SEVEN YEARS OF RUNNING

Today is my seven year “run-iversary.”

Seven years ago today a good friend texted me from a party, saying someone there challenged him to run a mile in eight minutes (this was seven years ago, so details might be fuzzy). He ran it, though it took longer than eight minutes. I tried it, and it took me 13 minutes, and I had problems walking down stairs for the next week.

According to Strava, since I started in 2016 I’ve gone on 1,419 runs, for 5,160 miles, in 1,006 hours, and climbed 229,692′ in elevation.

Biggest thing I learned? Slow down. Savor every fucking footstep, because one day each place you run will be the last time you ever run it.

Here’s some photos I took from runs over the years:

ELBOWS KNEES AND HEADS

What the hell are we doing?

“Victor has found that projects pop up very late at night, so he is in the habit of waking every three hours or so to check his queue. When a task is there, he’ll stay awake as long as he can to work. Once, he stayed up 36 hours straight labeling elbows and knees and heads in photographs of crowds — he has no idea why.”

From ‘AI Is a Lot of Work,’ all about the for-real humans that make AI seemingly work.

“Work stripped of all its normal trappings: a schedule, colleagues, knowledge of what they were working on or whom they were working for. In fact, they rarely called it work at all — just “tasking.” They were taskers.”

We’re doomed.

UNENDING BLOAT

I know social media is a constant bombardment of images, video, and text, but I think the most jarring part is how it’s all different.

So for me it’s bike, anti-work, bands, podcast clips in audio form, cookies, more bikes, cool camper vans, bands, bands, bands, coffee…

It reminds me a little bit of flipping through the cable TV channels back in the day, but with even less friction. And it’s not just 75 or 100 channels, it’s unlimited. You can sit there for HOURS and (probably) never see the same thing twice.

It’s like sitting there with a bag of chips, or (for me) a bag of cookies. I can just mindlessly consume them with zero thought. But then afterwards, I’ve got nothing of value, I’ve lost time, and I feel bloated.

KEEP OUT

I’ve been through this abandoned tunnel multiple times over the years, dating back to the 2000s at the least. We’d park nearby, do a few miles on our mountain bikes, and then come here to cool off and enjoy the scenery on the other side.

Not sure what happened. Must not have been too bad, right? Or else there’d be a real fence here, I’d figure.

GOING OUTSIDE

I deleted my Twitter account 15 days ago, but I think I watched 10 hours of video on Instagram yesterday. Not literally, but it sure feels like it.

When we used to watch four hours of television a day, which would been four or five shows as we flipped around, now we watch four hours of videos on social media platforms and it’s from 10,000 different things.

After a nice six mile run yesterday (photo above), I was wiped out. So in the evening I was scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling. This kept me up, and then I got to bed late, which messed up my morning plans to travel for another adventure on Sunday morning.

Today I deleted Instagram from my phone. I feel like I gotta delete my account and just be done with it.