I was going to head out for an evening's 5k jog when I noticed the Kevin Spacey movie "K Pax" about to start on the teev. Coincidentally, I had only just a little while before been reading part of Andy's Chicago training diary (for motivation ) where he mentioned seeing the very same movie and he had recommended it, so I stayed home and watched it instead, especially as I am a bit of a Kevin Spacey fan. And a fairly good flick it was too - moderately thought-provoking without being too challenging or weird. 6 or 7 out of 10 anyhow. It helps if you like Spacey of course. Or Jeff Bridges who plays the other main role.
Of course it had nothing to do with running other than a philosophical message about life in general - which in fact means it probably did have a lot in common with running even if it wasn't about running per se. Which is a very wordy way of saying that it left me inclined to go for my run anyway, which is what I did.
Truth to tell, I do a lot of my running late at night anyway. It's cooler, the streets are far less busy, and it gives you a nice feeling of solitude you can't get running in broad daylight, or so I reckon. And tonight was a lovely night for running. After a quite warm day, it was pleasantly cool with lots of stars and just a gentle gusting breeze cooling me down when I needed it. Perfect!
I have eschewed my original 5km course for a slightly longer one (5.2km)which instead of an uphill start and finish, has one long, gentle 1.3km uphill section in the middle, which I find better, as I don't much like coming home looking like I need an ambulance.
Actually, an ambulance went rushing past with its lights blazing on my run tonight. At least this one didn't slow down to check me out, as happened on another run recently. Terribly rude I thought... I wasn't even struggling at the time.
I took tonight's run quite slowly, as I'm still concentrating on building fitness and endurance, and won't seriously think about speed until I'm back down close to my ideal weight and running some reasonable distances again. I was pleased to feel quite strong however, and my time wasn't too bad (31:36), so in general I'm happy with my progress. Some shin and calf soreness however suggests I need a rest day, which will be easy as tomorrow is Monday, always my busiest day and an easy one in which to not run.
One thing I find a little perplexing is keeping my heart rate down to that 60%-70% of maximum heart rate that all the gurus recommend as being the core level for building endurance. As all the runs around here are hilly, I invariably find that all my runs end up with me averaging over 80% of maximum HR for the run - which is up in the anaerobic region usually associated with interval workouts. Short of actually walking large parts of my runs, I simply can't keep my heart rate that low. I could go to the local running track, but I find that soul-crushingly boring, and I'm so spoiled with magnificent runs from my front door that I can't bring myself to drive to flatter ground. So I've decided simply not to worry about it and just see what happens. Hills didn't do the Finns or Kenyans any harm, so I'll stick to it too.
I've been fiddling with my heart rate monitor recently and renewed my acquaintance with some features I hadn't availed myself of before. Turns out once you input some crucial data and let it do some tests on you, it can calculate your VO2max for you and also give you a reasonably accurate (not sure how you prove this mind) calorie burn count on your runs. For the record it says my VO2 max is currently 44 (OK but nothing special) and I burned 422 calories on my 5km run tonight.
But why on earth this would be of any interest to anyone else other than me I don't know, so perhaps I should quit before I descend into statistical hell.
Yea, it's them little End-Orphin critters . . . they get under yer skin and make y'do all kindsa crazy stuff.
Great, ain't it?
MLCM, I must say it's great to see you on this sort of diary form.
Your pleasure at a return to concerted running is obvious and welcome, not least because I'm not the only poor sod on here with a serious case of keyboard overload after uplifting runs
Spacey is superb, I'm a big fan of his work.
I saw K-Pax and found more in it than I had expected, much along the same lines you describe, ie commentary on life's opportunities, travelling in and out of each others' lives before moving on. At least that's what I remember. You obvioulsy know KS's work so I won't bore you with recommendations (most people have seen Se7en, American Beauty and The Usual Suspects anyway). But Jeff Bridges is a little more obscure. He made a movie with Robin Williams called The Fisher King (Dir. Terry Gilliam). It did little at the box office but has similar life-enhancing messages to K-Pax, is well crafted and has the bonus of a sassy performance from the lovely Mercedes Rhuel.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Oh yes, and two other Spacey movies I liked were "Shipping News" (although not half as good as the book of course) and a comparatively obscure TV movie called "Doomsday Gun" which was about the supergun that Iraq built way back before Gulf War I.
And I too am a big fan of "The Fisher King", which I thought brilliant and much under-rated. I think much of Gilliam's work is superlative - "Brazil" has to be one of the best movies ever, and "Twelve Monkeys" is easily Bruce Willis's best effort. And to think it all started with 1960s British TV comedy...
yes . . . but then that's something completely different
I haven't seen the Supergun movie.
Brazil was excellent - Robert DeNiro as Albert Tuttle, Subversive Plumber - sheer genius. And a good deal better account of 1984 than the John Hurt vehicle I thought.
Willis does step up in 12 Monkeys, as does Stowe in probably her best role.
I liked Willis's turn in Pulp Fiction, too. Ordinarily I can't stand him in leading roles - way too smug.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Is Jeff Bridges regarded as being 'obscure'? I thought he was considered quite a big star, though admittedly the films I remember him in are 80s - Jagged Edge, Fabulous Baker Boys..., er, that's it. He's still around. OK, just checked out http://www.imdb.com and he's been pretty busy recently, though I've not seen him for a while.
Kevin Spacey's a good guy. LA Confidential, Glengarry Glenross. Two of my favourite films. I think he bade me a Happy New Year in Hyde Park a few weeks ago. He's artistic director at the Old Vic here in London these days.
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
Spot on Andy - Jeff Bridges is certainly not obscure . . . I meant to say the Fisher King is one of his more obscure movies. I still don't understand why that didn't do better business . . . a little too close for comfort for the movie-going masses perhaps? The Big Lebowski was excellent, too.
LA Confidential is a great film - it has a real period feel, more so in some ways than the Merchant Ivory- style productions. The scene with Spacey and Guy Pearce in the diner with the 'hooker cut to look like Lana Tunrer is still a hooker' line is priceless. Certainly Russell Crowe has not reached the heights of Bud White since. Kim Basinger only exceeds her LA C performance in, naturally, Waynes World 2 I attended the London Premiere of WW2; sadly Ms Basinger did not
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Willis was good in Pulp Fiction I agree. When he's given an interesting character he's great, but some of the one-dimensional stereotyped stuff like "Mercury Rising" or "The Jackal" are rather a yawn.
Jeff Bridges is one of those actors who's been in heaps of stuff, but very little of it memorable. I guess "Fisher King" (in which he looks unfortunately like Kevin Costner) and "Starman" would be the pick of them.
Anyway, that's another perfectly good running thread hijacked!
To bring this thread back to the subject of running then...
Today's scheduled run very nearly didn't happen, and in hindsight really wasn't a good idea. It reached 39 degrees C here today (102 F) and was still over 30 when I finally headed out the door at 11 p.m. To make it worse, it was also quite humid, and despite being well hydrated, it simply was too hot to run. It was only a very short run, but it was tough work and far from enjoyable.
The worst thing though is that I've now got a very definite shin splint in the left leg and will have to rest it for a couple of days. Resting won't be a problem tomorrow as similar weather is forecast, and after that I'm off to Sydney for a couple of days, with way too many distractions to enable any running. So resting it will be easy, although it's a great shame as I was making great progress.
I guess the moral is that when you are carrying more weight than usual, you have to take it even easier than you think is reasonable to avoid injury. Luckily this isn't serious and I will be fine by the time I get back Saturday night, when hopefully I can go out for a short test run.
I've come to the conclusion that running in temperatures greater than 30 degrees C is not for me - it's way too easy to get heat-stroke. Maybe if I was supremely fit and accustomed to running more regularly in the higher temperatures it might be better, but for now it's a pointless risk. Hot runs are always bad runs, so I think jumping on the exercise bike in front of a fan for a bit of cross-training a far more sensible idea.
Or sitting in front of a bar in a nicely air-conditioned pub with my favourite beer on tap sounds even more appealing. Especially if the cricket is on the big screen. Sigh.
Speaking of my favourite beer, they did a bit of impressive temporary advertising in these parts recently. Impressive enough to take a photo at least... this taken from my front yard.
. . . worry me. They appear without warning and there's little you can do to shake 'em off, except rest, which is not something we like to think about.
It's weird MLCM - there you are sweating buckets and in danger of evaporation and here we are having to keep moving in case we freeze to the pavement. Neither is desirable, although I think we're better off - at least we warm up after a bit of running. Still, sounds like you've got some excellent remedies lined up - I particularly like the sound of the last couple.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Hi MLCM, shame about the shin splints. You could try jogging through them, and taking it easy on the hills. Regarding your heart rate, I agree that it's a bit soul destroying trying to keep within that range. Really though, 80% is still aerobic, at the top end of the scale but still aerobic. Do you set the zones you want to work in? I have found that when I set the excercise set to between 60 & 65% it's hard to keep within the zone. If, however, I just use the basic set and run at a very comfortable pace, then it's easier. God knows why. How do you know your max? My hrm says mine is 180BPM, I was running an average of 181 on Sunday and have seen my HR as high as 196 so what the HRM says is not always accurate - on the test side - the recording of heart rate yes.
Hi RB - I've given up trying to work within the zones, although I do still take a mild interest afterwards in how long I spent in each zone, but it's not something that is particularly useful at my current level of running.
I use a max HR (183) calculated by the HRM, and I'd say it was fairly much correct because once I get over the 95% mark I have the insatiable urge to buy more life insurance
But anyway I'm glad you call 80% aerobic, because I have to agree that I think that's the case too - certainly I can run reasonably comfortably at that level, which suggests it's primarily aerobic.
What I really like about the HRM is that it gives me another means of verifying my progress without having to use the stopwatch. So I can go for a long slow run, and compare my heart rate with previous slow runs instead of being forced to try and run faster all the time in order to measure progress. If you multiply your average HR for a run by the pace per kilometre/mile, you get a crude, but handy little performance index of the run, and can actually compare any two runs that way. But I'm really getting into number madness teritory now. I must start going to Stats Anonymous meetings again... at the moment I'm averaging less than 1.23 meetings per month, and then I'm only staying for 67% of the meetings total duration...
A statistics student was completely hung over on the day of his final exam. It was a true/false test, so he decided to flip a coin for the answers. At the end of the two hours, all the students had left except for the hungover student.
The examiner walks up saying, "Time's up son. Anyway, if you are just flipping a coin for your answers, what is taking you so long?"
The student replies, "Sssh, I'm checking my answers!"
(23-01-2005, 03:00 PM)Sweder Wrote: Spacey is superb, I'm a big fan of his work.
I saw K-Pax and found more in it than I had expected, much along the same lines you describe, ie commentary on life's opportunities, travelling in and out of each others' lives before moving on. At least that's what I remember. You obvioulsy know KS's work so I won't bore you with recommendations (most people have seen Se7en, American Beauty and The Usual Suspects anyway). But Jeff Bridges is a little more obscure. He made a movie with Robin Williams called The Fisher King (Dir. Terry Gilliam). It did little at the box office but has similar life-enhancing messages to K-Pax, is well crafted and has the bonus of a sassy performance from the lovely Mercedes Rhuel.
Two old movies I have finally seen recently brought this old thread to mind.
Firstly I saw The Usual Suspects for the first time - not sure why I had missed this one, but was finally prompted to see it by the excellent Movielens website. After a frankly tedious and confusing opening 15 minutes during which I nearly gave up on this film, it turned into a beauty - possibly one of Spacey's best. What I thought was rather ordinary acting on his part was in fact part of the deal - a very clever flick.
The other one was another Jeff Bridges film, Seabiscuit. I had probably avoided this one because it was both a feel good movie and a film about a horse. Not a particularly beguiling combination I had thought. But it was excellent, not least of all because of Jeff Bridges fab performance. Check it out - it's a surprisingly good movie.
Has anyone seen Spacey's made-for-TV movie Recount?
Saw Spacey in '21' - a card hustler Vegas number featuring Spacey as a professor of Math/ Maths (oh-oh ...) and his coerced students ripping off various Sin City casinos. Larry Fishburn steals the show as the hard-bitten security chief watching the pits. Good fun, none too challenging and a fair turn from KS. Far from his finest though.
Usual Suspects bears a second look MLCMan; you'll find that even with the most helpful summary in the cop's office you probably missed a few cracking details along the way. As you say, it's made that way, which makes it a darned clever film.
Unable to sleep whilst away last week I caught a cracking French film Ne le dis à personne (Tell no-one). I was spell-bound - perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, the still of the night or simply the edgy writing and excellent performances. Might also have been the presence of the sublime Kristin Scott-Thomas. One I'm sure to revisit.
On the flight home watched the brutal yet brilliant thiller Largo Winch - also featuturing talented multilinguist and recently-revealed top Sweder eye-candy KST. Mmm ... sorry, I need a moment ...
Think Bourne Identity with brains, and bells on.
Last but not least (apologies if mentioned in a previous post) The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke's BAFTA-winning turn as a burned-out WWF-style character. I didn't expect much, not being a big fan of grown men in lycra Mankinis, yet was blown away by Rourke's pathos-fuelled performance. Corny perhaps, in a Rocky kinda way, but, in my opinion, a better film. Plus Marisa Tomei playing a struggling single mum stripper helps things along quite nicley.
Coming up: District 9. Looks excellent.
Turkey of the year: Terminator Salvation. FFS just stop it - it's done
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Whilst on the subject of fil-ums, you gotta go and see Ice Age3 in 3D.
If you've never seen an animated 3D film, go now! Ok you get given those stupid glasses, but the results are amazing.
The film itself is for kids obviously (cute characters), but it also has plenty of grown-up quips that go waaay over the kids' heads but will have you reeling.
I'm sure the pedants amongst us will advise whether I have used the apostrophe correctly in the last sentence...
K Pax-ian running
) where he mentioned seeing the very same movie and he had recommended it, so I stayed home and watched it instead, especially as I am a bit of a Kevin Spacey fan. And a fairly good flick it was too - moderately thought-provoking without being too challenging or weird. 6 or 7 out of 10 anyhow. It helps if you like Spacey of course. Or Jeff Bridges who plays the other main role. 
I attended the London Premiere of WW2; sadly Ms Basinger did not 
