COVID and Readiness to Train 🦠🏃♂️🚴♂️🏊♂️
With two school-age kids, this seemed inevitable:
All things considered, my symptoms aren’t too bad, which I’m grateful for. Nonetheless, I’ve mostly been in bed for a couple of days to properly recover.
Since I’ve been monitoring my Readiness To Train (RTT) score, I was curious to see how COVID would appear in the metrics.
Thursday morning was the first indication that something was wrong. I completed what felt like a reasonably strong swim workout, only to suddenly feel really drained of energy while walking home from the pool.
After dragging myself home, we found out my son’s friend had tested positive. So, both he and I took a rapid test that confirmed we were infected.
Thursday night was peak symptoms for me, producing an abysmal RTT.
All morning in bed on Friday helped a lot and then a much better sleep last night layered improvement on top.
Today’s RTT seems rather optimistic to me though. My planned intensity included a two hour bike ride and 20k run. Those are not happening! Today’s planned intensity will be watching the season finale of Severance in my pyjamas.
My experience with RTT is that it typically reinforces how I actually feel with, perhaps, the occasional early warning. Basically a second opinion that reinforces my intuition. But when we disagree, like now, I’m definitely following how I feel.
The weirdness of Raised by Wolves shifted from intriguing to distracting between seasons 1 and 2. Although the second half of season 2 was better than the first, overall the season wasn’t successful for me
Although it seems like a luxury, $70 for always dry shoes is worth it. Especially with spring weather 🏃♂️
Completed an FTP test this morning. Important to do, though super challenging 😓🚴♂️
I’m letting my Pinboard subscription expire. I’ve added 3,500 bookmarks since 2010 and the service was valuable when actively engaged in research. I haven’t looked up a bookmark in the past few years though. Now I’ll rely on Apple Notes and Micro.blog Bookmarks
New trail running shoes 🏃♂️
I added a new pair of running shoes to my closet: Saucony Switchback 2. They are a lightweight trail shoe with the BOA Fit System (rather than laces) and good treads for gripping.
I took them out for a 10k run around the neighbourhood. Not quite the right conditions, since I was mostly on sidewalks and they’re trail running shoes. Despite that, the shoes felt fast and light. For the first couple of kms, I felt a bit like I was slapping my feet on the ground, since I’m used to more cushioning and my feet weren’t making contact quite when I was expecting them to. I didn’t take long to adjust to a better form though. I’m curious to see what the transition back to my usual shoes is like. Presumably with practice, I’ll be able to switch back and forth easily.
Overall, I’m happy with the new shoes and look forward to getting out to an actual trail with them.
Just fixed a small issue with my Elite Suito bike trainer: the magnets stopped working, so the resistance couldn’t be automatically adjusted. This is obviously a major feature of the trainer and particularly important for Zwift rides.
Fortunately, a quick conversation with their support team identified a fix that required replacing the trainer’s circuit board. Having recently built a gaming PC with my son, this wasn’t too complicated, though someone with less experience would likely be intimidated. The process took about 20 minutes and I took the bike for a quick Zwift ride to confirm all was well.
Although I’d much have preferred that the trainer hadn’t broken, Elite support was quick and helpful.
I’m really enjoying these videos by Mark Lewis on fitness and motivation
I appreciate his message of only striving for above average and carefully considering the trade offs between training and the rest of your interests.
Finished reading: Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse is a great story about a monster hunter on a Navajo reservation after a climate apocalypse📚
Finished reading: The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi is a fun “soldiers in space” book with some interesting ethical concepts📚
Finished reading: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers is really good. A strong emotional core with an intriguing sci-fi structure📚
One of the highlights from last night’s Stout Beer Festival: Beeramisu Imperial Stout from the Third Moon and Bellwoods breweries
Although I was disappointed to miss out on attending Micro Camp March 2022, I’ve enjoyed catching up on the videos. A nice diversity of topics, each very well presented
I think I liked season 1 of Raised by Wolves? A curious mix of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror that overall was more about mood than plot. I’m not sure what to make of the ending yet.
Integrating MindNode, Reminders, and Mail 🗺 ✅ 📧
I’m still using MindNode for task management. Seeing all of my tasks, projects, and areas of focus on one mind map has been really helpful, especially since it is integrated with Reminders.
One challenge has been integration with Mail, given the majority of my tasks arrive via email. Despite Apple’s seemingly inexplicable decision to isolate Mail from the usual sharing actions found in other apps, they at least allow drag and drop from Mail into Reminders, which adds a link to the original email message. This works with MindNode too. If you drag an email onto a node, it will add a link there. The issue is that when you synchronize MindNode with Reminders, the links to emails from MindNode no longer work when shown in Reminders.
After tinkering around for a bit, there’s a relatively easy fix. When you drag a mail message to a node in MindNode, it adds a url that looks something like:
message:%3CYT2PR01MB9@YT2PR01MB9447.CANPRD01%3E
Editing the link to add // after message:makes the link work in Reminders, while also continuing to work in MindNode.
I’m not sure why MindNode creates a url that isn’t accessible from other apps (perhaps a security feature?). At least this fix, though a bit annoying, allows for a more seamless integration between Mail, MindNode, and Reminders.
As a follow up to my post about swimming with an Apple Watch, I’ll note that the watch only records activity when your arm is moving. So, things like kicking drills aren’t recorded. Not a serious issue for me, though this can make stats inaccurate.
Despite this, I still appreciate the simplicity of using the Apple Watch to train for triathlons.
