Trying to impress 12 year olds

Being the slave to social media that I am, I have a YouTube account. I really don’t do too much with that account; I created it out of curiosity more so than anything else. However, I do upload the occasional video that I put together.

In 2009 my brother and I went up to Alpental on opening day. I brought my helmet camera and captured some POV footage of us skiing and made a stupid little video with that footage. I really didn’t imagine anyone other than my brother and I watching this, but I did upload it to YouTube and make it publicly visible.

Well, nearly 2 years after putting together this video, it looks like someone else has watched my video. I guess he didn’t care for it, but his comment is pretty awesome!

Im 12 and i did that run when i was 11 so do somthing a little harder

Thank you, The Gocarter for your constructive criticism. I will make a point of trying to capture some footage of me hucking cliffs in the Alpental BC during the 2011/12 season, or maybe ski Mount Rainier or Baker. Either way, I will strive ski runs harder than what an 11 year old can easily ski.

Spoons

Yesterday I went to my favorite coffee shop on the University of Washington campus: Parnassus. As I was waiting for my coffee I noticed this poster on the wall.

The poster states:

“It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground ship it to a refinery turn it into plastic shape it appropriately truck it to a store buy it and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you’re done with it.”

I guess this has been out there a while and been going around for a while, and it took a bit of searching, but I believe I found the person who created the poster (if not perhaps the text for it too). It’s a guy by the name of Max Temkin, his site is Maxistentialism. Cool poster, and I would buy one, except it is currently sold out.

The poster did give me pause, and I reached for a wooden stir stick instead of a plastic one. Although I did use the wooden stir stick then throw it away rather than washing it with the goal of using it again, but I did throw it in the compost bin instead of the garbage bin.

The 2011 Portland Marathon

Two minutes, and twenty four seconds. That’s how much time I missed my marathon goal time of sub-four hours by. In all fairness I was trying to cut 44 minutes off my previous marathon PR, but it should have been completely doable. I am pretty psyched that I ran so much faster of a marathon than my last marathon, but the fact that I failed to beat four hours, means I’m going to have to run another marathon. Darn this running addiction.

Overall, the Portland Marathon this year was a much more enjoyable experience than it was last year. The weather was mostly dry with mild temperatures, perfect for running. My strategy for running the marathon was just to come out as fast as I could maintain and then constantly adjust my speed based on how I was feeling, and constantly asking myself if I could run a bit faster. Other than noting the pacers, I really didn't use them at all, I just tried to keep as fast of a pace as I could maintain. My time at the half way point was 1:56:46, which would make it my 3rd fastest half marathon time! I did walk a bit on the climb up to the St John’s bridge. After the St John’s bridge I was dragging a bit, especially though miles 20 and 21 but then I really picked up the pace during the long hill leading down to the Broadway Bridge driven in part by the thought that around mile 23 there would be the beer aid station! After the Broadway Bridge my quads were really hurting, they almost felt like they were cramping. Between the leg pain and exhaustion of having just run 24 miles faster than I had ever run that distance before, I just couldn’t bring myself to push any harder and so I finished pretty slow.

So now nearly a week after the marathon, I’m feeling good enough to take a short run. I do need to get back into training since I have the Salty’s Half Marathon in a few weeks, followed by the Seattle Half Marathon a month after that. Right now I’m thinking about waiting until the packet pickup on the day before the marathon, and if the forecast is for dry weather on the day of the marathon I might just upgrade to the full Seattle Marathon. Other than that I have no other races planned for 2011, with the exception of participating as much as possible as my 8 year old daughter works on completing the Seattle Kids Marathon. However, for 2012 I would really like to run the Chicago Marathon!

Enjoying the Rain

Today I took the bus in; no running, no biking, just fully tapering before Sunday's marathon. As I was walked to the bus in the typical Seattle Autumn drizzle, I was reminded of an incident many years ago, in a different life, when I was a traveling paper salesman. I was in Denver for a trade show, the show was over, and all the sales people were out to dinner together before heading back to their respective towns in the morning. One particular sales guy was trying to mock my hometown of Seattle by describing it as the town that was all about intermittent windshield wipers. His comment was largely ignored, but his point was taken. Seattle is a generally wet city. Not real heavy rain, but sort of an on and off drizzle. In his book Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins talks of using a canopy of blackberry bushes covering the city to protect us from the rain, but what can you expect, Tom Robbins is a transplant from back East. I don't think the wet bothers true natives, or at least those who were born and raised in Seattle. But it clearly bothers the transplants, which there are so many of. I enjoy the rain, in fact I actually enjoy being out in the rain. What gets me down is the incessant complaining by the transplant. For at least 9 months of the year you hear and read endlessly about how dreary the weather is. It's all the complaining about the weather does get me down; and ultimately it's hard not to get caught up in it and get down on the weather that I would otherwise enjoy. This year I've actively been trying to avoid any talk about weather, or reading anything negative about the weather. Generally my plan to stay positive about the weather seems to be working, although it is early, and summer just ended, but I seem to be happy spending time in the cool gray misty rain. And it's a good thing I enjoy this wet weather because on Sunday I'm likely to spend my second Portland marathon in the rain, feet sloshing, clothes soaked all the way though, running for hours in this, with a big smile on my face.

Ice Breaker Clothes...

Ice Breaker makes awesome merino wool gear. I own a light weight short sleeve Ice Breaker t-shirt that I wore on my bike ride in today. What I didn't know about Ice Breaker was that they've got some of the most bizarre Ads, even the "Ice Breaker and Nature" picture on their web site is, um, different. But that's nothing compared to this commercial that I just found linked to on Backcounty.com's blog...

The daily bicyle commute

A few months ago I decided to discontinue my work subsidized bus pass and rely on bicycle and running as my primary means of commuting to work. My place of work is only about 6-1/2 miles from where I live so the commute is short, and the majority of the commute isn’t in traffic, but rather along the Burke-Gilman trail. Besides, it takes longer to get to work by bus or car than it does to get there by bike.

The best part of commuting to work by bicycle is the other cyclists. Seattle is definitely a city of bicycle commuters, and one of the primary routes for commuters is the Burke-Gilman trail. So the daily commute along the Burke-Gilman trail is always an adventure. There are the cyclists who slowly plod along, as well as those who see their commute as their personal daily crit. As for me, I fall somewhere in between. I do tend to see my commute as a bit of a personal time trial (anything under 25 minutes is good), but I have my own rules for my ride:

• I do actually stop at stop lights.
• I keep my place at stop lights and don’t jockey for a better position in front of the other cyclists who were waiting before me. This might get me stuck behind some slower cyclists, but I can pass them later.
• I don’t draft other cyclists during the commute (I might pace them, but there’s a good distance between us).
• I don’t pass other cyclists then immediately slow my pace (that drives me crazy).
• I don’t pass other cyclists unless it’s safe to do so (e.g. I’m not passing a cyclist with oncoming cyclists two abreast).

My commute can be interesting when I stick to these rules and try and beat my previous PR for getting home or getting to work. However, being a strict rule follower can lead to road rage and I do tend to get annoyed when others aren’t following the same set of rules. But I try and use that just to make the ride even more interesting; I might suddenly have someone I must catch and pass who is now way ahead of me because they flew through a traffic light while I was stopped.

Today I decided I would just take it easy and enjoy the ride in (I tend to tell myself that a lot, but rarely follow it). My ride started off with all of the lights in my favor as I ride down a mile of NW 24th Ave in Ballard, a hill long hill steep enough to easily keep pace with the cars. As soon as I got on to the Burke-Gilman trail, I knew the ride was going to be a bit more interesting. Everyone seemed to be moving at a pretty good pace, no slow riders. The pace was plenty fast enough so I just stuck ten or so feet behind the first person I came up behind. As I followed I was passed and then the person in front of me got passed by a faster cyclist. The person in front of me clearly frustrated that someone dared to pass them during their commute quickly picked up the pace, and passed the person that just passed them. I kept up with the pace behind the two cyclists following behind just close enough to see how it would end. In the end their were no violent acts of bicycle road rage, one of the riders turned off of the trail and headed in a different direction. However it was enough to keep todays commute interesting and get me to work a bit faster than what I had initially planned on; the daily Burke-Gilman bicycle commute is rarely dull.

Day one

I work at a large educational institution of higher learning. I work in IT for said institution. I write software for users of said institution. With all that said, day one of classes at said institution is never a fun day for me. I’m glad day one is over.