For a lot of October, I wasn’t feeling well. I ended up not running for a stretch of a couple weeks. I had been hoping that wearing my natural foot shape shoes and boots would prevent my ilio-tibial bands from tightening up when I had to take a break from running. Alas, that turned out not to be the case. Not yet, anyway.
I got myself a GoPro camera so that I can start doing more video of my backpacking trips. While I won’t be backpacking for several months, I want to start getting to know the camera. So, I had an idea. I’d go for a run, but take a break in the middle and play with the GoPro, and then run home.
The first mile felt pretty good, but somewhere in the middle of the second mile, my IT bands started to ache. The right one more than the left. I pushed through the pain until I hit three miles. Then I slowed to a walk and started filming things.
I took several videos, trying out different settings. There’s a setting to take pictures, but I probably won’t use that much. In the editing app, you can pull pictures from videos so why take a picture when you could take a video instead? I didn’t realize that I wouldn’t be able to zoom in (or I just haven’t figured it out), and it took me a while to realize the camera was flipping orientation automatically.
Overall, though, it was very easy to use.
I had planned on walking just one mile, and then running the rest of the way home. When I reached four miles (as tracked by my cellphone running MapMyRun), I started to run again, filming at the same time to see how that turned out. I did not last long.
My IT bands had tightened up even more while I walked at a slow pace and played with the GoPro. They were not at all willing to run anymore. They barely wanted to walk. I paused rather frequently for stretching while I walked the rest of the way home, which turned out to be closer to two more miles than one more.
When I got home, I showed the videos to Ambrose, who declared that my recorded voice sounded good. I thought that was kind of funny, but I was glad to hear it. He watches a lot of hiker vlogs on YouTube, and I knew he was assessing my voice as he would a random person’s.
I’m going to put together another YouTube video from that little trip. I think it’s good for me to get some practice videos up. I can always start a different channel if I decide to radically change directions. I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing, but I am enjoying the video process so far.