#100DoPP d42: My yoga teacher asked me to help her demonstrate headstand this morning.
After stacking my shoulders, back, and hips, I was able to slowly raise my legs, knees bent at about 90 degrees. She guided my back & legs as I straightened them up. After a bit of effort keeping up with her guidance & instructions for what to firm, pull back/forward, she slowly pulled her hands away, and I felt the most balanced upside down that I ever have.
Everything felt like it was just holding itself up, no swaying back/forth of the legs, no oscillating back & core contractions to stay upright. I held it for several more breaths before gently lowering my legs, having never touched the wall a few inches behind me.
I practiced a couple more times, from that stacked upperbody position with toes on the ground, focusing on my core to lift my straightened legs off the ground, to the horizontal. Just getting to this point of strength & stability took me over a year and a half of practice from when I was first able to hold a headstand.
Piking up to headstand now feels in reach of something I can incrementally practice, improve, and eventually lift up to with strength & control.
This was my last yoga class before my YTT starts tomorrow night, in another studio, with different teachers.
Woke up doubting myself. So I faced what I’m worst at, running up hills. #100DoPP d38. #nofear #getoutside #nofilter
Made a list of 5 summits, ran up 6 in less than 60 minutes.
1. Buena Vista Summit, 1a GG bridge view 2. Corona Heights Park, 2a steps, 2b summit 3. Mount Olympus 4. Tank Hill 5. Twin Peaks view at Christmas Tree Point 6. Twin Peaks Noe South Peak view of Sutro Bonus: unnamed hill south of South Peak, looking back at both peaks of Twin Peaks.
5 miles round trip (and 1312' vert) in 64 min running total.
#100DoPP d37: Touched Hopper’s hands. ~5.75 mile run with 614' vert this morning. Then a 45 min soccer game which I can’t remember ever having done before. #run #nofilter
Homebrew Website Club #Berlin is growing and has found a great spot: wifi, power, drinks, small bites, non-smoking(!), and a casual hipster vibe perfect for plotting #indieweb plans. #multiphoto #nofilter
#100DoPP d30 ran SFRC to Tennessee Valley Beach & back: 1:26:57 ~15 min faster than last week, 3 min than October.
Felt a mix of strength and struggle. Started out at a swift clip until everyone else ran on ahead. Did a 5-10min run / 1 min walk. Felt great to stretch the legs out on the downhills and hit faster top speeds. Uphills were a mix of steady and struggle.
In the last ~1.5miles of the return, runners who had taken the longer path led by SFRC started to catch up to me, which provided an added boost.
My friend Will who had taken that longer route slowly passed me with perhaps a half mile to go, so I picked up my pace and kept a solid sub-10minute/mile, pacing and chatting with him til the finish, which came a lot quicker than I expected.
This may have been the fastest that I’ve run to Tennessee Valley Beach and back, certainly with taking the more uphill path near the beach both out & back.
Nice to see both personal progress, and get a sense that if I keep up the training, there’s more progress coming up soon.
“The 17 banks directly funding the construction of the DAPL are: Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ, BayernLB, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Crédit Agricole, DNB ASA, ICBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, Mizuho Bank, Natixis, SMBC, Société Générale, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, TD Bank, Wells Fargo.”
Which banks are people switching to?
Are there any that have publicly: 1. Commited to not funding/financing DAPL and/or 2. Spoken out against DAPL?
#100DoPP d17: Too tired for a standing finishers photo, dad & I decided to kick it, coffees in hand. #runsurfcity #surfcityhalf #nofilter.
Finished my 9th half marathon in 2:24:58 (updated! originally reported 2:25:01), then went back along the course to find my dad and run him to the finish, almost exactly 30 minutes after mine. Our 4th half marathon that we’ve done together.
This was my first time racing in 90%+ humidity (not counting rainy races), and I had no idea how much energy it could sap.
I felt pretty good about my water & fueling, and got a solid first 10k (sub 1:04) of the race that I was very happy with (at maybe 90% effort, on track to PR the course by many minutes and striking distance of a half PR!). Despite the first half having the only real hill, my second half was much slower. Everything felt heavier. Muscles got sore in odd ways.
I finished without injury (goal 0), I beat my SF half time from last July (goal 1), but was ~6.5 min short of beating my previous time on this course two years ago (goal 2).
The muscle soreness has already faded (within a few hours), so I’m feeling pretty strong. However this was a good heads-up for needing to step-up my training in the next 5 months for the SF Marathon. Going to take it easy for a few days / week, and then jump back in.
The best part of today however was going back along the course to find my dad and then running him to the finish. Really #grateful for that.
☀️🏔🏎 7 year old me to me: sunshine, hills, and a fast car. #100DoPP d16 #nofilter.
Waking up for sunrises & catching sunsets, running sun soaked hills, and (still) driving an impractical but small & zippy roadster, apparently I’ve fulfilled my 2nd grader dreams (where I made this in class).
My mom found this and framed it, showing me today, and I vaguely remember making it, before I’d written my first line of code, played a video game, or perhaps even touched a digital device.
The inventor of the #hashtag rides MUNI like (most of) the rest of us. #yestergram #nofilter.
Or you never know when serendipity will cross your path with a fan or a friend who will recognize you and be more than willing to photograph you in public when you’re clearly deep in your device.
I spotted @chrismessina as he boarded and just quietly watched to see if he’d make eye contact or spot me. Maybe my black REBEL cap threw him off.
Then I pulled a classic “How to talk to a guy wearing AirPods*”, leaning forward and waving my hand in his downturned field of view until he cautiously glanced up, recognized me, and was surprised I was there the whole time.
Laughing and promptly putting his *pods back in their case, Chris and I caught up a bit (We’ve known each other ~12 years, co-founded BarCamp with four other friends, etc.), before he had to disembark, two stops before me.
I’ve run into friends on public transit (especially MUNI) so many times that I now try to always scan the entire train car, and stay alert when new people board, just for such improbabilities.
Public transit is a serendipity accelerant, and such serendipity is there for those that look for it.
HEADS-UP! @Facebook Messenger virus WARNING! DO NOT CLICK "(name), is that you?" fake @YouTube vid uses clktr4ck .com
Screenshot:
If you clicked (or think you may have) do two things: 1. Change your password. 2. Check your Facebook App Settings ( https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications ) and revoke (X) any apps you do not recognize or do not use.
See also https://indieweb.org/FreeMyOAuth if you want to double-check what other sites you may have given apps permission to act as you, and revoke any you are not using. Good idea to clean that up frequently.
This is a huge step forward for the creation of an alternative to Twitter, in numerous ways, some obvious, many more subtle.
In addition to the usual nice UX you would expect (require) from a “Twitter replacement”, micro.blog is being built from the beginning to encourage independent writing on your own site, rather than forcing you to use yet another silo (like Ello).
To do this, micro.blog is being built primarily as a service for microblogs, wherever you might host them, with “the main posts pulled from independent sites.” In this way, micro.blog will be more of an aggregator service that displays a timeline, replies, favorites etc. from multiple sites instead of a social media silo, where all such action must take place directly on one site (or through a proprietary API).
Micro.blog is being built from the start to interoperate with heterogenous systems (i.e. not just with other micro.blog instances, a big distinction from many previous open source decentralized web efforts which focused primarily or exclusively on interoperating only with themselves).
The key to micro.blog’s heterogenous interoperability is open standards support from the beginning, from microformats to Micropub (W3C CR), from RSS to Webmention (W3C Recommendation).
Manton has also been actively working with the already diverse and growing IndieWeb Community, host to numerous self-dogfooded projects already implementing those open standards, and already posting, commenting, liking, RSVPing to each others websites in a truly decentralized and federated manner.
I’m really looking forward to the development of micro.blog. In particular, Manton has identified a key problem with existing silos like Twitter, and that is the rampant abuse and over-notifications that result due to bad UX and architectural decisions about replies, favorites, retweets etc. E.g. Blocked accounts can still @-reply and show-up on your public tweet permalinks.
Manton calls his approach to solving this problem “Safe Replies” and I think it has a lot of promise. I’m looking forward to tracking the UX of Safe Replies, and seeing if we can help make Safe Replies happen in a federated way as well, with extensions to Webmention etc.
#100DoPP d13: 34:36 #NPSF PR Wednesday, 1 second faster than January! But at 48°F vs. 55°F last month. Improved cold resistance.
I only had to breathe through my buff for the first lap, and after that, pulled it down around my neck, took off my long sleeve sport shirt, and ran in a sport t-shirt and shorts for the last 3 laps. I can feel my cold air breathing tolerance slowly improving, being able to sustainably take deeper breaths of colder air.
The fact that I was able to run the course at essentially the same time as last month, but at 48 instead of 55°F, felt like quite an achievement.
For context, two months ago I was only able to run two laps at 45°F.
Having my headlamp also helped, as well as the earlier dawn, which lit the sky brilliant shades of pink and orange on my last lap, before the sun rose into and above our cloud clover by the time I finished. Check out others’s photos: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/npsf/
Capturing these again to remind myself next month:
On the positive side: * remembered to bring my headlamp * started my running watch when Zip said go * no soreness in either knee before or after (no Advil) * breathing was better than expected for high 40s F. (still had to power hike most of the West side hill) * downhills felt much better, especially as it gets lighter out, but also being able to breathe fast enough to move my legs fast enough. * got 8 hours of sleep two nights ago
I know what I need to do for next time: * Get 8 hours of sleep the night before And from that much faster June time: * 1 orange Clif shot blok * espresso en route at Starbucks * #nopasoparungang 2+ mile warmup to Alta Plaza park (I deliberately skipped this run since I’m supposed to be tapering for Surf City on Sunday).
I need to keep going to Friday hills to work on improving my Westside hill times, and get back to Tuesday track to push my breathing vs. effort limits to keep improving my downhill times. And steps. Need more steps.
I was finally in town (and not injured!) for a @Nov_Project_SF Sunrise 6k race, and finished, hitting my sub-40-min goal by mere seconds.
This morning was yet another exercise in facing my cold weather breathing demons and stubbornly overcoming them breathing through a buff the whole time til I sprinted to the finish to get my sub-40.
Pretty sure I was the “slowest” with my 39:52 finish (results at https://tracking.november-project.com/events/4504); our speedy co-leader Paddy O’Leary lapped me before I’d even finished my first of three laps! He ran literally more than twice as fast as me 😂. I’m grateful to hangout with such amazing (super)humans.
However, I got the satisfaction of finishing a 6k, and seeing *that* dawn & sunrise before most of my friends were hitting their snooze buttons. #whileyouweresleeping
Next up: In nine days I will race my ninth half marathon, the Surf City Half in Huntington Beach, California for the second time, with my dad (our fourth half together).
I don’t feel like I’m getting any better at running in cold air, I am however getting better at not quitting, at running farther in cold air. #stubborn #showup #paceyourself #raceyourself #neverquit
Record eight cities host Homebrew Website Club meetups today! https://indieweb.org/events/2017-01-25-homebrew-website-club#Where Nürnberg, Brighton, Birmingham, and London have wrapped up, but you can still show up to: Baltimore, MD Bellingham, WA Portland, OR San Francisco, CA
I’m hosting the HWC SF meetup @MozSF tonight — hope to see you!
Stopped in the rain to take this photo. Water on the glass unintentionally took a burst of photos and this one happened to be better than the carefully cropped shot I took afterwards.
This is the single largest US and world-wide political demonstration, perhaps ever. If this global momentum can become a movement, it will be the biggest force for advancing civil rights since at least the 1960s, perhaps ever across borders.
Starting a modest #IndieWeb #100Days of Positive Posts #100DoPP, inspired by @aaronpk #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100daysofmusic, @jkphl #100days of #opensource, @sebsel #100dagen500woorden, and @gRegorLove #100Words in 100 Days.
Despite being an optimist, I’m also expecting many (more) things to (start to) go wrong today with the inauguration of the new @POTUS. And since they’re often measured on their first 100 days in office, I’m making a deliberate effort to post at least something positive every day, preferably at the start of the day, as a direct counter.
The basic idea for #100DoPP: * Every day: post something positive on your own site * whether something positive you did (ideally) * a positive / constructive idea or suggestion * or something positive someone else is doing or suggesting * Preferably *before* posting anything negative that same day
I’m not sure if I’ve ever had 100 continuous days of posts on my site, so I’m expecting to have to make this a part of my daily routine just to make sure it happens.
@Twitter and other so-called “social media” make it easy to post *something* every day to their silos, so 100 days of that is not interesting in my opinion.
It’s also easier to complain than to be constructive.
In flight: civil & rational discussion with a white woman who voted for Trump. #nofilter #RESIST
tl;dr: Better message for change. (Hillary = status quo)
She believes in him as an experienced business leader. She’s worried about growing federal debt, about lack of opportunity and progress for anyone below upper middle class (echoing Occupy messages).
She saw no hope in Hillary, nothing she stood for, no believable plan for progress, for change.
This is someone who is fit. Who runs on trails and goes bicycling. She rides road & mountain bikes with mostly men, has heard, constantly hears locker room like talk and has just come to expect that from men, even friends. She’s long past tired of it, expects it, accepts it, perhaps as fundamental to men driven by an evolutionary imperative to procreate. Life pursuing its continued existence. Her words.
She thus found it easy to excuse, even dismiss Trump’s sexist & misogynist rhetoric.
She’s not on Facebook. Nor Twitter. Sees them as unhealthy wastes of time, makes no excuses for Trump’s words there.
She reads NYT & WSJ, questions and dislikes their biases, reads them anyway. Listens to NPR. Asked if I knew the show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! She said I sounded like Peter, one of the hosts.
Talk to people. Ask questions rather than making assumptions. Find out how they came to think and believe what they do. Everybody has a background, everybody has context. Find out what you have in common as well as your differences. Accept that it’s ok to have both.
We discussed and debated many things: eating healthier vs acquired diabetes and cancer treatments, personal choice & responsibility, healthcare systems in various countries, double standards, false equivalences in the media, political correctness, bullying, political contribution corruption, PEOTUS cabinet nominations from big money, women’s health and women’s rights.
She’s convinced Roe v. Wade is solid, that states’s efforts are a bigger threat. “Don’t mess with Texas? No, Texas is a *mess*!” in reference to their recent anti-choice legislation.
We talked about Obama commuting Chelsea Manning’s sentence. We discussed the ethics of whistleblowing. She wasn’t familiar with the details about Snowden. I suggested she check out the film. Apparently it was available on the in-flight entertainment system. So she started watching it as I watched Mr. Robot. Small steps.
I have much more to write about this, from my yoga beginnings, to gratitude to all those that have supported and encouraged me along the way as I take this next step.
I’m looking forward to completing my 200 hour teacher training, and leading some yoga @YxYY 2017, this time as a certified yoga teacher.
After we announced at the end of our demo that we had already open sourced all the code for any developer to interoperably “colorize” tweets, we’re pretty sure the shocked faces of the judges clearly communicated strongly decreasing chances that Twitter annotations were going to be made broadly available to developers. (Which they never were).
Congratulations @SocialWebWG and in particular editor @aaronpk and the entire @IndieWebCamp community for incubating⁵ and selfdogfooding⁶ Webmention on their own sites.
Very different races, and all longer (and more vertical climb).
Looking back further, only the second half of 2015 (pre-injury) had faster race paces. Before that, my 2015 Bay to Breakers pace was a slower 10:27/mi. And before that, my only faster race pace was at Bay to Breakers 2014.
In addition, my running watch recorded my fastest mile today at 9:02, just three seconds off my recent timed track mile of 8:59.
It was sprinkling as we filed into the Hot Chocolate 15k corrals. Soon after they announced the course had been shortened, to 9.82 kilometers (if I heard correctly) because sea water from the Pacific Ocean had flooded the Great Highway, the middle out & back portion of the 15k course!
After crossing the start, we wound our way around various twists and turns in Golden Gate Park. All the roads were familiar, however the rain and energetic crowd made it quite a different experience.
I had never run in the rain when I ran my first half marathon nearly three years ago (Kaiser 2014), where there was rain, wind, and wind chill. I was stubborn more than resilient. I had set my mind on running the race, despite the discomfort. Still, that didn’t stop me from complaining afterwards, and my sore swollen knees made me question whether it was a good idea in the first place.
In over three years of working out with November Project, whether in pouring rain here @Nov_Project_SF in Alamo Square, or running up Harvard Stadium Steps in sub-freezing temperatures with @Nov_Project_BOS, I’ve had the opportunity to learn and adapt to working out in more and more extreme weather conditions.
Rain was expected today, and yet the forecast kept changing, even as I went to sleep last night. I double-checked this morning, plenty of rain expected, low 50s F temperatures. From all my NovermberProject rain running experiences, I knew shorts and a tanktop would be fine, as long as I started with a longsleeve for the first 10-15 minutes while I warmed up, wrapping it around my waist for the remainder of the race.
Aside from a brief walk to take off my longsleeve, and another to grab a water cup at the first fuel station, I ran the entire 5.9 miles non-stop.
It felt great. Yes it was humid, which perhaps posed the biggest breathing challenge. In spite of which, I felt strong, and felt good pushing myself to that limit. Whenever the rain picked up, I just smiled, because I was ready for this.
At two different spots on the course, I spotted fellow NPSF friends Tony and Krissi, getting a boost from their smiles, cheering, and encouragements. With less than two miles to go, Krissi jumped in and helped run me and another NPSF runner, Cara, up the last big hill.
As we crested that final big hill, I got another boost knowing the finish wasn’t far, and sprinted downhill past quite a few in the crowd. At the end of the downhill I could see the lights of the finish line, just a short uphill away.
The elapsed time on my watch read just under an hour. I pushed a little harder up that last hill, and could tell I wasn’t quite going to make it before the hour turned over. However, it did help, and I could tell I was close enough to push and finish before another minute went by. Finished at 1:00:52, and kept running a bit to extend my distance.
I grabbed a bottled water near the end of the finish chute, and realized I somehow missed getting a medal! I ran back through the flow of finishers, picked up my medal, and then saw NP friends Ava, Holly, and Stephanie running alongside the course (having completed their race a while ago).
I dodged back out through the crowd and sprinted to catch up to them. Apparently they were finishing out their total 15k! I joined them for a bit, finished 6ish miles myself, and returned to the Golde Gate Park Music Concourse, finding more friends.
We picked up our finishers chocolate kits which were amazing. A cup of hot chocolate, with optional marshmellow. The rain was falling harder and colder, so we took refuge near the concourse’s underground parking area. The finisher’s large plastic chocolate mug included a receptacle of chocolate fondue, into which I dipped the included chocolate cookies, a rice crispy treat, and a banana. Delicious.
All in all, a good start to the 2017 racing season.
Next: Surf City Half Marathon, Huntington Beach, California, in four weeks.
That’s a small salad plate, long having learned that an early light dinner works best the night before a race. Made it all, except for the kale beet salad which came directly from Haight Street Market.
Missing no fewer than three events I wanted to attend tonight, acro yoga lessons, a friend’s birthday party, and another creative celestial party. But I also know from experience that it helps to have a quiet, peaceful, and early evening the night before a race. Grateful for possibilities.
It’s sometimes difficult to grasp the ramifications of choices among possibilities, yet it’s important to at least choose and act, rather than either not deciding, or deciding to do so many things that none can be done well.
First homemade eggs & salad of 2017. Took 15 min. #brunch #nofilter
About time I cooked eggs this year. It’s been a strangely busy start to 2017, still don’t feel like I’m done with 2016 even though 2016 itself is done.
Going to keep reinforcing healthy habits and hope that helps.
34:37 NPSF PR Wednesday yesterday morning, 0:30 faster than October, including ~30s starting new running watch.
Had stayed up late, and did not run to the park. First hill didn’t feel too bad, kept the tail of the pack in sight, and caught up on the North side downhill, passing a few people on the East side downhill, only to fall behind on stairs. Each subsequent lap felt a bit better as I warmed up, yet I slowly lost sight of those in front of me (apparently at least one friend did only two laps), except for one runner. She and I traded back and forth until she passed me on the last South side uphill and I couldn’t catch her on the steps to the finish.
It was supposed to rain but did not. Quite humid though. Temperature was about 55F, so that wasn’t a problem. However once again (like October) I only slept slept 4-5 hours the night before.
I was also only 7 seconds slower than my August PR Wednesday time of 34:30. Though still far off my 31:00 from June of last year.
On the positive side: * no soreness in either knee before or after * breathing seemed fine (still had to hike most of the West side hill) * downhills felt great, despite not being able see much from the darkness and fogged up glasses (darkness and high humidity was not a combination I expected, and I forgot my headlamp).
I know what I need to do for next time: * Get 8 hours of sleep for the two nights before * Bring my headlamp * Be ready with the last "click" needed to start my running watch And from that much faster June time: * 1 orange Clif shot blok * espresso en route at Starbucks * #nopasoparungang 2+ mile warmup to Alta Plaza park
And of course keep going to Friday hills and Tuesday track to push my breathing vs. effort limits in the mean time.
Flashed my first V3 of 2017 (orange). #smallvictories #fromwhereidefygravity #nofilter
Went on to flash another V3 and then solve one more V3 first attempt this session after watching someone else do the start, and successfully mimicking them.
After a knee injury late 2015 put me out of running for the first quarter or so of 2016, #recovery was the defining theme for me for the year.
That broken start to 2016 led me to focus and #repair & #rebuild much from the past (perhaps itself in bits).
I feel recovered in some ways, stronger in others, in particular in resolve. Not able to run as much, I pushed myself do more in everything else, other adventures, at work, other projects, and traveled thousands more miles than last year in the process of doing so.
Despite ending 2016 on a fairly strong note personally, I expect this year to be perhaps the most unpredictable and challenging year I’ve seen.
I haven’t yet been able to pick just one word for 2017. I know 2017 will require active vigilance and resistance. I know to be effective at both, I need to do so sustainably and balanced with growth & joy.
Figuring all that out will be my focus for this first week of 2017.
Happy New Year and may you find the strength and peace of mind to balance action & acceptance, risk & self-care, shining brightly & growing sustainably.
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