I was thinking about doing a workout, but my legs were feeling tired enough already, so I just went for 80 minutes on the south field instead.
quick link: i just stumbled on a nice-looking site of math problems. i just took a look at the most recent one and it's pretty good.
Saturday March 29 (medium-long)
Thursday March 27 (long)
100 minutes, which is pretty long I guess. Barefoot on the south field. Felt fine, just long.
Wednesday March 26 (easy)
75 minutes, late at night. My sleeping schedule has been awful recently. It's very easy for me to get off a regular schedule - just stay up late one night, for whatever reason. Then if I wake up at the normal time, I fall asleep during the day, can't get to sleep at the normal time that night, and the cycle continues. On the other hand, if I sleep in late, I still can't get to sleep at the normal time and sleep in late again the next day. I think the only way I've been able to maintain a normal schedule is when I have some sort of pressing daily function at 8 in the morning that I absolutely have to attend. I don't, so it always seems like a good idea to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep - at the time. But the problem is it makes scheduling my day difficult, and I end up doing things like sleeping from 11pm to 2:30 am and then going for a run from my apartment.
Tuesday March 25 (recovery)
30 minutes easy in the evening. I met a new tutoring student today, which is exciting for a couple of reasons. One is that her parents are insane (that is, asian) and want her to work with me six hours a week because she got a B on her last report card (she's in seventh grade). That means I can pay my rent now. The other is that they want me to work on English as well as math. Her father asked me to bring a reading assignment for her, and to work on her writing ability. I haven't done this before, and it's a kind of wide-open new territory. I desperately cast about my room for fifteen minutes today trying to find something that would be appropriate to a seventh-grader. Lots of my books are science or math. Then I have a bunch of science fiction, which while entertaining, probably would not go over well with her father. Any sort of full-length novel is a bad idea because we would be reading it forever. Also, seventh graders have a pretty wide range of reading abilities, and I didn't even know yet whether this girl is a native English speaker (I now assume she is; her parents aren't).
I went through everything I had - too technically difficult, too thematically complicated, to mature worldview, too boring, inappropriate content (I actually picked up Lolita for a second). Finally I found an anthology of short stories I had used for a writing class at Caltech. It meant I wouldn't even have to come up with exercises for her to write - they were already in the book! Yay! So I turned to my favorite story in the book, After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned.
This afternoon we did almost 70 straight minutes of "circles", then took a break. I got out the story and asked her to read the first page to me so I could hear what level she was at. After a minute she suddenly stopped midsentence. I looked over, and the sentence was, "I'm a fast fast dog and I can jump like a fucking gazelle."
Great job me. "Sorry, I forgot about that," I told her rather stupidly. "I'm a fast dog and I can jump like a friendly gazelle," I filled in for her and then we kept going. I read the next page aloud, and then gave her the homework of finishing the story and choosing any of the prompts and write the front of one page on it (I didn't actually want to assign her extra work, since I would prefer just to read the story together and talk about it, but her dad would not be satisfied with that. I'm not sure when this child is supposed to be able to sit outside and just enjoy the sun for a few minutes. She has a 97% in English class already.)
Anyway, I am glad to get a chance to think and talk about some short stories with a young student, but I could use some suggestions for stories to read with her that are age/context appropriate. My parents always censored my television and movie viewing, but never my reading, so that I read a fair amount of explicit material by seventh grade, but unfortunately that doesn't give me free reign to assign such material now.
Monday March 24 (steady state)
6xarroyo tempo
9:23, 9:07, 8:50 (27:20)
8:45, 8:55, 8:50 (26:30)
I felt a little tired and forced during the run, but basically okay. There were an awful lot of unleashed dogs, but I didn't get attacked a whole lot. Good workout, good effort.
Weekly Summary: March 2008, week 3 (no workouts)
I didn't work out this week, since I was mostly just recovering from last week's 10K. I got in a couple of nice runs and chilled out. The soreness is pretty much gone now and I'm ready to get back into training. The plan for next week is:
Mon: Steady State
Tues: recovery
Wed: medium-long
Thu: tempo or fartlek
Fri: recovery
Sat: long run
Sun: SFTC
Sunday March 23 (SFTC)
The North Field has officially become a piece of crap. It is all hard and dead and nasty. Seriously, it was so bad that for I second I thought I was running not on the North Field but on in your mother's barren womb. Then I realized it wasn't acidic enough for that.
So Kiesz, Dennis and I switch to the South field, then I did some weights and pondered "Schrodinger's Jesus" (he's in the tomb, but is he dead or alive? we just don't know)
Saturday, March 22 (long)
90 on the infield, still in shoes. My knees disliked doing shoes on soft grass, but only for the first ten minutes. After that I was good. Finished with 12 striders, which felt like a lot of striding at the end of a long run. I saw Sierra on the track running what looked like a tough interval session by herself. That takes some dedication - to run a hard workout by yourself during spring break. So it looks like we've hooked another one (I ran into Will out for a random weekend jog last week). We still have to get Will actually to run some races, though.
Friday, March 21 (easy)
80 on the north field, waiting until 5:30 so the heat would be somewhat diminished. I had a fortuitous run-in with Chris Raub part way through. Eventually we brought up the anomalous performances of Paula Radcliffe and the Chinese runners from 1993.
First, let me lay out the phenomena in question.
All-time best marathon performances for women:
1 2:15:25 Paula Radcliffe GBR 17.12.73 1 London 13.04.2003
2 2:17:18 Paula Radcliffe GBR 17.12.73 1 Chicago 13.10.2002
3 2:17:42 Paula Radcliffe GBR 17.12.73 1 London 17.04.2005
4 2:18:47 Catherine N'dereba KEN 21.07.72 1 Chicago 07.10.2001
5 2:18:56 Paula Radcliffe GBR 17.12.73 1 London 14.04.2002
6 2:19:12 Mizuki Noguchi JPN 03.07.78 1 Berlin 25.09.2005
7 2:19:26 Catherine N'dereba KEN 21.07.72 2 Chicago 10.2002
8 2:19:36 Deena Kastor USA 14.02.73 1 London 23.04.2006
9 2:19:39 Sun Yingjie CHN 03.10.77 1 Beijing 19.10.2003
10 2:19:41 Yoko Shibui JPN 14.03.79 1 Berlin 26.09.2004
11 2:19:46 Naoko Takahashi JPN 06.05.72 1 Berlin 0.09.2001
12 2:19:51 Zhou Chunxiu CHN 15.11.78 1 Seoul 12.03.2006
13 2:19:55 Catherine N'dereba KEN 21.07.72 2 London 13.04.2003
14 2:20:38 Zhou Chunxiu CHN 15.11.78 1 London 21.04.2007
15 2:20:42 Berhane Adere ETH 21.07.73 1 Chicago 22.10.2006
16 2:20:43 Tegla Loroupe KEN 09.05.73 1 Berlin 26.09.1999
16 2:20:43a Margaret Okayo KEN 30.05.76 1 Boston 15.04.2002
18 2:20:47 Tegla Loroupe KEN 09.05.73 1 Rotterdam 19.04.1998
18 2:20:47 Galina Bogomalova RUS 15.10.77 2 Chicago 22.10.2006
20 2:20:57 Paula Radcliffe GBR 17.12.73 1 Helsinki 14.08.2005
All-time best 3000m performances for women:
1 8:06.11 Wang Junxia CHN 09.01.73 1 Beijing 13.09.1993
2 8:12.18 Qu Yunxia CHN 25.12.72 2 Beijing 13.09.1993
3 8:12.19 Wang Junxia CHN 09.01.73 1h2 Beijing 12.09.1993
4 8:12.27 Qu Yunxia CHN 25.12.72 2h2 Beijing 12.09.1993
5 8:16.50 Zhang Linli CHN 06.03.73 3 Beijing 13.09.1993
6 8:19.78 Ma Liyan CHN 03.11.68 3h2 Beijing 12.09.1993
7 8:21.26 Ma Liyan CHN 03.11.68 4 Beijing 13.09.1993
8 8:21.42 Gabriela Szabo ROU 14.11.75 1 Monaco 19.07.2002
9 8:21.64 Sonia O'Sullivan IRL 28.11.69 1 London 15.07.1994
10 8:21.84 Zhang Lirong CHN 03.03.73 5 Beijing 13.09.1993
11 8:22.06 Zhang Linli CHN 06.03.73 1h1 Beijing 12.09.1993
12 8:22.20 Paula Radcliffe GBR 17.12.73 2 Monaco 19.07.2002
13 8:22.44 Zhang Lirong CHN 03.03.73 2h1 Beijing 12.09.1993
14 8:22.62 Tatyana Kazankina RUS 17.12.51 1 Leningrad 26.08.1984
15 8:23.23 Edith Masai KEN 04.04.67 3 Monaco 19.07.2002
16 8:23.26 Olga Yegorova RUS 28.03.72 1 Zürich 17.08.2001
17 8:23.75 Olga Yegorova RUS 28.03.72 1 Saint-Denis 06.07.2001
18 8:23.96 Olga Yegorova RUS 28.03.72 1 Roma 29.06.2001
19 8:24.19 Gabriela Szabo ROU 14.11.75 2 Zürich 17.08.2001
20 8:24.31 Gabriela Szabo ROU 14.11.75 1 Paris 29.07.1998
Why is it that the fastest non-Chinese-in-1993 woman is a full 3.2% slower than the world record? Why is Paula 2.5% faster than the next-fastest female marathoner?
Clearly, these are different situations, because in Paula's case the superb performances were repeated over the course of a couple of years. She also has an enormous, El-Guerrouj level support system working for her. Note that Paula is the third-fastest non-Chinese-in-1993 woman at 3000, and has the #1 fastest non-Chinese-in-1993 10,000m time ever. It makes some sense that she's a better marathoner than Catherine Ndereba, Deena, or the top Japanese women, because Paula is simply much faster than they are across the board. If you took a guy who has run 10,000m in 30:02, trained him for the marathon, and he ran 2:18 or 2:17 a few times (including a race where he stopped to crap on the side of the road), and then once ran 2:15, it would be a surprisingly good result, but not a shockingly good one. So Paula's numbers make sense in some way.
The Chinese numbers do not make sense. Not only are they all from the same nation in the same year, they are all from the same coach (Ma Junren). Just go here and scroll down to the year's best performances. There is one Chinese woman in the 400, two in the 800, then the entire list at 1500 and 3000, and the top four of 10000 and marathon. (They didn't bother with the 5000 because the World Champs had 3000m instead at that point). Checking 1992, you see this dominance arose from nowhere. If you look at 1994, you'll see that next year they mostly disappeared, except the two world-record breakers, who both ran significantly slower, but still well enough to make the lists.
The typical response is to say, "they were on drugs," make a joke about turtle blood (and caterpillar fungus, apparently) and then forget it. But I don't think that's an adequate explanation. Of course they were on drugs. One of them, Zhang Lirong, was later caught. Also, China itself caught six of Ma Junren's athletes during blood tests before the Sydney Olympics and held them back from competition. But still - why were they so good? Why did they run such fast times only in Beijing? Why were they so young (mostly 20 or 21)?
It's not like the Chinese women were the first ones ever to use drugs, or that no one has done it since. And still no one, not even runners doped to the gills, can touch 29:31 or 8:09 (no female one, anyway). The Ethiopian and Ethiopian ex-pats have already taken over the 5000 best times list. Soon they will break 30:00 (Meseret Defar ran 14:16 last year). But it will be a long time before a woman runs 3:50 again. No one is even in the vicinity of 8:09, either.
So why did they run so fast? Why a group of Chinese peasant women? What was do different about their approach to drug-enhanced running as compared to everyone else who's ever done it?
From Google Books:
The famous coach, Ma, and his 'army' can be used as one of the examples. In the 1990s, Chinese women runners emerged as the dominant performers in middle and long-distance races in international competitions. The person credited with this success was their coach, Ma Junren. The team's success has been attributed to his use of traditional Chinese herbal medicine and his rigorous training methods. however, Zhao Yu, a writer, revealed in his book, The Investigation of Ma's Army, the dark side of the story. Ma Junren acted not as a modern athletics coach, but as an ancient gladiator trainer. Girls under his training were 14-16 years old. They had to run 220km a week [135 miles] - almost a marathon a day. he beat htem whenever he wanted to. Wang Junxia, the holder of world records from 1,500m [inaccurate, she was close though] to 10,000m and recipient of the presitigious Jesse Owens Trophy in 1994, was beaten by Ma every week, sometimes even in front of TV crews and her parents for her 'inappropriate behavior'. The same things happened to the other female athletes. Zhao Yu claimed that all girls were subjected to verbal and physical abuse regularly.
Ma also controlled all aspects of their lives. He controlled their wages and did not allow the girls to have money in their pockets. He controlled their reward money and used millions of it to build his training centre. He controlled their medals, rewarded cars and houses and used them to trade for his benefit. He also controlled their personal lives. Girls were forbidden to have boyfriends or to have long hair, face cream, let alone make-up, nice clothes, and even bras. On one occasion when Ma noticed Liu Dong, the 5,000m world champion, wearing a bra he lined the whole team on the training ground, threw her bra on the ground, and called her 'a prostitute who wants to attract men'. The humiliation force Liu Dong to leave the team and retire, while at the peak of her career.
In Ma's training centre there was no music because Ma smashed all records, CDs and tapes by hammer; no books and magazines because Ma burned them all; no educational classes because Ma hated them; no privacy - even private letters were examined by Ma before they reached the receivers. Ma was the feudal warlord. Female athletes had to obey him completely and serve him like slaves. Their duties included washing his feet everyday. Although Ma's cruelty and inhumanity was partially revealed and criticized by the media, Ma was not punished but promoted from a coach to a vice director of Liaoning Provincial Sports Commission and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference for his contribution to the Chinese gold medals.
My internetting gives the original book by the Chinese reporter with three different titles, so my guess is it's never been translated in full (because you can bet it wasn't translated three times).
And what does Wang Junxia have to say? "I didn't feel happy at all in those days."
Gee, no kidding. She left Ma the next year, and won the gold medal at 5,000 in Atlanta. She never touched those same times, though. In fact her 5000 PR, from the Olympic year, was 14:51 - a slower pace than her 10,000 record.
So now we have an extraordinary situation - a whole bunch of woman from one area in China and with one coach suddenly become the best in the world - and an extraordinary circumstance to explain it. But was it only the insane training and drugs that made Ma Junren's runners so fast? Was the absurd, "gladiator training" lifestyle also a necessary ingredient? It's hard to say. In fact, it's hard even to define from a logical standpoint what that question means. So to rephrase: could those performances be replicated by a similar program, in which athletes are given performance-enhancing drugs and huge training volumes, but otherwise live a normal athletic life?
Maybe they can. But they haven't yet. It'd be nice for someone camp to come along and prove it, though, so there's no question that torture is not a necessary part of incredible performance. Actually, it'd be especially nice if they could do it without the drugs.
Thursday, March 20 (easy)
With Matt in the morning. Uncomfortably hot, and still a bit sore.
Puzzle:
1 3 7 12 18 26 35 45 56
what comes next?
(from Godel, Escher, Bach. hint: specifically, this came from a chapter discussing completeness and negative space)
Wednesday, March 19 (90 minutes)
There is a relatively-new Salad Fingers out there. I don't know how it took me this long to realize it. But it's glorious. A visceral plunge into the cobweb-filled corners of life. You know you want to watch it.
I don't know why, but my calves now appear to be permanently sore. I thought they were better, but after about 20 minutes of running today they were starting to feel it, and I went a full ninety. I guess it's back to shoes tomorrow.
My armpit foam returned today. This convinces me that it's related to sweat, since it was a sunny hot day and I haven't had the foaming all winter. That's still not much of an explanation, though. By the way, "armpit foam" is one of the most common internet searches that leads people to this site (after 'anorexia'). So if you're wondering why your armpits foam and came here for answers, I don't have them. But just be reassured that you're not the only one out there. Other people are just like you. It's okay. I feel ya, bro.
Monday, March 17, 2008 (70 minutes, strides)
My calves have been sore to varying degrees for ten days, ever since I sprinted some 300's barefoot. I finally decided to wear shoes until they're ready for action again. Accompanied Scott down to Lacy for some laps (not working out, just laps), then back to Caltech and some strides. Also kung-foot against Yez and Alex. I discovered that Alex is a natural for this ancient discipline.
Short core workout after.
Sunday, March 16, 2008 (NFTC)
Longish NFTC that migrated to the south field due to dodgeball on the north field. Some people would say it was softball on the north field, but when you're running laps my name for it is more appropriate.
Jasper, Phyllis, and Catalina joined me after a few miles. I jogged with Jasper for a while until Ian came by, then ran with Ian until he was done. Then Garrett sauntered his way over and we all lifted a short while until the gym closed. I'm not sure how it wound up being two hours, but it was.
Ian invited me to come run 1000's with Oxy on Tuesday at the end, but as soon as I hit the shower I remembered I was already scheduled to work then.
Saturday, March 15 (swim, Lower Quad meet)
Men and women both took second in the lower quad meet, but both were close. I didn't catch all that many times or marks, and the results aren't online yet. Also, I can't really tell by looking how well a sprinter is doing. The 4x100 did well. Seth and Alex had a beautiful hand off, after having struggled with it in practice.
The story of the meet for me was the women's 4x4, with the A team and B team battling it out all the way. Tencia hardly ever runs the 400, but gave herself away by holding even or slightly better than Bettina on the first leg for the B team. Then Stephanie was ahead of Sierra and stayed there, and Jenny held off Aria on the third leg. Perrin got the baton just a few strides ahead of Suzanna, who took off to catch her in the first hundred meters. She did, but was in obvious pain when the vicious wind that blew intermittently throughout the meet came roaring down the backstretch. Perrin caught back up with 200 to go and it was a battle all the way down the homestretch, until Suzanna pulled out the win in the last 30 or 40 meters.
I jogged a mile or so with Kiesz and Sachith before the 800, and swam for half an hour before the running events. Even though I haven't swam further than a lap this school year, I made it through without even getting unduly tired, so, go me.
Friday, March 14 (10k race)
It's time to stop putting off the post-race analysis. I ran pretty poorly.
32:39, with splits of approx. 15:42, 16:57.
That doesn't look pretty.
I felt fantastic in the first six laps. I worked my way up through the field, coming through the mile in 5:00. My first lap was about a 78 since I was stuck in traffic, so I was dropping laps as fast as 73 early on.
After that I locked onto Kris Brown from CMS, who somehow recognized me as the beer miler without even turning back to look at me. After a couple of laps I went around him to chase down a tall runner in white up ahead.
I caught the guy, who I quickly learned was named Jason. I felt very good sitting behind him, but I thought he was going a little slower than 75's so after two laps or so I went around him. This was on lap nine or ten. When I did, I ran a 73 for the lap, and I started to feel tightness in my chest. It was a strange feeling that I don't get in training at all. My legs still felt fine, so I kept going, but I didn't shake Jason. He passed me back shortly, and as we came up on three miles I started to feel the pace in my legs as well. All at once, it became blindingly obvious that I was not in 31:15 shape or even very close to it.
When I saw this guy's uniform getting up further and further ahead, and came through three miles having slowed a little of 5:00 pace, I just didn't want to do it any more. If I wasn't going to run 5:00 pace, I didn't want to make myself suffer through a long, painful decline. In my mind, I just said, "fuck it", and cruised the second half trying to ignore the people cheering for me and the runners passing me. Some of them were even "unlapping" me - lapped runners passed me to get less than 400m behind again.
I had the dignity at least not to sprint like an idiot on the last lap and just finished the race. The CMS runner Kris and Mike Davies both broke 32:00 by a little, and the tall runner in white ran 31:17.
If you read my description of the race and think that my attitude was immature, I agree. It was not the attitude I would want to have displayed. I was just so disappointed to discover that the race wasn't what I hoped it would be, and that my physical conditioning was not on the level I had imagined, that I gave myself in to disillusionment. I had a pretty sour, unsportsmanslike attitude towards the race.
Of course there are lessons to be learned. I guess the first is not to be so stuck up. If you can't hit the time you want, it doesn't mean you should give up. You still have to make the best of the situation.
Second is patience. I should have stuck right behind Jason rather than passing him, running hard, and getting myself into quick trouble. He actually maintained 75's the whole way. He wasn't seeded anywhere near that, so congratulations to him for executing that strategy and running that race alone. I think that when I'm training now, I'll try to carry the image of this lone, slightly-gawky runner occasionally slowing a second or two, but bringing himself back every time, maintaining his composure as he laps people and even as he gets lapped, focusing on his task, and finally closing the last lap on an excellent race. That will be my ideal.
I'll be moving to 5000 now. I did feel very comfortable running the second-fastest 5000 of my life last night, so I know I can PR. I beat Chris Smith and ran faster than the CMS guys by some good margins at 3000 a month ago, and now they are all between 15:08 and 15:15 (nice job, Chris, by the way!). I'm not giving up on 15:00, but I don't want to make it the goal immediately. The last thing I want to do is become a slave to 72's the way I spent the last month enslaved by 75's.
I'll race at the Pomona Pitzer invite. There will be lots of good competition there, and the field won't be spread out and lonely like in the 10,000. The goal will simply be to run the race as a race, not a time trial, and to finish feeling like I went after it the way I know I should and can do. I hope that a bunch of those SCIAC guys are there and that we can all go after some great times together.
Speaking of which, Matt had a good 1500, while John Mering had a slightly-better one and DeMar had an awesome one (great to see him again, and see him tearing it up like that).
Filmed from the stands above the homestretch. It's a little shaky, and the original, nice video has been reduced down to youtube quality, but you still get a nice view of Kiesz, DeMar, and Mering battling it out. CMS had two freshman at 4:02 and 4:04 as well, so there's some talent in the conference for 1500 as well as 5000 this year.
Also, Jake from Redlands had a much better race than last week, going 1:55.
KB broke her own school record for 10,000, although I think she can go even faster. Sub 20:00 is within reach by the end of the month. Best also ran a great 5000, and Stephanie worked her way onto the all-time list at 1500.
Garrett PR'ed at 1500 with his first-ever sub 5. I'm maybe happiest to see that of all the performances at the meet. He's been working at it for a couple of years, but keeps the most amazingly positive attitude towards the sport despite constantly battling injuries. It's not easy having to pace yourself while the rest of the pack goes out ahead each race, but Garrett's been getting better and better. Maybe soon he will not have to let that pack go - he'll be in it. So great job Garrett on that race.
Sachith has some major difficulties with pacing. Even though we talked about it several times, both in reference to his previous 3000's and in planning for this 5000, he went out in 5:12. So that's what we have to work on. After the meet, he expressed his desire to run under 17:00. What I don't think he understands is that he is already at 16:45 fitness, but has to give himself a goddamn chance in order to actually run the race. As in 5:30, 5:25, 5:20, 30 = 16:45. (If you don't think Sachith can run the last 200 in 30 seconds, you might be right, but he can run it in 32. He's faster than he looks.)
Conclusions:
Personal: Time to focus on 5000, don't be such a maniac about times and deflate the ego a bit.
Team: Things are coming together as well or better than any other of my 4 years here. Matt is on track for nationals once he get his kick together, and everyone else is on track for PR's, SCIAC finals, and general good times and awesomeness all around.
Tuesday - Thursday, March 11-13 (easy)
Went easy each day. Actually, I took Tuesday off, then went about 80 minutes on Wednesday and 60 minutes today.
The 10,000 is tomorrow night. I'm hoping to run with Mike Davies, but if I have to run alone I think I'll still be okay. My plan is to go for 76's on the first mile, then 75's the rest of the way, which with a modest kick yields 31:15. Of course, by "plan" I mean "fantasy," not that I believe the race will pan out exactly that way. But it's nice to have some sort of concrete image in your mind to make things a bit easier. Also, I "plan" to be hurting pretty bad about 4 miles in. I'll give a report later on how that works out.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Plodded around the infield 60 minutes, then hit up some core, and did 14 pull-ups, which is not far off my old PR of 16. Finished it up by splashing around in the pool for a few minutes and even swimming a lap.
stuff I did yesterday:
Ben Brown recap
Ballroom Dancing
Weekly Summary: March 2008, week 2 (track work, tempo/speed)
Stuff happened. I felt tired a sore a couple of times. My track work wasn't quite what I wanted. I didn't do a long run, didn't do a steady state, and took a day off that wasn't scheduled.
Still, this week wasn't bad necessarily. It just wasn't what I expected. I think most of the decisions I made were good ones. I should have worked out on Friday instead of leaving it to Saturday night. Actually, I should have gotten up an hour earlier on Saturday morning and workout out then. I shouldn't have stretched so vigorously early in the week, making my quads sore.
I did some things right, though. I'm glad I didn't shove an extra workout into my legs. I'm glad I took it easy on the tempo Tuesday. I'm glad I actually went ahead and did the workout Saturday night, despite being tired and having some misgivings.
So a few lessons learned and a few days older. Next week is the race. I'm still feeling intimidated by it, but not in a scared way. More in a curious way. It will be very strange if I really can run six miles at the pace that feels strained in track work that's not only shorter but includes rest. I'm also aware that I may have to hurt quite a lot for ten or even fifteen minutes consecutively, which is not something I'm used to doing. But I'm working on accepting that.
The plan is:
Monday: run as you feel
Tuesday: run as you feel, a little faster stuff if you want
Wednesday: run as you feel
Thursday: run as you feel
Friday: 10,000m goal pace 75's for 31:15
Saturday and Sunday: I am too blind, and cannot see that far ahead
Sunday, March 9, 2008 (SFTC)
Kickball claimed the north field before I did, so I migrated south. Kangway and I rocked the weight room by doing very little, really, but some bench, some pull ups, and some abs. I got in four sets of seven pull ups, which is pretty good for me. Also three sets of six with 115 on the bench. Body weight is coming soon.
My left calf especially was sore while running. But the various pieces (joints and tendons, etc.) seemed to be fitting together pretty well over all. I also only made one small snafu due to daylight savings time, getting a phone call from a student at 1:06 in the afternoon, informing me that it was actually 2:06 and I was late. But I made up for it by (poorly) explaining complementarity, since it was one of forty bullet points on a sheet of paper her physics teacher had handed her and requested she memorize.
Sunday, March 8, 2008 (4xmile)
Went to Ben Brown.
Take a look at the times from the SCIAC guys in the 5000:
10 Brian Kopczynski Claremont-Mu 15:13.01
13 Florian Scheulen Claremont-Mu 15:13.74
14 Kris Brown Claremont-Mu 15:15.64
22 Chris Smith Redlands 15:26.78
8 Brad Johnson Claremont-Mu 15:30.89
11 Georgi Dinolov Claremont-Mu 15:35.83
12 Jeremy Kalmus Redlands 15:36.50
15 Adam Coleman Claremont-Mu 15:40.58
20 Matt Cummins Claremont-Mu 15:44.55
5 Kramer Straube Claremont-Mu 15:56.42
14 Alec Fillmore Redlands 16:17.09
15 Charles Enscoe Pomona Pitzer 16:18.85
17 Matt Kurtis Claremont-Mu 16:23.33
22 Nolan Zandi Pomona Pitzer 16:43.30
31 Jeff West Redlands 17:10.03
33 Keenan Ferar Pomona Pitzer 17:47.35
34 Ross Brennan Pomona Pitzer 17:51.77
Incredible depth considering Oxy and Pomona, and possibly LaVerne, Cal Lu, Whittier and Caltech all could contribute further sub-16:00 performances.
Some of those individual performances are surprising, but none are absolutely shocking. However, taken collectively, they're way outside what I would expect. You just can't have everybody have a career day all at once. So either it's a massive statistical anomaly, or the 5000 just got really tough in SCIAC, or something strange was in the air at Mt. SAC.
Also, Pete Magill ran 14:34, which is just ridiculous. And just as we were leaving we watched Torri Edwards just barely hold off the competition in a 400, running a 57. It was almost surreal to see her coming around the first turn. She simply dwarfed the other runners. It was like that kid in 5th grade gym class who's actually 13 years old but just failed a bunch of times.
Matt ran 1:57.33, with a tough last 50 meters. It's a good mark for this point in the season, when he's done almost no 800-specific stuff. Katherine won her heat of the 1500, but seemed rather nonchalant about the whole thing.
I toured Mt. Sac with Ian for a while, taking some detours up large, granular hills, and getting intimidated by a cow. Then I cooled down for a while with Matt. Later that day I did my workout at Caltech. I was originally planning 5xmile, but my legs had been hurting a bit earlier in the day, and with six days until the distance carnival I didn't want to push things. So I did 4xmile with a lap jog recovery in about 2:40.
I hit:
5:00
4:58
4:56
4:49
But I felt off. I could do it just fine, but my internal clock was messed up. Every time I came around, I'd always try to guess what that lap had been based on how it felt. For example, "I got a little more turnover on that one, so it was probably a 73." But I was consistently giving myself credit for two seconds that my watch didn't agree on. I wanted to feel better than I did on this workout, but there's nothing to be done about it now. All that remains is to rest up and at the end of the week see what I can do.
I warmed down with Will for a bit afterwards, since he happened to have come by on a jog. By the end my calves were feeling very tight and sore, probably a compound effect from sprinting yesterday, then hills and a workout in flats today.
A Brief Google Survey
I watched a video today of a public lecture given by Frank Wilczek, who recently won a Nobel Prize for work on QCD.
What he said was, "physics is beautiful", while describing quantum mechanics, the standard model, etc. I've heard this many times. In fact, in studying relativity I've thought it myself. It's so ubiquitous a view that I sincerely doubt there are more than a few practicing theoretical physicists today who do not believe that fundamental physics is beautiful.
It makes sense, of course. If you're going to devote your life to something that involves, essentially, huge sacrifice (because it is difficult, takes years of training, and normally gives much less material reward than other possible career paths), you probably need a very strong reason to do that. One good strong reason would be that you think the subject of your life's work is the most painfully beautiful thing humans have ever witnessed.
But why do physicists say this so frequently? For one thing, painting is also beautiful. But I don't hear art critics going around saying that they study painting because it's beautiful. For another, I don't hear geologists proclaiming that geology is beautiful (although maybe I'm not listening as closely). I hear "geology is fun" or "geology is interesting", but not much about beauty or elegance. So a quick Google poll:
" ... is beautiful"
physics: 8,710
geology: 6
chemistry: 15,400
art: 171,000
poop: 5
nicole kidman: 6,590
life: 2,620,000
truth: 141,000
math: 16,300
my wife: 99,700
my husband: 21
scenery: 177,000
chemical engineering: 0
god: 206,000
you [are]: 2,080,000
frog: 25
blood: 35,600
running: 17
death: 81,500
sociology: 2
economics: 4
symmetry: 4,040
vagina: 5,510
pain: 61,500
we [are]: 1,210,000
this: 738,000
revenge: 9,920
graffiti: 3,450
moon: 84,200
nose: 44,100
carbon dioxide: 0
toaster: 8
Okay, maybe not so brief. And it turns out physics did not fair all that well. So maybe my perception that physicists spend an awful lot of time raving about how beautiful things are is attributable mostly to selection bias.
PS - just after posting this, I decided to do one more search. This time, instead of "physics is beautiful", I went for "the beauty of physics". That did it. I got 47,900 hits, up from 8,710. 16,700 for "the beauty of chemistry", which is barely an improvement over "chemistry is beautiful" (15,400). The Google probe is not too robust, it appears.
About .8% of web pages with "physics" also have "beautiful" on them.
For the web as a whole I get something like .06% (searching "the" gives 12 billion hits, and the AND beautiful 64 million)
Friday, March 7 (70 minutes, sprinting)
Yesterday one of my students asked me, "How do I know if I'll ever be good at math?" At least she was asking a question, rather than simply stating she believed herself to be a lost cause.
My first reaction was that I don't consider myself to be "good at math", and so I'm hardly the person to ask. But my view is skewed by being at Caltech and by constantly being bombarded with math I don't understand. By any normal person's measure, yes I'm good at math.
So I had to think for a minute before answering. I wanted to tell her she was already getting pretty good at math, and that if she continued studying she would also continue improving. That innate talent is only a small part of the picture, and that effortful practice is what truly needed.
But I wasn't sure it was true. I want to be encouraging, but I also want to be honest. She's pretty dismal at math. She's slow to catch on to new concepts, and quickly forgets most of what she learns, even the more fundamental things like "this is why we use inverse functions" or "this is what an equation means". Occasionally, she tries to take her knowledge and extend it to solve a new type of problem she hasn't seen before, but I've never seen her do that and actually get the right answer. She simply doesn't have the ability to visualize things the way many people can. She is unable to keep herself mentally organized enough to keep track of more than two or three little parts that have to fit together. Without those skills, her chances of becoming "good at math" are dim.
But being "good at math" is not the bottom line. In her adult life, it will not matter much how good she is at trigonometry. So teaching her trigonometry is not actually my goal. Instead, it's to see if I can get her personally involved and excited. Eager to meet with me and further, eager to work things out on her own.
So instead of answering the question she asked, I told her I wanted to show her something. I explained that you can always tell whether or not a number is divisible by three, without doing the division. You add up the digits, and if the sum is divisible by three, then so is the number. We worked through a couple of examples until she got it.
You may be surprised she hadn't learned this school-kid trick before, but she is really so oblivious that I constantly need to remind myself that I'm working with a sixteen-year-old human being when she claims never to have heard of: solar panels, Mozart, the word "status", the big bang, mirages, and elastic, among other things.
Anyway, she hadn't, and my thought was that most people, when they learn this fact, will give one of three responses:
- Who cares?
- That's interesting.
- Why does that work?
In this case, I got response two. But even though my little test didn't give the result I was hoping for, as soon as I asked it I realized I had unwittingly given it to myself as well. Because I didn't know the answer off-hand. And I did, in fact, wonder why it was true. So here we go (it's short)
Take, for example, the number 76,223. This can be written as a sum:
7*10^4 +
6*10^3 +
2*10^2 +
2*10^1 +
3*10^0
Now divide the number by three, which is the same as dividing each part of the sum by three:
7*(104/3) +
6*(103/3) +
2*(102/3) +
2*(101/3) +
3*(100/3)
Which equals
7*(3333 + 1/3) +
6*(333 + 1/3) +
2*(33 + 1/3) +
2*(3 + 1/3) +
3*(1/3)
We aren't interested in the answer, which just want to know whether 76,223 is a multiple of three. In other words, whether the division problem above gives a whole number.
The parts like 6*333, which are two whole numbers multiplied, don't matter then. All we need in order for that sum to come out a whole number is that the multiples of 1/3 collectively leave us with a whole number. Explicitly
7/3 + 6/3 + 2/3 + 2/3 + 3/3 = whole number
(7+6+2+2+3)/3 = whole number
Which is what I set out to show. Ta-Da!
(This goes deeper. More at a future date.)
As for running, I came to the track today intending to work out, but my right knee still felt a little sore or achy, so I scrapped it in favor of 70 minutes on the infield.
Halfway through, a group of sprinters was about to start a 300, so I jumped in (which I do so frequently when I'm running on the infield and I happen to jog by as they're lining up, that it's almost instinctual). Julie built it up, admonishing them not to let the old man with gray hair beat them (I don't have gray hear, do I?), and so of course I took off pretty fast and ran a 41 (beating them, although they weren't at the fast part of the workout yet.)
Fifteen minutes later they were finally ready to go again (I think I may have missed one in between), so I lined up again. This time people seemed to be watching, since Yezdan was getting near the end of his workout and Julie was telling him to quit sandbagging as he had on the first half and run some quick repeats. So the spectators were making bets on who would win, shortest shorts or tightest shorts?
I made it interesting, but Yez was too fast in the last 100, and we both ran a 40. I was planning on calling it quits there, but Julie wanted me to go again to pull Yez through his last one. About a mile and a half of infield running later we were finally lined up for the last one (Julie told Yezdan he had to beat me, or would have to run more repeats). I took off hard and started really kicking around the turn. We were even coming into the last hundred, but he pulled away again. I think I squeaked just under 40 seconds.
This was probably stupid. Considering I had already decided not to work out that day because something was hurting a bit, top-end sprinting was not what I needed to work on. But it was fun. And the only ill effect I notice now is that I tore some skin off the bottoms of my toes (I was barefoot of course).
Also, 39 seconds for 300m is not too slow...
Thursday, March 6 2008 (off)
An unsolicited email I received today from Facebook:
Subject: Mark, you are more desired than 21% of all people.
In total, you were reviewed for dating 2 times and no people expressed interest in you.
You are more desirable than 21% of 23,346,774 people.
Last week you were viewed 1 time and no people expressed interested in you.
Well, I guess I had to learn the truth sometime. Nine out of ten people use the yellow pages but zero out of two people express interest in me.
Wednesday March 5 (recovery)
Last night I lay on my belly, my body thrown halfway off the mattress and onto the carpet. I was in a semi-somnolent state, somewhat aware of what I was doing but unaware of why. What I was doing was kicking my legs up and down the way a kid does when his feet don't touch the ground.
Suddenly there was a loud smacking sound, followed immediately by a jolt of pain in my toe. It didn't take me long to wake up and realize I had just kicked my bookshelf hard enough to draw a little blood.
Now it's bruised a bit, so that I have to wear shoes while running. That's what I get for trying to be literate.
After my run I did some core in the gym, but Katherine started before me and kept going after I was done, giving me yet another reminder of my general wimpiness.
Tuesday, March 4 (tempo + speed)
This would normally be a steady-state day, but I wanted to help Matt with his race-simulation workout, so I decided a short tempo run beforehand would be enough.
I warmed up and clicked off 6400m in 21:44, which is just what I was aiming for. I felt a bit stiff throughout the run. Looking back, I've made this comment enough times in the past two weeks that I'm glad I'm about to head into a short rest period.
After a break, I warmed back up and paced Matt. He did 1000, 700, 500, 300.
I ran the first 600 of the 1000, first 400 of the 700, last 300 of the 500, and the 300.
I took it out too hard on the first one, so there wasn't really much acceleration, but my splits were:
600: 95 (63 pace)
400: 63
300: 45
300: 43
Amazingly, my legs actually felt better doing the speed than they did on the tempo. Not that the workout was a cakewalk. I'd have had a hard time finishing the 1000 with Matt if I wanted to. But it did start to get inside my brain - going fast is fun. Maybe if I knock off this 15:00 5000 early enough I'll have time left this year to go for 4:00 as well.
Monday, March 3, 2008 (recovery)
Jogged the south field, followed by some pull ups, crunches, and bicycles. Despite my hiring an abs coach and learning a bunch of new exercises, I haven't installed much of a real core training program. But on the other hand, what I was doing before worked just fine as long as I was consistent with it.
My left knee has been clicking a bit more than normal recently, and also I felt some sort of weird "hopping around" phenomenon going on in my left achilles whenever I stretch it out too far, so I took the time to stretch out well today and foam rolled for a bit.
Weekly Summary: 2/24/08 - 3/2/08 (track work, steady state, tempo, long run)
As I write this, it's twelve days until the distance carnival. It's time to stop daydreaming about the race because now it's not looming off in the future - it's become completely real.
My focus this week was on the track work at race pace. The goal was to go longer intervals than last week and still feel comfortable running them. I'd say I succeeded, because I actually felt more comfortable with the 7x1200 I did this week than the 10x800 I did last week.
I'm carrying a bit of long-term built up fatigue in my legs now. It's the kind that you're supposed to build up over a long training block. It makes me feel like I doing it right, because although I know I'm working hard, it also feels sustainable. I can still perform well on any given day, and I'm taking enough recovery to keep from wearing down. At the moment, my estimation is that my training level is completely appropriate to my fitness and goals.
I'm not tapering for the 10K, but I will take an easy week before it. So next week will be my last hard training. I put money in the bank this week with a solid steady state in the arroyo and a good Thursday tempo w/speed sprinkled on top.
One thing I've changed recently is that I've let go of an old neurosis of mine: accounting. I want to take an approach towards training that is focused on feel and intuition. I want to use inspired guesswork more than quantitative analysis in my own training, despite my desire to look at others' training en masse in a quantitative and statistical manner.
So, because I want to focus on the role of each training element and the way the workouts make me feel (because ultimately what matter on the line is not what workouts you did but what physiology you achieved, and your biofeedback is an excellent barometer for your physiology), I'm not counting my miles, or even my minutes, in total.
I don't know how many minutes I ran this week because I didn't count warmups and cool downs and other such nonsense. A warmup shouldn't be a number - it should be a run that gets to ready to work out. So I'm not tracking it because when I do, I feel internal pressure to run a bit more, to squeeze out some extra minutes on my easy days or cool downs.
But I'm already hitting a long run each week along with a long steady state. That's enough work for me aerobically - a few piddly miles here and there aren't going to help much. Throw in a fartlek and a track session and I need to keep my recovery slow and easy. Miles are a popular metric for runners because they're easy to track, easy to compare, and easy to do. Not, at least in my opinion, because they're (in and of themselves) closely correlated to performance. People who run a lot of miles frequently perform very well. But it's because they're running a lot. Not because they're writing down big numbers.
So that's my paradigm. I'm focusing on each individual workout as it comes, trying to understand how it fits in the overall training picture. The log lets me take a moment at the end of each day, week, training block, and season, to reflect on how effective these pieces were individually and as a whole. It's the experiment of one, and this is how I'm choosing to conduct it.
Next week I'll tweak my schedule a bit to accommodate the fact that I worked out today rather than yesterday, and to help Matt through his tough track work on Tuesday. The plan is:
Monday: recovery
Tuesday: steady state, some pace work for Matt
Wednesday: recovery
Thursday: long
Friday: recover
Saturday: 5x1600m @ 5:00, short rest (6 days before distance carnival)
Sunday: NFTC
Sunday, March 2 (7x1200 @ 10K)
Much nicer weather today, and consequently clearer focus. An extra day's rest in my legs, a long lazy afternoon before me, and I felt ready to give it a good hard effort on the track this morning.
I did a slightly longer warmup than last week, jogging about 15 minutes, doing a few drills, and a few easy strides, before heading into the workout. 7x1200, starting every 6:00 (2:15 rest), goal pace 3:45. I jogged about 300m between repeats.
3:43
3:43
3:44
3:43
3:42
3:42
3:34 (2:28 + 66)
On the first couple of these I felt discouraged. My legs felt a little tight despite the long warmup, and it just seemed like an impossible task to run 25 consecutive laps at a pace which I was able only to flop my way through three laps at a time.
As the workout went on I felt better. 31:15 still feels like an enormous goal, but if it weren't a challenge it wouldn't be a very good goal. I'm worried about getting stuck running alone, because it's not hard to get separated from other guys over six miles, even if they're running about the same pace you are.
The last one I kicked at about 85% effort over the last lap, and this still gave a 66, so I think I have the wheels and fitness to pull this race off. I need to get the confidence and toughness down. Fortunately, that's something I can actually control.
Later I joined the NFTC. Ian has been supportive of the 10K attempt since the start, and even recruited Mike Davies almost explicitly so I'd have someone there to run with (at least, that's the way it sounded). So running with him and Jasper and doing some lifting with my abs coach was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon.
In fact, I'd say the entire day was pleasant. Wake up, lounge around, bike to campus under the cool sun, tutor calculus a while, work out, mad burgers for lunch, nappy time in the library, more working out, and finally a story for the Tech on the SCIAC Invite.
Saturday, March 1 (distance)
I was planning track work, but when I got to the track I realized I didn't have a watch. I stood in the locker room figuring my options, and I finally decided to just go for a distance run and postpone the workout a day. I'd like to think this decision wasn't influenced by the drizzly cold weather, but honestly it probably was.
Friday, February 29 (recovery)
jogged on the NF, then lifted. felt a bit sore, which was actually the residual from lunges on Tuesday, not 800m last night. I think.
Thursday February 28 (tempo)
20 minutes at Lacy with Matt, feeling a little sluggish, but fine. I'm glad to get on the grass and do a moderate workout I don't have to think about.
7xPatton, 4x200 fast.
Afterwards, Matt and I were lounging in front of the TV, fixing a flat on my bike, when I helpfully reminded him, upon his avowal of a desire to PR in a couple weeks, that 63's are very fast. He informed me that he was well aware of this already, because they were faster than I could run.
In short order, this led to the two of us standing out by the track, whereupon I warmed up briefly and punched a 2:05 800 (in trainers).
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