slower than the single, and not good running music)
Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – The Beat That My Heart Skipped (if you like The Streets, this is sorta like that but WAY better)
Dragonforce – Through the Fire and the Flames (…yeah)
MIKA – Grace Kelley (If you like Queen you need to listen to this)
NIN – Perfect Drug (again … yeah)

That’s as far as I got tonight music-wise. Queued up for the next solo run, however…

Outkast – Bombs Over Baghdad
Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor
Bad Religion – Los Angeles is Burning
Paramore – Misery Business
William Shatner – Common People (everyone’s homework assignment is to find some music from Shatner’s Has Been album and give it a serious listen. Some amazing stuff)

Saturday night, I noticed that after walking for like 30 seconds, my shins were killing me. I’ve had a little shin pain when starting out like that, but it went away, especially once I started running. Last night, it did not. I tried to run a little to see if it would fix things, but it didn’t and I had to quit early. Turns out that, even though none of the beginner guides for running I read mentioned it, stretching before you start is a bad idea. If you stretch at all you should wait until after walking or jogging slowly for 5 minutes. I had been stretching the whole time but didn’t have this kind of reaction… I guess I just happened to stretch it too far.

Tonight’s run was much better, though still bad. I didn’t stretch, and I could tell a difference immediately. I was much more comfortable in the beginning than I have been. However, hurting myself a little yesterday caught up to me, and after walking 5 minutes and running 4, I decided to just walk out the rest of the 30 minutes.

Katie and I both got Nike + attachments for our iPods, so we can track things and compare runs to see where we can improve. You can see my run data to the left. Unfortunately, I paused the workout and even though I thought I had resumed it, I apparently did not, so the current data only reflects the first 13 minutes. Yay for being able to mix running with geekiness.

Tomorrow is a full off day. No running or walking, to give the muscles time to recover and build up. Hopefully Tuesday will be a good satisfying run, I’m really missing it already. It’s discouraging to have two unsuccessful runs in a row, but you have to run before you walk I guess, no pun intended.

The new shoes definitely helped as well. I was running on a pair of Brooks Beasts last night that my friend Andrew gave me years ago. Turns out they are for people with close to no arches, and I have average arches. I got a pair of Saucony Progrid Guide 2’s which are like heaven in shoe form.

Whether it was better pacing or better shoes, I have far less pain than last night. I was able to get my heart rate up higher and get out of breath some since my shins weren’t aching almost immediately.

Two runs so far, that’s all, and already I feel SO much better. Sleep came so easily last night, and I had so much energy today. I’ve been in an amazing mood all day.

As I was trying out different shoes at Runabout Sports in Blacksburg (amazing, amazing store) I was running around the store, and just that little bit of running was like waving a bag of coke in front of a junkie. I found myself daydreaming about the run all day. I can totally see how people get addicted to this. In fact, I’m well on my way.

In totally unrelated news, if you haven’t heard of Amanda Palmer, check her out. It’s imperative. AMAZING music. Here’s my favorite song.

Amanda Palmer – The Point of it All

One of my best friends in the world, who blogs at slimminsam.com,  is shooting for losing over 200 pounds. He started at 419, and is working his way to 200. So far, he has lost 79 pounds, and he has only been going a few months.

The task before me is much simpler. I really only need to lose about 40 pounds to get to my ideal weight. I don’t care so much about the weight though. Whenever I walk for more than like 10 minutes at a time, my legs ache. I have used the phrase for years, “my body is betraying me” when something weird was going on, but in truth it’s the opposite. I have been betraying my body by not exercising at all.

So, the run tonight was 30 minutes. Katie and I went out not expecting much, but we ended up running about half of the time. I definitely wasn’t counting on running more than 10 of it. I never got out of breath, the problem was just my legs aching.

So I’m telling you, the interwebs world, about this in hopes that I feel that I have someone keeping tabs on me, so I don’t give it up. Katie running with me will help wonders, I’m glad that she agreed to it– without a running partner it would be very easy to give up.

Here’s to health!

Well, my wife read something the other day, and since using this new method, I have gotten the closest shaves of my life, with no irritation at all.

The key is baking soda! Don’t bother with shaving cream/gel, you won’t need it. Here’s what you need to do.

1. Get about 1-2 teaspoons of baking soda in your hand (faces are all different, so the amount will vary), and add enough water to it to make it into a thick paste.
2. Rub the paste into your face on all the areas that you will be shaving. Don’t rub too much. The baking soda will also exfoliate your skin, but since it’s abrasive can also irritate your skin if you overdo it. You’ll get the hang of how much you need to rub it in.
3. Rinse all the baking soda off of your face. Be careful to get it all– if you DO cut yourself you definitely don’t want baking soda getting into the cut.
4. Shave! Don’t bother with cream or gel. The baking soda makes your hairs stick out a little more and softens them up. You can barely even hear the razor cutting the hairs. I prefer one pass with the grain, one pass against the grain, but YMMV.

Like I said before, this greatly reduces redness and irritation, and you’ll have closer shaves. Plus, the exfoliation caused by the baking soda will leave your skin clearer and softer.

EDIT: The only reason I added “(updated)” at the end and the “-2″ to the URL was to change this post. For some reason all my Akismet spam is hitting this post.

#note to blog readers, this one is basically only for people wishing to run Ubuntu in a VM:
2) VMWare or VMWare Player will work better with Linux, at least in my
experience. VMWare Player is free, and you can download. They call the
Player images "appliances" and you can get a bunch of them free from
here: http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/
VMWare Server is free, but I don't think it will install on XP, I think
you need server 2000 or 2003. VMWare Workstation costs money. The player can only run
vmware images that others have built, but there are ways around that.
That said, if Virtual PC works for you, then don't worry about it

3) glad you've figured out sudo and apt-get, you'll use those a lot! You
can also use Synaptic (graphical front end to apt). I prefer command
line apt, but synaptic is sometimes easier if you don't know the name of
the package you need.

4) there are other repositories that you can add if you need other
things that aren't present in the ubuntu repositories. Be careful with
that, though. You can sometimes break things.

5) I'd suggest registering an account at ubuntuforums.org (I'm a mod
there, so I have to plug them I guess). Nearly every question gets
answered in under 30 minutes. Nearly every question that gets asked
there has already been answered, so try out the search first. There are
also mailing lists you can join, a load of IRC channles on
irc.freenode.net (#ubuntu, #ubuntuforums, etc).

6) I would strongly suggest not using scripts like Automatix and
EasyUbuntu. Automatix tends to break things, and EasyUbuntu is somewhat
buggy if you try to install some things with it, though I've never seen
it actually break things. Seems like every couple of hours there's
someone in #ubuntu with problems stemming from something Automatix did.
I've experienced these myself. I still try them out whenever there's a
new release to see what they have. Plus, with doing things on your own
instead of using a script to install things, you learn more of what's
going on and how to do things. I'm considering making a massive howto on
how to do everything that Automatix and EasyUbuntu do, and safely.

7) ubuntuguide.org has a load of information on how to set up things in
Ubuntu, and I'm sure you'll find at least some of that info useful. The
official ubuntu wiki, wiki.ubuntu.com is full of searchable info as
well, and doc.gwos.org was started by one of my friends on the forums as
a way to take the useful info from the forums and put it into one big
wiki, so it's also a great source of info.

I'll go ahead and tell you, you're going to have trouble with some
things. Patent encumbered technology, such as mp3, dvd, etc. You'll have
to violate the law a little bit to get those things working, but it's
pretty easy. Adobe has decided that Linux might as well not exist, so
there hasn't been a new flash player since version 7. Supposedly 9 is
coming out later this year though. If you need higher flash versions,
you can install IE or the Windows Firefox through wine and install the
flash player for windows through wine and it works well.

9) RTFM! Yeah, I was joking in the first email I sent you, but
seriously, reading documentation and following tutorials and such will
get you ahead in the game faster than almost anything.

Let me know if you have any problems with anything and I'll try to help
you out. Hopefully you won't run into anything bad. You shouldn't have
hardware issues since you're not using real hardware

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