8r4d Over the river and under the train. When I first ran over this #bridge it was a simple but popular footbridge but a few years ago became a train crossing with a suspended pedestrian path below. We ran across it last night and it’s weird because every time I’ve crossed this bridge in the past I seem to be in the cusp of some kind of huge adventure… a big trip, a physical recovery, a career change. It’s like there are symbolic places in our world that span the points between moments and simply moving through them becomes a mental marker for our soul to latch onto. Weird huh?

8r4d One last #downtown meetball run before I sign off. It’s been a minor blast having an excuse to revive some adventure #running in the middle of our marathon training season, but it’s a heckuva drive back and forth after a long day. #runcrew

8r4d Change is inevitable, and we can either change ourselves or be changed by the hands of fate. I've officially chosen the former. If you haven't already heard, I have given my notice at the City of Edmonton where I've worked for over 12 years and I will be moving on to something new at the end of this month. What that new thing is, looks like, feels like, turns out to be, all of that is up in the air right now. A few months to decompress. A few months to reinvent. And... then change happens, right? I have created a plan that is simultaneously fulsome and promising, yet open-ended and full of a hundred unexplored paths.There is some travel in the very near future. There is a lot of running to be done before the Chicago Marathon. Writing, definitely. But I've also left a lot of space to be filled with digging into my hobbies, reconnecting with people, and simply following the white rabbit into the wonderland of opportunities that I've been ignoring for years. It's an amazing privilege to create this space and I have an amazingly supportive wife whose shoulder has been there all the way. So? Onward. And stay tuned.

8r4d Sure, you’re looking at a photo of a tree that’s toppled over in the wind and giving it an indifferent shrug. But this tree held a weird and unique spot in my mind. It was a damn near perfect tree. I mean that it was almost a prototypical tree, like a kid’s drawing of a tree made real, a slender trunk with a cartoon shaped orb of foliage atop, exactly what the tree in your mind’s eye looks like, and it was in a storm drainage park and was not clipped or groomed or trimmed to get that way. It just was there accidentally perfect. And it fell over and died completely this week, snapping off at the base of the trunk and not even leaving a stump behind. So so so weird.

#rain in the #downtown got me into a meditative mindset this afternoon…

8r4d I guess the kid was feeling a bit nostalgic when she picked out a #fathersday gift for me this year. When she was younger I bought us matching #tshirts off the internet of this “velociraptor riding a velocipede” which we both thought was hilarious at the time. Still do, but those shirts wore out and disappeared from our wardrobes a half dozen years ago. Well, she hunted down new ones for me and herself so that we could once again have matching shirts. A selfie with both of us, tho, was pushing it a little too far.

8r4d On this particular #sundayrunday the skies opened and we found ourselves #running 19k in the various waves of #rain and fluid #weather conditions as we wove thru the creek and looped along the trails. You can’t save your training for fair weather days or else you’d be hard pressed to find any days to train at all, and while we can run inside when the air is smoky (dangerously so) rain , as they say, is best avoided only when one is made of pure sugar and sweetness, a description that I’d not say applies to myself.

8r4d What a view!

8r4d On another #running adventure #downtown for that whole downtown marketing campaign for work, five of us explored some of the streets and trails and tackled that nutty hill on 105th street with only a bit of walking. #runcrew

8r4d After another Tuesday tempo training run, we wander back at a more leisurely pace. Our marathon training is broken up into various types of training and #tempo runs are meant to be run at an elevated heart rate to increase your endurance and stamina. We do a casual warm up run out to a regular starting point that also happens to be the start of a good long 4 km flat and L-shaped path. Warmed up you kick up the speed to a pace you can just barely sustain for the duration. We start with an 8 minute out then 8 minute return run, totalling 16 minutes and then add a minute to each in consecutive weeks, so 9+9 then 10+10 and so on. Tonight we did 14+14 for a total of 28 minutes of sustained threshold #running. Or booting it and really hauling ass, in technical terms. It hurts in the moment but pays off on the race course. #runcrew

I’ve been writing code. See, about eight months back I created this very applet upon which you are reading these words as a means to (a) avoid posting on evil corporate social media while (b) keep sharing photos with a select group of family and friends. If you scroll back far enough you’ll find the #newyork pics upon which I trialed the whole endeavour. And tho I’m lightly and cautiously back to sharing on a couple of the regular socials, I still post here too, arguably more so. So, I finally dug in my heels and wrote some php to fix a few deficiencies in the code over this past weekend, adding some quality of life enhancements for myself in the UI on the backend, also the ability to edit my own posts (ultimately making better posts for you!) and finally adding the multiple-images feature where any post can have up to 5 pics and you will see little navigation buttons on the bottom corners if it does. I’m still not sure if anyone even visits this, but I use it as a memory machine which is all that really matters anyhow. If you do enjoy it let me know IRL. In the meantime that’s my #meta #update for tonight, and hopefully I don’t find any more bugs and can just go back to posting pics! #blog

8r4d #flashback : ten years ago in June 2023 at age five she was playing soccer and wearing mittens… today it’s scorching hot outside.

8r4d We rarely come over to this end of town (near the big old famous mall) so to see the progress on the #construction of the new #edmonton west #lrt line is pretty impressive! They had this massive crane-slash-concrete track lifter hovering above the road and when you're driving under it, it's a little daunting. #westedmontonmall

8r4d That meta moment of #shopping for a lego store while inside a lego store… (spoiler: no, we didn't buy it.) #westedmontonmall

8r4d A month from now we’ll be climbing up the real thing… too soon for celebrating yet! #europe2023 #westedmontonmall

8r4d The #running #runcrew descending into the river valley under the high level bridge. We were approaching the end of a #downtown adventure run in the #summer heat.

8r4d the definition of being an adult is that the carnival is in town but (a) you need to work and also (b) you have to watch it from afar out your work window all day

8r4d As it goes for us, when our #running route crosses the tracks we’ve gone a long way… #train #runcrew

8r4d I get a thirty minute timer to tackle the weeds in the #garden… then the sprinklers attack!

8r4d Oh Sal, what are you looking for in the long grass? #buggyland

8r4d Hugging the gas line, Bill has an early start to his Sunday morning. #buggyland

8r4d Hard times have befallen Blue. #buggyland

8r4d Ms. AA copying me… as we check out the #publicart in #edmonton #downtown on a #lunchbreak. Feets pictures are a trend I guess…?

8r4d Wally was watching from the trees as we ran by on a Sunday morning run… #buggyland