Running
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 1/10 (1:01 am) - 4.02 miles at 8:39/mi pace, 36°F 🌧
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 2/10 (5:02 am) - 4.02 miles at 8:55/mi pace, 37°F 🌘🌥
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 3/10 (9:00 am) - 4.01 miles at 8:51/mi pace, 36°F 🌥
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 4/10 (1:01 pm) - 4.02 miles at 8:33/mi pace, 45°F ☁️
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 5/10 (4:41 pm) - 4.02 miles at 8:59/mi pace, 50°F 🌥
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 6/10 (7:57 pm) - 4.01 miles at 8:31/mi pace, 48°F 🌥
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 7/10 (1:02 am) - 4.02 miles at 8:47/mi pace, 47°F ☁️
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 8/10 (5:04 am) - 4.02 miles at 8:59/mi pace, 40°F 🌌
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 9/10 (9:52 am) - 4.02 miles at 8:35/mi pace, 38°F ☀️
- Running Log: 4x4x40 - 10/10 (12:58 pm) - 4.69 miles at 8:06/mi pace, 45°F ☁️
- Running Log: 4x4x44 - 11/10 (4:46 pm) - 4.03 miles at 8:27/mi pace, 41°F ☁️
- Running Log: 4x4x48 - 12/10 (8:51 pm) - 4.03 miles at 8:35/mi pace, 39°F 🌧
In between kids activities I took advantage of the beautiful weather today and got out for a run. Still feeling the lingering results from COVID but much better as the week has gone on. 🏃🏻♂️
Second run back since the virus got me and it felt much better than the first. Not great but better 🤨🏃🏻♂️
It has been over a week since I have worked out and I think the lingering COVID virus made this 3.3 Mile run feel like it was much longer. Might have to keep easing back slowly this week. Didn’t help my attitude out there as I kept running into Trail Closed signs 🙄🏃♂️
This is really nitpicky but honestly, the worst part of being stuck inside with COVID is I am missing my outdoor running time. I probably could go do it but I think the smart decision and with the current weather… I should stay inside and find something else to do 🤔😂.
Not sure about you but I can see the open water from here… 🤔 I guess I should go across it right? 🤦♂️
I really do enjoy the signs I find running 🏃🏻♂️
I think I missed the better day to run yesterday but needed to move a little today. Also once I got out there in the 2°F weather it didn’t seem so bad 🏃🏻♂️
Today seemed like a great day to update my profile picture so I went for a run. At the end of the run Strava told me the weather was: Few clouds, -11°F, Feels like -21°F, Humidity 69%. I knew it! The humidity was killer today 🤣🥶🏃♂️
Making fresh tracks today in the fresh snow. It was a cold one and I actually broke out the spikes for the first time this year but not sure it was needed. 🏃🏻♂️
All in on Micro.Blog
I can’t say for sure this will be my final solution but it has made sense so far. A little while ago that I wanted to give this a try as I don’t like having too many different places on the internet to hold where my stuff is. I had been stuck for a while thinking of a new domain name and in the meantime I bought about 10 (yikes!). Maybe I will point some of them to some specific stuff on Micro.blog but my main one now for this domain is going to just be EricMWalk.blog. I think I will make a simple static site that my EricMWalk.com can be pointed to and there I can point people to other projects I have worked on. However, right now it just goes to my old WordPress blog so still need to get that changed.
So I finally did it and moved all of my old posts from my self hosted WordPress blog to Micro.blog so I would have finally one source of information (well not exactly more on that later). Overall the import process in Micro.blog worked flawlessly except, I did find some issues but they were self inflicted for many reasons. The one I assumed I would run into was any links I had in my posts to other posts on my site which would not get updated correctly. I was right on that but luckily I didn’t have too many posts with that issue and I could correct that problem somewhat quickly by doing a search in the Micro.blog post section for my old site name. However, the two bigger unknowns to me that I probably should have expected but didn’t think about were having too many tags and that pictures didn’t import.
Tags - This was nightmare. I guess though the years on WordPress I got very Tag happy as it didn’t seem hard to just add them as you went and honestly I probably didn’t use them too much but to find related things or maybe others did. However, all of them got imported into Micro.blog and I quickly realized that my one off tags were very messy. So I went though and painfully deleted as many as I could. I still have more than I like but it was a good start to see how I can use tags going forward. I think the interesting thing for tags in Micro.blog is that they are their own feeds so I might do something with that at some point.
Pictures (Root Cause - Old Domain Names 🤦♂️) - This is a problem of having various domain names over the years. Micro.blog did an exactly what it was suppose to do and did an excellent job importing the photos to Micro.blog when it could “find” the photos. However, since some of the domains I don’t have anymore I had broken links on my WordPress site that I had not really realized so Micro.blog couldn’t find the photo to import. I am not sure if there is a quicker way to fix it on the Micro.blog side of things but honestly if I would have maybe thought about this before I exported everything I more than likely could have cleaned it up to make it work more seamlessly.
Other than those two minor hiccups I am glad to have gone full in on Micro.blog and with that I am hoping to be posting more photos, thoughts, and other things I find interesting all in one spot.
Next up…
Since I have not been using Facebook (forever really), and Instagram has been less and less. I stoped really posting to Facebook specifically a long time ago and just did instagram and my WordPress blog but since the beginning of 2021 I have been really using Micro.blog to post the quick photos I would have done there. So next up I am thinking of pulling all of my historic Instagram posts to Micro.blog after I ran across this help post.
Back to work tomorrow but actually to the office too. New employee is starting so might be there a couple days this week. Today was nice as the kids were at school so I just caught up on things and went for a run with a friend. Not a bad way to start the but now on to day 2 😁
Last run of 2021 and there was just a little snow on the ground this morning to cover the ice 😁 🏃🏻♂️
Had to do some backtracking on my run this morning as I really wasn’t going to be happy if I lost one of my favorite gloves… Thankfully I found it only a half mile back! 🏃🏻♂️
With the temperature of 40° today I decided to get a run in since I could wear shorts of course 🤷♂️🏃🏻♂️.. It was nice outside today for a run but the rink does not like this weather. Glad we got a skate in yesterday 😒
Chanhassen really likes these signs. Why can’t they make mention of it at the beginning of the trail instead of after you fully committed to a half mile in. Then the only options are up a hill through someone’s private yard or back the way you came. I took the hill 😁. 🏃🏻♂️
4x4x48 Recap
Two weeks ago I decided to set off on completing a 4x4x40 as part of some crazy ideas for my 40th birthday year. However, after I reached the 40 miles I felt like I really needed to continue as I figured at that point I might never do this again and get so close to hitting the real number and completing a 4x4x48 (run 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours). Maybe it helped that I was a bit sleep deprived at the time and not thinking clearly as I figured what was two more 4 mile runs at that point.
Since I posted after each of my runs with a short photo, time, and thought I will not rehash all of them. I don’t want to make light of this challenge as I think it was hard but the miles themselves weren’t the worst for me. Some of that could have been that I didn’t really have a pace per mile in mind. I obviously wasn’t going to try to run the fastest 4 miles I could every time. However, in my mind, I wanted to keep all of my averages per run under 9 min/miles. The biggest struggle for me during this challenge was trying to fit it in during a normal working day. Due to the weather forecast and maybe my last-minute planning, as it was December, I did it during the middle of a workweek. So I scheduled it out earlier in the week and pretty much created an appointment for myself every 4 hrs. It worked great the first day but the second day some things came up at work so I had to shrink down one of my 3 hr blocks of recovery and extend other ones. I still was able to get the run in that 4 hr bock but I wasn’t as consistently on the hour as I was the first day of running. In a way, I am wondering if working both days helped me keep my focus away from running and how tired I might have been as I was doing things I needed to do during the day. Then in the evenings I still helped get the kids to activities and stuff.
Now obviously the lack of sleep is one thing but the worst time of runs for me was the 5am runs that I did. I think it is because after the late-night 1am run it always took me longer than anticipated to fall asleep. You would have thought I would have been tired enough to just get into the house and fall asleep. I am guessing that the kick of adrenaline that was in my body messed with allowing my brain to shut down at that time. So for both days by the time I would will myself to sleep and it would work I think I only got 1 hr before I would have to wake up at 5am to run. After that run, I would just start my day and didn’t try to get any more rest as my youngest gets on the bus at 7am.
In the end, I have never run so many miles in two days. It ended up being 48.9 miles due to one run when I put my trust in a running friend who lead me astray by an extra mile. Those two days were more mileage than I had completed any week during my marathon training this past year. It was an interesting challenge as it took careful planning as I still worked and helped with kid activities like a normal day. It was just I ran every 4 hrs 😁. The day after I was done I felt pretty wiped out from most likely lack of sleep and over-exercise. Fast forward two weeks later and I am back on track. Maybe I will do another one of these challenges someday but probably no time soon. At least for the rest of this year, it will be back to the normal scheduled running for me.
Full Data of Runs - Links to Posts and Strava
One of those head scratching moments seeing the icicles in this tunnel while out on my long run today. Kind of makes me think there is cracks in it 🥶🏃🏻♂️
Was feeling sluggish this morning due to being up most of the night flooding. Decided a long run would help me wake up and it did. Not to mention I had the trail to myself today. Could have been because it was 17°F 🤷♂️🏃🏻♂️
Seemed like a heat wave today as the snow was melting in this 35°F weather. Also, why do you think they plowed to this bench? Who is going to sit here in the winter? 🤔🏃🏻♂️
