Running is therapy

Last Saturday, and then today, I ran. Sort of.

Last week for the first time in over ten weeks I laced up and headed over to the barracks to run. Sort of.

I did day 1 of Couch to 5K plan. It’s essentially 5 Minute Brisk walk, 8 reps of Run 60 Seconds/Walk 90 Seconds, 5 Minute cool down walk.

After doing it last Saturday, I didn’t feel physically taxed, however my heel did ache a little that night. So I figured I would wait a week and try again. I did the run again today, again I didn’t feel taxed, and while I can feel a couple of twinges, it’s not as bad as last week…so far.

The really nice part was that my girlfriend went with me. She did really well, and seems to enjoy it. Muahahahah, the poisoning of her mind begins! :)

If not for the vegetarian diet shrinking the brain, think about how crazy smart I would be.

A while ago I signed up for a promotional site sponsored by Perl Izumi. The site is called saverun.org. The site is more of PI’s elitist runner nonsense that I actually find very amusing, and cheeky.

The main draw for the site for me was that the first 200 people to sign up got a free T-Shirt, and since I am an absolute T-Shirt nut I signed up.

Many months went by and eventually a couple of weeks ago the shirt came. In the parcel was also a stack of stickers, and a coupon for a FREE pair of Perl Izumi’s! Holy Crap! So I wasted no time in ordering my shoes. They arrived today. They are very comfortable.

I ran up the hallway and back in my office. I wish like mad I was going running today. Grrrrrrr.

Heh, I am going to quit mentioning it…if I don’t specifically say I went running, assume I am still hurt. It’s been 2 months since I went running, and my heel feels about the same as it did July 15th when I stopped. It’s really hard not to fill this post with swear words and long diatribes that would boil down to me feeling really sorry for myself…

In order to keep from killing everyone in a 50 mile radius of my house, for the last 4 weeks I have been engaging in other fitness related activities. Swimming, lifting, stationary bike, walking etc. I even picked up a road bike from Spartacus. I have it on loan while I try it out, but I will likely be buying that in the next month here. I will post some pictures soon.

This weekend I managed to get 33 miles in on my 2 bicycles (I still have a crappy Costco mountain bike).

Saturday, Bill and I went to the Rail Trail in Newville. We thought the trail was 11 miles each way, and so had settled on the idea that we’d do the whole thing, out and back. We were dismayed to find out that only a little over 9 miles later we were at the Shippensburg terminus. We headed back to Newville and Bill really wanted to get the 22 miles in, so when we finished, we headed back out for the additional miles we needed to complete 22.

Then Sunday I hit the road early to crank out a couple of miles on the road bike. It was fun, but I still hate cars. After some dude refused to move over at all as he flew past me, I decided it was time to buy a helmet. I look like a tool box in it, but I had to get one eventually.

Create or append to array (Ruby):

  (array ||= []) < < 1


Over the last 3 days I have been using netbeans for RoR development. Honestly I expected to hate it. I figured I would use it for a few days, then crawl back to Emacs begging her to take me back with promises that I wouldn’t stray again.

Here is the truth. I don’t hate it. In fact, I kind of like it.

I like all the integration with Subversion (which we use at work) and Mercurial (which I use at home). I like the Rails integration. It has intellisense type functionality (though with a dynamic language is often unwieldy). The syntax highlighting (while having a white background) is nice.

One of my big complaints however was a lack of really good keybindings. I was missing my C-a, C-e and C-k. A quick google later and I realized you can switch to Emacs keybindings. Sweet. So I have done that.

I hate to say it, but overall I am pretty happy with Netbeans. If you are doing RoR development, and are chronically dissatisfied with software as I am, give it a shot.

My only complaint so far (and this might be fixable) is that tab navigation is chronological and not spatial (or serial you might call it). It’s like using Alt-Tab to cycle through windows versus using virtual desktops to navigate. I have to look into that further.

Exactly.

If you do any amount of Rails programming, at some point you end up with various versions of Rails installed on your system. Generally this is fine as Rails keeps what version should be used in it’s environment.rb file.

However when you are creating a new project, the system rails command will use the most recent gem installed.

Also usually fine unless you know the latest version breaks something you want to use. Andy had mentioned to me before that it was possible to specify the version Rails should use on the command line when generating the initial project. However I forgot what it was. Lately I have been on a code reading kick so I decided to start at the start and see if I could remember what he had told me.

Well it didn’t take long. The 3rd line of actual code in the system `rails` command is:


if ARGV.first =~ /^_(.*)_$/ and Gem::Version.correct? $1 then


You can see, if you specify:

rails _2.0.2_ project_name

And that particular Rails version is correct and installed, it will use that version. Thanks to Andy for pointing that out.

Let’s say you belong to some high volume lists and generally get a load of email everyday.

You need a way to highlight important message. Using PATTERNS in your muttrc is an easy way to make that happen.

This pattern says if the message is (~f) from her@herdomain.com, AND it’s (~N) new, make it appear brightcyan in color in your index.

  color index brightcyan black '~f her@herdomain.com ~N'


I have to admit, swimming is saving my fitness. I feel really strong.

Monday night I was beat, I could only muster 2*10 laps and my HR was through the roof. I hit the bike for 20 minutes, and then lifted and then went for a 2 mile walk. While on the walk, at a 16:xx pace, my HR was 125 the entire time. I was overdoing it.

I had my PT appointment on Tuesday, and that went pretty well. He was able to pin point a few bio-mechanical issues I need to address with my gait. I am working on learning to walk again.

Also, (and I knew this) my right leg is .5 inches shorter than my left leg. He is pretty certain this is what is causing my heel issues. Now, in addition to wearing orthotics in my shoes, I have lift in the right one.

It’s actually pretty awesome though, and I do think it’s helping. That could all be in my head, but whatever. If I thought dripping chicken blood on it would help I would. It really changes the way I walk, and it changed it instantly.

I have some soreness from changing my bio-mechanics but nothing crazy.

Tonight I hit the pool for 3*10 laps, 20 minutes on the bike and then lifting and stretching. I didn’t get to the gym until 8pm, and it was wicked fun. I dig it when there aren’t many people in there. I feel good. Unfortunately the way my schedule works out, I won’t be in the gym again till Saturday. That still gives me a 4 day training week. Not too shabby after that month long lay off.

I wonder how much training running I would have to do to run a half…