Category: Run

Stupid wired after late swim

Y’know that endorphin buzz one gets after a good workout? Keeps me awake when I work out at night.

This week’s been very, very good to me. Actually, the last two weeks have been great. I’d gone off about the Houston runs – man, that’s still a high.

Monday, I was on travel but still managed to squeeze in 7 miles in the rain at BWI. If you’re ever staying near the airport, there’s a GREAT trail that runs around BWI. Part of it goes right under the flightpath for one of the runways, and it was great watching the SWA flights drop out of the scudding clouds with huge trails of vapor blowing off of their wings, woosh overhead, and go land. It might feel like riding a bus when you’re in the airport, but it’s still amazing that those things can fly. Witchcraft, I tell you.

Yesterday, I didn’t sacrifice a workout. My flight got in just early enough that I was able to head over to the base pool to get in a good 35 minute workout – turned out to be about 25 laps at 70m/lap – just over a mile. Today, the best laid plans of running to the pool at lunch were turned over. But, things worked out anyway – I went back to the Y for the first time in a while and did 2300 yards in less than an hour, which may be my longest swim workout ever. I started with 250m of breaststroke, followed by a monster set of 20 laps (1000m) crawl, complete with flip turns. Caught my breath for a while, then set out to do another 10 laps easy – long, strong strokes, slow follow-through, easy breathing, and upright turns at the end of each length. The 10 felt good, so I did another 10 without stopping, finishing the last lap with an all-out, supper in the back of your throat sprint.

I’ve got a run (possibly) scheduled with the neighbor tomorrow at 5 AM. ‘cept he’s on TDY working 6P to midnight this week on short notice, so I’m guessing he won’t show. Wonder if I will. It’s also Bring A Child To Work day – Jake’s finally old enough to go, so I think we may have to put the bikes on the back of the car and let him take a quick spin around Jamestown on the way home and demonstrate “fringe benefits”.

Y’all rock. I cannot wait for Mooseman, even though my training hasn’t been what I hope it would have been. June will be all about endurance, suffering, and repentance.

Semi-regular rant – Early April 2009

1. I’m a huge believer that for the 21st century the internet and ubiquitious free or cheap access is as critical to national success as was America’s roads infrastructure was to the US’s dominance of the last half of the 20th century. And I think it makes even more sense for the government to do it than it did with the roads, as access to the internet is critical to freedom of expression, organization. all that fun stuff that is in the Bill of Rights.
So, with trillions being doled out, what’s a couple of hundred billion to begin connecting municipal internet efforts, revive muni-wifi, or maybe even hold some spectrum to build out publicly owned WiMax? Just a thought.

So far the Obama administration has offered $7.2 billion in grants to be doled out by two separate federal agencies to give to companies to build out networks in “underserved” areas. The whole process is mired in semantic debates over what “broadband,” “unserved” and “openness” mean. Incumbent players such as AT&T and Verizon are complaining about onerous openness requirements and are threatening to not even apply for the funds — these are the folks who have done everything in their power to suffocate innovation on the net and in the wireless world. [From National Broadband Plan? Dream Big, Feds, Very Big | Epicenter from Wired.com]

2. I’ve been running. Running is good. Running with the wife is better. Got in a total of 18 miles over the weekend with my soulmate. Love to run. Need to do more.

Dadgum

I’ve been slacking lately. Warren is going to hand me my hat in June.

I got exactly two (2) good workouts in this week. Monday my excuse was being stuck in the ATL (second least favorite airport in the world after IAD – even Bahrain has a good airport). Tuesday, I had a GREAT 4+ mile run at 8 minute miles, with the last quarter mile at sub-6 pace.

Wednesday – worked through lunch, then building Pinewood Derby cars with the boyos, and troubleshooting the Pinewood Derby track with beer with a couple of the other Cub Scout dads after everyone was in bed. Finally found something about the Cub Scouts that I liked. So, no time to work out.

Thursday – yeah, just lazy here, I guess. I worked through lunch again, but probably could have swum or rode after the kids were in bed.

Today, I spent a quality 55 minutes on the bike at 150 BPM heart rate during lunch. A bit disturbed that NONE of the TVs at the gym were showing the College Basketball playoffs. But, I had two great talks from TED – Dan Arley on why we all cheat on occasion, and Stuart Brown on Play. (I like to think that’s why we run, bike, and swim – what’s better than hammering, especially on the off chance there’s someone else to chase?)

So, pretty much a bust. Missy’s off at a well-deserved women’s retreat this weekend, so I think the boyos and I are going to have a little bit of male bonding. Pinewood derby and bar-b-q. First at Chester’s, and then I may get a smoker while we’re buying stuff to build garden boxes.

Or, has anyone ever cooked in a chiminea?

Colchester Half Marathon 2009 / Lent

I ran this over the weekend with a bunch of guys from the church.

Missy ran it last year, and had been warning me about how tough it was. I was kind of skeptical – our first stretch living up in Connecticut, we lived just off of the course, and I didn’t recall it being that hilly of an area.

Thing is, I wasn’t a runner then.

This is one of the toughest races I’ve run – up and down all over the place. TRCWTOH has said she wasn’t crazy enough to run it (though I’m guessing she could run anything. But won’t press it, as she volunteered to bring beer and chips to the finish next year). And we ran it this year in completely benign weather – mid to upper 30’s, not terribly windy. Missy keeps reminding me that there was a bizzard the day before last year’s running, and she still finished.

Anyway, I felt pretty good throughout the whole race. Set a pace and mostly stuck to it. I walked a bit of the last mile, just because I didn’t want to go all-in, as this was a training run and not a flagship race. I’d set a goal of finishing in 2 hours with gas left in the tank to keep training this week, and think I hit that goal well.

Almost too well – I finished at just over 1:54, which is within spitting distance of my 1:53 PR from the OKC half last April. Considering the degree of difficulty for the course, I’m over the moon with the performance. I’m still carrying at least 10-15 lbs more than I should be (probably closer to 20-25 lbs over optimal), but it’s a sign that the motor is working well.

And look at that effective transition to talking about Lent!

Since I’ve put on a few pounds since the New Year, I’m giving up (in order of priority):

  1. Drive-Thrus
  2. Deep-Fried Stuff
  3. Soda

Drive-thrus make sure that I’m going places with good food choices, and providing the ability to eat well. Deep-fried stuff eliminates french fries and onion rings, which, while especially delicious, are nothing but empty calories, and lots of them. And while I drink just diet soda, I’m beginning to buy the argument that it just doesn’t matter. Between the artificial sweetener and carbonation, there’s got to be lots of bad stuff going on in soda that the body doesn’t like.

I broke down and had a soda on Sunday, but that’s only one in an entire week, which isn’t so bad.

999

So, I’m all kinds of freaked out. Next post is 1000 posts to the blog. Granted, some of them were from my experiment with del.icio.us, but I’m willing to bet that most of them are real posts, the kind that I actually put some thought into. And MAN – they go back almost 5 years. Crazy. Wonder what I could have done with all that lost productivity? Probably something worthwhile. 5 years time and tens of thousands of words – isn’t that what they call a PhD?

Anyway, the navel gazing will be the next post. Today, I’d like to talk about 10. Specifically yesterday’s 10.

I’d had a rough week running. The cold finally got to me, so I managed exactly no (zero, zip, zilch, nada) runs the last week of January. It was cold, there was ice, I was busy, and generally just a big fat hairy wimp. (I swam and rode the darn trainer), but didn’t run.

Yesterday, though, was just too good to pass up. Temps were well up into the 40’s, the sun was shining, and there were no excuses. So, after a little bowling with the littlest Jank while the bigger baby Jank was at a birthday party, I strapped ’em on, grabbed the camera, and headed out to do Missy’s 10 mile loop.

I generally do my longer runs focused on a lap of River Road and Rt 27 in Stonington – nice and flat, plenty scenic. Missy, however, isn’t content with the flat, easy route – she’s all about running the little hill we’ve got near the house.

So, I decided that since I’d been a pansy (man, I cannot wait for spring) all week, I went out with every intention of doing the tough route. And I did. Pictures follow:

The cemetery on River Road fascinates me.

RiverRoad

The river’s all iced up. Folks were playing hockey. I’d never seen anyone out on the river during the winter before this cold snap.

RiverRoad

These next three are down in Noank at the geographic low point in the run. If someone wants to stitch these together into a banner for my website, I think it’d be pretty darn sweet.

LowPointofRun
LowPointofRun
LowPointofRun

Now that I post them, I realize I left out the railroad tracks between the middle and last picture. Rats, guess I ought to go run it again

The high point of the run was about mile 9. Up until I stopped for these pictures, I felt fine. Then, the last mile really, really blew.

HighPointofRun

But, I gutted it out. If I can survive this week, I ought to be fine. My pastor almost ran me over between the low and high points; called me and chewed me out for not wearing bright enough clothes.

Now, what to write about for another 1,000 posts?

Pie is good

want to learn about pie or killing stuff? - Pie is good.

For what it’s worth, I did break down and actually bought a hunting license this year, got both my federal and state duck stamps, and spent exactly NO days waist deep in freezing water. My belly wishes I had; the fact that I haven’t yet had the flu makes me think it’s a smart decision. Didn’t help I was gone most of November.

Training for Mooseman is going well. I spent a little bit of my discretionary income on an Apple TV and Cheap Monitor instead of beer and wings for the basement. Now, I’ve got the whole of the internet on video staring me in the face while I ride. So, it’s not much different from sitting on the couch, other than the sweating and the wondering if I ought to spend more time in the drops.

Running is good – Honestly, I head out and just keep wanting to go. I’ve been running with some fast guys from church on the weekends. They kill me, but go easy for their long runs – I suppose it will make me a better man in the long run.

I also cannot say enough about the swim class at the Y. I’ve got the same instructor, Jen, that my younger kid has for swimming, and she rocks. She’s not a triathlete – came to teach swimming, and it’s absolutely great to get feedback on the actual right way to do things. I am actually beginning to feel somewhat comfortable in the water, which is more than worth the price of admission.

let’s see: We wrote psalms in Sunday school this week – I managed to rhyme “PowerPoint” with “Anoint”, causing David to start spinning in his grave.

So, that’s about it. I suppose next month’s discretionary income will go towards bike parts. But that’ll mean that I might be on the road and not on the stupid trainer.

Before we go, I’d like to leave you with a half hour on the scientific method. Honestly, I think this is exceptionally important – the intellectual discipline that brought us into the Enlightenment and out of the Dark Ages needs to be celebrated. This is why I love my job, and why I relish even a tiny chance to be a research engineer. There’s a tiny bit of profanity, but not so much.

10 miles in the snow

Drill in Newport again, and another storm decides to roll through in the evening. So, rather than spending Saturday evening at the house (or, more to the point Sunday morning digging out and driving on crappy roads), I holed up at the Q in Newport. Work kept me busy until about 5:30, when I strapped on the sneakers, bundled up, and headed out into the first flakes of the evening’s snow.

Really and truly, I didn’t want to go run. Pretty easily I could have justified gaffing off the run, ordering up some wings and breadsticks and watching “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” on Comedy Central. Man, was it cold, and I was tired, and wah, wah, wah.

I finally talked myself into going three miles. That was going to be it – just a quick out and back to at least put something into the legs. So, I started, and then something just clicked.

Sure, it was cold, and I was tired, but something just felt great. The snow falling was beautiful, the evening was beautiful, and there was just something about the run that felt RIGHT.

So, I kept going – through downtown, across to First Beach, and down the Cliff Walk. Cut across the peninsula, back through downtown, and did another lap until the Forerunner hit 10 miles. Life was good.

Tonite – Jack was back. Spent an hour on the trainer watching 24:Redemption and spinning. I may not love the wind trainer, but it’s what I’ve got, and my legs need the miles.

Tomorrow’s swimming. Cannot wait.

Fitness Plans 2009

Hey, isn’t this a running blog?

Well, no, not necessarily. I mean, yeah, kind of, but remember, we’re trying to branch out.
Regardless, I’m still pretty passionate about the running, the biking, and the swimming. My major race goals for 2009 are:

Other guaranteed races are:

So, how am I going to get there?

For Mooseman, I’m kind of playing it by ear. I’m using ontri.net to track my training – I liked the ability to do batch edits of a training program and upload it as a CSV file. Mapmyrun/tri/bike/whatever is pretty slick, now that I’m using a Forerunner 305. However, there’s no way to use it to plan training, only as a really, really slick tracker and mapping tool. ActiveTrainer was indispensable for me in preparing for San Antonio, but that was largely a result of having a good marathon plan offered for free by the race. The training planner interface is pretty slow. I was tempted to just keep the plan on my laptop, but I like having access to it in cyberspace without having to lug 5 pounds of laptop with me (if anyone wants to buy me a netbook, feel free). And I think I’m ditching nike+ – I’m beginning to enjoy running in silence.

I’m melding the ontri.net 20 week half-ironman plan with the one from TriNewbie. Essentially, my plan is to:

  • run/swim Monday (Swim precedence)
  • bike Tuesday
  • bike/swim Wednesday (Swim precedence)
  • run/swim Thursday (run precedence)
  • Rest Friday (beer precedence)
  • Long Run Saturday
  • Long Ride Sunday

with the culmination being 60 miles on the bike, 15 miles on the run about 3 weeks before the event.

NYC will be pretty much the same marathon plan I used this year, although I may spend June and July examining Run Less, Run Faster given the cross-training base I’ll have after Mooseman.

(Funny thought, marathon training being somewhat anti-climactic the fourth time around)

More thoughts on 2009 elsewhere on this blog.

2009 – Doing

I’d meant to get this out before the New Year, even to the point of getting a draft going days ago. (By getting a draft going, I mean that I came up with a concept in my head, and put a sentence into ecto.) And it kind of died there.

But, I’ll resurrect it here, as 43folders is back with good stuff that sums up a couple of other bits that have really resonated with me lately:

Even (or especially) for people with a notional gift for their chosen field, talent — like luck, rich parents, and unmined gold — is just a raw material. It’s not the one-bit switch that determines artistic success. And, any “talent” one theoretically possesses is likely to stay stuck under a layer of river rock unless and until its claim-holder learns to repeatedly pan, sluice, or dredge it into something that can be refined, polished, and, in most cases, vended. Fancy ladies buy gold jewelry; not drawings of mining equipment.

Even closer to my own state of mind was O’Reilly writer Simon St. Laurent’s resolution to practice:

I don’t expect to become a master at either of these things. Frankly, I think that “mastery” is usually the wrong goal, a strange habit in our culture of setting ourselves up to fail. Mastery happens, but we need to remember – and value – the intermediate steps.

Even closer to home for me has been getting to know a couple of musician friends up here a little bit better. Missy and I went to our first live show together in, well, like forever a couple of nights ago to see Ben and Nancy play, and, man, did it bring together a bunch of thoughts that have been rambling about my head for a while.

Practice and Train

The first is just the unabashed joy of DOING something WELL. What I captured at the San Antonio Marathon, and what I’m beginning to recapture through my coursework at the War College is that half-assing things, while sometimes the right thing to do, is ultimately a method of last resort. Quality comes from repetition/practice/drills. My first two marathons were matters of survival. My MBA was getting a box checked off. San Antonio was the first marathon I did after committing to being a runner, being (relatively) consistent about training, and really doing the groundwork.

My kid brother’s a real inspiration here. He took up the violin last spring, and got to the point where he played Christmas carols for the family this year over the holiday. I want to do that. But I picked up the guitar maybe a dozen times in the whole year, and the piano even fewer. No wonder I can’t play.

Be Realistic

It’s kind of important here to discriminate between doing something WELL and in achieving excellence or being the best. 30,000 people ran the San Antonio Marathon with me; only Meschack Kirwa won the race. I finished in the middle of the pack, but I’m completely satisfied with that result. My point, here, is not to necessarily settle for mediocrity, but to realize that a lot of things are still worth doing. And that the more you do them, the further along the distribution curve of results you’ll get.

We did “A Charlie Brown’s Christmas” as the church’s pageant this year, and filled out the list of kids who wanted to participate beyond what we needed for speaking parts by letting some of the musically talented kids play christmas carols. And, man, was I happy we did. It wasn’t perfect, but it really helped set the mood. There had been a brief motion early on in November when we started practicing to use a CD for the songs, but I put the kaibosh on that. Vince Guaraldi’s album is as close to perfect as a Christmas album can be, but that wasn’t what we were after. We wanted the kids to think about Christmas, and to celebrate Christ’s birth using their own talents. In the end, we had a couple of kids show talent even their parents hadn’t realized. No one’s going to take our show to Broadway, but we didn’t want them to.

What I’m saying here, I guess, is that unless you’re Usain Bolt, or Michael Phelps, there’s always someone better, and it’s always easier not to use a talent. But that’s the wrong answer.

Get Help

I finally understand what people mean when they’ve been telling me to “get help.” It means that I should actually go out and talk to people who know what the heck they’re doing. (My wife’s yelling at me that, no, it means I ought to go see a shrink)

Again, coming back to the church’s Pageant. We hatched the idea, coordination kind of fell to me, since, well, I am the elder for Christian Education. So, I went out and watched the TV show, we bought the screenplay, and I adopted it for the Church. Then, when we started rehearsals, one of the other teachers was helping out tremendously, and had a much better talent for getting the kids to move around the stage than I did. Another teacher took the kids without speaking parts, and did a tremendous job arranging a chorus around the show. I took the kids who didn’t want to be on stage at all, and we built stuff. My initial concept had been that I’d do the directing; but others were stronger at that. Help offered itself, and I had the good sense to say “yes”.

So, I’m going to adopt that attitude elsewhere. I’m going to actually discuss essays with my professors. I’ll get career advice from folks I work with and follow through. I’m going to take “Triathlon Swim Training” classes at the Mystic Y.

Focus

Another thing people have continually told me is that “you can’t do everything”. While I’d like to think I’ve proven them wrong, I’ve realized that what they were really trying to say was “you can’t do everything WELL.”

And it turns out that they were right.

I’ve already kind of started to put this into practice. If something isn’t important to me, it’s gone. I gave a pretty major project for which I’d won a big proposal to another engineer at the office so that I could concentrate on the work I really want to do. I’m paring down my RSS feeds (as useful as he was earlier today, 43folders and almost all the tech rumor sites are gone), and I plan on being quicker to “mark all read” when I haven’t had the chance to read news in a couple of days. And I think I’m pretty much done with television. I’ll watch the conclusion to Battlestar Galactica and this season of 24 on Hulu, and maybe catch Headlines once in a while with the wife.

Cub Scouts? I’ll help out where asked, but am not really moved by the whole scouting thing. If things don’t improve with the pack we’re with, we’ll do Webelos with a different pack in the area that has some super dig-it parents.

I’ve cleaned my spaces in the house – they’re filled with stuff I want to do, and I may cut up the credit card so that i can’t buy new stuff with which to distract myself.

Alright already, enough with the preaching

So, what do I want to do? (Husbanding and fathering are, as always, above everything)

First, while I’m committed to the fleet seminar program at the War College, I really want to go back for a technical masters’ (or PhD groundwork) in Computer Science, specifically state processing or digital signals processing as applied to software defined radio. To support this, I need to:

  1. Brush up on programming and working with hardware; and
  2. Brush up on Math.
  3. Finish one of the projects I’m facilitating at work on time, on budget, and on spec.
  4. Get my ham license

Not necessarily less important is that I want to continue to contribute at church. There’s a bunch of projects cooking, and a bunch of talent newly inspired and some new arrivals. Good times.

I also want to write more, and write better. My plan for this is:

  1. Purge NewsGator/NetNewsWire
  2. Paper journal as first priority
  3. Write first, browse second
  4. Revive the sandbox.

Music’s on my mind. Action items here are:

  1. Resume playing while putting the children to bed every evening. It’s much more interactive with them than my recent routine (following FaceBook on the iPod Touch)
  2. Play the darn guitar rather than looking for new “how-to” books or vieos
  3. Possibly take a few lessons this summer, once I’m done with Swim Class at the Y and on summer vacation from NWC.

Become more accomplished as a geek.

  1. Move my iTunes into a Zen virtual machine on an XP instance inside of Ubuntu on the MacBook. Then, I can still sync the heck out of my Touch, but get some Linux loving.
  2. Finish working through the Python books, and move on to C
  3. Run my own server. So I can get my stuff from anywhere. (I dug this podcast; sad to see it go)

Hey, isn’t this a running blog?

It just hit me that this went way, way longer than I’d planned. I’m putting the fitness stuff in another post.
2009 ought to be good. My predictions:

  • Gen X becomes, as mid-30s types, neo-hippies, fulfilling the promises that the boomers squandered once they realized that love and nature didn’t pay for shag carpet and coke in the ’70s. Gen X, on the other hand, will realize that community doesn’t show up on anyone’s balance sheet, and that productivity improvements mean missed soccer games, missed meals, and midnight oil.
  • Apple releases something cool, sorely tempting my resolution to avoid Tech Rumor sites.
  • The BCS gets even more frustrating.

Thoughts I want to explore in 2009

  • Things that ought to be “Amateur”, or that ought to have lots of non-professional participation (arts and sport spring immediately to mind)
  • Things that ought to be handled at a community level
  • Camping

All right. Enough.

Happy New Year, y’all.