young me, now me

1960


2010

I was squeamish about wearing white socks and sandals but in the interests of recreating a photo of me from fifty years ago I reluctantly pulled them on. Please note, the ridiculous facial expression is deliberate!

saucony progrid stabil cs running shoe

My arch pain has subsided enough to run and I've been back at it for three weeks. I have realised that my exisiting shoes have inadequate cushioning for longer runs and are far too flexible. I feel the root of my foot injury has been my low arches combined with over-use and the wrong shoe this year, so, after plenty of research I bought these online from Wiggle in the UK. I'm familiar with the brand and confident about sizing as I run in Saucony shoes.

Construction is solid and build-quality excellent. They feel heavy and rigid for a running shoe and make my Saucony ProGrid 8s feel decidedly lightweight. Sole cushioning is deep, firm and comfortable on hard surfaces. The ProGrid Stabils have an internal arch support strap which grips as you tighten the laces and holds the foot in line.

At first I found them a little "clumpy" and was conscious of the extra weight but they are comfortable. Time will tell if they can give the arch support I need. The biggest difference is the medial side of the sole which is flat to the road rather than arched as the following comparison of the right shoes shows.


NEW SHOE (right)


OLD SHOE (right)

This week I have run three times - six or seven miles each time and my initial reaction is positive. I still have some arch pain but maybe that will go eventually. For the past three weeks back on the road I have been adjusting my gait to compensate for the weak arch and have a number of little niggles as a result. Having run in the new shoes for the first time this week, there is some tenderness on the outside of my left sole where the new foot strike feels different.

Needless to say after such a long lay-off my times are way down and my stamina is poor. None of this is helped by the soaking humidity, daily temperatures in the high twenties and a dose of something a few days ago which put me to bed with nausea for twenty-four hours and left me with a weak appetite. I'm returning to normal now so hopefully next week will be easier on my muscles, heart and lungs!

heat wave

Sunrise at 5:30am casts long sharp shadows heralding another day of blistering temperatures. By early afternoon it's twenty nine degrees Celsius with a stifling hot breeze, yet we are cooler than much of the rest of Canada. In central parts the "humidex" (I'm sure we didn't have that when I was small) is forty three degrees Celsius.

This is rather nice for someone like me who enjoys both hot and cold weather. However the heat and humidity sap energy, not useful when you are returning to running after an eight week injury break. There is still an ache in my foot but nothing like the previous severe pain. At the end of yesterday's five mile run I was footsore, heat-exhausted and somewhat dehydrated.

This morning the foot twinged when I first walked but eased up later. The latest setback has been lower back pain so nasty that you would laugh to see me attempt to regain the perpendicular from a sitting or lying position. I believe my gait is compensating for the foot injury and putting unexpected muscle strain on my back.

I have ordered some new running shoes with high tech "motion control" features that support the arches and guide the foot securely from heel to toe. I am keen for them to arrive soon as I have high hopes for them.

the injured foot

A heavy running schedule for April and May have taken their toll. My last run was five weeks ago -eleven miles on the Confederation Trail. Pain set in on the top of my foot so severely that I couldn't put my full weight on the left foot. I self-diagnosed Extensor Tendinitis as the likely cause and tried ice, ibuprofen gel and rest. Additionally I used the TENS machine (Transcutaneous Electronic Nerve Stimulation) that I originally bought a decade ago for relief from fibromyalgia.

Tendons have a limited blood supply so are notoriously slow to heal. TENS stimulates muscle and tendon at the cellular level and is thought to release pain relieving agents as well as to encourage growth; icing tricks the body into survival mode and it delivers extra blood to the cold area; rest avoids worsening the damage of course.

After a week the pain began to ease but running was out of the question and I began to get fidgety from the lack of exercise. Michelle reminded me that the community sports centre in Stratford offers free gym facilities. We took the kids there one Friday morning for the pre-school playgroup (also free, including refreshments) and I slipped upstairs to investigate the exercise equipment.

There are two running/walking lanes around the perimeter and a rank of about a dozen instruments of torture, mostly weights. However my eye was caught by two ellipticals and two bikes. Having arrived suitably attired, I leapt aboard an elliptical and began "running" without the impact or the foot tension. The cardio-vascular workout was exciting and I felt relieved that here was a way to maintain my fitness for the time being. Since then I have used the elliptical and the bike daily, pushing my heart rate to one hundred and fifty beats per minute and burning over seven hundred calories in an hour.

It has become a ritual to pull on my sports gear, take my mp3 player and drive the fifteen minutes to Stratford. I have come to recognise the regular faces, the old and the young, the slow walkers and the fast runners, the weight crunchers and the lazy cyclists, the flabby and the toned! I set my mp3 player to random and work hard until salty sweat is stinging my eyes and dripping from my chin. I have the windows down on the drive home and look forward to a deep, hot bath.

I can walk without too much discomfort for most of the day now but I can't run yet. I have tried an occasional quick mile around the gym track and the pain returns, so for the next few weeks at least, I will have to release my endorphins on the elliptical!

music unpacked

This is my second CD carousel. I sold the first when I returned briefly to the UK in 2008. Since then my CDs have been boxed up in storage and the time was now right to open the boxes and get them all out. So, here they are on discreet display. The revolving shelf alone weighs over a hundred pounds and moves slowly but smoothly to give access to all four sides.

It's great to have my entire collection at my fingertips and I'm revisiting a lot of music both from the last few years and from long ago. My CD player and amplifier hide behind glass below the TV from where they also perform DVD duty. The armchair is strategically positioned between the shelf and the electronics so that I can plug in my headphones without stretching the lead uncomfortably.

My DVDs are all out on show now too. There is a nice mixture of Films, TV Drama and classic comedy. As we don't subscribe to cable or satellite, DVD viewing is almost nightly entertainment. I order British TV box sets from Amazon UK who neatly reduce the price for overseas orders to cancel VAT (British sales tax). That way if I get stung for import duty here in Canada at least I am not paying the tax twice!

headphones

I like to hear every last detail in the music I listen to. I certainly want to hear the most sophisticated sound my budget will permit. I don’t think that quite qualifies me as an audiophile but it does mean I research equipment carefully before investing.

I play CDs on a NAD 541i or Cambridge Audio DVD89 player through a NAD C350 amplifier powering Bowers & Wilkins DM601 speakers. The sound is mighty impressive, clear and able to go unbelievably loud. I like to listen loud and immerse myself in the music. That was fine in my house but somewhat inappropriate for a small apartment.

I haven’t listened to music “properly” for over eighteen months. Most of my CD collection is still in storage but that is about to change. I have ordered shelving to house a lifetime's collection of CDs and DVDs and some serious listening will soon ensue. After several days reading reviews and comparing prices I opted for a pair of Beyer DT770 Pro headphones. I scoured the globe for the best prices, yet remarkably found the best deal in a local professional music showroom only five minutes from home.



I’d like to describe the aural pleasure these headphones supply but I can’t do it justice. Suffice to say they breathe new life into music. For the technically minded: the dynamic range is 5Hz to 35,000Hz, meaning they reveal the deepest rumbles and the highest squeaks! Source material CDs sound rich and full while even mp3 files with average compression leap out to be taken notice of. These are “closed-back” headphones which isolate the listener from ambient sounds and prevent leakage of music even to someone sat beside you; excellent for apartment living with two small children.

Six years ago I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD590 headphones. They brought my CD collection to life, in a slightly less private way. They are open-backed which the purists say is far better; more like listening in the real world. The dynamic range of the Sennheisers is 12Hz to 38,000 Hz but the difference from the Beyers is not noticeable. The big difference is that people in the same room get treated to your music and you can hear ambient sounds clearly. Both pairs reproduce music faithfully and with the intricate detail I love. On balance I prefer the isolation of the closed-back Beyers.

after the slaughter of mary jane kelly

Whitechapel 9^th November 1888

 

It is over.

 

The empty, broken corpse of an Irish rose lies on grey sheets drenched in its own blood. The radiant beauty of youth hacked away, leaving in its place a carcase devoid of organs and a face stripped of identity. Exhausted and stripped to the waist, he stands tall and stares at the carnage in a detached way. The embers of her open fire still light up the horror but already his fury has waned. He picks his great coat from the floor then rolls his knife in a rag and stows it in the pocket.

 

As he crouches and stokes the embers he hears the creak of floorboards above. Sweat runs on his face but he pulls on the coat, covering his slick body. He thumbs the door latch off, clicks the door softly shut behind him and slips into the early morning dark.

 

He takes care, turning up his sticky collar. Even at this hour Londoners are about their business. Pools of dim gaslight illuminate street corners but the narrow lanes are black and safe. Head down, he passes a group of lurching revellers, hats askew and bumping walls in a passage. Moving south from Whitechapel Road he mixes with the first dockers but turns east at Wapping. He runs through dark alleys in shadow, fleeing the devastation his hands have wrought.

 

After a mile he slows his pace and stops to lean on a wall. Nausea overwhelms him as usual. Soon he will put great distance between himself and the Inspector’s inquiries but first he must sleep. In the corner of a dark yard he curls on the cobbles and shuts his eyes for an hour.

 

---

 

Morning reveals a cold grey mist settled over the hulking iron steamers in St Katherine’s Dock. Already, emigrant passengers are filing nervously over the gangway, shifting heavy cases from one hand to the other. Amid the clangs and shouts a tall man passes onto the upper deck, almost unremarkable save for the streak of blood behind his ear. He sits on deck and looks back at the City.

 

How easy to have tied a sack of rocks to his ankle and jumped from Westminster Bridge in the night, to have sunk into the icy brown Thames and ended this. But his wretched cowardice had spurned that solution long ago. Bile rises in his throat as he remembers her whimpering pleas for mercy.

 

A shudder in the ship’s timbers tells him the steamer is moving. As she turns in the basin her deep horn bellows over the East End. The echoes cannon off warehouses and ring across open water, yet even as they subside his keen senses catch the shrill persistence of a Metropolitan police whistle announcing a dread discovery. Too late. In two weeks he will be just one more unknown strolling through New York with a knife in his pocket.