Sunday Run

I'm not sure that I trust the distance given by the above map, but if true then the pace was a little dismaying. 1:39:42 for about 8:10 per mile. I felt faster than that.

Happy Mother's Day!

Saturday Break

With the help of my 12-year old daughter, I changed my front brakes this morning.

Breaks are a job I dread: You've got to jack the car up. The pads are usually rusted into the shoes. Brake fluid gets everywhere. If you do it wrong, you crash, etc.

Surenna helped by pushing on the brake pedal while I bled the lines. Now that she knows she can reach the controls, she is very interested in learning to drive. For the sake of my clutch, perhaps I will wait a bit.

The Drill SGT said... Can somebody explain how polar bear became a distinct species in the last 500 years or so? DBQ has it right. It is a little known fact that polar bears and grizzly bears can still interbreed. Which in a technical sense, means that they are not a truly distinct species.

A day off of this-and-that...

It was raining, so I saved changing the brakes on my car for another day--probably this weekend. They fade and pulsate, but they will probably stop the car for another two days.

Instead, I did some work on the addition: I rubbed-off bits of cement residue from the glass-block wall with steel wool and a small spatula. Then did some final sanding on the plaster prior to putting a primer coat of paint on it.

Went for a run--see the below post. I've made this run a few times, but finally mapped it into "Map my run", so now I know how far it is.

After a nice long shower, I set to work on dinner for the family: Chicken Cacciatore. It is pretty straight forward. I just make my regular red-sauce and then brown some chicken, add the sauce, cover and simmer for a while. My wife had gotten a deal on some skinless, boneless thighs--which is perfect for this dish, though I would love to try it with rabbit sometime...

Today's run

74:23, so about 7:51 per mile.

Faun Lake.....5.5.....42:20.....7:42/mile....5/8/09

An International Sandwich

I only realized it after it was made and partially consumed: My sandwich was from a lot of countries.

I started with a French bread sub roll, which I toasted the inside of.

Then I covered the inside with a couple slices of American cheese.

I microwaved some leftover Indian tandoori chicken and put that in.

I added some Italian chopped hot peppers.

Finally, I topped it with some Greek yogurt.

It was very unusual tasting and very good.

I "couldn't" take a picture of the sandwich because even though the camera was literally within reach, I was too hungry to wait. So here is a cute puppy picture instead.

Saturday Run

I took about 85 minutes, so the pace was a pathetic 8:23/mile or so.

The party is at Noon so I had to go early in the morning and I am not really a morning person when it comes to running.

I really have nothing to add to this.

Obama on Abortion & Interrogation [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

More than a few people have said some version of this to me since Wednesday:

I was taken aback during Wednesday press conference when I noted the difference in Obama's answers to the questions on waterboarding and abortion. I haven't seen anyone note the inconsistency of his reasoning. When it came to torture/ waterboarding/ enhanced interrogation techniques, Obama said we shouldn't take shortcuts. Even when it's hard, we should take the high road. It's in our nation's character to take the more noble option, though it will require a lot more work and effort to get the same information. But when it came to the issue of abortion, while he readily acknowledged it was a morally and ethically weighty issue, he said it should be an available option. Why? Because he trusted that women, along with their doctors and their families, appreciate the ethical weightiness of their decision and will make the best decision for their circumstances. Oh, how I wish we could swap those answers! How is it that he cannot trust the educated opinion of government lawyers as they balance ethics (of inducing discomfort and pain) with practicalities (of stopping mass murder) and advise as to where enhanced techniques cross the line to become illegal torture? But a woman, by virtue of having two x chromosomes, can be trusted to weigh ethics (of live and death) and practicalities (of inconvenience and economic difficulties) while having a personal vested interest in those practicalities.

05/01 10:04 AMShare

Dialog on IM which (I swear) does make sense to us

Wife says: I've added Caprica and I'm moving it up to the top

Dr. Kutner was murdered. says: Is it even out?

Wife says: Yeah and there are even user reviews on it.

Wife says: Sounds like it has a lot of sexy time

Dr. Kutner was murdered. says: As long as I can keep my dr. caligari

I finally found it!

It is hard to see me. There are three guys all in a row and in step on the right hand side of the picture. I am the one in the back. I was wearing black tank top with a long sleeved yellow shirt underneath and the sleeve pulled up to the elbow. Also, you can see that I was wearing black ankle socks and white shoes with gold trim.

Pictures from here(page 144) There are 359 pages with 12 pictures each, so it is a bit of a challenge to figure out where to look. What I did was to find people with about the same net time at the 30 kilometer mark, who also (because we are dealing with net time) started around the same time. Also complicating matters is that only a few runners in each picture have bib numbers that you can make out. And then the only ones which are useful are the ones in the 9000 group.

Dog Picture

A while ago I did (or perhaps wanted to do, but gave up on) a post containing WFB and his favorite dogs: Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. For the life of me; every search came up with plenty of dogs, plenty of WFB but none with both.

Now, by accident I found such a picture. It was included as part of an excerpt of Growing Up Buckley by Christopher Buckley in The New York Times Magazine.

So here it is!

Awww!

More Fuel test data

Earlier in the year I decided it would be interesting to see just how often I fuel-up my car. Today, the 27th of April I put gas in. So I made it almost 6 weeks! I probably won't have to buy gas at all in May.

I went from the 9th of February to the 18th of March between fill-ups.

Groton Road Race

In the first mile...

46 209 DAVID PECCHIA 46 38/262 M 18/102 M4049 CHELMSFORD MA 45:45 7:22

I came in 46th out of 435, but ran about one minute slower than last year. I think there are two good excuses for that: It was really warm this year and I just ran a marathon less than one week ago. I really think the heat accounts for all of it since I came in 57 out of 371 last year. This year's effort puts me in the top 11% and last year's was about 15%. So while my absolute performance went down, my relative performance improved.

What the other numbers up there mean: 38/262 men. 18/102 men in my 40-49 age group.

I did manage to catch and pass this guy before the end.

All pictures from Jim Rhodes The Runner

Running the numbers

I got my final results back from the BAA and at first I was really pleased: My number was 9899 and yet I came in 6792. It should be remembered that your bib number is directly in proportion to your qualifying time.

At first I was pleased because I assumed that finish order was a zero-sum game: If one person finishes ahead of his number, then someone else must finish behind theirs. So for instance if # 1 finishes 20,001 and everybody else finishes in order, then they each gain one place position and that one runner looses 20,000 place positions. It all equals-out.

Just to confirm this hypothesis, I looked at 20 runners in order 9880-9899 and summed-up whether they gained or lost position. Here is what I found: There were three runners with no finish. Not everybody who signs-up ends up running and not all runners finish. In fact: there were around 28,000 entrants and about 23,000 finishers, so we are missing about 5,000 people. This will have no impact on #1, but # 28,000 should gain 5,000 finish positions just by completing the race. I had a # that put me around the 35th percentile part of the pack, so I should gain 1750 positions just by finishing at the top 35 percent point.

The average gain for the 17 runners I looked at was 1320 place positions. This is not far from my above estimate of 1750. When I sum up the three that did not finish and subtract from the aggregate gains, the average gain drops to 361.

I am still happy about picking up around 3,000 place positions, but around half of that was me and the other half simply a function of showing up and finishing.

Warmest and Coldest years from 1880 - 2005

Click onto images for better resolution.

Source: NOA

I was forced to put together this data in order to debunk the claim that "the 11 hottest years all happened in the last 13". It is a claim that is rather obviously false, but I wanted to be on solid ground.

Looking at the data it is interesting that from the mid 1940's till the 1970's there were neither extremes of cold nor heat. Maybe that is what got us spoiled into thinking that climate never changes. Then, there were some cold years in the 1970's and everyone panicked about the coming ice age. Now we have a few hot years and global warming is the hysteria.

"The 11 warmest years on record occurred in the past 13 years." That is not what NOA says: Of the 20 hottest years between 1880 and 2005, 11 were between 1882 and 1949 and 9 were between 1981 and 2003. Below are the 11 hottest years on record. Note that 7 of them are longer ago than 13 years. 1995 0.88 2001 0.88 1906 0.91 1948 0.96 1999 0.97 1921 0.99 2003 1.11 1944 1.18 1914 1.23 1932 1.41 2002 1.47

Would we walk 4 miles for icecream?

Yes, sure. Two miles each way on a beautiful sunny day, with the dog--who got some too.

Hi Bob!

On the walk down from the athletes village to the start line, I struck-up an acquaintance with a guy about my age named Robert from El Paso. We had a lot in common since we had both been in the Marine Corps and knew some of the same places.

His number was in the 12-thousands and mine in the 9's, so we had to go off to different corrals. Actually, I could have moved back to his and probably would have if I had thought of it at the time. Anyway, it would have worked out well, had I done this since his time was 1:14 better than mine. I am pretty sure I could have done a bit better if I had someone to run with. In fact we might have both had better times since I ran a faster pace at the beginning and the time he gained was all in the last couple of miles. I could have spurred him on at the start and he could have returned the favor at the end.

I never saw him even though he had a faster time because the times are net and he probably crossed the start line a minute and a half or two behind me.

Results:

9899 Pecchia, David B. 46 M Chelmsford MA USA Checkpoints 5k 10k 15k 20k Half 25k 30k 35k 40k 0:23:47 0:46:56 1:10:12 1:34:02 1:39:15 1:57:56 2:23:20 2:49:41 3:16:10 Finish Pace Projected Time Official Time Overall Gender Division 0:07:57 3:28:28 6792 5749 948

The above is cut-and-pasted from the baa website.

I will edit and comment on the results later.

Later: I feel much better now.

Here are my 5k splits: (24:48 is an 8min/mile pace for a 5k)

5k 23:47 7:40/mile Gain 1:08

The course has a lot of downhills in this section and one is very fresh at the beginning, but the course was too crowded to go as fast as I wanted. I had expected to loose a couple of minutes in this part, but I didn't so this was a good first 5k.

10k 23:09 7:28/mile Gain 1:39

Only by the end of this 10k did the runners thin to the point that you could go at whatever pace you wanted. But by then I was feeling a little tired. Not "I would like to stop now" tired, but 6 miles is 6 miles and you feel it. So I just tried to maintain the pace I was on.

15k 23:16 7:30/mile Gain 1:32

The pain and fatigue were beginning to mount, but I was able to maintain my pace.

20k 23:50 7:41/mile Gain 0:58

It was becoming harder to maintain pace: Muscle soreness as well as degrading aerobic potential made maintaining pace very difficult. Earlier, this pace had been easy, now it took a lot of effort to maintain. I think it was somewhere in this section that I passed by the Wellsley Scream Tunnel. This gave a new burst of energy even as I resisted all offers for a kiss.

25k 23:44 7:40/mile Gain 1:04

I crossed the starting line around 6 minutes after the gun and a small goal was to make-up that time--such that the official time when I crossed the finish would be under 3:30. By the 25k mark I had done this, but was so worn-out that that I was never able to maintain this 6-minute lead.

30k 25:24 8:12/mile Loss 0:36

My pace began to decay and I hadn't even reached the hills.

35k 26:21 8:30/mile Loss 1:33

The hills (heartbreak is one of three, which all seemed about as bad) were murder. At 20 miles your legs are pretty sore even on a flat course. The early downhills around Hopkinton add to the damage. The thing is that such hills on a normal run would be nothing, but after 20 miles and lots of down hills, they really sap your will to go on. Nicely, crowds congregate on the hills to exhort you on.

40k 26:29 8:33/mile Loss 1:41

8:33 seems a lot faster than I felt like I was going. I tried experimentally to go a little faster. I would add a bit of effort and feel myself getting out of breath, but I didn't feel like that effort caused any more speed.

I saw a co-worker along the start of this section and it was nice that finally, among the million people lining the course, there was one that knew me. Actually, my wife and the older two of our daughters were on Boylston at the right time, but never spotted me. I wouldn't have heard them anyway since the crowd was deafening by this point.

26.2 Miles 3:28:28 07:57/mile

I had three goals going in:

1)Finish--check

2) Qualify for next year--check

Do better than in the Bay State Marathon--Fail. 3:39 longer. But, the bay state is a really flat course and it loops, so a head wind one way becomes a tail wind the other way. Boston is all one direction and we had the wind in our faces the whole way.

The End

The temperature was perfect for long distance running. In the hollows, I would pull up my long sleeves, at the crest of hills the breeze would hit and I would pull them back. I carried my gloves pretty much the whole way; they were almost essential at the start and not enough at the end.

Boston is colder than the outlying areas due to being close to the water, and downtown Boston was much colder and windy than Hopkinton. Mylar blankets were handed out at the end, but it only took some of the edge off. My hands went numb and stayed that way until about an hour later when I was riding home on the Orange Line.

The out-processing order was as follows, with plenty of very helpful and pleasant volunteers all around: --Cross the finish line.

Get a bottle of Poland Springs water.

Get a space blanket.

Helpers put a sticker on the blanket to hold it shut.

Turn in your timing chip in exchange for a medal.

Get a plastic bag full of edible goodies.

Get a banana and put it with the rest of the goodies.

Decide not to get a free Power Bar.

Go to the end of a very long line of buses to pick-up clothes/cell phone & etc. In all fairness, it is the start of a very long line of buses for some runners--someone has to be at the end.

Find an empty spot to put on sweat pants, change shoes, put on dry shirt and jacket.

Go to the family meeting area and find the "P".

I spot my wife, look below her and spot children, notice the younger one spot me and hear her say, "Momma, look! There is daddy!"

I could barely keep up with them on the walk to the Back Bay station. Once on the train, blessed relief: Warmth, a soft spot to sit and a chance to finally eat the banana, some nice salty chips and finish the 2nd water bottle.