4th of July weekend I set out for the fourth time in my new inline skates; my previous three sorties carried me 7.5, 7.5, and 5 miles. I figured it was time to stretch into the double digits so I drove over to the White Pine Trail and laced up the boots.
Almost three hours later I arrived back at the car after covering 33.4 miles! I felt great - yes, I was definitely tired, and my heart rate had been 150-170 (that's above "easy run" range for me) the whole way - but I was nowhere near toasted. My quads felt a bit crampy over the last half hour but not painful. Before setting out I was confident that I could finish 30+ miles, but I never thought I'd cover it in 2:58 and still have some pep left over.
Last Sunday I talked Amanda into joining me on the White Pine Trail again, but instead of skates she was riding her bike. The night before she kept telling me "I think I only want to go to Rockford" (that's an 8 mile round trip) and I assured her that we'd just go until she got tired then turn around since it's uphill going north and downhill back south.
After riding and skating for an hour I asked her to check her bike computer and it read 10 miles, but we hadn't turned around yet! I knew that Amanda had been selling herself short the night before. We continued on since Amanda felt OK still, but within a couple miles she wanted to turn around. I pressed her on for another mile since then we could say we did a marathon.
And we did, going 26.8 miles in 2:31 although strangely I felt more tired than after my 33-miler. Amanda totally bonked at the two-hour mark and we inched along for about 10 minutes until her system finally rebooted and we cruised back to the car.
As impressive as it felt to be skating along at 11 mph for 2-3 hours, it blows me away that elite runners would've dusted me! I skated a 2:30 marathon and folks out there can run that same distance in less time. Wow.
Having stayed up until 2am last night this morning to watch the entirety of the 2008 MLB All-Star Game, I better make it worth my while and share some insight from my bleary mind. For those of you wise enough to get a good night's sleep, the game lasted 15 innings before the tie was broken, giving the American League a 4-3 victory that awards home field advantage to whichever AL team reaches the World Series.
Yes, you read that right - an exhibition game that impacts the results of baseball's crowning event. Why would the MLB do something so silly? To avoid something even sillier - an All-Star game that nobody cares about.
Tell a professional athlete that winning doesn't matter and the athlete won't show up, chosing instead to rest his worn out body for the remaining half of a season that does matter. Tell a fan that the players don't care, and the fan won't pay money to watch the event. So what to do?
After the 2002 All-Star game embarrassment (that ended in a tie after just 11 innings when both teams ran out of pitchers) the MLB decided to put the World Series home field advantage at stake in hopes that the players (those whose teams still had a shot at the post-season, at least) would care enough to show up and play hard, despite the slight risk of injury that any sport entails. That the managers would save enough pitchers in reserve to go the distance, no matter how long the game lasted.
It just doesn't work that way. Pitching takes such a toll on the arm that many All-Star hurlers will adjust their usage before and/or after the game to accomodate the extra stress. Regular season games are played just two days before and two days after the All-Star game, giving pitchers little time to recover.
Most starting pitchers are limited to around 100 pitches per start - more than that can risk injury. Consider that the Milwaukee Brewers were so desperate for quality pitching that they traded their top prospect for a stud starter, CC Sabathia, just a week ago. Yet their staff ace, Ben Sheets, tossed 42 pitches yesterday. Should the Brewers be forced to sacrifice half a game of ace pitching while in the thick of a playoff race?
Milwaukee's division rival, the Chicago Cubs, saw three of their best pitchers throw 57 pitches combined. That almost seems fair until you realize that the St. Louis Cardinals - in the playoff race with the Brewers and Cubs - saw its hurlers throw zero pitches because none of them were good enough to be All-Stars.
In truth, the All-Star game will never be fair - after all, due to the whimsical nature of fan voting many of MLB's best players don't even get invited. Fundamentally the All-Star game is still an exhibition, so I wish baseball would stop pretending that "This One Counts" (the pleadingly sappy official motto of the 2003 contest) and instead come up with a solution along the lines of "We Care" because that's all that matters for an exhibition.
My proposal is to run the All-Star game as a charity contest:
-- Each player voted into the game selects a charity to represent.
-- MLB lines up corporate sponsors to ante up a significant pot of cash.
-- Players on the winning team split the cash as donations made in their name to their chosen charity.
-- Further, bonuses could be handed out, such as:
---- An "MVP sponsor" gives a extra bonus to the charity of the player who wins the MVP
---- Additional sponsors could hand out bonuses for players hitting home runs or pitchers getting strikeouts
---- The home run derby could have "jackpot" bullseye targets in the bleachers that could earn extra donations if struck.
And so on. If a player wants to back out of the game to go fishing instead, he'll have to endure the boos of fans for turning his back on a charity. Rather than being a physical burden, it would be an emotional honor for a player to compete.
Since the game has zero impact on regular season or post-season games, there's no need to drag it on for extra innings because something affecting the players' professional future is at stake. Instead a tiebreaker can be used - remember, it's just an exhibition put on for the fans. Some have suggested that a home-run derby can break a tie, but that's rather anti-climatic.
An exciting tiebreaker would be if the game is tied after nine innings then each subsequent inning starts with the bases loaded. The highlight of last night was when the AL loaded the bases in the bottom of the 10th inning with nobody out (albeit due to two errors and a walk) but failed to score a run as Aaron Cook induced three straight ground ball outs, getting two force outs at home plate.
If the current version of the All-Star game is so ho-hum, why did I watch? Because I'm a die hard baseball fan without cable TV, so I watch any televised game I can. Amanda is a baseball fan, too, but she decided to count sheep instead of innings. Fans don't care about World Series home field advantage in July. Fans do care about seeing their favorite players together on one field as they exhibition the skills that make them such beloved athletes.
...has come to an end! Leaned up against my shelf of running shoes are these "shoes":
With cross training as a perfect excuse, I figured now is the time to try off-ice skating. After lots of research I finally settled on the K2 Moto 90, which has large 90mm wheels. Most "fitness skates" have 70-80mm wheels but I wanted something that could handle rougher terrain, "rough" as in road shoulders compared to "smooth" pedestrian paths. I choose K2 over Rollerblade since only K2 sells a size 14 to fit my boats.
So far I have about 20 miles of skating underfoot and I'm definitely still learning - I have to remind myself to stay within my limits! Inline skating is quite different than ice skating:
-- The wheels build up angular momentum, requiring more energy for starting and stopping
-- One can't do a 'hockey stop" and that little pad on the heel barely slows things down
-- The "blade" is heavier, longer and taller than a metal ice blade
-- Ice doesn't have hills!
Overall inline skates are easy to use, but by far the most difficult thing is controlling speed, especially coming to a stop, which can be quite critical obviously. :) No falls yet, but I'm sure it'll happen. Yes, I do wear my bike helmet!
Skating requires a similar aerobic effort to running, whereas cycling doesn't require quite as much heart rate. Due to the speed of skating, though, it's tougher to maintain a *tempo* paced effort since at those higher speeds I too often have to slow down to make a turn or avoid an obstacle, allowing me to coast and recover some HR. Otherwise, though, it's a superb workout and best of all, my legs feel great afterward! No pounding, so after 45 minutes of skating I feel like I could easily go for another hour. However, the next day I sure do feel sore all over!
Bah, that's nothing. Just 30 minutes south of us they got seven inches of rain in one day! In fact, someone drove their car into a swollen river and died just a couple miles from our store.
Quit yer complaining! Yesterday in a 12-hour period the northwest lower peninsula of Michigan got ELEVEN inches of rain!! The primary highway was one of several roads that were washed out, leaving much of the area un-navigable by car.
Yet here in Michigan we're doing quite well... compared to Iowa. Some areas there are 15 FEET above flood stage, putting entire downtowns of major cities underwater. It's as bad as a smaller-scale Katrina, complete with failed levees and more at risk of being topped. Folks trying to evacuate are stranded by flooded roads and can only sit tight and hope the water doesn't rise much higher.
Amanda and I watched NBC News this evening to get some information about the disaster. Instead we learned how random people feel about Tim Russert.
For the entire 30 minutes of news time NBC interviewed various acquaintances of Russert interspersed with patchwork clips of the political host in past years. Obviously unscripted, many interviewees babbled aimlessly like a tired business manager trying to justify calling a Friday afternoon meeting. Some Kennedy matriarch was dragged off her airplane and interviewed live at the airport, where she rambled on until Brian Williams cut her off.
No offense to Russert; in fact, he was one of my favorite figures in the news media. His zealous enthusiasm was so magnetic that he reminded me of Steve Irwin, unable to hide the passion for his work.
But seriously, NBC. I know Russert was a huge figure in politics; I understand that he was a friend of many at the station. The capital city of one of our 50 states is underwater! Yet the nation's leading news program doesn't see fit to even mention the catastrophe because one of its smiling faces passed away?
Adding insult to the flooding injuries (and deaths), NBC implored viewers to stay tuned for a special memorial program for Tim Russert later in the evening. If they were already planning to give Russert his own broadcast, then at the very least they could've used even a few minutes of their precious half-hour news slot to do something special - cover the news.
Russert prided himself on staying focused on the issues regardless of which high-profile politician he was addressing. NBC should've done the same - both to honor Tim Russert and to respect the people drowning in Iowa.
What can I say... It's been eons since I last posted here and this will only be a "here's what I've been doing" update, but I figured it's better than remaining off the radar.
I'm still setting up my "new" blog. With Amanda and I moving our old Why Dogs? blog to 2 Feet 4 Paws, I was left with just Why Run? and Vox. One problem with Vox is that it's more of a "social" service than a "publishing" one, and Facebook works better as the former. Vox is still cool as a personal blog for stuff like I'm doing right here, so I'm going to re-start my original havybeaks blog on Blogger as a platform for my "articles" on various topics like running, flying, etc. Problem is, I'm having trouble finding time to write good articles...
Last week I went on a business trip to Cincinnati on short notice and I still don't have a company laptop yet so during my three days in Cincy I had no email access. Ten years ago that would be no big deal but next time I'm sent somewhere, I better be connected with more than a pad of paper! Not only did it limit my contributions during the meetings, it also prevented me from keeping pace with my outside-of-work life...
Mach League, the fantasy baseball league that I run, is way behind schedule. Three weeks ago was our monthly stat update that happens every four weeks, so I'm close to getting lapped by my own procrastination. Unfortunately, my title of "League President" is by definition a *fantasy* job, which means that my real jobs of "engineer" and "pet store owner" take precedence...
2 Feet 4 Paws is still chugging along thanks to Amanda and we're *still* trying to re-arrange the store layout to fit more products. Finding a means to display items that a) is attractive, b) is cheap, and c) can use the odd-shaped and small space that we have has been a challenge. I think we know what to do now, though...
However, I don't know what to do about running, specifically my long-time goal of running the 100K in early August. Believe it or not my right hamstring is STILL not 100% and I'm having doubts that a) I can put in enough training to do more than hike 100K, or b) my hamstring can last for 100K. It's not that I can't run on it, in fact I can maintain a 9:00 pace without problems, but going under 8:00 per mile is too fast for the hammy. Running on back-to-back days is not feasible yet so my training consists of a weekend long run plus one mid-week short run; that's it. Plus, the long runs tend to wear out the hamstring so I've replaced a couple long runs with long bike rides...
Cycling is a lot more fun with a bike computer - simply having a way to track distance and time is such a luxury! It's better than using mapmyrun every time, especially when my two long rides were 37 and 40 miles each. Ever since middle school I've wanted a pair of inline skates and I may have convinced Amanda to finally let me buy some. Now I'm going to hear more of her begging for a new digital SLR but I've still got that kayak up my sleeve that I've been pining for so I can match her beg-for-beg. :) Right now I'm leaning towards the K2 Moto 90...
My hope is that they'll be an effective cross-training tool. Cycling is great but it's hard to get my HR above 150 without burning out the quads in short order. One odd thing about the hamstring is that heavy impact makes it sore, e.g. stomping on a shovel to dig dirt. Running downhill also stresses the hammy, perhaps due to impact, perhaps due to higher turnover? I don't get it, but hopefully skating falls aerobically between cycling and running...
Viruses can affect aerobic performance; after my bad case of the flu in February I somehow caught a fever in April - rarely have I ever been sick twice a year. Both times my resting HR went up to around 64 from it's usual 54; in fact it had only gone back to 58 by the time I got sick a second time. Right now I'm at 59...
Viruses also afflict computers and I spent countless hours the past two nights fixing Amanda's computer. Some kind of spyware got on board and fooled SBC/Yahoo/AT&T/insert-dot-com-merger-name-here (they provide our DSL service which includes anti-spy and anti-virus). The anti-spy found most of the evil files but not all (yes, the definitions were up to date) and one would remain hidden and re-install the malware just minutes after deleting it. I finally killed it by downloading Microsoft's "malicious software tool" which found just one file, but it was that pesky installer that the others couldn't nab. So far so good...
I didn't want to end on a sickly note so I saved the best for last. While in Cincinnati I got to visit our friends Kim and Tony who live just minutes from the hotel where I stayed. They treated me to a home-grilled dinner and even some fancy ice cream (it's a famous Cincinnati brand but I forgot the name). I got to meet their new daughter Kate for the first time, who only likes wearing winter boots inside the house during summer. :) After Kate went to bed we shared some great conversation about baseball, airplanes, and of course dogs...
I also met for the first time their two golden retrievers, Zeke and Nellie, who are apparently cut from the same nutty cloth as Haven and Beacon. Nellie is the boss and likes to play-fight with Zeke by literally sitting on his head! I brought a couple toys for them from our store and Nellie promptly stole Zeke's toy but once he got it back he didn't set it down again, not for one second! By the time I left a few hours later he was falling asleep with the plush salamander still safely in his mouth.
The death of Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby was not unexpected. It has nothing to do with her being a filly racing among colts, but everything to do with horse racing being a sport that risks the lives of its competitors. With Barbaro's protracted fatal injury in recent memory I decided it was worth looking for some answers. Why did these animals die?
Obviously broken legs led to their euthanization, which brings up one sad truth about horses: an injury as simple as a broken leg is often fatal. While Barbaro's shattered right hind leg was far from "simple", his leg did in fact heal but he and his veterinarians were unable to overcome the laminitis that developed as a result of the injury. Barbaro at least had a slim chance to recover since only one leg was broken, but Eight Belles broke two legs and had virtually zero chance for survival.
Much was made of the fact that the injury occurred during the gallop out after the finish, essentially a "cool down jog". The forces on the legs during that phase are much less than when racing at full speed, but are still significant enough to cause injury. It's possible that Eight Belles had a pre-existing stress fracture or suffered a non-displaced fracture during the race. During the gallop out phase the horse was decelerating, imparting forces in a "backwards" direction that might have had enough leverage to displace the fracture in a way that "forward" forces could not.
Another source of consternation is that Eight Belles broke both of her front legs but my guess is that just one leg that broke initially, and this structural failure immediately doubled the load on the remaining good leg causing it to break in quick succession. It happened so fast that it appeared as though both ankles broke at the same time. Although the Derby veterinarian said he'd never seen such an injury before, it's happened as recently as two years ago. Perhaps Eight Belles had pre-existing stress fractures in both legs; after all, she had competed in more races than any other 2008 Derby starter.
Regardless of how Eight Belles or any other horse suffered their fatal injuries, the fact remains that horses die from racing. A recent survey found that there are approximately two deaths for every 1000 starts in horse racing; given the 20-horse starting field at Churchill Downs this year, there was a 1-in-25 chance that the Kentucky Derby would be a killer. Eight Belles came up short on those odds and is one of almost 1000 horses who die from racing annually. Eight Belles' trainer Larry Jones said afterward "Losing animals like this isn't fun", causing me to wonder just how many more of his horses have died from training and racing.
To be fair, any racing sport is dangerous. Human runners frequently deal with injury - myself included - yet luckily for us a leg injury is rarely fatal. Most other animals can also endure leg injuries without putting their lives in danger. As much as I love running races, if I knew that a leg injury would kill me you can bet I'd find another hobby! Which brings up a key point - I have that choice.
Horses are born to run, they love to run, but they are forced to train and race to such a degree that their lives are at stake. Years of selective breeding have engineered thoroughbreds into racing machines so fragile that broken bones are deadly. Yet we race them for our own amusement. As Big Brown's jockey Kent Desormeaux put it, "...Eight Belles showed you her life for our enjoyment today".
Horses are born, raised, and trained under the illusion that they are loved and cared for, only to find their lives cut short as soon as they stumble or worse yet, they are cast out from their home if they don't bring home enough race winnings. Ever wonder about the fate of the "losers"? Horses in the Triple Crown races are just three years old; with a life expectancy of 20-30 years these creatures are virtually teenagers. Can you imagine Kerri Strug being executed after breaking her ankle on her famous Olympic vault? Such was the fate of Eight Belles.
Luckily it was not the fate of my dog, Beacon. A yellow lab, he was born to retrieve - he loves to fetch so much that he would run and swim until he collapsed from exhaustion if I didn't end the session first. Two years ago while playing frisbee with Beacon he twisted his knee making a catch. He limped back over and sat in front of me, eagerly awaiting another throw! His selectively-bred genes made him willing to continue retrieving despite a partially torn knee ligament. It was my responsibility to end his frisbee session and ensure he was fully recovered before letting him run and swim again. Best of all, his knee injury did not risk his life!
People have the freedom to choose whether they want to put their life on the line. The biggest exception is military conscription, but at least the purpose behind that is more noble than pure entertainment. As I wrote last Memorial Day, we've been "conscripting" our domestic animals to serve us for thousands of years and by genetically breeding them into what they are today, they depend on us and we owe it to them to make their lives worth it.
Yet there are still people out there who enjoy killing horses for their viewing pleasure. In Washington state there is the Omak Stampede, a rodeo that features "The Suicide Race" as its main attraction. Riders drive their horses at full speed en masse down a cliff and then (if the horse is still standing) must ford a deep river. A more appropriate name would be "The Murder Race" since horses die in the event virtually every year.
The Kentucky Derby is not about the horses. It's about getting noticed wearing a big hat and paying $1000 to sip booze from a gold cup for the privilege of watching Eight Belles do everything that was ever asked of her. Her reward was a painful death. Surely humankind can do better.
"...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
-- John Donne, Meditation XVII
I don't know what the deal is but it seems whenever I go running around town these days, I stumble upon a major crime scene in action!
Last month I ran past the scene of a bank robbery were the perpetrator had left a (later to be determined phony) bomb before making his getaway on a bicycle, of all things.
This morning I was out running at 4:30am - for some reason I woke up early. It was a great run - super peaceful with no cars on the road and nobody awake. I did see a giant flat-screen TV turned on in one house but as I ran by I saw that the "viewer" was sound asleep under a blanket on the couch. I wonder how much electricity they burned by leaving that thing on all night? It lit up the whole living room.
Speaking of lights, as I turned on to Main Street I saw some flashing red lights in the distance. I was wearing my glasses instead of my usual contacts, and my glasses being several years old my vision isn't as good with them. At first I thought there was a new four-way flashing stop light but that seemed odd. I decided to run towards the lights and see how close I could get - I couldn't even tell how far away they were.
Turns out they were just half a mile away - it was a large fire truck blocking the road with flares! Actually the flares were little flashing lights sitting on the pavement, flares for the digital age... just like the blinking LED I was wearing on my head! As I approached the intersection a fireman got out of the truck - figuring that he got out of his warm cab just on my account, I simply said "Good morning!" and he responded the same, and I decided to not bother him by asking what was going on. It must've been a big deal, though, because M-21 is a state highway and they wouldn't close it without a compelling reason.
Last time Amanda figured out the cause of my crime scene encounter, and this occasion was no exception. When Amanda finally woke up at 7:00am she told me that there was a standoff just down the road! Some guy apparently chased some women out of their house with a gun but a baby got left behind. The police even used some kind of robot to approach the house for reconnaissance. It was all going on as I ran by (but I never saw or heard a thing) so no wonder the fireman made sure I wasn't about to cross his barricade!
What is going on with Lowell these days? I wonder what crime will be transpiring a month from now when I'm out running through town? I better get a police scanner...
When you go out for a run, you never know what you're going to find. Last evening after work I took advantage of the 49-degree, sunny weather and headed out for a nice jog. Upon reaching Main Street I noticed that the police had closed off a section of the road. An officer instructed me, the pedestrian runner, to take the detour! I asked him what's going on and he mumbled a couple words that sounded like "crane drop".
I noticed a large crane over at the flour mill and while it appeared to be intact and functional, the officer's comments had me wondering if a crane accident had occurred, reminiscent of the collapses in New York and Miami. As I finished the detour loop and popped back out on Main Street, though, I observed that the crane was outside the closed-off area. Hmmm.
Poor Amanda had to drive the detour when she came home - cars were backing up enough that at times I was out-pacing them with my blazing 9-minute miles. That's what you call "ludicrous speed"! :)
Finally home, Amanda was able to find out what happened: there had been a bank robbery on Main Street! The perpetrator left behind a bomb that turned out to be fake, but during my run was when the bomb squad was checking it out. Apparently the officer I encountered had said "bank robbery" and not "crane drop". One cool thing in the news story is that they interviewed Chief Valentine, who happens to be one of my neighbors. Good job, Jim!
The funniest thing about the robbery (if crimes can be funny) is that the bank robber fled the scene on a bicycle! The news anchor in the video clip refers to it as the "get-away bike". If it was a tandem bike would the other guy be called the "get-away pedaler"?
Last week John McCain was pretending to be a president by meeting with leaders in the Middle East. A smart move on his part - with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton still sparring for just the candidacy, McCain can take the time to act as though he's accustomed to presidential duties. In fact, he was even auditioning two of his potential running mates, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, who joined him on the trip.
However, what really caught my eye was something at the end of the article attributed to McCain:
"He promised that, if elected president, he would uphold a long-term military commitment in Iraq as long as al-Qaida in Iraq is not defeated."
The only reason al-Qaida is in Iraq is because our military is in Iraq. As long as the military is there, so will be terrorism, and we can't win a war on terror any more than we can win a war on crime. Mitigate it, yes, but eliminate it, no. If the existence of extreme dissidents is the criteria for staying in Iraq, then we will never leave.
A quick update of what I've been up to, set to a "wishful" theme...
1) The simulation baseball league that I run had its annual draft last Friday evening via telecon. Each of the eight members lives in a different state/province (except for two of us in Michigan) - MI, OH, IN, MA, NC, AZ, and ONT. How did we all meet? Well, not all of us have met, except by phone and email! I wish that someday we could all get together in person for the draft like we did in 1993.
2) The next morning I ran my first running event of the year, the Irish Jig 5K. While I wish my hamstring were healed enough that I could've actually raced instead of doing a "training run", I still had a lot of fun by carrying a camera and taking photos during the race.
3) I wish my hamstring would heal more quickly. Nevertheless, it's getting better; in fact it was feeling surprisingly good after the Irish Jig. I ran 5.6 miles Tuesday and 3.2 yesterday and so far, so good.
4) During PT for my hamstring while the trainer was away waiting for the heat pack to warm up my leg, I would alleviate my boredom by grabbing his copy of Netter's Orthopaedic Atlas and flipping through the pages. I was hooked! I'd make great use of a book like that to help understand anatomy, or better yet, I wish I had the newer Thieme Atlas.
5) As long as I'm window shopping, I wish my feet could have a pair of Simple Shoes.
