Running – surfing the universe

2025 Day 11: 4 miles in 44:26

2025-0111S-1515 Austin, TX

Over the holidays my cousin was in town with her husband, who happens to be a runner. Five years ago, I took up his challenge to run 3 miles with him. I blogged about it then: 2020 Day 10: 3 miles in 27:20. When I was writing yesterday’s Day 10 post, I reread the one from five years ago. I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t run in a while. This morning, when I awoke and began getting dressed, I chose a running t-shirt. This was despite that it froze last night and was still quite cold outside.

Bird Bath Reflections of Sun on a Wire, 2025-01-11, Austin TX (photo credit: surfingtheuniverse.com)

“Am I really going to do this?” I thought. I don’t remember the last time I ran – maybe a couple years ago. Swimming has been my recent exercise of choice. Today is not the ideal day for swimming. Then I remembered my post yesterday: 2025 Day 10: Roll the Dice! So, I decided to just do a quick 15 minute run down to the neighborhood park and back. I rolled the dice. When I got to the park, I saw about 25 people all running around the park. My naturally running path led me into the middle of them. They were all spread out. I continued running with them as I noticed they were all exiting the other side of the park.

“Am I really going to do this?” I thought again. I rolled the dice again and continued running with them out the other side of the park. A man with a one-year old in a stroller ran up next to me and said hi. We started talking and I learned this was a running group like I suspected. They had started at a coffee shop and were running a total of 10 kilometers. I ended up continuing to run with him all the way to the coffee shop (Praxis, I think). My left knee started hurting around mile 3. As I arrived at the coffee shop, I stopped my watch timer and it had been 4.01 miles.

After 10 minutes of yoga, and grabbing some coffee, and meeting new people, I walked back home in the crisp sunny weather. I’m grateful that I decided to roll the dice multiple times today. It was a good reminder of the unpredictability of life. It also felt good to do some cardio. My recent focus on computer work has not been good for my physical health. After the run, I checked my bp and decided to just take a half dose of bp medicine and monitor it. I have a theory that daily cardio might be a healthier substitute than medication.

20210903F Day 612: Depletion, Tears, Rebirth, and 2.49 mile run

20210904S-1612-AustinTX

Dog Beach Rebels at Flamingo Cantina, September 3, 2021, Austin, Texas

Yesterday, a couple of my friends, A&Z, and I celebrated a birthday. We shopped, ate, danced, and satisfied our sweet tooth craving with some ice creme on Congress. We had quite a bit of fun and kept celebrating until midnight. By the end of the night, I was feeling quite depleted as I dropped them off at their car. I started crying, which is rare for me. They asked what was wrong, and I didn’t have the words. All I could gain access to was my feeling of depletion in terms of my ability to give and a strong desire to receive accompanied by a belief that A&Z were also feeling depleted and unable to give right now either. I’m not used to feeling depleted. Last night I cried myself to sleep for the first time in I don’t remember how long.

In the morning, I awoke with some clarity. During dinner, one of my friends had been talking about their recent breakup and how hard it was to not be in intimate connection with their ex-partner. I had had a similar conversation with another friend earlier in the day at Barton Springs. The energy of both of these conversations was resonating within me at the end of the night and I was subconsciously feeling my own sadness that I was no longer in communication with my ex-beloved, Yana. It required me sleeping on this to realize this in the morning. I never really grieved the end of my relationship with Yana, although she has been on my mind the last 3 months that we have been out of connection. It felt like last night I was able to grieve, and also able to feel deeply my sadness and express these emotions. While difficult for me, I welcomed my tears.

This morning, I felt gratitude, strength, and optimism that I now have an enhanced ability to feel and express my emotions, especially ones of sadness which I have tended to avoid in the past. I felt reborn. I wondered what else might be different in this new universe in which I awoke. I decided to run for the 5th time since I started running again. My first run, I had run 2 miles in 20 minutes. My best run so far was my 3rd run at 2.31 miles in 20 minutes and 20 seconds. This morning, I shattered that record and ran 2.49 miles in 20:22. I’ve set a horizon goal of running 3 miles in 20:20, which is my lifetime fastest time that I ran in 1980.

2020 Day 23: My longest run 5.47 in 53:33 and Life Coach business plan

Being now in Santa Cruz I thought I’d check to the status of my old and new habits in this new location. My old habit of checking stocks is still not present. I did talk stocks with friends. My new habit of running is still present. I just ran 3.33 miles at a 10-minute mile pace, 5 miles in 49:19, and 5.47 miles in 53:33. My experience with universe surfing is to increase your chance of moving to a desired universe, it is helpful to change as many things as your have control over. It is also especially helpful to give energy to each cell of your body. I find that running causes a lot of cells in my body to replenish themselves. I can imagine old cells being recycled into new cells. From a universe surfing perspective, I am moving to a universe where I’m more fit, strong, and healthy. And by moving universes, it is likely by random chance that other things will be changed, especially things which are correlated with the primary things changed (in this case, the running habit and removal of stock checking habit).

In 2020 Day 21: Surfing Universes – Life Coach – 60 Needs that Healers Have, the first need I mentioned was the need for a business plan. Your first business plan should be realistic and serve as a guide for you to get clarity on the goals, risks, and priorities of your business. Before you invest much time and money into your passion project or business idea, you should convince yourself that your business is worth this investment. Your business plan only needs to be a few pages long. Here is an example one:

Life Coaching Business Plan Example 2016-12-01

2020 Day 19: My longest run 4.67 miles and chair entanglement

My best race in high school was the half-mile and as a freshman, my fastest time was 2:08. I ran the mile also and my best time was 5:35. I stopped competing after my freshman year and stopped regular running. I remember waking up early on my 18th birthday, having not run for a long time, and just jumping out of bed and running out the door for as long and far as I could. I’m not sure how long that was, but likely under four miles. I felt like three miles was my limit for races. My fastest 3-mile race was 20:20 and my only 4-mile race was around 35 minutes.

Today was a beautiful day – sunny, windy, and chilly. I thought I’d try to run faster than my last 3 mile run. However, when my first mile came in at 8:20, I began to feel a different universe. I remembered that last run I was able to run longer than 3 miles. It was feeling like today was going to be about extending my distance rather than decreasing my time. I tried a different trail and ran far into the woods so that I knew it would take me at least 4 miles total to get back to where I started. I was definitely running a slower pace. I imagined this was because I was weighted down by the extra clothes I was wearing to keep warm. I checked my 4.33 mi time and it was 13 minutes slower (at 42:18) than my 3.33 mi time last run. My time for 4.67 miles was 44:25 (9.29/mi pace). So by my Apple watch tracking, I ran the last third of a mile in 2:08, the same time as my best half mile. I did have more energy at the end of my run but I find it difficult to believe I ran at a 6:24/mi pace, so I question either the Apple watch or my memory. I do believe though that there is a universe where both my memory and Apple watch were working and I DID run at 6:24/mi pace. So my next challenge will be to return to (or find) a universe where I can run at a 6:24/mi pace for at least one third of a mile.

A couple of days ago I gave away my couch to Goodwill. I also donated my bed frame. I wasn’t completely sure how I was going to fit my couch in my RAV4, but I knew I needed to take it apart. There were a couple of metal bars connecting two recliner chairs. As I measured the width of the chairs at 43″, I realized that my RAV4 was barely too small. There was only about 1′ of 43″ width in the back and I needed 2′ of 43″ width. I pondered putting the couch on the roof of the RAV4. While all of this was going on, I saw a neighbor and asked if he could help me load my couch pieces. When he realized that my RAV4 was too small, he offered his larger SUV. The chair did barely fit into his Honda Passport. We then went down to the women’s shelter and found out they didn’t take furniture. We then went to Goodwill, dropped off the chair, and went back home to get the other chair. When we returned to the Goodwill, the guy at the loading doc told us someone had already come and taken the chair! For some reason, at this point I wondered if this is what entangled particles that are separated feel like. Did the person who took the chair think he was getting a complete chair? I didn’t really pay attention to which chair piece we took to the Goodwill first, but I knew when we took the second chair that the first piece must have been the opposite version. My understanding of entanglement is that for this analogy to be complete, both chairs need to be in a both states at the same time (say Left chair and Right chair) until the true state of the chair is “revealed”. So if Goodwill was in Quantum Land, then the chair we dropped off would be in both states and anyone getting the chair wouldn’t know which state it was in until the state was “revealed” at some future point in time/space. If a second person picked up the second chair we dropped off at Quantum Land Goodwill, then they also wouldn’t know the state of the chair until it was “revealed”. Since the chairs were entangled, then once one chair state was revealed, the other chair state would be known to be the matching state. For the purposes of this analogy, I’m going to say that the state of the chair is revealed whenever someone is sitting in the chair and is successful in reclining it using the lever that is either on the left or right side of the chair. Before revealing, each chair looks like the reclining lever is switching back and forth between the left and right side of the chair in a random way. Once one chair is revealed, the other chair stops switching back and forth instantaneously and the recline lever is seen only on one side of the chair.

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2020 Day 16: 3.33 miles in 29:19

Having not run since 2020 Day 10: 3 miles in 27:20, I thought this morning would be a good day to see what running universe I was in. I noticed something interesting as I ran a slightly different route which caused me to run clockwise around a main loop rather than counter clockwise. During the first mile when I was running to the loop, I ran an 8-minute mile. But during the second mile when I was running against the flow that I’ve run every other time, I felt resistance, ran a slower 9 minute mile, and my right leg was starting to talk to me at the end. At 2.5 miles, I didn’t even feel like I could finish all 3 miles and wanted to stop. My pace was about a 10 minute mile at that point. Then I decided to just turn around and run counter clockwise around the loop. Immediately, I felt additional energy. I could feel my alignment with the universe in which I had more strength and more speed. A positive feedback loop started where as I believed more, I felt stronger, which caused me to believe more. As my watch buzzed me to let me know I had run 3 miles, I didn’t want to stop. I wondered when I would begin to loose energy. I thought to myself that I’d run 27:20 and stop to see how much farther I ran that last time. I still felt strong so I gave myself a stretch goal of running 3.25 miles. At 3.25 miles, I still felt strong and I saw the hill coming up that always gets me. As I approached the hill, I saw I was about to hit 3.33 miles, and so I stopped. I felt good about my final time of 29:19. It reminded me that 10+19=29.

In other news, the stock market rose strongly at the beginning of this 16th day of the month. I plan to start paying attention to the first day and 16th day of future months to see if I notice a pattern that matches this study of S&P 500 first day tendencies.