Month: May 2007

Good sore

I slacked on Saturday, after the wonder that was the Bluff Point race. Man, I really get jazzed when I run there, and to have it be a race, and to run it with two absolutely wonderful women! F’n a.

Missy and I woke up to the traditional Saturday morning pounce by the boys. I’ve learned to hear Jake coming down the stairs, so I’m usually opening my eyes about the time our door opens and 50 pounds of 7 year old comes flying through the air. Not really awake, but my eyes are opening.

Yesterday – wow, I really could have slept another hour. Missy kind of summed it up when she said “Y’know, I feel like I’m waking up after a party back in college, ‘cept without the headache.” But, workday at the church started at 0800 sharp (what kind of idi…. wait, wait, doing the Lord’s work…). I put in an electrical outlet and a phone jack, and then rebuilt our WordPress installation. Yep, I’m a plumber for the 21st century. Only smashed my thumb once with the pliers while stripping wire, and I managed to turn my “Oh, F…” into “Our Father…”

This afternoon? Family swim and a quick run back to the house.

Nate destructed Saturday morning at swimming lessons. Didn’t want anything to do with the pool AT ALL. Not quite the wailing and rolling on the floor, but close. I finally coaxed him to the edge of the pool, and his instructor grabbed him and pulled him in before he knew what was going on. After a minute or so, he was fine. This afternoon, though, I managed to get Nate swimming with just the “bubble”, or floaty thing on a web belt. He didn’t even need to hold on to the floaty-dumbell thing. Small triumphs.

The run back through town – the best part, I think, is that I did it. I’ve still been getting discomfort in my ankle, but, since I moved to running more on my toes, I think it’s getting better, and is now just soreness. Six months of heel striking really screwed things up, I think.

Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure – Cow Hill beat me today, Warren. Just couldn’t quite make it up and over without walking for a couple of minutes.

So, to borrow a phrase, it’s a beautiful life. Go congratulate Mark on a smokin’ performance at the Red Moose marathon up there in Canadia.

Bluff Point Twilight Trail Race 2007

Maybe the sun will shine today – Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

Then again, maybe it won’t. Not that it needs to when running one of the best races of the year!

The Bluff Point Twilight Trail Run was tonight, and, as usual, it was the highlight of both my social life and the second best date on my annual race calendar. It’d be in the running for first, but New Haven is two beautiful Labor Days in a row, and The BPTTR is only batting .333 for nice weather.

So, proving that we’ve gotten old and boring, my lovely wife, Melissa, and I sprung for a babysitter tonight so we could go run together. And truthfully, I loved it.

April Anne made the trip down to the shore with the promise of USCGA cadets on the course, despite the mid-40’s temperature, grey clouds, and promise of more rain. The rain was made especially stinging thanks to 10 days or so of perfect weather preceding it.

There didn’t seem to be nearly as many people there tonight as there were in 2005 or even 2006, but the crowd that was there was ready to run.

Best part about rainy trail runs? It’s about a mile into the run, when there’s finally a puddle that you just can’t scoot around, and the freedom that you get once your foot completely gets soaked. Before there’s water over the top of the shoe, there’s the myth that you might be able to keep your toes dry. But once they’re wet, it just doesn’t matter any more, and somehow that makes the squishiness between the toes feel fine.

About two thirds of a mile down the trail, I said “Hey, I thought running was supposed to warm us up?” April Anne, before she kicked in the afterburners said “Wow, you’re reading my mind”. It was chilly. Warren said yesterday “As long as it’s warmer than about 40 degrees, it’s great.” Yeah. Right. Canadians…

As I’ve been a slacker, and Melissa’s new to running on trails, we took it easy over much of the course. And y’know what? I loved it. Granted, I love races where I let it all hang out and blow up about 3/4 of the way to the finish line, and cross the line on willpower alone.

But tonight was different. The woods were wet, and fresh, and chilly, and absolutely stunning, and I was running with my absolute favorite person in the world, no other distractions. It doesn’t get better than that.

We finished in a bit over an hour. (A bit being about 10 minutes). April Anne was waiting for us. She and Missy chatted for a while while I stuffed my face with steamy chowder and donuts. They sipped water.

Heh, so I guess I did get a tasty meal out of the date in addition to the run.

Here’s hoping for sun in 2008. Get your registration in early!

Oh, and the new album is all that and a bag of chips. I may have to dust off the podcasting tools and give y’all a taste.

Stroke, Stroke, Kick, Kick, Breathe, Repeat

The BLUFF POINT TWILIGHT TRAIL race is this evening (as in today, Friday), so I didn’t feel too bad about blowing off running yesterday. It was kind of a crappy day, and I just wasn’t feeling motivated to do much of anything, much less run.

But, after getting home, having a light supper, and mowing the yard, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to at least go get wet, so I headed over to the Y, and hopped in the pool.

Wish I could say that there was something transcendent about swimming last night, but there wasn’t. It was good, don’t misunderestimate, but in all it was just a swim. Though after two nights in the pool in a row, I’m greatly appreciating exactly how much a whole body exercise swimming is as opposed to running or cycling. And, I think I finally figured out how to do a flutter kick.

I wrapped up at 9 – I was the only person in the pool, which was really, really nice.

So, how do y’all feel about running in the rain?

PS – I got the new Wilco album,

    Sky Blue Sky

yesterday. It’s not the phenomena that the last two were, but it’s growing on me. Kind of like the ultimate breakup album, country and western with out the country or the western, and a good dose of organ. I recommend it.

Spring

No doubt about it, there are few things so spectacular and enduring as a New England spring. Sure, the bluebonnets in Texas are amazing, but that’s a couple of weekends. New England spring is months. The trees are finally out, and you’ve never seen so many shades of green, from the extremely pale of the sugar maple in my back yard to the deep, deep green of new pine needles.

Then, there’s the flowering trees. From the tulip tree and the other one in my yard, I pass the forsythia bush, with it’s annual warning of yellow flowers that spring is at hand, which is just now losing the last bit of brilliant yellow. There’s the apple orchard at the top of the hill, bedecked in white blossoms with the promise of apples, and the crabapple at the office, which is showering the cars in the parking lot with pink petals.

I suppose for a show like this, you need 6 months of winter as rehearsal.

Ran on Tuesday, swam last night. The run was good, but I’m having a little bit of ankle trouble again in the mornings. I hope it’s because I’m not stretching enough, but as my schedule straightens out, I may have to go see a doctor, ’cause this is just getting ridiculous now.

The swim was good. The run was good, but mostly because it was just a run.

Swing by Complete Running – they just went over a thousand RSS subscribers. Good things are happening in the internet running world. Good things.

Actually, speaking of running evangelism, I’m getting my buddy Christian back on the road this week. Now to pick back up with the Jons.

links for 2007-05-12

5 Borough Bike Ride

So, I headed into Manhattan last weekend with a few guys from church to do the Bike New York 5 Borough Bike Ride. Good times were had by all.

Statue at St. John the DivineWe got into the city on Saturday afternoon. We stayed at the New York Youth Hostel, upper west side. Walked around for a long while after we got there, and managed to put back both a plate of pasta at the hostel’s carbo-loading supper, as well as half a small wood-oven pizza (with whole wheat crust!) at a great restaurant down the street Saturday night. We also walked up to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine Absolutely amazing, but an odd vibe. Even though it’s an active church, it felt like I was walking through the Cloisters more than the church. Then, there was this bizarre statue outside. It had something to do with peace, but I just kind of liked that everyone was standing on a scary looking crab. And the avenging angel’s pretty darn sweet – ought to be a comic about him.

Continue reading 5 Borough Bike Ride

Podcast Workflow

Chris Brogan asked for podcast workflows today. Mine follows:

We use an Roland Eridol MP3 recorder patched into the PA to capture the audio feed. One of the chior members turns on the recorder as they go out at the beginning of the service, and turns it off at the end of the service. We capture audio at CD quality (44100 sample rate, 24 bit).

After coffee, I go grab the SD card out of the recorder, and take it home. I use Audacity and my MacBook to trim the file – start just before the Gospel reading, and end at the end of the post-sermon prayer.

Once the file is trimmed, I do a high-pass filter with a cutoff at 70 Hz to get rid of any 60Hz that we picked up from the electrical system, and a low-pass filter at about 3.5 KHz to get rid of any higher frequency noise. I’ve experimented with the “Noise Removal” effect, but it either
1) Doesn’t do much; or
2) Adds digital artifacts.

I then export the file as a 44.1KHz/24 bit WAV, and run it through the Levelator.

Re-import the output into Audacity, and use the Lame MP3 encoder to export as 11.5KHz/8 bit MP3.

Our platform is WordPress with the PodPress plugin. I use the FireFTP plugin in Firefox (Flock, actually) to upload the file.

Then, it’s a matter of New Post -> Include audio file -> Post; and we’re done.

The only trouble we ran into was trying to figure out why our initial posts sounded like chipmunks in the flash player included with PodPress, but that turned out to a non-standard MP3 bitrate on our part.

Dialogue

Setting: A three-year old’s bedroom, morning, before work. We’ve been watching Zabomofoo, and Nate is putting on pants (YES!)

Characters:

Daddy

Nate (the three-year old)

D: (Sings) While walking with the Nate one day, Daddy and Jacob saw something strange, a bouncing little creature who loved to jump and play… (Spoken) Nate, what do you think we saw in our yard?

N: A monkey.

D: (Laughs) That would be cool, but I was thinking a squirrel. You know there’s no monkeys in our yard.

N: (seriously) There ought to be. (Smiles)

Exunt