Ohio Falls Bridge Painting, Part II
I am starting on this by doing thin washes and mostly working from the top down. At this point, I am just using a lot of burnt umber, some yellow ochre, raw sienna, cerulean blue, french ultramarine and Permalba. I am mixing it with Turpenoid, which I do not like only because I cannot smell it. I would actually rather work with something I can smell. That way, I know if I am inhaling too much of it.
Today I brought the painting and easel in from my garage to my living room and painted for a couple hours, taking my time. Then I sealed up my palettes (a couple of Chinet paper plates) with some Press’n Seal and moved it all back out into the garage. Most of the paint I had from many years ago was no longer usable, but the brushes have held up well. If “real life” work is not too much of a killer this week, I hope to do some more work on this throughout the week. That way, when it comes to posting Part III next week, there will be more to look at!
Today I completed a 13 mile run, in keeping with my training plan for the 2008 Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon. It was the longest I have run since April 28, 2001 (last time I ran the mini). I am pleased that I made it through the run, but I now know that my goal of completing the mini in under 2 hours is probably not achievable. I thought I ran fairly strong, and I took a one minute walk break every 9 minutes, carried water with me and hydrated correctly, ate a bowl of Kashi hot cereal beforehand for energy, etc. But I must have bonked somewhere around mile 10. All I know is that by the time I had gone around 11.6 miles, it seemed like I was running in slow motion, maybe because I was! The last two miles seemed killer to me.
I kind of felt this coming, psychologically. I have not been losing weight like I was, in fact, I have even gained a couple of pounds in the past couple weeks [lousy diet lately], and I have been having the winter/gray skies/all work and no play blues. So building up to this day, I just felt a little anxiety. I woke up around 4 in the morning last night feeling like I needed to have some new music on my iPod to just get me through the run. I downloaded about 10 songs, most of them old funk/R&B classics. I have a huge weakness for early 70s stuff, especially soul funk. Then I created a playlist on my iPod called “Get me thru” and loaded the new songs into it, without listening to any of them because I wanted sort of a “surprise” factor, and mixed in some stuff I already had, enough to last 2.5 hours. All I can say is thank god I did. I really don’t think I could have done this run if it weren’t for the music. And I know for a fact I would have just walked the last uphill half-mile if not for King Floyd’s “Groove Me.” What an awesome, awesome song! From the moment it starts out with a grunt, all the way to the very end, just absolute beauty.
And so, I title this post in honor of that song. King Floyd died a couple years ago but I owe him big time. For those of you interested in the song or maybe want to listen to it, click on this link to a page on the NPR website about it, and about Mr. Floyd. You can then click on another link to listen to the full song, in all its funky splendor. Maybe you will see what I mean, how it carried me up the hill and through the last half mile, and why I love it so.
Obligatory numbers (Yeah, I know. Slow.):
| Total Time (h:m:s) |
2:21:45 |
10:45 pace |
| Distance (mi) |
13.19 |
|
| Moving Speed (mph) |
5.6 avg. |
9.4 max. |
| Elevation Gain (ft) |
+967 / -964 |
|
| Temperature (F) |
30.8 F avg. |
32 F high |
| Wind Speed (mph) |
N 6.9 avg. |
N 8.1 max. |
Ohio Falls Bridge Painting, Part I
The canvas size is 36 x 24 inches, and I am working in oils. For the first step, I created a very light pencil drawing, and chose some rudimentary colors for a very thin wash. I will build up more color, detail and paint as the painting progresses, and post photos here of the progress. It’s great to be painting again. It may not be much to look at now, but hopefully by the time I am done with it, it will be. Regardless, the joy is in the doing. Oh, and reading my fellow blogger Michelle’s wonderful articles on her landscape painting has been very inspirational to me this time around. She is a fantastic artist. So thanks, Michelle!
Here is the original photo I took:
Ohio Falls Bridge
If you want to read more about the bridge, you can click this Wikipedia link.
No words but these, and some numbers.
| Total Time (h:m:s) |
2:07:51 |
10:39 pace |
| Distance (mi) |
12.00 |
|
| Moving Speed (mph) |
5.6 avg. |
8.1 max. |
| Elevation Gain (ft) |
+853 / -847 |
|
| Temperature (F) |
36.5F avg. |
37.4F high |
Hmm, this is only the second movie rating I have done since I started this blog, but I know I have seen more than Juno and No Country for Old Men recently. I will have to think about it and get back to you on the others, but these are the only two I have bothered to rate here so far. Two extremely different movies, but both are excellent. I just love movies. Soon I will post a list of 100 movies I have enjoyed. In the meantime, if you have not seen Juno, I very much would recommend it. No need to review it or provide a synopsis; there are plenty of sites on the internet that do just that. Nope, this is just a rating, and I do so thusly:
Rating: 
And here is my favorite quote from the movie, spoken to the title character by her father:
“Look, in my opinion the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what-have-you. The right person is still going to think the sun shines out of your ass. That’s the kind of person that’s worth sticking with.”
Today, in accordance with my training plan for the miniMarathon, I completed 11.25 miles. I followed the route below. I only had a general plan before I started out; I just added on some streets to a pretty consistently run 8-mile route to give me more miles.
I enjoyed the run. For me, there isn’t such a thing as running “junk miles.” I don’t run enough miles every week to warrant any such classification. Nor am I a speed demon. I do have specific goals in races, but those are mainly just side benefits to be out there, running. Here are my Garmin watch numbers for the day:
| Total Time (h:m:s) |
1:54:40 |
10:11 pace |
| Distance (mi) |
11.25 |
|
| Moving Speed (mph) |
5.9 avg. |
11.4 max. |
| Elevation Gain (ft) |
+940 / -941 |
|
| Temperature (F) |
42.8 F avg. |
42.8 F high |
| Wind Speed (mph) |
W 14.4 avg. |
W 14.9 max. |
The miles went a lot better for me than on last week’s 10 mile run. However, I am still inconsistent in my pace. Since I run alone, I think I have a tendency to not be as aware of an ideal, efficient pacing. Maybe I should advertise in the want-ads.
Wanted: Running partner to train for half marathon. Desire to run the mini in under 2 hours, so an experienced training partner who can help me achieve that goal would be a plus. Buy you a beer after.
Here is a table of my lap times today:
| Lap # |
Time (m:s) |
Distance (mi) |
| 1 |
7:57 |
1 |
| 2 |
9:19 |
1 |
| 3 |
10:02 |
1 |
| 4 |
11:56 |
1 (messed with earphones) |
| 5 |
10:05 |
1 |
| 6 |
10:06 |
1 |
| 7 |
10:02 |
1 |
| 8 |
10:12 |
1 |
| 9 |
11:17 |
1 |
| 10 |
10:30 |
1 |
| 11 |
11:02 |
1 |
| 12 |
2:06 |
0.22 |
Oh, a final, humorous side benefit of today’s training run. As I had mentioned in a previous post, I track my running on FitLinxx, a website that shares data with the Downtown YMCA where I work out. After I logged the humongous amount of calories I burned on the run, it put me into the number one spot in males my age there, as you can see in the graphic below. Eat your heart out, “Facility Users” and mwebster52, whoever you are. 
This morning I woke up feeling kind of blah. I didn’t sleep very well last night, and I feel like my energy level is low. I dallied a bit, checking email, etc., before I got out the front door to run. The weather was an improbable and incredible 66 degrees, and there were lightning flashes and several minutes of gentle rumbling thunder. It made for a great run. My body feels better and my spirits are higher than when I woke up.
I am not posting the numbers from my Garmin watch in a tabular format like I sometimes do (I am thinking I will only do that for longer runs from now on), but I did my normal 3.01 miles at a 9:25 pace. The rain is coming down heavier now, as I type this, and the thunder is picking up. I should have dallied more this morning.
Yesterday I completed a ten mile training run at Seneca and Cherokee Parks in Louisville, KY. I started out the run feeling a little out-of-sorts, a tad sluggish, and an hour later than I had planned. The rest of the run I felt somewhat fatigued. I am old enough to know–plenty old, in fact–that not every run is going to be a stellar experience. But I need to manage my running more efficiently. My laps have always been not as consistent as they should be, and yesterday it was quite evident that I need to pick a steady, workable pace and stick to it. By mile eight, I was totally out of gas. I ran on vapor from then on out. Those last two miles, I ran a 10:55 pace, but let me tell ya, it seemed a heck of a lot slower.
After the run, I went home, took a hot shower, and quite frankly, I have been lazy ever since. Tomorrow is another day. Obligatory training numbers from yesterday’s run:
| Total Time (h:m:s) |
1:41:04 |
10:01 pace |
| Distance (mi) |
10.08 |
|
| Moving Speed (mph) |
6.0 avg. |
10.3 max. |
| Elevation Gain (ft) |
+702 / -700 |
|
| Temperature (F) |
30.2 F avg. |
32 F high |
| Wind Speed (mph) |
SSE 7.5 avg. |
SSE 8.1 max. |
