Hartford 2008 and a new PR

With 5 marathons in the bag, I decided to keep going and run my  6th. 

The good news is my running for this year has been on track for good marathon training so I didn't need any extra hard training the month leading up to the October 11. Also, I just ran the Reach The Beach relay in New Hampshire on September 12th and that went really well.

The bad news is I've spent the past two weeks dealing with hay fever and low energy. Not the kind of health I like to experience before a long run.

Friday the 10th and the days leading up were packed with logistics and planning. My family including my dad and step-mother were coming to watch the race. Also our friends the Tapanainen's were planning to join.  Robyn put a ton of energy into getting everyone ready and the whole trip was a success. I can't thank her enough for all her hard work.

As is often the case with a long run, I spent the night before "trying to get to sleep". Next time, I'll try the Tylenol PM.

We left the house at 5 am, picked up Grandma and Grandpa along the way, and arrived in Hartford at 6:40. Since the bib-pickup was open until 7:30, we had lots of time. 

Robyn, the girls, grandpa, and grandma all found a spot roadside about 200 yards after the start and they waited. The crowd near the start was just insane. It felt like all 2000 runners were standing right on the starting line. Too crowded to get into the chute at the front and too crowded to get to the end of line, I waited on the side.

When the gun went off, I pushed through - with a dozen others - and crossed the start just where the chip-reading-mat were placed. I spent the first few miles wondering if I went over the mat and got my chip registered. If my chip was not registered, I would not get an official time. Fortunately, when I looked at the race results later they showed that I did in fact cross the starting mat. Phew.

The family was waiting for me at the 200 yard mark and they were all smiles and cheer. That was nice. Emma caught some of it on video.

 

It was a fun day for the family and friends with a kid's run around 10 am and a trip to mile 22 to cheer me on. Everyone had a good time.  With warm sun and nice fall foliage, how could it be a bad day!

The first 10 miles, I took it easy and tried to stay near 8:00/mile. This felt like a good pace but right from the beginning my breathing was heavier than usual. The 2 week hay fever was catching up with me.

I met some guys running comfortably at 7:30/mile and stayed with them for over an hour. We talked a bit but mostly just kept each other on track. 

Around mile 18 I started to run out of gas and dropped back from the guys. This was not fun. The good news is that I had about 10 minutes in the bank. I'd been running 7:40/mile for the 1st 18. Now, with only 8 miles to go, I had some headroom to hit a target of 8:00/mile.

Starting with mile 18, I walked for  a minute or so at each water stop. Doing this I was able to finish the race with a run - instead of a walk or a carry.

Around mile 22, Robyn jumped out and handed me a banana. I stopped, gave her a big kiss, posed for the camera, and dropped off my hat. Then I ran for as long as Robyn and the family could see me - about 2 blocks - and walked a bit. This was the drill for the rest of the race. 

In many of my races, I've sprinted for the last 2 miles. I was starting to doubt this would be one of those races.

As I approached mile 25 many cheery people were shouting "you can do it". I just smiled and walked by thinking "yes I can, even if I need to walk...".

Mile 26 and only 1000 feet to go. Someone shouted "the finish line is just around the corner". I ran a bit. About 500 feet. Then walked. Ugh. Definitely not sprinting to the finish.

As I approached the finish, I could barely make out the race clock. It looked like 3:29. I said hey, I've got 1 minute to make a 3:30 PR. All I need to do is cross that line! Well, I ran like it mattered and crossed the line with the race clock at 3:31. Knowing I did not start right with the gun, I was optimistic that my overall race time would be around 3:30. That's 8 minutes off my PR (Marine Corp Marathon 2007 - 3:38) and 14 minutes off my most recent marathon (Boston Marathon 2008 - 3:44). Very nice.

We spent the afternoon catching up, sharing pictures and stories. We ate at the Publick House in Sturbridge and visited the Halloween displays there. It was a relaxing afternoon with lots of good food.

At home again in the evening, I verified my race time (3:30:56 - mighty nice), went to bed at 8pm and slept clear through to 7am. 

By all the standard accounts, I ran too fast. But hey, I beat my PR and that feels great. 

Next challenge: Qualify for Boston: 3 hours, 15 minutes.

After extensive data analysis of the marathon results, I was able to create a histogram of the finishing times. This was quite fun. Even with the best tools - Numbers on the Mac, Excel on Windows, and MATLAB on Windows - the process of converting the text results (above link) to the below graph took a long time. This could have been done in one step in MATLAB. Too bad I started with Numbers on the Mac.

Anywho, the graph below shows the bins for all finishes between 2 hours and 6 hours. Most people finished between 3:20 and 4:38. As you might expect, there is a steep rise from the 4 people who finished in about 2 hours to the middle and a gradual slope from the middle to the 6 hour mark.  Only about 40 people finished in more than 6 hours. Which is almost the same as the number of people to finish in less than 3 hours. Interesting...

I finished in 3:30 which puts me in the 6th bin below (click on the picture for a larger view). 

Enjoy.

Another Engine

 

This is an engine. OK, so it's a picture of an engine. The great thing about engines is they generally work. Some years ago I saw the movie His Girl Friday. Rosalind Russel goes on a tant about Made For Use. The  basic idea is that everything produced is produced for a purpose and for me, engines have a purpose.  That purpose is to run. Frankly, I don't care much if they do anything beyond that.

This weekend's adventures included mowing the lawn. Usually this involves running the weed whacker, picking up the dog poop, and pushing the big mower around. If the grass is not too tall, this can take less than 2 hours.

This is my mower. The nice folks at equipmentlocator.com have the same mower so I snarfed their picture.

Anywho, the mower is about 7 years old. I bought it used from my friend Rick. It has needed only minor repairs since I got it. Much joy!

This weekend I had another opportunity to use my mower-fixup-checklist. (See previous blog entry). This time, it was fuel.

There were actually three things wrong with the mower.

1. It's hard to shift gears
2. The mower stalls after running for a few minutes
3. It's hard to start.

The first problem was a case of mistaken belt routing. One of the drive belts was routed around around the wrong spindle. It was an easy fix once found.

The second problem took some sleuthing. The spark plug was clean and unfouled. The engine did not start when choked  or unchoked - it didn't even sputter. I pulled the bottom off the carb and voila - no gas. The tank had gas so obviously the problem was somewhere between the tank and the carb. (You'll learn later that the problem was actually the operator.)

Having narrowed the problem, it was a simple matter of take-apart, and re-assemble, until the fuel resumes flow. The fuel line was pinched inside a clamp, I loosened the clamp and all was well. Now the fun part is that the clamp was mis-installed by me some months ago. The interesting question is why this was only a problem now. I suspect the fuel line has been swelling with age and the pinched section got more and more constricted over time.

With the fuel line repaired, the mower started on the 1st pull. Nice.

The third problem is still not resolved. I found out after trying to start the mower the day after the above repairs. It just would not start. Marathons take the gas out of my legs, pull starting mowers takes the gas out of the rest of me.

I suspect the starting issue is related to a dirty air filter cuz one I pulled the air filter off, the mower started right up. That's something to investigate further next weekend.

Small engines

Ahh the joys of simplicity. I love small engines. There are so few things to fix! Of course, the details do matter but for a small engine to run, you really just need 4 things:

* Gas
* Compression
* Spark
* Timing

For car engines, the timing is generally set electronically. For small engines, it is also electronic (or perhaps points/condenser) but the weak link is actually the flywheel. If the flywheel key shears - which it will from time to time - the timing will be way off and the engine will fail to run.

Anywho, here are a few of my current thoughts on small engines. Basically the typical 4 stroke engine works like this: suck, squeeze, pop, flooey. OK, maybe my grandfather explained it to me like that 30 years ago but it's a great visual. Air and gas go in, the picture gets compressed, the spark make it go "pop", then the exhaust goes out and we start all over again.

If you want to make a dead engine run, the process is, check for gas, check for spark, check for compression, then check your timing.

Most often, it's gas. Gas won't go in if you've got a dirty fuel line or dirty carbeartor.

Next comes spark. The spark plug can be really fouled - full of smelly gas or oil - but in general, if it's not broken, the plug is not the problem. The easy test is putting the plug on the cylinder head then pull the crank through a few times. If you see a bright blue spark, the plug is good.

If you've got gas and you've got spark, timing is the next thing to check. If the engine stalled cuz the mower hit a rock or it backfired before dying, the flywheel may have lurch ahead and sheared the flywheel key. Remove the flywheel (sometimes a non-trivial task) and check the key. If you need to replace it, make sure you get one of the same type - don't use a steel one if the one you took out was aluminum. Also, when it's all done, be sure to re torque the flywheel nut to the engine spec.

OK, so lets say all that is good, what if you still can't start? Now it can get tricky. You may have compression issues - these don't just show up suddenly though. You may have bad oil - bad enough to make the engine not start. Pretty seldom though. So, if you've got spark, timing, and gas, you should be all set. If not. something has gone dreadfully wrong and it may be time to seek help.

Speaking of oil, I noticed something interesting recently. If the oil in your engine is old enough to suffer viscosity breakdown, your engine will run poorly when it gets hot. Essentially, the thin oil blows through important seals and causes the engine to stall. Play it safe and keep your oil fresh - one or two seasons of use max.

Small engines are fun and they even more fun when on a go-cart and it's moving you along at 40 or 50mph. Perhaps I'll go get a go cart.

Electric Signs

Today my friend Brian invited me over to help put together an electric sign. It consists of 800 christmas lights (all red) and some vinyl roofing material - about 18ft by 30 inches. The project -which he started a few weeks ago - takes a lot of time but here's the jist.

• Mark out the shapes you want on the roofing material.


• Poke holes with an awl (front to back on the material).


• Turn the roofing over and poke the christmas lights through.

Your best bet is to start at the same end with all the light strings cuz this puts all the plugs at the same end of the sign. Also, light strands come in 50 or 100ft lengths so you may need to stash some extra bulbs behind the sign - the strands really can't be longer than or shorter than multiples of 50 ft (if you start with a 50 or 100ft strand, that is).

Anywho, when it's all done and thumb blisters have all healed, you'll get a sign that looks like a giant lite-brite.

Here's a fun video of the one we made together.

Running for the Actors

A friend called me last month and asked if I wanted to run in the Boston Marathon. I told her that I'd love to! Her friend was looking for a runner to collect funds for her theater and I jumped at the chance.

I've been running several times a week for about 5 years and it's been quite a rush. Given the opportunity to raise some money for the Enter Stage Left Theater and run another marathon - how can I lose?

The theater is located in Hopkinton MA - just a few blocks from the start of the marathon - and they have been doing coffee houses and small-venue plays for the past 24 years! They have a great local following and offer loads of classes from Acting and TV production to inverviewing skills.

Check out their web site and let me know if you'd like to sponsor my run.

Mobile Phone Apps

My Motorola SLVR phone can load Java Apps. Cool, I said, so now the question is how?

Three steps:

1. Get a USB Cable
2. Install MotoMidMan (download)
3. Connect and download

It must be that simple, even though it took me several hours to get the recipe right!

Also, if you want to author your own Java apps, use NetBeans 6.0 it really makes things easy!

Pizza Time!

I've been making pizza at home for about 10 years now. It's been a long learning process and it goes like this:

1. make dough
2. roll out dough
3. top the dough
4. cook
5. eat

The only tricky part is the dough. Of course you want the oven to be the right temperature and you want the dough to taste right and you want the sauce to be to-your-liking but those are details.

Here's how to make the dough.

• 2 cups water
• 2 teaspoons salt (if you like salt)
• 2 tablespoons of yeast
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 5-6 cups white flour
• mix

I basically mix everything but the white flour in a stand mixer with the dough hook for about a minute before adding the flour. If you want to do this by hand a wooden spoon and a big bowl will do just fine.

Add the white flour about 1 cup at a time until the dough starts to thicken. Then cut back to about 1/3 cup at a time. If you add to much flour, the dough will lose sticky-ness and fall apart while you mix it. If you don't add enough it will be wet and stick to the bowl and be hard to mix.

The texture of the dough is likely the hardest part. It has taken me years to get it right, you may learn faster though!

Next hardest is the cooking. I like to cook on a pizza stone with the oven around 500 degrees F. If you don't have a pizza stone, search Google and get one - they are worth it. We got ours from Pampered Chef.

With the oven at the right temperature and the pizza stone on a rack near the top of the oven, put the dough on the stone. This can be tricky. My favorite technique is to sprinkle a little flour on a pizza paddle (also well worth the cost), assemble the pizza while it's on the paddle, and slide it into the oven from there. One tip here is to make sure you don't push down too hard while making the pizza. A pizza that gets stuck to the paddle can make a big mess when you try to stuff it into the oven.

Now it's almost getting easy. If you want to keep it simple, set a timer for 3 minutes and close the oven. Then, once the timer goes off, take the pizza out when the cheese starts to bubble. If you want to be tricky and get a slightly crisper crust, move the pizza to another rack - one without the pizza stone - and let it cook for another minute or two.

The eating part is fun and the pizzas freeze and refrigerate well for several days.

Enjoy!

The morning after

OK, the hate/love relationship with scribus has changed. After a brief review of their release notes, it seems that putting Windows XP into Classic mode guards you from the crazy access violations.

Now with Scribus you can create great stuff like this in record time and for one low price.



I'd sure like to be able to paste images directly into scribus but it seems to require saving to disk first.

Did I mention you can save directly to PDF for sharing with all your friends?

Very nice.

A new blog

Don't you just hate desktop publishing software that crashes?

For that matter, don't you hate all software that crashes?

I just downloaded the freeware desktop publishing software called Sribus and used it for about 20 minutes. Then it crashed. A nice "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" showed up and that's all she wrote. For that matter, that was all I wrote too, the program exited with no auto-save and no temp file and no dice.

It remindes me how much I really love commercial software. OK, not all of it works all the time but most of it works often enough to make it worth the $50 (or whatever it takes) to buy it. No, I don't want to spend $500 for Office professional but I'd happily spend $75 to avoid crashes and get all the perks.

The sad news is I can't just spend $50 or $75. It looks like $150 is the price point.

OK a quick search of Amazon says I can buy "Print Shop" for just $10 but that just scares me. Perhaps it's worth the $10 if I don't get crashes.

Something to ponder...