http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3774727/
Etc. 30 seconds and 4 minutes. I've been doing 40 seconds (taking into account the treadmill slowly speeding up) and 2:40. To do intervals more than twice a week, I think 4 minutes is too hard. The intensity I'm using is also I think a little too hard. Feel very tired at times. Thinking to reduce to 3 times a week....

Read Dr. Susan Brown's The Acid Alkaline Food Guide. Going to try to eat more alkaline. Claims it gives more energy among too many others things. Must note that it's pointed out that at high altitudes the lack of oxygen has an alkalizing effect. Found this interesting as people at high altitudes do actually live longer. Doesn't seem that it's understood why: http://www.wisegeek.com/does-altitude-affect-life-expectancy.htm The concept of Chromic Low-Grade Metabolic Acidosis could explain it. Maybe it will catch on.

Read The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Meh. Kind of boring and just fades off. Much more realistic people. A lot of time spent in people's head as they remember mostly random bits of their lives. It was kind of boring. Idea is after death everyone goes to a kind of purgatory? until there is no one alive who directly remembers them anymore. And on earth a plague is in the process of completely wiping out mankind.

Also I bought a viola. Really like the sound. I guess it will bite into my cello playing but I'm not racing against the clock to become awesome.

3 mile PB (20:59). Huge PB although just on a treadmill at 1% incline. I'll take it though. Think I"m on to something with the 3/4's.

2 mile = 6:50 9/19/13 (intervals 5 days a week, 3/2's for a couple weeks, then 2/2's then 1/1's?
2 mile = 6:58 8/28/12 (80/20 two slow long, two tempo) 
3 mile = 6:59 (on treadmill with only 1% incline) 2/21/14 (3/4's, two days on, one day off, 4 to 6 reps, just for maybe 7 workouts... up to 6.4 min/mile. Last few times added two 1/4's, last one at 5.7 min/mile. One day of rest. Weekly mileage only like maybe 15 miles if that for quite a while.    
3 mile = 7:13 4/28/12 (just intervals twice a week for almost two hours each time) Maybe 24 miles a week, counting the walking...
4 mile = 7:18 10/16/12 (80/20 two slow long, two tempo and then suddenly did 20 mile run then this two days later) 35 to 40 miles a week
5 mile = 7:25 9/13/12 (80/20 two slow long, two tempo) 35 to 40 miles a week
6 mile = 7:41 11/14/12 (? not very good, think I wandered away from 80/20, which was so boring) 35 to 40 miles a week
8 mile = 7:53 9/29/12 (80/20 two long slow, two tempo 35 to 40 miles a week

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

They killed his father to begin with and then left you wondering just what was Steelheart's fatal flaw. And so, read and read to find out. Very light reading. I like the Way of Kings because it's so dark. But everything else by this guy is just too light and fluffy. And the banter in this book is just stupid. Can't imagine what is going on in Sanderson's head as he's writing it, how he could think it interesting or entertaining.

The one thing that kept it going... was finally revealed at the ending... Oh yes, he could only be hurt by someone who didn't fear him. Other than that, not much to say about this.

Wife is away for a week. Hope to write 5,000 words while she is gone. Got my 1000 today. Although at 1000, (which took an hour or so), I've had about enough.

After Steelheart I did a search for intellectual fantasy fiction. Really need something to counter that book. And did bookmark a page. And am reading something that seems pretty good (The Brief History of the Dead.)

Today with running. I'm going so fast I finally really do need a warmup. I just can't immediately go at 6:30 pace. Anyway did 9.1, 9.2, 9.2 and 9.3mph (6.4min/mile) pace for 3 minutes each at 2.2% incline. Then 10 and 10.1 mph for 1 minute each. All with 4 minutes of rest between. This is my new thing. Much longer rests, so that I can run much faster. Also doing a bit of leaping after a couple times a week because I want the legs back I once had. Want some of that bounce back in my step.

I think I could probably handle quite a bit more than 10.1 mph for 1 minute intervals. Will be interesting to see what I get up to. I really hope I don't break the treadmill.

The Scar by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko
Really liked this one. Had a moral thing to it. Main character is just a total ass at the beginning, then he is cursed and becomes too overwhelmed by fear to function at all. Then he becomes considerate and self sacrificing and finally the curse is lifted and he whips out a can of whoop ass.
The world wasn't the most creative. Did have a little something of a russian feel I guess but what exactly that was. Maybe placebo effect.

Now reading Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson. Cheesy and shallow but I like it. The banter between a couple of the Reckoners is especially stupid. Very YA. Was thinking my nephew might like it.

Was thinking that generally characters have to do something other than get along perfectly or immediately try to kill one another. There has to be some conflict that simmers.... But often conflicts seem stupid. Burrich being against the Wit. King Shrewd being so distant. The Fool withholding so much. And more than that, it tires me, the idea of creating imaginary conflicts between imaginary characters.

Have to get over it. Now.

----

Started doing longer rest periods in my interval runs. If resting 60 seconds is better than 15 seconds, why wouldn't 4 minutes be better than 2? Anyway immediately running much faster. My third run (three days in a row) did 3/4's x 5 at 6.6 min/mile pace on 2/2.2% incline.

I have a bit more reason to dislike mondays in that I workout hard on the weekends and am physically down each monday. I'm additionally more down than usual I think because trying to avoid all oil (low fat, no refined sugar) has brought me down a bit. I accidentally listened to some new music on Rdio today. I put me very suddenly in a better mood. Haven't listened to any new music in so long. (Talking industrial music of course, not radio crap.) But also right before I got a cinnamon bagel with hummus and an orange scone from Panera. Such unhealthy gluttony may have slowly kicked in and brightened my mood also during the 40 minute drive home.

Was also really down about my writing. Switched up my idea about the red plain though now, and feeling somewhat better about it.

Now in a pretty good mood. Was relating The Scar plot to nephew. I certainly didn't used to be that good at telling a story. From trial and error of just shutting up and writing, maybe improving, slowly. But still have only written about 6,000 words so far. And of that basically 90% is probably garbage. Long way to go, but will keep trying.

Even right now.

Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn
http://www.heartattackproof.com/
No oil. Along with no diary or death grease. Also frowns at nuts/seeds/avocados. As I don't have CAD (that I know of) I probably don't need to worry about limiting nuts, etc. But I am against oil anyway. It's really an offensive food actually. Think about it. You're taking real food and extracting the fat or in other words removing the nutrients, just leaving the fat behind. How could that be good for you? Also very wasteful. It takes tons of olives to make olive oil for example. Such wastefulness is offensive. (Same idea with sugar.)

Yet, we have this idea that olive oil is healthy for you. Maybe it's better than death grease and congealed baby milk from other species, which is incredibly disgusting if you think about it. (Similar to beastiality but still better than death grease.)

So anyway, avoiding oils. We'll see how I do with trying to eat out, or eat when at work, day after day. At home made a very good bean stew. Added bay leaves and a lot of cilantro. Was very very good.

Been thinking about how virtually everyone is committing slow suicide, with a hefty dose of serial murder along the way. (A real win for everyone involved.) It's a hell of a thing. Depressing. Would really like to move somewhere that I don't feel so isolated.

Wool by Hugh Howey.
Ugh, hate this kind of book. But I read all of it. So I must have not totally hated it. What I would call a task-oriented story. You've got a task, you dutifully do it, describe it, make it hard to do, add some suspense in the doing. OK, next task! Oh no. We're only 300 pages in and about finished and we wanted 500 pages. OK, throw a few more character/obstacles in there.

The explanation of why things are the way they are wasn't entirely uninteresting.  And you put that within a mystery with people being murdered and I guess that's a story. Absolutely not the sort of thing I'd ever write and my dislike of it explains why I've had such an extremely hard time with writing.

Dystopian sci-fi mystery. Everyone lives underground because the atmosphere is toxic. Turns out a lot is being kept from the people, because it's assumed they're too stupid to handle everything. Not a premise that totally makes sense in this setting, but hey the basic concept applies in reality. But just all so predictable and uninteresting. With a few exceptions you see where things are going throughout. Also drones on about things. Could have cut a hundred, maybe two hundred, pages.

Vacation to Orlando.
There because got a "deal" on a tryout of a timeshare. Otherwise really not where I wanted to go. Warm but didn't want to go to Disney.

Good things:
1. Enjoyed playing the recorder with Ty in the car on the way down.
2. Marco Polo, etc at the one hotel we stayed at the first night.
3. Really liked the mystery dinner with the British theme.
4. Enjoyed my run in the abandoned amusement park (Splendid China).
5. Gatorland was ...ok.
6. Enjoyed playing ping pong with Ty.
7. Enjoyed roughhousing with Ru.
8. The Haunted House at Disney was really nice.
9. Had a nice really fast run. Wonder if the lower altitude played a role, although on the negative, my back was bothering me during it.
10. Savannah, Georgia was very nice.
11. No fights with sister or mother!

Things I didn't care for.
1. Disneyland for the most part. Big load of way overpriced crap. But at least my wife figured out fast pass and app for line waits. That made it much better.
2. The timeshare was basically crap. Not even counting the 3 hour hard sale gauntlet.
3. How incredibly slow my sister/one nephew were at Disney. Spent so much time just standing and waiting.
4. Ate a lot of awful gloopy / cheesy swill.
5. Was quite cold most of the time. Next year gotta go further south.
6. Didn't get adequate time for writing/just relaxing.
7. Slight migraine on return trip.