This is what it looks like when I fall behind in my duties. In my own defense, last summer was really damn hot in Atlanta.
Category: Personal
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Mount Desert Island Marathon
It’s two weeks and one day until the Mount Desert Island Marathon. I and Jenn and our friends Tim and Andrew will be meeting in Southwest Harbor to run this race. I’m quasi-ready for this race; I’ll finish, but I don’t think I’m going to enjoy the last ten miles or so.
Whatever, my only goal is to finish.
We’ve had the MDI Marathon on our list of races to do for a while. We honeymooned on the island, which plays home to Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor and other less-well-known towns. Conveniently, Southwest Harbor is where the race ends, and where we spent our honeymoon, so we’ll be back there for our lodging. It’s always nice to not have to climb into a vehicle to get to where ever you’re going after a race. We will merely walk a block down the street and collapse.
It’s going to be a nice re-visit to the location of our honeymoon, 8 years ago. Even if the end of the race will be filled with moaning and groaning and “oh my god”ing.
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Running/Training Plan – 2012
If you’ve been reading the blog, you may remember a statement of mine in an earlier posting that went something like this:
I am delightfully looking forward to NEVER EVER EVER running a marathon again…
Let me tell you, training for the Mount Desert Island Marathon has been a pain in the butt for several reasons. I will enumerate them for you:
- The MDI Marathon is on October 16th. October is in the Fall. Summer comes before Fall. Marathon training comes before the marathon, which is in the fall. Do you see where I’m going here? Marathon training in the Summer, in Atlanta, is torturous. It’s not so much the running in the summer—we do that all the time—it’s the weekend long runs that end up being such a burden. The only time we can do the 2 and 3 and 4 hour runs is on a weekend, in the early morning. This means being very careful about activities the previous evening. Yes, running can and will impact your social life.
- I have been fighting a recurrent calf injury for a while. I’m happy to say that it’s been doing well the last few months, but given the condition of my leg, I very gingerly entered into this marathon training schedule. I have been doing nothing ((Almost nothing. See here.)) in running besides this marathon. No 5ks. No 10ks. Nothing. I’ve been afraid of overstressing the leg and having to drop out of the marathon. That is no fun whatsoever and I didn’t get into running for it to be no fun.
- An add-on to item #2, because of my calf, I’ve been training for this marathon with one goal only: finish. It’s going to be slow and I don’t like to run slowly. I haven’t been doing any training that would increase my race pace beyond the approximate 5:00 completion mark. While that is in line with my goals, and I’m happy that I’m meeting my training goals, I’m still not happy about the particular goals, if you get my drift.
I am not swearing off marathons forever. Jennifer likes running them, and I like running with her, so I’m sure I’ll do another one sometime. Her 40th birthday present to herself will be to run the Marathon in Greece, and I suppose I could be convinced to sign up for that one. For the time being, I’m going to concentrate on other things, rather than marathons, because I feel that the 26.2 mile distance was occupying too much space in my life.
For edification and enlightenment, here are my 2012 training and racing goals, in no particular order:
- Maintain the ability to get up on weekends and run 13-15 miles, as a matter of course. This will serve two purposes: it will keep my base miles high, and it will let me run half marathons without too much trouble or training
- Break 50:00 in a 10k. The Charles Harris 10k will be my race for this goal.
- Work toward a PR in the Peachtree City Sprint Triathlon. This will be my “A” race for the year and I’d be delighted if I can come close to matching (or exceed) the performance I turned in during my ironman training year
- Improve my 5k time from the first race of the year to the last by 8%, or beating 23:00, whichever is better ((This may seem excessive to people in the know. I’m basing the 8% off a 2:00 improvement from 25:00 to 23:00. The reason I don’t consider it excessive is because I think my first 5k of the season is going to suck, time-wise, but I have a lot of latent speed inside these legs which probably just needs to be reawakened.)).
- Regularly do my mile-run-for-time to benchmark myself. “Regularly” is going to be “every 6 weeks” or so
- Emphasize abdominal and hip exercises for flexibility and stabilization
One of the reasons for the first bullet is because if you want to do long runs, you have to do long runs. One of my issues with marathon training is that I’ve always been starting from a base of near zero. Given enough time ((Most anyone can run a marathon with 6 months lead time and a committment to the training program.)), that isn’t a problem, but for the next time I sign up for a marathon, I want to start with a running base that lets me train like I want to race, not just finish. So, after recovering from the MDI Marathon, I’ll be back at weekend long runs of 13 miles or so.
A strong base also allows you to add intensity to other workouts; workouts directed at (say) improving my 5k time by 8%. The better your base training is, the better your race-specific training can be, and it also helps prevent injuries.
Of course, part of that strong base is training that concentrates on weaknesses. My back has been a continuous problem, and part of that problem surrounds flexibility, not just strength. I will be doing a better job this year of maintaining a program of both core strength and flexibility. Remember, it’s the exercises you hate most that you should be doing most often ((At least, that’s the way it feels to me. Single leg squats, single leg stands, plank and other core work is so mentally exhausting to me, as opposed to standard squats and bench press and the like which are physically hard, but not mentally hard. To me. Your mileage may vary.)).
Races that I’m looking forward to next year, and have become tradition for me include:
- Atlanta Track Club cross country 5k at Milton High School
- Atlanta Track Club Peachtree City 5k/10k
- Charles Harris 10k
- Georgia Marathon (Half Marathon! Although I’m thinking about volunteering for the bike escorts this year)
- Chattanooga Riverfront Triathlon (olympic distance)
- Peachtree Road Race (10k)
- Peachtree City Sprint Triathlon
- Kaiser Permanente Corporate Challenge (5k)
Also, with the exception of preparation for the Peachtree City Sprint Triathlon, which is my one “A” race this year, I want to be able to go out on a Saturday or Sunday and run a race just because the whim strikes me, and not worry about screwing up my marathon training. It’s a lot less important if I downgrade or drop out of a local 5k than if I have to cancel a trip we’ve been planning for over a year.
That’s my plan. Of course, it’s only September and 2011 isn’t even over yet, but the end of my training year is nigh and I will be on the 2012 rotation at the beginning of November.
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Georgia Shakespeare needs Help!
The company of players we get season tickets for every year has put out a call for help. It boils down to Georgia Shakespeare needs money, please give.
If you have the inkling to help out a Georgia organization, we certainly would appreciate it. It would be a tragedy if this fine company had to cease operations. Instructions for donations can be found on the linked page.
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Things of Note
- Dragon*Con is coming! We have 17 people coming in from out of state. I should get a tax credit for boosting the local economy
- Jenn and I are starting a new podcast. First episode will be up on Friday, September 2. There’s a reason why Friday which will be explained when we start “AMP”ing up the podcast advertisement ((The quotations would make much more sense if you knew the name of the podcast, hahahahahahahahahahahahaha…))
- Work is crazy gangbusters busy. Better than the alternative
- I have my first, and last, triathlon of the year on Saturday. I won’t be breaking any time records, but that’s ok. Going to use this as an opportunity to experiment with some pre-race nutrition
- We had two days this week where the morning temperature was below 70 degrees F. It’s like the end of the world
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Final Launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis
Jennifer and I decided to roll the dice and drive down to see the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis. We figured we had a good shot because there were three chances to go, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So we packed up the car and drove 8 hours to Florida!
Or at least, we tried to drive. We were within spitting distance of our destination on Thursday night when we spent 45 minutes going verrryy slowly.
Nevertheless, we crashed in Orlando for the night and then popped over to the coast on Friday morning to see the launch.
My plan was to avoid the common viewing areas right up close to Kennedy Space Station and show Jenn what I had seen as a child. I spent 9 years living in Satellite Beach, FL, and saw the first 24 shuttle launches from either the beach, my backyard, or my school. So we headed through Kissimmee and St. Cloud, on our way to Melbourne and the barrier islands. On the way, I stopped by the Old House to see if was still there. It was.
Jenn and I drove north on A1A until we got to a point where we figured it was too crowded to continue. We ended up parking at Lori Wilson park and sat on the beach reading books until the launch.
As you can see from the picture, it was a bit hazy and cloudy, but thankfully the weather was good enough for the shuttle to go! Jenn got to see her first shuttle launch, and I got to bookend my experience with the space program.
We spent the rest of the weekend in Cocoa Beach about two blocks from the ocean and did…nothing. And it was glorious.
Recommended:
- Simply Delicious Cafe and Bakery. Yum yum yum
- The Bald Strawberry Coffee Shop in Cape Canaveral. Cute, tasty, and not as frequented as Dunkin Donuts. We only found it because we were looking for coffee on the way out of town and Dunkin’s was packed
- Atlantic Ocean Grille on the Cocoa Beach Pier. Mostly for the views. Food was fine.
Not Recommended:
- Sunset Cafe. Service was fair to poor, food was boring. The only reason I can think that I would eat here again would be to sit at one of the tables that’s out on the dock. Otherwise, no.
- Finding good beer. Maybe it was just where we ended up, but no where seemed to have any kind of beer selection beyond standard domestics in bottles. Blah.
We had a good time and we really should just uproot and go to the beach more often (unhappy look on my face is an artifact of squinting and trying to get the bloody camera to take the picture).
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Automated Checkout
Kroger annoyed the crap out of me this morning. They’ve been doing it for years (and Home Depot and Publix have followed suit, too) by installing the convenient, time saving, handy-dandy self checkout machines.
This particular phenomenon is something billed as “for customer convenience” but I am personally convinced that if a survey were taken, the vast majority of persons would admit to hating them, or at least that the machines are never as convenient as they should be.
I avoid them if possible, but this morning it was not because there weren’t any lanes open that had people. However (thought I), it’s ok because I’ve just got a bag of coffee to purchase. I plunked it down on the scanner and prepared to purchase some bulk coffee beans.
“Remove item from scanner,” said the pleasant American female voice.
“Whuh?” Why do I want to do that? I just got here. If I am an edge case customer, I’ve got one item and I’m going to put it on the scanner, not the staging area, or whatever they call it. I poked a few buttons on the touchscreen to try and select coffee beans.
“Remove item from scanner,” said the annoying American female voice.
Fine. I removed it, touched the “select by image” button to find where the bulk coffee was hiding, and then put the coffee back on the scanner. I navigated through several menus looking for something that looked like coffee. Nothing.
Fuck it. I’ll search by name. I pushed the BACK button a couple times. One too many it turns out.
“Remove item from scanner,” said the voice which I was starting to hate.
Up goes the coffee; thud goes my finger on the touch screen, pushing “search by name”. Down goes the coffee as I type C-O-F-F-E-E into the touchscreen QWERTY layout. It serves me up with an image of “Deli Coffee”, which is a medium-sized disposable travel cup of coffee with a lid.
No, I’m not buying a cup of coffee, I’m buying beans. Where are the goddamn beans?
I go back and type in B-E-A-N-S. I get several images of beans, some of which are Green Beans or other type of bean that is obviously not made of coffee. There is however, a selection that looks just like roasted coffee beans. Plonk, goes the finger on the “BEANS, BLACK, BULK”.
At this point I almost decided to go ahead and purchase the BEANS, BLACK, BULK instead of coffee beans because their unit cost per pound is way less than coffee. However, I’m a good corporate American drone and instead I used my annoyed American male voice to demand of the automated checkout monitor dude that he “Please let me purchase this fucking coffee so I can get on with my life” (my exact words).
He did some magic mojo thing with his wireless keypad and poof, I was paying for coffee.
- Question 1: Why was that so hard?
- Question 2: Why doesn’t bulk coffee come up under a search for “Coffee”
- Question 3: I hate the automated checkout devices
This system of providing a convenience to the customer has got to be counter productive. You want your customer to leave your store happy about their experience. If the last thing they do is have to struggle with your stupid touchscreen menus, or struggle with trying to get something to scan which is not a task they perform daily, unlike your checkout clerks who [gasp] do it all the time and are good at it, then they’re going to go home and write blog posts about how pissed off they are with Kroger.
And they might not go back to your store for more coffee.
The next time I’m in a situation like this, I’m going to pick the easy route and just pay for the BEANS, BLACK, BULK.
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Margarita Recipe
My easy as pie Margaritas. This recipe is fast and tasty. I highly recommend it.
- Get a pitcher. Fill it 2/3 with ice
- Make some simple sugar. One cup sugar mixed with one cup water, boil on stove
- Pour simple sugar (still hot) into pitcher
- Add one bottle of Real Lime lime juice
- Add nine oz. of liquor: 6 oz. of tequila and 3 oz of triple sec
- Stir, pour over ice, drink
Total time to produce: 5 minutes
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Lazy Butt
Yesterday I did…almost nothing. I have a yard that is looking like the final scenes from A Little Shop of Horrors and the inside of my house is begging for some TLC. My podcast is sitting there, daring me to record ((I actually have a couple episodes, I just need to sit down and do the recording and editing)) and there’s a set of other things that are on the list of things to be done that I could get to. Instead, I sat on my butt.
And it was wonderful.
My weekdays end up being busy and time-crunched because of the 1.75 to 2.25 hours a day I sit in my car on the way to or from work. Taken with the 9 hours I’m at work ((including lunch)) plus the 8 hours I like to sleep, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for other things. Five hours to be precise, including the wake-up-shower-shave-dress-go period in the morning. During the weekdays, I usually stuff at least a couple workouts into those 5 hours and then I get home and [thud]. “I’ll take care of it Saturday”.
Or not.
We have some idea of putting the house on the market soon. We should be putting some effort into incrementally improving the look and feel of things around. One good place to start would be the forest of poison ivy that apparently is growing up around Psyche’s grave. I itched for two weeks after we brought her home from the vet.
Instead I stuck my butt on the couch and read some books. I call that a win.
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Presidential Politics: Georgia Edition
With the Iowa Caucuses coming up soon ((for the political definition of “soon”)) there’s all sorts of fun going on in the Republican political arena. Mitt is being bulldozed by Palin and Donald “the hair” Trump decided he’s not running for president on a birther platform (or any other). Michelle Bachman of Minnesota is trying to reduce her previous crazy-as-a-bedbug reputation and her Governor is pursuing an agenda of “who the hell is Tim Pawlenty anyhow?” Mike Huckabee came out saying “I’m too Baptist to run for president” ((which may be code for “snowball’s chance and I don’t want to give up my Fox News salary”)), and let’s not forget Ron Paul (“Republicans for No Public Infrastructure!”) and Rick Santorum, the anti-intellectual and homophobic creationist who is running on the strength of garnering 41% of the vote for his incumbent senate seat in 2006.
But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to talk about Georgia. Notably, two candidates who are from Georgia: Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich.
Newt is the one everyone has probably heard of. Speaker of the House during the Republican majority of 1995-1999; author of several histories; husband of several wives; I am a resident of the district he used to represent. This is a distinction of almost zero value nowadays. Why? That’s an interesting question, actually. The best explanation is to say that Newt isn’t a Georgia politician anymore. No one around here seems to give a crap about him. He’s regarded as a Washington insider, not as a Georgia resident. It probably does not help that his official residence has been in Virginia for 12 years. No, no one around here seems to care about Newt.
I place Newt’s chances of succeeding during the primary season as small. My contention is that he’s both too crazy, but not crazy enough to appeal to the Republican party. If people are looking for Crazy come voting time, they’ll pick Sarah Palin, or Michelle Bachman, or Herman Cain. If they’re looking for Not-Crazy, they’ll pick Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty. In neither of these scenarios is Newt going to do well. He’s an intellectual in an extremely anti-intellectual party; he’s a hypocritical born-again catholic ((oxymoron, I know)) who will not make a good case with the family values crowd. On top of that, he’s just not good at speaking to his base. Good luck, Newt, I think you’d better milk your time between now and the primaries for all it’s worth.
Then there’s Herman Cain. I confess that I don’t know much about Herman Cain beyond that he is a former CEO and owner of Godfather’s Pizza. However, his public statements have firmly ensconsed him in the “crazy” category. According to him, there is a vast Muslim conspiracy to get Sharia law into all aspects of American life. His latest quotes:
TP: Mr. Cain, you recently came under fire for your comments about the kind of people you would appoint to your cabinet. Would you be opposed to appointing an openly gay but qualified person to be in your cabinet?
Cain: Nope, not at all. I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all. I just want people – I want them qualified, I want them to basically believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. So yep, I don’t have a problem with appointing an openly gay person. Because they’re not going to try to put sharia law in our laws.
I understand the tactic of “viewing with alarm” in order to generate a problem so that you can say you have a solution. It’s also called the strawman argument and anyone with any sense of debate tactics and rhetoric will instantly recognize it for the bullshit it is. This generally isn’t a big problem because, unfortunately, it is a major part of our political discourse. The reason why this particular opinion of Herman’s is a big problem is because he’s advocating and continuing the unlawful and unethical persecution of our American Muslim minority.
Herman first appeared on my “do not like” radar a little while back with this particular brand of hypocrisy:
The role of Muslims in American society is for them to be allowed to practice their religion freely, which is part of our First Amendment. The role of Muslims in America is not to convert the rest of us to the Muslim religion. That I resent. Because we are a Judeo-Christian nation, from the fact that 85 percent of us are self-described Christians, or evangelicals, or practicing the Jewish faith. Eighty-five percent. One percent of the practicing religious believers in this country are Muslim.
And so I push back and reject them trying to convert the rest of us. And based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them. Now, I know that there are some peaceful Muslims who don’t go around preaching or practicing that. Well, unfortunately, we can‘t sit back and tolerate the radical ones simply because we know that there are some of them who don’t believe in that aspect of the Muslim religion. So their role is to be allowed to practice their religion freely, just like we should be allowed to practice our religion freely, and not try to convert the rest of us.
In that link, I had called attention to the following two opposed issues: “The role of Muslims in America is not to convert the rest of us to the Muslim religion.” and “…85 percent of us are self-described Christians, or evangelicals,…”. I can’t help but think that Mr. Cain didn’t listen during his school days when they taught that evangelicals are specifically supposed to promulgate the christian faith to the unconverted ((“unconverted” = “unsaved” = “anyone not my particular sect of christianity” in my experience with evangelical christians)).
However, let’s examine a couple other statements in that quote above:
- Obvious: Most Jews I’m aware of would be rather miffed to be lumped in with the self-described christians and evangelicals.
- A point for rhetoricians: Don’t start by saying how little you know before making a statement about that knowledge. “…and based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.”
- Synonymous: Let’s take this quote, “Now, I know that there are some peaceful Muslims who don’t go around preaching or practicing that. Well, unfortunately, we can‘t sit back and tolerate the radical ones simply because we know that there are some of them who don’t believe in that aspect of the Muslim religion,” and substitute “Christian” for “Muslim” and think about the Westboro Baptist Church and Harold Camping with Family Radio. I’m seeing petards in your future, oh Mr. Cain.
Whatever his economic and other positions are, Herman Cain has identified himself with racists and bigots and homophobes and other people who do not like the Other. Please don’t vote for this guy if he shows up in your primaries.
Who will I vote for? Well, last election I voted for Obama, but I will vote in the Republic Primary when it comes around to ensure that if someone does beat Obaman, it’s someone who’s not batshit insane. I doubt my contribution will have much effect (this is Georgia after all and we love our christian conservatives) but I’ll do my part.