Tag: life

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.

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.

2008 Summary

David asked me to review my 2008 resolutions and see how I did. Here goes:

  1. I’d said I’d run 700 miles for the year, and as near as I can figure it, I made it. Nike+ lists 680 miles of runs logged there, and I’m more than a little bit sure that I did 20-odd without my iPod here and there. As a matter of fact, I’m completely sure I did more than 20 miles in December, and Nike+ lists nothing there.
  2. Races:
    • OKC – Bout of plantar facists (yes, I know that’s not how it’s spelled) in January and February made this into a half as a goal and not a whole marathon. But, I did succeed in “crushing” it (“Crushing” defined as under two hours.)
    • Fall Marathon – I did make the NYC lottery, but did San Antonio instead. Didn’t “crush” that one (marathon “crush” defined as under 4 hours), but did knock out a pretty sizeable PR, and finished it with my motivation intact.
    • New Haven 20K – This was a really, really tough race for me this year due to blisters, but I finished the race, and placed somewhere in between my historical times.
  3. That was pretty much it.

So, I’d set the bar pretty low last year, and seem to have cleared it. What was I thinking talking smack this year?

Times are Tough

50 Cent Shaves $ 4Million Off Farmington Property

After almost two years on the market, the rapper has lowered the price of his Farmington mega-mansion from $18.5 million to $14.5 million, a 21 percent price cut. – Hartford Courant via Planet Money

(Also of note -we’re thinking about raising chickens. No, really)

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.

Happy Festivus!

Yeah, just wanted to get that out there. As you all may know, as I can see from the many aluminum poles in the audience, tomorrow/today, December 23, is Festivus. As such, we all need to be prepared for:

  • The Airing of the Grievances
  • Feats of Strength

Before we come to that, however, I’d like to catch up on a couple of things.

Saturday – Almost a foot of fresh snow, and a great mix of powder and costal New England concrete laid a wonderful base for about 7 miles of XC at Bluff Point. I basically did the epic Bluff Point Trail Race 7~ish mile loop in reverse, and was completely in reverie the whole time. I always love getting out on the local trails on cross-country skis, as it’s a quick and easy way to survey the other post-hippies in the community. No deer, though.

Sunday – Extra sore from the XC – man, does it really, really work the core. Skipped the morning’s Hundred.

Today – Work, supper, kids, and headed to the Y for a swim. I’m in “Base” mode preparing for Mooseman in June. Essentially, what I’m going to try to do is to swim 1K to 1.5K on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, bike 30 minutes to 1 hour on Monday, Wednesday, Sunday, and run 30 minutes to 1 hour on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, with Friday as a rest day. Shoot for about 8 hours a week training, shower included. More on this another day.

Today’s swim was good, at least as good as last week’s trip to the base pool when I realized it was a 35m pool instead of a 25m pool. The only bit of awkwardness was afterwards in the locker room with one of the guys who can’t stand to be naked with other guys. Gives me the creeps.

OK, so, let’s get on with the festivities:

THE AIRING OF THE GRIEVANCES

  • Food – Why are you so darn tasty? If you weren’t, I’d eat just what I needed to survive, and would have fabulous abs.
  • Fat – Leave. Just leave.
  • Weather – All I ask is for one nice hour each day. Is that so hard? Why do you have to squander so many nice hours during the spring, summer, and fall when I’ve got to be at work?
  • Shoe Companies – Look, just stop already. Nike – the Air Pegasus 25th anniversary edition is darn near perfect. Asics – I dig me some Gel Cumulus X’s. New Balance – Why did you mess with the 803’s from about 3 years ago? I’ll wear out the pairs I’m using now soon enough, and will happily buy more
  • Clothing Companies – Can we get some options for guys besides baggy pants and t-shirts? Oh, and would it kill you to build more shirts with pockets for mp3 players?
  • Sunglass Companies – How ’bout something that doesn’t make me look like Bono?
  • Other runners – the fuel belts look dorky. Sorry, they just do. Pick up a banana at the gas station. They’ve got water and juice, too.
  • Gadgets – Look, here’s what I want: one thing that I can strap on my wrist that logs everything – run, bike, swim; inside and outside; treadmill and stationary bike; and if it could electronically monitor my blood glucose level to estimate how much I was eating, so much the better. Then I want it to automagically sync to my web interface of choice (Mac, PC, Linux, Wii, whatever), show pretty graphs and pretty maps of where I’ve been, and then write 400 witty words about the day. The 400 witty words could be done by a speech to text converter during the workout, ‘cept I’d like to be able to set a filter to edit around the f-bombs and other four-letter words to keep the blog about PG.
  • Beer – What happened to all the good Belgian imports?

Yeah, that was fun.

Feats of Strength

  • Uh, I plan to get up in the morning, and drag myself into the office and face the year-end tasks I’ve been putting off, so they’re not waiting for me in 2009.
  • Oh, and I’m going to the hundred in the morning. I’m building towards doing something like this every time I wake up.

So, Happy Festivus! Get the bile out of your system, and then either continue enjoying your religious holiday of choice. I cannot wait to go sing my lungs out at the Christmas Eve service.

Stuff

First Item:

Head on over to NPR. First to pause for a moment to commiserate with the 7% of the staff that got axed, and second to tune into their Jingle Jams. Good stuff, though I don’t see James Brown’s Funky Christmas anywhere on the list.*

Second Item:

Spam. Man, Yahoo mail seems to be full of it.

Third Item:

Have I mentioned that I LOVE to run? Tuesday’s run was incredible. Perfect weather as the temp had risen into the 50’s, the rain and wind hadn’t started. And, interestingly enough, I’d left my headphones in the car. But I ran anyway. I think I may be past using the iPod as a crutch.

Fourth Item:

I’m getting a bit fed up with Rodale. A while back, they moved Bicycling magazine to an automatic renewal policy. Which is fine, ‘cept they wanted to charge me $22 for a year’s subscription this time around, and send me some crappy new lifestyle magazine. This is a problem when there’s fliers in the dead tree magazine, and a huge add on Bicycling’s website offering a subscription for $12/year. So, I called up, cancelled the old subscription, and re-subscribed for 2 years for $21. Why is it that people feel entitled to take money out of existing customer’s pockets?

Fifth Item:

Swim Class at the Y. The boys are over the moon, ’cause their dad is going to be taking swim lessons at the Mystic Y, just like they do. They’re offering a triathlon swim training class on Monday and Wednesday evenings, 5:30 to 6:30 Mondays and Wednesdays, which is perfect with my class schedule. Things are really falling into place for Mooseman.

Sixth Item:

Training programs. I’m open for suggestion, especially for base development for January and February. I’m partial to modifying TriNewbie’s half program. It looks to be about 7-11 hours per week, which is about the volume I think I can reasonably support (I know i’ll just be squeaking to finish a half; but I’m realistic). The other one I like is Scott Herrick’s. Now, when do I sleep?

Last Item:

Looks like this blog is branching out a little bit. I’ll try to keep a fitness focus, but will likely do a bit more rambling here in the near future.

OK, so that looks like it’s about all. Hope everyone’s having as good a holiday season as can be expected. I’m completely loving life. We’ve got our church pageant on Saturday (with CAKE afterwards). One more class this calendar year; then three whole weeks to catch up on reading.

*They do have Run DMC’s Christmas In Hollis

worst. run. ever. (And travel/training question)

So, the 20 miler on Saturday sucked.

Lesson 1: Make a plan. Stick to the f’n plan. On Friday, I’d checked the forecast. Saturday was supposed to be crappy and rainy. Sunday was supposed to be sunny and dry. No brainer – run on Sunday. Figured I’d repeat the great 18 miler experience and crank it out before Sunday school. However, just after lunch, I conned Missy into letting me take the afternoon and squeeze in the run.

Lesson 2: Fuel pre-run. What you’ve got in your belly is what you’re taking with you on the run. In my case, lunch was beans and rice, and nachos and salsa. Cheese doesn’t digest very quickly. So, the whole run was a bunch of fiber trying to work its way through my system, while at the same time, burbling back up in a series of “burps”, not being able to come up with a better word for small amounts of barf in the back of my mouth.

Lesson 3: Don’t fight the body’s cycles. (TMI after the jump)

Lesson 4: When your instinct says bail, bail. After the genesis of lesson 3, I decided to keep going. Made it out to the point in the Borough, read the memorial to the brave, brave men who fought off the Royal Navy in the War of 1812, and turned around. The combination of intestinal distress and enthusiasm had gotten me to start off too fast, and to alter my stride. I shoulda called Missy and had her come pick me up about mile 12, but I pressed on.

Lesson 5: Walking is slow, slow. Still feeling crampy (not the dehydrated crampy, but the intestinal crampy), I walked most of the last 6 miles to the house.

Lesson 6: Beer makes everything better. Missy fed me pizza and beer, and I feel great today.

Man, if the Marathon is half as bad as this last super-long run was, there’s no way I’m doing it again. But, I didn’t have anything going my way, so it’s hardly surprising that things went so bad.

Due to the lack of effort, I think I’ll extend my last double-digit run next weekend from the planned 12 to somewhere north of 16.

But this begs another question entirely: I’m headed to Sydney on short notice to give a talk next weekend (2 weeks before race day). I’m flying the last Saturday, and landing on Monday. What I’m planning to do is to do:

  • Skip the long run on Saturday (maybe a quick 4 or 5 with the older boy)
  • 2.5 hours Monday so as to sleep off jet lag (Essentially combine Saturday’s long run with Monday’s plan)
  • x-Train on Tuesday (per plan)
  • 1 hour Wednesday (per plan)
  • x-train Thursday(per plan)
  • 1 hour Friday before heading to the airport (per plan)
  • 8-10 miles Saturday (per plan, and about 36 hours after Friday’s run due to time changes)
  • rest of the Taper per plan

If anyone’s been to Australia and can recommend some routes in Sydney, I’d be much obliged.

Continue reading worst. run. ever. (And travel/training question)