Mistakes were made

The poultry netting (aka, chicken wire) was pulled away from the trunk. Rabbits found it.

Multiple layers of newspaper. If the exposed cambium does not dry out, it can heal.

Interesting summary on pain and physical activity HERE

Like the Drill Instructor said, "More sweat now means less of your blood later". Higher levels of physical activity correlated to higher-to-much-higher levels of pain tolerance.

Today was a lifting AND running day. I ran first and then did minimum lifting for maintenance. 

The running went very well. I had very little in my gut and I believe that my volume-of-air per breath was higher than the last run. My bpm plateaued at 143 bpm. 

Twenty cycles of this equals one hour and four miles

I am NOT recommending that anybody else do it this way. Everybody is unique.

If all goes well, the sixty-seconds at 6.0 mph will be bumped up to sixty-six seconds after another week of "foundational" conditioning.

A rule-of-thumb for younger runners is "growing" mileage 10% a week which equates to a doubling of mileage every seven weeks.