Here's something I love about being at Caltech. I was doing my long run on the infield, and Elette was adjusting the height of the high jump. She had the bungee stretched across instead of the bar, and when she moved the supports higher, the bungee started vibrating.
As I ran by, I pointed and excitedly told her, "Elette, you excited the fifth harmonic!"
Just about anywhere else, I'd expect a groan or a smart response, but instead she actually said, "Wait, did I?" and then bent over for a closer look, presumably to count the nodes. Awesome.
The workout was just 100 minutes with a brief stop for bathroom. At the end Scott tossed me one of his seemingly inexhaustible supply of (expired) Odwalla bars, which I caught while still running, tore open and devoured within a lap. I was just at the point where I would have considered stopping (I left my watch at home and was estimating running time by the clock on the gym wall) but I decided to go an extra couple of laps, just to give my body the chance to practice beginning digestion while still running. You know, in case I ever have to run away from a pack of bloodthirsty wolves for a really long time, and also they happen to be chasing me through an Odwalla Tree grove (I know such things exist because it says right on the package that they are real food for humans (and I am a human (who is good at logic))).
Wednesday February 27 (long)
Tuesday February 26 (recovery)
After 51 minutes of jogging after English class I decided it was enough, then lifted for a while. I did a max set of 12 pullups, so I seem to be fairly stagnant there (indicative of inconsistent commitment). I got in some bench, rows, lunges, and in general all sorts of good stuff that will make me exceedingly beautiful, plus a little bit of core.
Monday February 25 (steady state)
6xarroyo tempo.
On the fifth one, I saw a tall, balding runner bending over the drinking fountain just on the far side of the bridge by the casting pond. Once he started running again I thought I might recognize the stride, but I wasn't sure exactly what the face that goes with it was supposed to be.
I came up along side him a few moments later, looked over, and after we exchanged the typical runner's pleasantry of a man-nod, I asked, "You're not Pete Magill, are you?"
It turns out he was, in fact, Pete Magill (who does things like run 14:40 at age 45), and he chatted with me briefly before I continued on (he apologized for stopping my workout). He said he was running at Ben Brown and the Vanquisher Invite, but maybe not Oxy because he's too old to recover that quickly. Then informed me I was crazy to be attempting a 10K. Nice guy who I hope to run into some more at future meets.
Anyway, I also ran into a bunch of horses and people on the narrow sections of trails, so I didn't get all my times, but they went something like this:
9:21
8:58
8:55
8:45
something
8:40
Good run. I felt mildly uncomfortable, but completely disciplined. I had to run at 2:00 due to scheduling, and my stomach was a bit upset. I was cramping a bit before I started, but by lap three I felt better than lap one.
Weekly Summary: 2/17/08 - 2/23/08 (intervals, fartlek, steady state, long run)
This was a solid week of training. It was my first practice session for running 75's on the track, and I got through it and executed the workout I wanted. My long run was good and so was the steady state. The fartlek was relaxed, more of a tempo.
I missed the NFTC on Sunday, which I didn't want to do, but I was under deadline for some stuff for the paper. There were a few other days were I planned to do some core work later in the evening, but didn't get around to it, and I've been a bit lax with my achilles exercises. So that's something to watch out for.
Next week my focus is again on the Saturday track session were I hope to feel a bit more relaxed at 75's, as if I could run them without any "pushing" at all. The outline is this:
Mon: steady state - 6xarroyo tempo
Tu: recovery, lift
Wed: long
Th: fartlek, probably in Lacy, reps
Fri: recovery
Sat: 7x1200@3:45
Sun: NFTC
Saturday, February 23 (10x800)
Saturdays are going to be my track work days. The plan is to run slightly longer intervals each Saturday while maintaining race pace. The overall volume of intervals is slightly lower than the full race distance as well, mostly because the race distance is really long.
I'm using these for pace and rhythm. Fitness comes on Monday (steady state runs) and speed comes on Thursday (fartlek/reps). So today I wanted to be as relaxed and smooth as possible while running the workout.
I went to Rossi with the team and snuck away to Pomona's track to work out before the races began. They had barriers out over the first three lanes, so I worked out in lane four, improvising a little on the correct location of the four-turn stagger starting line, but I think I got it to within a meter.
From the very first one I felt kind of stiff and tight. In retrospect, this might have been a remnant from the long run on Wednesday, but regardless I didn't like it. The pace felt aerobically fine, but my legs were reluctant.
Ian came by after I had done two and said I looked like I was "jogging", which I guess is a pretty good sign. (He was running some mile repeats at the same time, but didn't seem at all inclined to throw down a few 2:30's with me.)
The good news is that the workout felt pretty much the same all the way through. Number three and number eight were pretty much equally uncomfortable. So I guess I wasn't getting too much more tired, but was just having a slightly off day.
My splits were mostly consistent. They were almost all 2:28 or 2:29, except a 2:26 in the middle followed immediately by a 2:30. The last one I pushed a bit harder, especially on lap two, and ran 2:21.
I cooled down briefly to get back to the track, then had a good time watching the meet and jogging with various homeys. Kiesz ran a strong 1200 leg on the DMR, and Anton had a PR 3000m at 9:22, which puts him on the all-time top ten list on his first try (at number 10).
Friday February 22 (recovery)
Jogged on the infield, then did a "plank workout" at the instruction of my abs coach. I did some "balance planks" and "knee-to-elbow" planks and "leg lift" planks and normal immobile planks. It was pretty tiring by the end.
Thursday February 21 (tempo)
Got to have a little meeting with my best gal Barbara Green today. I have official approval for KELROF 2008, including track reservations, for May 10-11 8am to 8am (Saturday into Sunday).
I decided to switch to the 8am-8am format because many people have suggested it to me, and it makes sense. If you start at 8pm, you've probably already been up all day, so that staying up another 24 hours straight is impossible. Starting at 8am you get fresh runners. Also, Friday into Saturday kills basically the entire weekend, but this way you still have Friday night free.
Also also, the date is somewhat unfortunate because May 10 is the Oxy Invite, so any distance runners trying to run 3:53 to qualify for nationals or coaching their top-two-cross-country-runners-at-any-DIII-school will be unable to participate on my all-star team, should they decide the Invite is more important than a glorious relay squad. I chose the date because last year I overlapped with JPL day or something like that and it was apparently bad. Any later and you're running into finals as well.
Also also also, I'm officially recruiting for a team to try to break the record. It requires an average of about 5:45/mile for the 24 hours, so that's 25 miles each at that pace. So far I have myself and the Romero brothers down, which leaves me, oh, about seven people short. But we can make it!
I need more runners. Ogliore - that means you.
Also also also also, Kiesz and I did 3x8on, 2off in Lacy today, getting progressively faster. It was nice actually to do an entire workout with Matt all the way through, which I think I haven't done since, like forever. I threw in 6xPatton and 3x300 on the track at 48, 46, 45. It was wet on the turns and running in lane one in trainers at 60s pace, I had to be wary of slippage, but everything turned out all right in the end.
Wednesday February 20 (long)
100 minutes. Longest run I've done in a while. By the end I was a bit drained, so that the six strides I did felt a bit ungainly. I kept the pace easy, though.
Garrett wanted to know how many laps I had done, and I said I didn't know. This was apparently unacceptable to him.
"Well, estimate how many."
"One hundred minutes worth."
"How many is that?"
"I don't know."
"Yeah, but, estimate how many."
Tuesday February 19 (recovery)
Recovery jogging today. Lifted first because the gym was going to close. I took my ab coach's advice on blasting my pecs with free weights rather than the bench.
After running I was walking back to campus proper where I had left my bike, and saw a skunk waddling down the walkway in front of me. I have no idea why skunks are so horribly ungainly walkers. Maybe it's because they never have to run away, ever. It was repeatedly testing whether or not it could fit under the fence to the tennis court, and eventually it succeeded. But the point is I felt badass for being brave enough to trail a skunk (from a respectful distance) rather than turn the other way. Skunks are not the boss of me.
Monday February 18 (steady state)
I got started a little after 5, which precluded use of the arroyo. For safety/lack of creativity I went to the track.
16,000m tempo, splitting the 8K halves at 28:20, 27:31 = 55:51 (5:36/mile)
I felt pretty good, although the track wasn't my ideal venue. I was going almost exactly twice as fast as some lady in a red sweater out in line five. After the sun went down there was really nothing to look at, even my watch, since after 30 minutes is starts displaying seconds up in the corner in tiny numerals too small to distinguish easily while running.
I might have pushed a little too hard on this run, but I think the level was probably appropriate.
Next week I should get back on the trail, though.
Weekly Summary: 2/11/08 - 2/16/08 (race, steady state, fartlek, long run)
It was a fantastic week of running. My race on Saturday was better than I had hoped and proved my fitness is slightly higher than I realized. I'm feeling fit, healthy, energized and psyched up about running.
I began a more regimented approach to training this week. I'm still searching for the balance between leaving myself freedom to adapt to each individual day, and providing enough structure that I don't dick around too much and run useless workouts.
I'm trying to make it so that I know ahead of time the main idea for what I want to accomplish that day, while the details of how I go about getting it done I decide on the fly.
For example, I'm planning on doing fartlek on Thursdays from now until the 10,000 at the distance carnival.
So I knew all week that I'd do fartlek on Thursday, but didn't decide to do 8x3on 1off alone at Lacy until Thursday afternoon. I think this is about the right approach, because I don't waste mental energy trying to decide how to mess around with my schedule, but I don't feel pressure to perform a specific workout a specific way or compare it to the previous week.
I've gone further to both extremes - at times planning the details of my workouts in advance, and more recently just making a checklist in my head of the things I want to get done over the course of the week and doing them however was convenient. If the 10,000 goes well, it'll be good evidence to my mind that my current level of organization is just about right. To be more specific, here's my plan for next week:
Mon: steady state, longer than last week; core workout
Tu: recovery jog, lift weights
Wed: long run 95 minutes, with strides
Thu: fartlek, then about 1 mile worth of track between mile and 3k race pace
Fri: recovery jog, strides, core workout
Sat: 12x800 @ 2:30, 200j rest; about 800m worth of speed work
Sun: NFTC
So Saturday is pretty well planned out because it's my key workout for the week, and I want to use it to work on being familiar, comfortable, and relaxed at goal 10K pace. The rest of the week is set up as far as the goal of what I want to accomplish, but with some room for improvisation.
Sunday, February 17 (NFTC)
The weekly NFTC meeting got off to a delayed start since both Ian and I were late. We jogged half an hour, with Kangway providing the entertainment by attempting to remove his shorts while still running (consequently, a patch of the north field became closely acquainted with his face). When we finished he busted out a 58-second quarter for no apparent reason other than Ian and my personal amusement.
I got in three sets of 6x115 on the bench and 42 pullups, in addition to a small bevy of core work before we got kicked out at pumpkin hour of 7:30.
Saturday, February 16 (3000m 8:43)
John Mering and I lined up next to each other. I knew he had a great cross season despite being a track guy, so I decided to key off him early. The gun went and I pushed hard through the first 30 meters to make sure I wouldn't get buried. I wound up on the first lap exactly where I like to be - right at the very back of the lead pack. No one runs on your shoulder or spikes you there, and you can watch everything that's happening. When the break starts you can slip out to lane two and go, and you have an entire peloton there to break the wind for you.
The pack was about 7 or 8 guys. My time goal for the race was 8:50, but competition was more important. If they had gone out in 69's I'd have backed off, but the went out in 72's instead. I was very pleased that despite not working out on the track much (and when I have, rarely exceeding 5:00 pace) I was already able to feel my pace out to within a second or two.
On the third lap one of the LMU guys (there were a bunch) developed a five meter lead or so. I moved out to lane two on the homestretch, but it was too early and I didn't get anywhere. I had wasted a little energy, but just tucked back in where I had been. Coming around on the fourth lap I heard Ian yelling to me to watch for the move. The LMU guy was 10 meters in front now so I decided the move had already happened. Chris Smith had also broken off the front of the pack to chase. On the homestretch again I went wide, moved with more conviction this time, and came up behind Chris.
This was when I remembered that races are rather difficult, and that my legs were starting to get a little tired. No matter, as I was focused on the race ahead now. Somehow the LMU guy was still ten meters up. I heard 4:41 at the mile. I was lucky to have Scott there. He leaned in and got just a few bits of information through to me against the roar of everyone who decided they needed to cheer right at the start line. I decided to pretty much forget about time and see what I could do with the race.
On the homestretch for the fifth time now, I made yet another move to get past Chris and take after the leader. I was still ten meters back. We came through the 1000m to go mark, where I realized it was now the closing act.
I spent 200m trying to gain ground. I didn't get anywhere. I spent 200m relaxing, pretty much acknowledging I couldn't gain any ground on this guy and he was going to get away from me. But he still had exactly the same lead. With 600 to go I was equivocating, trying to decide whether or not it was worth the pain to kick and try to reel him in.
Suddenly I realized what a stupid question this was, and that it is always, always worth it to go after him. So I did. I started kicking and he got the bell 5 meters in front. I don't think he knew I was there, and he didn't look to be picking it up at all. His shoulders were a bit hunched and his stride was almost laconic. Not enjoying himself. But seeing someone in front of you tired is probably the best motivation you can give a runner.
I caught him with 300 to go, and had such good momentum that I just went for it, hoping to put the issue of who would win the race to bed well before the finish line. With 150 to go I heard Ian yelling "HE'S STILL THERE!", much to my surprise. I heard yelling for John, too, who I had thought was long gone.
I went into the homestretch and kicked one last time. I hate the homestretch. There's really nothing you can do with it. If someone comes up on my should there - oh well. I'm already going as fast as I can. The LMU guy passed me easily with 100 to go, and then with 40 to go John crept up on my peripheral vision as well. He got two strides ahead and I finished third.
72
72
70
68 (moving around the pack)
71
71
66 (chasing the leader)
32 (200m)
8:43
The time was a new North Field Track Club record (and indeed my club was announced over the loudspeakers as North Field Track Club), and 7 seconds better than my goal. I didn't expect to run that time, or to be competitive with the field (which in previous years has been 20 seconds faster), so I was very pleased with the race.
Afterwards I got hugs from just about everyone, except Bettina who turned me down. Ian was a bit reticent, apparently thinking I had come to physically attack him, and I had to assure him I'd run slower than his PR before I could get my hug.
Matt ran a very steady pace (although Scott's splits are a bit suspect since they show him running the last 200 in 40) to get a 9:10 PR, despite his shoe coming untied. He's definitely stronger than ever before.
Sachith got under 10:00 with 9:59, although his pacing is was atrocious (75, 76, 79, 82, 83, 85, 82, 37). He probably ran the first 200 faster than the last.
Garrett also needs dramatic improvement in pacing. His fastest lap was an 80 (the first) and his slowest a 96 (the second-to-last). I'm not sure how you could possibly run the first lap at mile pace by accident. Even in high school I don't think I ever did that. So we've got work to do with those two.
After the race Matt took me on a tour to the botanical gardens just north of campus, although we failed in our mission of getting really really lost.
Later that day Anton and Katherine both had excellent 800's, and some random sprinter asked to join our hodgepodge 4x400 D-team, and ran a 52 to get us to 3:40 (Anton 58, sprinter dude 52, me 57, Sachith 57).
photos
Friday, February 15 (recovery)
Cruised 60 minutes on the infield in prep for tomorrow. Sat at home later, perusing a textbook I don't really need to read.
I love these quiet race night hours, drawn out in long, dangling chain in front of me. I love the grip of anticipation that won't let me quite sit still, and the way it battles with the rational mind that won't let me obsess. Instead I turn my focus to the concrete world of text on a page. The book's immutability and permanence form a wonderful contrast to the looming uncertain future. In my imagination my fortunes the next day wax magnificent and wane again into ignominy. And that's the beauty of it - that no one can predict it, except for that fact that it all rests firmly in my conscious control. When the time comes for me to run, I am finally granted a rare opportunity to assert my selfness, will and ambition, in front of the world in a plain and quantifiable manner. There can be no disputing, after the fact, whether you went for it or crumbled. I'm nervous, but not uncontrollably so, and I want to go.
Thursday February 14 (fartlek)
(3on, 1off) x 8
At Lacy, felt fine but not smooth. I was glad to be running alone, since I felt no pressure to push the pace, especially early on. Afterwards I did 5xPatton (Renato Canova hill sprints) and 2x300 in 49, 46. By that time I was getting towards the point where my legs were turning to jelly after what added up to a good bit of milage today. Julie saved me though by giving me a brownie and a cookie shaped like a heart - that was my Valentine's Day. And to give back, here is my Valentine's Day gift to the world:
Wednesday February 13 (long run)
95 minute long run with 6 strides, joined part way by my new dedicated abs coach, Kangway Chuang. That's right - Kangway is now the official coach of my abs. Pretty soon now you are gonna look up and say, "OH MY GOD! Why did a pack of eight small rodents suddenly decide to cover themselves in a stretchy tanned blanket and hover right in front of me?" But I'll just say, "Don't worry, that's no guinea pig posse. It's my abs." And you'll say, "oh yeah."
Tuesday February 12 (easy run)
60 minutes on the grass/track, chatting with Megumi. I lifted afterwards and imagined myself with big muscles, especially in the lattisimus dorsi region. Basically I want to look like this:
Monday February 11 (steady state)
I'm going to start logging each run as an individual post, in anticipation of eventually logging it with some metadata that can be extracted and visualized by external software. I'm still a long way from realizing that goal, because my knowledge of how to make it work is limited, as is my time for learning this stuff. Regardless, I at least know enough to understand how it can work as a general plot, but not enough to know how any of the details can go. I need to do a little background reading and then start my way through the Blogger API.
Went to the arroyo for 5 of Ian's tempo loops. Splits of 9:16, 9:14, 8:57, 8:36, 8:20.
This workout was fantastic. I went in thinking that I simply wanted not to push when I should just be letting things flow. That felt exactly like what happened. By the fourth lap I was running much faster, but although I could tell my stride was a quicker one, my breathing and effort seemed steady. Even on the last lap I was letting the speed build itself rather than forcing it myself. I felt exhilirated when I finished, not exhausted or drained. If I could make every steady state like this one it'd be a sign that I've learned a lot.
I ran into the team out for their long run and jogged around with them a bit before calling it a day.
Pizza and Sex
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Doing the comic for the Tech is fun. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
The thing is no one reads the Tech. But they do read the comics. So every comic I draw is scrutinized by just about everyone I come into physical contact with on a daily basis.
Being the person who draws the school paper's comic is like being a woman with giant boobs. It's only one (relatively) unimportant thing, but to people who don't know you well it's your most prominent characteristic. There's also the strange mix of simultaneously wanting and not wanting people to look.
Here's the hard part about it - my head is screwed on a bit wrong. That's probably why I can sometimes draw outside the lines a bit and come up with something funny. But the other result is that I occasionally find things to be outright hilarious while everyone else just sort of backs away slowly as I roll around on the ground in peels of uncontrollable laughter.
When I have a possible comic idea, I want to make sure it's funny before I make it. But that's really hard to do. There's obviously no objective test. And the idea will run through my mind fifty times. Sure, maybe "The Pink Panther" is funny, but would Clouseau's antics retain their charm through fifty viewings?
Last week I printed this one:
Which is a pretty funny idea, although I honestly can't tell whether the comic is any good. But then I googled it, and amidst scores of other "the chicken or the egg" comics I found this one (there are many more with the same theme):
So yeah, there's also a pressure to be original. Because even if I didn't see the other comic before I made mine, it still totally outclassed me.
Anyway, I think I'll continue posting comics on here before they're sent to the paper. That way, you can tell me "yes, it's funny" or "no, it's crap" BEFORE 2000 people read it.
Also, the same thing that happened to me just happened to Randall Munroe, although he doesn't know it. The latest XKCD is here:
but a few months ago I did this:
in your face, XKCD (okay, not really. the film projector is far more subtle and ingenius. I'm sorry and XKCD is probably the logical equivalent of God according to some sort of obscure joke about operating systems or such and such)
Latest Running Blog Idea
I want a running blog that basically does these things:
- allows daily entries of arbitrary length, including html and multimedia, like i currently have on this blog
- each day to be encoded with data about the run - number of minutes, category of work (tempo, long run, intervals, etc), route, shoes, time of day, weather (could be automatic given time/date and location) etc
- i want to see a big calendar as the main display on the screen. each block on the calendar has some bare-bones information about the run displayed. also, the blocks are color-coded by the type of work done and intensity-coded by the amount of work done (i.e. 1,000m of sprinting would be a light red, and 15 mile long run would be a dark blue)
- I want the ability to display previous months' calendars in miniature size
- i want to be able to plot any variable against any other variable, for example plot weekly milage versus time, using a simple interface. the trendalyzer is a beautiful example. possibly also be able to do things like plot time on the x axis, then on the y axis barefoot miles, shod miles, speedwork miles, distance miles, and tempo miles all in different colors, with little markers indicating on the time axis where special events occurred (races)
- i want the entire thing to be easy for other people to use, and i want them to use it.
- i want it to have the ability to manage communities of runners like the one we have going on right now. for example, i want to be able to click on a button marked "my friends" and see eight different monthly calendars pop up, each one labelled with the runner and each one color/intensity coded so that i can see at a glance the general idea of what anyone is up to, then zoom into their calendars easily and without navigating all over the place
- i want to integrate it into the existing infrastructure as much as possible, and avoid reinventing the internet (or wheel)
- your entries should be searchable and easily navigable
- everything should be customizable. what the color-coding means (or if you want to use it), whether you view things in calendar or blog mode, what metadata you record with each daily entry, etc. you should be able to use the same system to track your runs or record your practice time on the violin. anywhere that's you're keeping a log of a regular activity, you should be able to adapt the system to help you organize and visualize your data
But you can make a template for a blog and my guess is I ought to be able to record some metadata like how far i ran each day. Then this data could be accessible to a simple javascript reading the blog and putting together the calendars and charts and things.
You also maybe need some front end software to make creating new blog posts with all that data in them an easy task.
Previously, I was thinking of trying to make a log from scratch, like running.caltech.edu. But that has a couple of problems. It requires me to run and operate my own server, and to store everyone's data there, and to entice random people to come use it.
By integrating with an existing system like Google, there's less work in development (although more work to understand how Blogger works in the first place). Also, the data storage and server issues are all on Google. Finally, the entire system is much simpler because there's no databases involved.
This is still a huge project, because I don't actually know how to do any of the fancy visualization type things I want to do, and don't know how much pre-existing code there is that I'd be able to use to accomplish that task.
I'd also have to learn more internet technology stuff, since my old knowledge about server-side scripting and databases wouldn't be very useful. Nonetheless, thinking about it gets me excited. I think though it would have to be a project that waits until the summer, as was my previous one.
But let me get some feedback. Do other people also wish for a better system for organizing and visualizing the data we're collectively slapping all over the face of the internet?
02/04/08 - 02/10/08 Mr. Potato Salad (350 minutes, 2 track workouts, 3000m race)
Sunday, February 10 (60 minutes)
Epic NFTC run, including Kiesz, Ian, Megumi, Katherine, and in the weight room Peter and Kangway. I totally blasted my something or other up there. Whatever part of me looks really impressive and hard core, that's what I blasted.
Saturday, February 9 (3000m race)
I raced for the first time in nine or ten months, so it was good to get back to that. 8:58 for 3000m, see above. Afterwards I allowed myself to participate in the alumni 4x400 of Tim, Stu, Scotty, and yours truly as anchor. It was an awful embarrassment because Tim somehow ran a 50xx lead off leg, and we were holding our own until the last two legs, when Scott and I showed what it means to be pathetic.
Friday, February 8 (30 minutes)
Easy pre-race jogging, and some lifting. Running 3000m tomorrow, hopefully against some good competition from the CMS guys. I think I'm in PR shape (8:54), so my plan is to hold steady at 71/72 and give it a big push at the end.
My goal is to run a steady race, see how I fare, and give myself a good target time for a fast race next week against a bigger field at the PP All-Comers.
Thursday, February 7 (descending ladder)
2000: 6:27 (77)
1600: 4:53 (73)
1200: 3:33 (71)
800: 2:17 (68)
400: 63
I had forgotten. The physicality, the immediacy. How very little exists but it exists more intensely. The lightness in my arms, swinging strongly by my sides, their way made smooth by sweat. The way the dead-still air whistles through my ears, humming incomprehensible tunes of an alien land. The backstretch, the far turn, the homestretch, and the first curve. Each as separate entities as separate siblings, or separate lovers.
The way the slanting sun shoots bold orange rays into my eyes as I round the first curve, brush past Scott into the backstretch.
Sound, the split, sinking in from the outside. Registered and assimilated without a conscious effort, absorbed whole into my body and my purpose. The swallowing of the sun by row of dark mirrors, and the pit gaping empty on the inside of the rail. Hugging the curve, watching each knee rise up beneath me and return hungrily to Tartan. Each foot falling just inside the last until the curve straightens out beneath me.
The homestretch - its impossible length displayed before me. The doldrums. The featureless nothing that seeks somehow to destroy, to kill the focus and the flow, to snap the mind and the body asunder. It must be fought not with effort but with its own nonexistence. Body and mind disappear to become only motion, distance, and stride.
And at last the final curve, the gateway. From the old lap to the new, a split beckoning up ahead and companions pushing from behind.
Lacing its way through all this is the pain. Engulfing meters and seconds. Turning time in crazy ways so that trees and lines and people flash past instantly but distant objects never move but just bob quickly up and down. The pain defines the workout, compactifies it, brings it meaning and ineffable beauty. I find that I have no choice but to fall in love with it.
It had been a long time, but I'm beginning to remember speed again.
Wednesday, February 6 (90 minutes)
A good, solid long run with a strong finish.
Afterwards KB and I tested some bread I made using the same algorithm we use to make the Tech: take whatever ingredients you can get your hands on and throw them in together. Hope for the best.
It came out all right, surprisingly.
Monday, February 4 (4 x 1600)
I planned 6 x 1600 starting at 5:20 and cutting off 5 seconds per repeat. I started off fine with 5:16, 5:12, 5:08. At that point I had worked pretty hard on the third mile. Wind was gusting strongly, and the direction of the wind seemed to be changing just enough to make each lap unpredictable.
Without someone else there to share the load with me, I found it very difficult to stay steady and even. Going into the fourth, I decided to cut the workout short because I had no chance of completing three more intervals at a faster pace than I had already done. Still the last one came out to 4:58, which is fine. I'm not totally satisfied with the workout, and in retrospect I think it would have been a better idea to stay at 5:15 and finish the six than to run just 4 at a faster pace. Run and learn.
Also, here's a story about the 2008 commencement speaker, Robert Krulwich.
And, for your viewing pleasure, one more comic that didn't make the cut with the paper:
Ah, well I guess it's not actually funny. It was in my head though. It's kind of the logical conclusion. If "only you can prevent forest fires," and there's still a forest fire, then you must not have done your job preventing it. Hence, all your fault. There, any semblance of humor that possibly once painted a dull patina over that comic is now completely washed away in a sea of inanity. Is that even a word?