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HERE LIES TEN MINUTES OF MY TIME. |
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I don't know what to make of this Quick entry brought on by a barrage of Freds. Mostly cousin Fred, but Fred DB messaged me from out of the blue earlier today as well. Sometimes you notice a pattern that you didn�t realize was there before, and you wonder where it came from or what it means. Like apparently, according to a nature TV program I saw once upon a time, humans, humming birds, dogs, whales, just about all animals have about the same number of heart beats over the course of their typical life times. I don�t know if that is true and how big a range �about the same� really means. Once upon a time I was having a conversation with my Cousin Fred, and he asserted, I believe, that women were catching up to men athletically speaking. I said I didn�t really think so. Well, I�d certainly concede the point if we were talking about participation in organized athletics, but we were talking about world records. He said that the marathon record gap was shrinking, and I said that women�s world records are about 10% slower than men�s records. Or maybe it is the other way, men�s records are 10% faster. Anyway, he said that isn�t true, the world record on the erg (Fred was a rower in college) for men is such and such and the record for women is� and then it dawned on him that it was almost exactly 10%. And so a �truth� was discovered for both of us. Today I was on the erg (this is what crew people call rowing machines) working out. I�m always fiddling with things to think about on the machine, and today I tried closing my eyes and counting my strokes for the duration of a song. I always listen to music while I�m rowing, usually mash up mixes. The mash-ups that I did the �close my eyes and count� were between 3:35 and 4:35 long, I closed my eyes and counted 5 times during my work out, and each song ended up with between 100 and 104 strokes in it. I don�t know what that means. But it feels like it means something. It feels like there is a natural lifespan to a song, like every song has about the same number of beats regardless of its rhythm. Like some part of my brain that my conscious mind doesn�t operate in much knows exactly how long the natural lifespan of the song is, and is breaking my strokes into 1% milestones. When my eyes are open, I�m watching the machine and it tells me either my pace or the watts that I�m producing. I try to keep pace with what my eyes tell me. It looks like when the eyes are out, I�m keeping pace with what my ears tell me� but I�m not trying to do that. And in case you are wondering, I don�t know anything about what happened in CJ beyond what the news has said. But believe me, I noticed. |