Here’s some simple fan art animation inspired by Leo Laport’s This Week in Tech show I made 14 years ago, and which still makes me jump for joy when I see it.

I suppose one has to start somewhere. My animal drawing is still lacking, especially of those long-haired breeds. Still, I gave it my best attempt. Maybe I need to study some master paintings.
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This one of 32 by 32 pixels took me several hours and two iterations to complete.
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Creating portraits in pixel art reminds how important it is to be mindful while making art, not to just follow a recipe or rely on what you’ve done before. Each artwork has to be intuitive at first, then more contemplative as you continue. Then take a break, and start again, using one’s intuition.

More creativity, I suppose?
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I suppose it’s good to try being creative…
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My resting heart rate reached an all-time low of 42 beats per minute. Soon I’ll have to disable the low heart alarm on my watch, which has an (odd) lowest setting of 40 bpm. Mind you, I’m still overweight, quite a lot, so that resting heart rate is bound to drop a few bpm in the coming months. ❤️

Yesterday I ran a 10 km “race” in the heat of the day (30℃, 86℉), which is quite hot for traditional Dutch summers (though becoming norm with climate change). I wanted to run a half marathon, and was prepared with a cooling vest, but, apparently, this is a novelty, and I a fool to expect a race 🏃‍♂️

I now have a temporary free premium account with Strava, and am even less impressed than with Garmin Connect. Unless you like to flaunt with made up statistics to get some clout within the runner community, I don’t see any point in paying for a premium account.

24 marathons across 24 European countries in 2 months. This guy is just crazy, but in a nice way. He almost died during his first marathon from exposure, separated from his team (words were spoken, improvements discussed). See this YT video.

Today’s long run was (from the start) a bit of a bad run (see my result on Strava). It wasn’t so much the temperature, but the fact I wasn’t recovered (enough) from last Sunday’s intensive long run of 32 km. I had to walk the last 6 km. Better luck next time, in three weeks.🏃‍♂️

On my run this afternoon I saw a guy in winter clothing and mittens, while it’s 31℃ (88℉) in the shade 🫢 I thought myself being odd for running in hot weather, but, apparently, I didn’t even scratch the surface of strange 🤡 human behavior.

I looked into doing multiple marathons within a year. The best advice I found was:

• plan the marathon races far in advance, so you know what you’re up to
• concentrate on post-marathon recovery, especially the first week after a marathon (mostly non-running related activities: walk, cycle, swim)

🏃‍♂️

Yesterday I ran a 22 km race as part of a 32 km training session.

Around 8 o’clock in the morning I jogged 9 km, took a shower, dressed in my race outfit, drank a cup of coffee, grabbed my race gear, and jogged the kilometer between where I live and the track and field club, where the start of the Brabantse Wal Marathon was at 10:45 AM. I did the half marathon event, which actually was 22 km (900 m longer than the half of the 42,195 m marathon distance).

The course was mostly off-road, with some steep short climbs and stretches of loose sand, which I had practiced in the past couple of weeks. In the first kilometer there was a single track, and with 270 runners we got stuck now and then, as you would expect. After the field was more spread apart, single tracks were no longer a problem.

I kept a steady pace, though slower than usual, because of the 10 km pre-race jogging. While I struggled to keep from falling, the inevitable fall happened, giving me bruises on my left shoulder and knee. I couldn’t see that tree root on the heavily shaded path. It didn’t slow me down much (like a few seconds).

In the last five kilometers I ran on familiar territory and could pick up pace. The last 1600 m on the road I could pick up even more speed, sprinting in the last 300 m on the track towards the finish line.

The time wasn’t that impressive. But I hadn’t expected that anyway, because of the added distance, and because of the off-road bits that were rather challenging. The 32 km I did in less than 3 hours and 20 minutes I was proud of, especially because of the low average heart rate under warm conditions (21℃). Corrected for temperature (into a result with 8℃), this would have resulted in a 1 hour 50 minutes for a half marathon road race.

Now I will take a few days to recover with easy training. Next Sunday will be my next long run, 29 km at a more leisurely pace.

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I streamlined my followers list on Strava, by removing the athletes who didn’t have any running activities in the past 4 weeks, and whoever did activities (in a way) I’m not interested in. No use to follow inactive accounts, nor any fun to follow activities that only annoy or bore me.

I get why email newsletters are so popular. Most don’t understand RSS/newsreaders, while email is much easier. And if newsreaders are not allowed on the company computer, email always is. But why would anyone publish newsletters, besides promotion and “marketing” (actually, creeping on strangers)?

There’s this separate bike path in town where on one side (where’s a ditch) it’s full of butterbur, like weeds. After summer they’re always cut back to the ground, yet they keep coming back early summer.

Sun worshipers 🐱☀️

I know a physiotherapist who refuses to treat runners, because those are the worst patients. In those runners' minds, running is all about getting fit, so how can that make you sick? There’s no patience and a reluctance to see an injury as a serieus affliction that needs careful treatment. 🏃‍♂️

In just 12 days Runalyze dropped my estimated time in the marathon race by 4 minutes, while my marathon shape has reached 99%. By losing some of my excess weight slowly over the next 5 months, I might be able to lose a proportional amount of 15 minutes, provided I slowly speed up my training. 🏃‍♂️