Farewell to June 2011: a pain in the butt

Workout notes
My shoulder ached just a little bit last night (sleeping on the floor?) so I decided to skip swimming today. Instead I did a 2 mile run, 2 mile walk plus yoga around the hike and bike trail.
Result: the 2 mile run, while slow, was nice and steady. I was ok with it given the heat. Then I walked and right at about 36 minutes (3.5 miles) the butt fired up (minor tingles otherwise). This wasn’t severe pain, but the butt had reached its current limit.

Hence 25-30 minutes will be my limit in the near future; the idea is to stop before this happens. Note: I was somewhat sore from doing…and this is embarrassing to admit, lunges with tiny weights. So those will have to be a part of my routine. I know what to do.

So, my plan will be 3-4 swims (1500 to 2200 yards each), 3-4 easy runs (2 miles), 3-4 easy walks (12-14 minutes per mile, 2-3 miles), 2 yoga classes, 2 upper body weight sessions, 2 lower body weight sessions (can be combined with the upper body weight session. All of these workouts will be between 30-60 minutes each, and I’ll probably double up on these; perhaps two from this mix every day. I’ll attempt to do this for a 2-3 months with an eye to working up to being able to start training again.

I won’t aim for a goal event in 2011 but instead shoot for something in 2012. But I admit that I’d love to do the McNotAgain trail 30 miler at the end of October, if possible. But I’ll be doing that in a “just finish” mode.

Yoga:

(click on the thumbnail to see the full photo)

This is a nice set of poses; if you read the caption I get a nice “shout out” (one of the links is to one of my photos). It is always nice to see the enthusiasm spread.

Posts
This is an uplifting article about frogs; there are many cute photos here. Here is but one of them:

The site contains excellent photographs of many species of Bornean frogs. What struck me most is the resemblance of many of the depicted species to Central American frogs, especially the Costa Rican ones with which I am most familiar. Our toad friend above reminds me of the gracile-limbed Central American toads of the genus Atelopus. (Superb photos of the various Costa Rican frogs mentioned can be found in Jay Savage’s magisterial The Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica [see references] and at Costa Rican Frogs, a site I just discovered.). The following one is a more typical-looking toad, resembling various Central American Bufo.

Upshot: though evolution is mostly driven by reproductive successes (given some random factors), what survives in a given region is, in part, determined by the nature of the region. Hence if you have several ecologically similar regions that are so far apart that there is no gene transfer between the living organisms in those regions, those organisms will evolve in similar ways. Hence genetically distinct organisms will end up looking similar to each other and behaving in similar ways.

Evolution of the eye This is an interesting article about a recent discovery and what is says about the evolution of eyesight (by Matthew Cobb).

Religion
Take this Bible quiz. I got 37 out of 50 questions right, though I admit that at least one of the questions was “dirty pool”; take the quiz to find out.

Education
Here is a tool by which one can see which colleges are the most expensive (sticker tuition and net tuition) by category.

Politics I saw some of the Obama press conference. The House Democrats seem pleased.