Where did all this light come from?
Summer has finally come to Vancouver. The temperature has been in the high 20′s for the past three days and I’m enjoying the respite from the typical grey raininess to which I’ve become accustomed. Today I skipped the commute to UBC and headed up Burnaby Mountain to SFU instead.
I’m currently sitting in the sun by a big open window in the coffee shop here, drinking an iced latte and staring out at the mountains. It would appear I’ve turned into a stereotypical Vancouverite. The only thing that could make it more stereotypical would be if I hiked down the mountain on my way home. I don’t think that’s such a good idea in flip-flop sandals, though, so I’ll stick with the bus.
Qumana
In my capacity as an HCI grad student/usability professional, I recently had the opportunity to evaluate a blogging tool from a company here in Vancouver.
Qumana provides a local software interface to pretty much any web-based blogging software you can think of.
While the software is definitely still a work in progress (they are still working out some bugs) I am impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I tested it with Blogger and WordPress-hosted blogs, as well as my own installation of WordPress on jkparker.ca, and everything went extremely smoothly. In fact, I’m using it right now to post this entry.
One of the most intriguing features of Qumana is the "drop pad." It’s a small window that sits on your desktop onto which you can drag pictures, text, and other media. You can then double-click the pad to create a post that contains all of your dropped items
I’m not sure Qumana makes sense for me at the moment – I only have one blog right now, and Qumana’s main draw is the ability to edit multiple blogs in a single interface – So I’m not going to completely abandon my handy dandy WordPress web interface just yet. But I’m not ruling Qumana out either.
Another 10k?!
Well, 10.8k to be exact. I had planned on doing a considerably shorter distance this weekend, but the Conquer the Point race at UBC was cancelled. So I’ve decided to enter the Do It For Dad race here in Burnaby because: 1) it’s a short bike ride from my house and 2) It doesn’t start until 11am, so I get to sleep in. There’s no minimum pledge amount, so my entry in the race is already secured. However, if you’d like to help me support the British Columbia Foundation for Prostate Disease, you can make online donations here.
Recovering from the 10k
I did my first 10k race ever on Sunday. Running is definitely my least favourite part of triathlon and I don’t train for it nearly as much as I should. In fact, this race was the first time in my life I had ever run 10k! My longest training runs so far have been only 5 or 6k, so needless to say doing the full 10k was a bit of a shock to my legs. My quads were in absolute agony yesterday, and I’m still feeling some pain today. But I met my goal of doing 10k in under an hour! As one of the women at the starting line said, “It’s your first 10k? It doesn’t wmatter what your time is then. Whatever it is it’ll be a personal best!”
Summer Athletics
Here I am after yet another long break from blogging. Hopefully I can manage to stick with it this time. Since you last heard from me I’ve finished my courses at school and gotten involved in way too many extracurricular activities, from school-related committees to more exciting endeavours… like triathlons!
Vancouver is an extremely fit city. Everywhere you look you see joggers, cyclists, and hikers. Somehow, the ultra-fit Vancouver lifestyle must have managed to rub off on me because when my friend Leah asked me to enter the UBC mini triathlon with her in March, I said “ok”! The mini triathlon (400m swim, 10k bike, 5k run) got me hooked and I made a rather limited attempt at training before entering a sprint tri (800m swim, 20k bike, 5k run) over the May long weekend. Despite rainy weather and my lacklustre training record, I had a great time doing the race. I managed to finish it AND I didn’t place last in my age group, so I met my two main goals.
Now I’ve jumped into training a bit more seriously and have got a calendar full of events planned for the summer. I’m even doing a 10k this coming weekend! I’m a pretty awful runner (the swim and bike sections of the triathlon are much more fun in my opinion) so this 10k is going to be a huge challenge for me.
Here’s my summer sporting itinerary:
June 4th – Sandcastle City Classic (10k run)
June 11th – Conquer the Point (5k run)
June 25th – Scotiabank Vancouver 5k (5k run)
July 1st – VOWSA Canada Day Challenge (2k open water swim)
July 22nd – Abbotsford Triathlon (sprint tri)
August 6th – Bridgetown Triathlon (sprint tri)
I saw Wynne’s post about the HBC 10k and was keen to add that to my list as well, but it turns out it’s on the same day as my open water swim. And I’d definitely much rather swim 2k than run 10k. 