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June 30, 2005
Working hours
From June 30, 2004 until today, June 30, 2005, I've attempted to keep track of my hours worked and what I did using my aging Palm Pilot with Hours for PalmOS.
The total comes to 2160 hours 50 minutes. Early on I tried to count in 5-minute intervals, but soon resorted to counting nothing smaller than a 15-minute interval, so there's probably a bit of rounding error, but it's not too far off. The count includes work done outside the office.
Of that count a whopping 609 hours was spent on email!
During the year, I also spent 100:30 eating lunch at work, and 241:05 running and showering. Those of course are not included in the 2160:50. I also didn't count the time it took to commute.
Posted by Mark at 09:18 PM | Comments (2)
23:21/156
Ran this morning's 5 km a little too fast for a recovery run. I had a busy day ahead and I guess I wanted to get it over with. Tomorrow I have to run 8 km at race pace, meaning I'm supposed to finish in about 34:08.
On the way home this evening I felt rested, so I tried to break my record holding 20 kph uphill. I got as far as the side road off to the fort. Only another few hundred meters left to make it all the way to the house. But I'm not going to work hard on that while also training for a marathon.
Posted by Mark at 08:51 PM
Love or confusion
This morning I woke up at 4:12 am with cramps in my left foot and the realization that God does not necessarily hate us. It seems possible that an omnipotent, omniscient creator could both love us and not take us out of the current situation. Metaphorically, God as Our Father stands beside his tormented children realizing that although, even because he loves us he must not lead us out of this box, but instead let us grow our own way out.
I'm not sure we can get out, but at least we're not necessarily doomed. Of course, I could be completely wrong. I'm very tired and my mind has been flaky.
That said, if you consider yourself an atheist and yet read this far, let me tell you this. Light can be understood as a wave, as a particle, and in many other ways. Concepts whose truth can be proved we call facts, and in this domain we're dealing with metaphors.
Posted by Mark at 06:32 AM
June 29, 2005
29:59/171
30-minute tempo run as planned. Ran a bit too hard starting out, and my right leg was bothering me on the outside above the ankle for the first 5 minutes. Today was hot although we've had a little rain.
Posted by Mark at 05:52 PM
Sleepless
Terrible fatigue. Finally got out of bed at 4 am, having gone to bed at 11 pm, but unable to do anything anymore but toss and turn. Today feels like another bad day already.
Posted by Mark at 07:06 AM
Religious
Dad sent around a link to a speech by author Michael Crichton delivered in 2003. Crichton sees the religion of environmental fundamentalism as a key stumbling block in the way of effective, scientific approaches to environmental problems. He also sees "politics" as another key stumbling block.
Rob and Luke laughed at me for enjoying Robert Anton Wilson's book, Quantum Psychology. Rob calls it, "Shit Psychology," in reference to the amount of horseshit you have to shovel through to get to anything substantive in what Robert Anton Wilson writes. Rob also laughed at Critical Path for some of the same reasons, something to do with dolphins. Rob believes in the Scientific Method, so he reads books by Russell and Feynman.
I reacted negatively to Crichton's speech. I don't have well-formulated beliefs about environmental policy, perhaps because I shy away from contact with the world outside ideas, instead remaining in a cool, dark corner of that cave, replaying the same slides with the old branding. I hate the Scientific Method, although I cannot imagine anything better. The hate seems totally irrational.
Rage comes out of a feeling I've had my entire life, a feeling of powerlessness and of being trapped in the same sense as the narrator of Kafka's Bericht für eine Akademie, yet with the eldest child and idealist stress of both infinitely high expectations -- there are only failures -- and the pressing need to do something about it. That rage drives my extremism and my revulsion. Sometimes it also drives reserve and compassion, since most other people must also be islands of horrible suffering.
When I look at the situation from outside, it's positively hilarious. Psychological slapstick.
At another level, it's another interesting engineering problem. That makes at least two:
- What fits better than rule of law?
- How do we think straight?
Mark Williams observed years ago in Vaihingen when he was studying at Stuttgart and I was farting around that engineering looks out at the world to solve problems in the hope of finding a better fit, and that the Buddhists decided instead to look within and solve problems in the expectation that if you get yourself straightened out, the world will follow.
It occurs to me here on the floor of my cave that in wondering which to do, I'm doing neither.
Posted by Mark at 06:20 AM
June 28, 2005
Bugs, sweat, spinning
Tried wearing my normal sunglasses while biking yesterday afternoon. Everything went well for the first couple of kilometers, no bugs in the eyes, no squinting, although I had a somewhat distorted view of the road, which made me nervous cornering over what Dana calls chip seal, where they tar a patch of road and dump fine gravel on it.
But then I started sweating more. It was like looking through a swimming pool by the time I got to the train station, only about 8 km from work.
So this morning I went back to squinting. And bugs. Since late spring we've had the gnats that go for the eyes. Actually I'm not sure they go for the eyes particularly, but they stick there very noticeably. Now we also have the kamikaze bugs that dive bomb into your helmet and leave you wondering what species they are. Perhaps a wasp? Maybe I need to tape some sort of netting in there.
And I'm glad to be in France, where there are hardly any bugs. It must be much worse back in the midwestern US.
Also experimented with spinning faster than my normal 105-110 rpm target range. I find that above the top end of that range my legs jerk the pedals. At a sprint my max. cadence is probably only around 130, which explains why I've not yet gone faster than a little over 70 kph. Matt said cross-country cyclists aim for a cadence of 120, useful for not losing power over abrupt changes in terrain. That seems very fast indeed.
Posted by Mark at 01:45 PM
38:59/154
This was only 20 seconds too fast for 8 km, compared to the easy/long time in my training schedule. I started out too fast and got to the halfway point at 18:36, but with the heart rate over 80% of max. Need to do something about that, or it'll be much too high at marathon pace, even as the weather cools off.
Posted by Mark at 01:41 PM
June 27, 2005
10 years old
Sun's running another JavaOne event. The celebration is around the 10th anniversary of the Java language. You have to be a hard core nerd to get excited about the 10th anniversary of a programming language. Maybe some of you will take that as a compliment. I might.
Anyway, Ludo was listening to some music then a keynote from John Gage at work this afternoon. I decided at least read a little bit about what's going on this year.
I'd hardly gone far when I saw Patrick Keegan's guest blog for the JavaOne conference at the top of the list of blogs! I got that sudden breath of fresh air feeling you get when you actually share an occupation with someone who's been famous for 15 minutes.
Posted by Mark at 08:25 PM
Heat, part III
It's been too hot for too long. Where we live even the natural cooling at night has slowed. I'm starting to feel like the hours I sleep are not equivalent to normal hours of rest.
Meteo France predicts rain by this Wednesday, however, with a high of only 30 C (86 F) instead of 35 C (95 F). Looking forward to that, even if I do have to clean my bicycle chain again.
Posted by Mark at 08:19 PM
24:25/157
Using VDOT tables to calculate how long I should run for today's 5K, I managed to hit the time for my estimated VDOT (53), on the nose.
Unfortunately, it wasn't at a steady place the whole way.
Posted by Mark at 05:56 PM
June 26, 2005
Training for Halloween
Based on Hal Higdon's intermediate training II, I've set up a new training schedule to get me to the Halloween marathon in Grenoble.
There's plenty of running, but almost no speedwork compared to what I originally planned for this summer. On weeks when I don't feel up to all that training, I can drop a Monday or a Thursday. That might happen, giving that commuting to work by bike adds an extra four hours of exercise per week.
Posted by Mark at 10:14 AM
Revisiting the rule of law
Geoff Arnold blogged in consternation about those of us who run red lights and stop signs when cycling. The comments ranged from, "We have laws about this and these folks should follow them," to, "Why in the world should I allow this law to dicate my behavior in situations to which it very obviously does not apply?" All of that can be debated, and was, in the context of cycling within or outside of the rules of the road.
Rob and I had an equivalent discussion at work the other day about standards and conformance in software, with the specific context being management frameworks. Agreements always seem to break on the equivalent of cyclists running red lights. The thing is, most of the cyclists doing that agree in principle with the laws they're breaking. Had they taken part in establishing the law, they'd probably have come to the same conclusions as the representatives who voted on the text.
In places outside the US, like France where I live, there's a fatalistic acceptance of the gulf between theory and reality. As a result when French officials came up with a plan to reduce the number of traffic accidents on French roads, they decided simply to more strictly enforce existing laws and begin a huge scare campaign. The results were dramatic reductions in the number of people dying and getting injured on the roads. So you can more effectively force application of the theory...
...but when there's an alternative, people will opt out. Even in areas of high population density, we've managed to make commuting with the car almost inevitable. A crackdown therefore breaks people, forcing them to behave according to the law. It won't work as well in situations of choice. Yet that's exactly where we want to arrive at protocols, agreements on how we'll operate, that must be respected voluntarily.
Jon Bosak may say we can get to such agreements following Robert's rules of order. What we do, however, is come up with rule of law plus bodies of legislation. Then we find situations where specific legal prescriptions do not apply, and otherwise upstanding members of the community become temporary outlaws.
Would increased participation be enough? In other words, am I more likely to respect a law I personally had a hand in devising? If you'd answer unequivocally, "Yes," to that question, do you do it when you write software? Or do you tend to want to adapt your design ever so slightly when you're coding?
The rule of law seems to be a good approximation to the right system. Yet it also seems to break in ways that suggest the design is fundamentally flawed.
Posted by Mark at 08:00 AM | Comments (4)
Inheritance and training
Dana claims I've progressed over the last couple of years of running to moving faster than he achieved, although he ran consistently over a period of years. Somewhere I read that an endurance athlete inherits key biological capacities for endurance, like mitochondrial density, from his mom. So perhaps Dana should blame Evelyn. Or I should thank Mom. (Too bad my mom's of German, rather than Kenyan, descent.)
That said, perhaps I'm not starting out with better raw material than Dana. He certainly worked at it much longer than I have. If I'm not getting this mixed up, he averaged over 1000 miles per year for 10 years at one point. Perhaps I'm benefitting from advances made in training runners.
I don't know the history of runner's training theory. Hal Higdon wrote that at one point, probably in the mid 50s, almost all anyone ran in training was intervals. Lots of coaches took the attitude that either you'd succeed in recovering from the training and getting faster, or you'd get dropped. There was a bit of that when I ran middle distance in junior high school. We had one guy who could run a 5-minute mile, and the rest of us were superfluous. Same problem running cross country.
That's reflects a good way for coaches to avoid wasting time with people who won't win, but it doesn't make much sense for people running as a hobby or a way of staying fit, where the primary competitors are our earlier selves. Dana started running during the 1970s, I guess, when the sport was finally being seen as something for normal adults to do. I imagine there wasn't nearly as much information about training available to the average adult runner as there was 30 years later when I started running again.
I remember Dana regularly running the same distances at about the same speed. He probably had heard about long slow distance and intervals, but not about tempo runs. He didn't have a heart monitor, and may not have thought about how to relate his lactate threshold or VDOT to his training. Also, today's idea that you must regularly shake up your routine, running different distances, different speeds in order to progress in your training, probably was not nearly as widespread.
It could be that my children will run faster than I do with less work. Even if their mother says she hates endurance exercise in general and jogging in particular.
Posted by Mark at 07:22 AM | Comments (2)
June 25, 2005
Star Wars, part II
Tim's forcing everyone to watch the second film in the second Star Wars trilogy, the one called Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones. This is a copy of the DVD, which is probably illegal, because the copy is terrible, as though they'd put some anti-piracy coding in there. One thing Tim really wants is the DVDs for all six films, but that's an expensive present for an 8 year old.
In this one, Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala fall in love. I identify with this guy who becomes Darth Vader. By that I don't mean I'm good looking, technically competent, an ace with a light saber, or any of that. It's more his feelings, frustrations, sense that you start out an idealist and eventually cave in to the dark side.
There's one scene where he goes to rescue his mom, who has been taken captive by some desert dwelling nomads. She dies in his arms. He loses his temper and kills the whole village. Then he's back in his stepdad's garage, fixing something. He makes this statement about fixing things, how it's soothing and makes life simple where he can fix everything. (And pointless, like the red polyhedron in THX1138.) He's talking about power, enough power to provide immortality. Then, right after that commentary on modern man's approach to reality, Padmé gets him to say what's wrong. He admits he killed them all, women, children. This she more or less ignores, instead pitying him, saying something like, "To hate is normal."
This probably goes right by Tim and Emma, but it surprised the heck out of me. I thought the last three were mostly devoid of humor and intelligent commentary, but in fact it's all there, dry irony. It's like reading the Das Glasperlenspiel through Noam Chomsky's glasses.
Posted by Mark at 08:12 PM
1:56:36/147
Yes, there are lots of boring entries like this. Bear with me. I'm not doing this because you want to read about my running, but because anybody running enough to consider it training should keep a log somewhere. Why? When you get injured, you can go back and check what you did that you should no longer do. Theoretically you can also review your progress, but I don't bother with that. Progress for a marathoner takes years.
Next week I begin training. Tomorrow I'm taking a rest. So today I ran 24.5 km (15.2 mi) before eating breakfast as a long jog. I used to run longer runs too fast, so I'm slowing down to focus on form. Notice my average heart rate was about 76% of my theoretical maximum. Maybe even that's too fast to work the fat burning mechanisms. What I'd like to achieve is an appreciable increase in the energy contribution from metabolism of fat.
It really boils down to ecology. Ideally you want to use only easily renewed energy sources that don't increase pollution and are available in abundance.
Posted by Mark at 11:08 AM | Comments (1)
June 24, 2005
4:46:28
This was the time spent commuting this week, including one errand to Grenoble. I averaged 25.5 kph (15.8 mph), including the minutes inside trains and stations at near 0 kph, and one max. speed peak at 70.5 kph (43.8 mph) down the hill leading up to the house.
Theoretically speaking according to a web page suggesting how to calculate cycling calories, I burned about a pound of fat doing those 121.8 km (75.7 mi).
Posted by Mark at 08:55 PM
25:47/159
After the party last night, nobody else was up to run this morning. So I ran a little faster than normal for Friday morning, but still only did the 6 1/4 km route.
Posted by Mark at 10:21 AM
Halloween?
Okay, so I am going to miss the marathon this year in Chambéry, but I can still train for the Marathon de Halloween in Grenoble. If I start an 18-week program next week I have just enough time.
I had planned summer training based on Hal Higdon's expert plan. (I'm not an expert, but I want to get better.) Since I'm biking a lot commuting to work, I may try something more intermediate. No use working really hard if it's only to get injured again.
Posted by Mark at 06:02 AM
Heat, part II
Last night Nathalie and I went out to an evening at the Château Mollard in Le Touvet sponsored by our comité d'entreprise at Sun. It was a nice setting to take the social equivalent of a four-hour coffee break around folks from the office who are fun to hang out with. Still we left earlier than most... to come home and relieve our babysitter. She's studying for exams.
Despite not getting to bed until just after midnight, I had a hard time sleeping. It's the heat, unusual for France. Today will be a good day for a morning run.
Incidentally, yesterday at the shoe store I learned about a track only 4.5 km (2.8 mi) from work where we can run intervals. It belongs to a junior high school, and lies just off the bike path leading behind the place in Meylan where Stu and I used to play squash. It's a little too far to be convenient, but maybe on days when I'm really going to run hard I can ride or drive over there, or at least part way.
Posted by Mark at 05:35 AM | Comments (2)
June 23, 2005
New shoes
I've only been biking today, since over lunchtime I needed to pick up new running shoes. Rode downtown to Training 7, where I bought a different model of shoe from last time. This one gives me more pronation support.
The sales guy there said I ought to get a new pair of orthotics. He suggested doctors in St. Ismier near where I work, ones who make orthotics for runners and have you run on a treadmill rather than step on a plate.
He also suggested I consider lighter shoes for interval training or racing. He says they do have pairs now even for heavy guys like me (83 kg for 189 cm).
Posted by Mark at 04:38 PM
June 22, 2005
1 character per hour
Andy found me complaining to him in email about how our DTD at work, SolBook, supports underscores in entity names and attribute values, and how PSGML mode for Emacs doesn't. So he told me to fix it.
I don't know Lisp, and am slow anyway. Ludo helped me a bit, but I found the suspicious bit myself. It was in the range of line 300 in psgml-parse.el:
(mapconcat (function (lambda (c)
(modify-syntax-entry c "w" sgml-parser-syntax)))
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrtsuvwxyz" "")
(mapconcat (function (lambda (c)
(modify-syntax-entry c "_" sgml-parser-syntax)))
"-.0123456789" "")
Ludo told me about C-h f, to get the doc about mapconcat and modify-syntax-entry, and saw this mapping alphabetic characters to w (word) and numeric characters to _.
So I added an underscore to the SEQUENCE:
"_ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrtsuvwxyz" "")
This seems to have done the trick. I could now load and parse our DTD in PSGML mode.
Too bad it took me so long to understand. At one character per hour, it should only take me 128 years to write the next version of our Developer's Guide.
Posted by Mark at 08:30 PM
46:10/153
Stu and I ran up to Rochasson, starting at 12:30 pm. It was quite warm. When we got back, we bought lunch at a sandwich stand. The owner had a thermometer registering 37 C (99 F) on his counter.
We started off at a good warmup pace, then split up. I ran the hard uphill part at gradually increasing intensity, arriving at 96% of max. heart rate at the top of the shortcut and 95% in the parking area at Rochasson. It was easier than yesterday to let my heart rate drop back on the way down. We finished gently. My aim was to run downhill smoothly, so we took a different route down, turning up in Montbonnot rather than Meylan.
I've run many times without headache now. It seems that whatever the chiropractor did helped. It may also have been good to stop training, so I'm not pushing myself as much.
I push myself a bit cycling to and from work instead. Still have a long way to go before I can justify shaving my legs.
Posted by Mark at 08:22 PM
June 21, 2005
Holding 20 kph
There's a hill in front of the house. I climb it on the bike each night when I return home. It's not too steep, but nevertheless enough to push me down below 20 kph. I'd like to be able to ride all the way up to the house at over 20 kph, but to do that right now would give me a heart attack.
This evening I managed to hold it over 20 kph further than ever before. All the way to milestone maybe 100 m further than the end of the field and the beginning of the woods. That's about 300 m down, only maybe 750 m more to go.
Posted by Mark at 08:16 PM
39:44/149
Ran 5 km of the the 6 1/4 km with Stu at a comfortable jog during which we could chat. Then I continued on an extra 3 km or so, picking up the pace steadily for the first half of that until I hit 96% of max. heart rate and was wheezing too hard to catch my breath. Temperatures were about the same as yesterday, probably 32 or 33 C (90 or 92 F).
The funny thing was that my heart rate stayed quite high for the start of the cool down, although I dropped the pace. Maybe my body was having trouble cooling off.
Posted by Mark at 08:08 PM
Abdominaux : arrêter le massacre
Shortly after I got the crunch trainer contraption, Karine lent me her book Abdominaux : arrêter le massacre. Dr. Bernadette de Gasquet says you're not going to exercise your way to a flat stomach by contracting your abdominals and squeezing them into lumps. The result of standard sit ups is unfortunate pressure that pushes the abdominal organs down and may push out the belly you're trying to flatten.
Instead, she offers this book of theory and exercises that rely on balancing the stomach muscles against those of the back, working with stretching, static tension, even breathing. But it's not because you're not moving that the exercises aren't tough. Halfway through chapter 5, "Des exercices pour aller plus loin," I was left behind. I just don't have the strength and flexibility yet to do the most effective exercises.
I have been working to keep my back straight while running and riding. Dr. Gasquet explains how good posture improves your capacity to breathe more deeply in addition to strengthening the muscles that make it easier to keep good posture. My hope is that it'll eventually pay off in terms of form. Form is the basis for being able to go longer and faster.
Posted by Mark at 06:35 AM
June 20, 2005
Deadlines
Aren't we glad nobody writing docs over here needs this level of pressure to meet deadlines?
Posted by Mark at 08:21 PM
Heat
When I was standing in the corridor of the train this morning, I realized today would be a hot one. At 8:00 am I could already feel the sweat dripping as I stood there in the breeze coming through the window.
This afternoon it was downright hot when I jumped on the bike at just after 6 pm to catch the train back home. The nice thing about biking is that you always have a breeze blowing in your face. The faster you go, the better the breeze. Of course the better the breeze, the harder you have to work. Had a hard time cooling down when I got to the train station.
Posted by Mark at 08:08 PM
54:48/148
It's a warm day and I felt sluggish. So I ran slowly. Not sure how far this was.
About 24 minutes into the run I started feeling warmed up, an unusually long wait. Didn't want to run for more than 1 hour, however, since I was losing lots of fluid through sweat, and had a meeting a 1:30 pm.
Posted by Mark at 04:21 PM | Comments (2)
June 19, 2005
Last stop
Last week my brakes had worn down to the nubs. At the rear I was close to having the metal brake pad holder rubbing on the rim.
After I put the new brake shoes on, I carefully adjusted everything, taking my time. Michel brought me clips to hold things you've glued in place. They're great for calibrating brakes within about a millimeter of the rim, like having a third hand. It took a little while to get everything right, but it's nice to have the security of well-adjusted brakes.
As soon as I got on the bike to try them, the back wheel locked up.
I'm a terrible mechanic. So I put the bike down for a while. Later I came back to it. It seems the whole mechanism had rotated on it's axis. When I pushed the whole brake, everything came back into true. I coasted around inside the garage and it seems to hold.
Posted by Mark at 09:13 PM
Made up
Yesterday afternoon we had the fête des écoles in Barraux. The girls got their faces made up.
Timothee won enough points for four squirt guns, three of which seem to be broken already. Didn't last long.
Posted by Mark at 09:08 PM
Working
This book, written in the early 70s by Studs Terkel, was on the shelf at my mom's house, but I never picked it up there. I saw it again on the bookshelf at work where we've amassed English books.
I read it mostly on the train to and from work, sometimes in the morning before making breakfast for the children. Studs Terkel did many hours of interviews with people from all walks of life, having them all talk about their jobs, careers, work. It's not clear what generalizations you can draw from it all, except to say that lots of people had it a lot harder than I do.
If you work, worked, or know people who do, or did, you might want to read this one. It left me feeling that having a meaningful occupation is psychologically quite important, but just working is something we as human beings should be occupying ourselves with freeing each other from.
Posted by Mark at 03:41 PM
Warm
Cutting the grass today was tougher than last time. France is having hot weather. The thermometer in the shade says 33 C (91 F). Most of the grass is in the sun.
We have another passion flower and many buds on the vine. The pool Nathalie has been filtering each evening with the pump was a big success this morning. Nobody was shivering this time.
I ought to be out there clipping the hedges and weeding, but cutting the grass is already a fairly large job. Took me almost 3 hours.
Posted by Mark at 03:00 PM
June 18, 2005
Jeux
After my birthday, Nath got me one of these:
Karine later lent me a book that suggests crunches are the wrong way to build stomach muscles. The squeezes tend to make the muscles pooch out instead of stay flat and hold things in, which is what they're there for.
But the girls really enjoy playing with it. That and the exercise bike. One of Diane's favorite games is to climb up on the exercise bike and take a bite out of the foam handlebar covers.
Posted by Mark at 10:50 AM
1:01:43/164
Nathalie had a meeting to go to at 10 am, and I had to drop Tim off for school at 8:30 am, so I decided not to run long today.
Ran 14.7 km (9.1 mi) as three laps around Pontcharra with two drink breaks. Started at a relatively good pace and picked it up for the third lap ending flat out. If I remember correctly, my split after drinking the second time was 42:34. That would mean I ran the last 4.9 km (3 mi) in 19:07. No headache.
It would be nice to get efficient enough to run the first two laps at that pace, then pick it up and run the third in 17 minutes.
Most of the time this morning I worked on the feeling of steel and cotton, which is keeping your core straight and letting everything pivot around that as necessary. Even before reading Chi Running, I realized that running a long way fast comes not from power, but from smoothness and focus. Matt talks about "caning it." I guess that comes from the jockey, which is you, beating the horse's hindquarters, which is your body, with a cane to get the animal going as fast as possible. Perhaps that's the right approach to cycling. I don't know.
It's not the right approach to distance running. In distance running as I see it, you become a sort of control system for your body. To a large extent you're there only unconsciously firing the spark plugs that keep the engine turning over. People running slowly and well under their thresholds can then do a lot of thinking while they're running because the part of you that is conscious is not very involved. Yet when you focus, your consciousness switches over to monitor, test, adjust.
There's always more to monitor, test, and adjust than my consciousness can handle. At medium speed, my consciousness can more or less keep up, however. At high enough speed I lose it again and just run. My consciousness is not longer doing much more than fighting to keep the drum beating fast, to hold the tempo, to convince the whole body not to slow down. I cannot run like that for very long. My hope is that by short exposures to that sort of running, my body itself will gradually get better at finding the right adjustments, so medium speed will be slightly faster. Then my consciousness can get back to monitor, test, adjust, improving my form.
Posted by Mark at 10:23 AM
4:32:35
That's the time I spent this week cycling to and from work, including a trip to Decathlon for brake pads, 117.25 km (72.87 mi).
My average speed over that time is only 25.8 kph (16.0 mph), but there's wide variation, from probably less than 1 kph maneuvering in the corridors inside trains, to 63.7 kph coming down the hill on the road in front of the house.
Posted by Mark at 10:16 AM
June 17, 2005
Beetle
Tim found a beetle in the yard, something similar to but only half as big as this:
He kept it in his bug observation apparatus overnight, then took it into school. We were relieved to hear it didn't die, but was instead let loose in the woods.
Posted by Mark at 10:57 PM
Drop out, part II
Tilly mentioned Cyril Fiévet had also blogged Steve Jobs's commencement address, concluding that Steve's ready to blog himself:
You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
And here's that quote I saw part of before:
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Think different. Buy an iPod. Sometimes I think there's more black irony in Silicon Valley than in all of German literature.
Posted by Mark at 10:16 PM
Overflow
We're in one of those periods at work where I don't really get through my email. Periods like this are perhaps more the rule than the exception.
Posted by Mark at 10:13 PM
26:32/155
6.5 km as a jog. Nobody else wanted to run this morning.
Legs felt tired. In fact my whole body felt tired. No headache, however.
Posted by Mark at 10:30 AM
June 16, 2005
Too many cooks
This afternoon we were in Eric and Helene's office sort of redesigning something on the whiteboard after a suggestion from Seb, who's in QA. Eric didn't take part. We seemed to be getting to him.
Eric I overheard later was going out on vacation tomorrow. He's been working pretty hard trying to keep the cats herded. I get the impression he has so many other interruptions he cannot find time to do the work he's set aside for himself.
He should've been less polite. Probably should've thrown us out. Some of us cooks in his kitchen were standing around talking about what we'd do with ingredients none of us can afford. Others were ready to rewrite the menu entirely.
Posted by Mark at 08:25 PM
1:08:24/154
Distance speed for the first 9 km, then tempo speed up to 92% of max. heart rate at 12 km, then cool down again for the last 2 km.
I rode slightly slower than usual to and from the train today as well. Matt reminded me yesterday that different levels of training bring different improvements. You can improve your fat burning system and the density of capilaries in your muscles at slower speeds.
Posted by Mark at 08:20 PM
June 15, 2005
Cycling and pace
My work day is gradually getting condensed. Taking the train does that. I'm starting to get used to thinking in terms of needing to finish at a certain time in order to catch a train home in time to eat dinner with the children and put them to bed. I've been worse than usual at answering mail, too. It's the lack of time. (Mail should be easier when we move work mail to the edge and I don't have to get on the VPN to get mail from work.)
Matt also suggested I take more time riding to and from the train. He says you can easily work too hard and ruin your training. It would be cool to rearrange my day, work from home sometimes all day. Maybe I can make that work when Diane goes to school in the fall.
Posted by Mark at 08:31 PM
24:11/166
6.5 km (4 mi) at a hard pace. No headache. Ate and drank too much yesterday night with Stu and Lana over for dinner, so I tried to burn it off.
Posted by Mark at 08:27 PM
Drop out
Wired says Steve Jobs told Stanford grads dropping out was the best thing he could've done.
"Your time is limited so don't let it be wasted living someone else's life," Jobs said to a packed stadium of graduates, alumni and family.
I'm sure Steve says that to all the people who work for him. "Don't waste your life doing what I tell you to do."
Cross this with What You Can't Say from Paul Graham, which Geoff Arnold blogged about Monday.
Nerds are always getting in trouble. They say improper things for the same reason they dress unfashionably and have good ideas: convention has less hold over them.
Paul, that's mythology. Most nerds have accepted the blinders, probably more than people emptying garbage cans. Sure, they get to show up for work at 11:30 am wearing clothes almost studied to say, "Look at this. I'm so outside the box." Most nerds probably also accept a lot of crapola outside their domain of expertise. We're happy when a product we worked on sells, even if it's directly to the military. We watch the news, filters off, sitting there gobbing every drop of that raging torrent of sewage. We buy iPods.
Geoff Arnold quoted Paul Graham, "Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?"
I guess that's a test to see whether you've had a lobotomy. My wife once had me take homeopathic medecine that was supposed to help me let it out. That medecine seemed mainly to make it easier for me to be grouchy. Paul writes:
The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky.
It's true, Noam never got any real work done in linguistics before he flaked off into doing the lecture circuit as a scholarly anarchist. We'd better stay clued in, graduating through the hoops, even if Paul says we shouldn't. Ain't that right, Steve?
Posted by Mark at 09:03 AM | Comments (2)
Wet
Pulled on my biking clothing to head off for work today and noticed that although it's only Wednesday morning everything already stinks. I already smelled like a wet dog on Tuesday evening.
Then I looked at my bike. The brake pads are shot. If I don't find time Saturday morning to shop for new pads, I'm going to ruin the rims. Not sure I should be braking even now.
Posted by Mark at 09:01 AM
June 14, 2005
OpenSolaris launch
It was supposed to be announced by blogs. It looks like the press is picking up the story.
It'll be interesting to see how it goes as we open source the docs.
Posted by Mark at 05:18 PM
Faking it
The Guardian is running an article about a product for SUV owners who cannot find time to ride through the countryside: spray-on mud. Almost 8 pounds a bottle.
I wonder if the spray is safe for the ozone layer.
Posted by Mark at 02:19 PM
Bad wager
Bet against the rainstorm this morning and took the train + bike. Things stayed dry until Gières, then I lost. My socks were squelching when I arrived at the office.
The weather's warm enough now that you don't freeze riding in the rain. Knowing I'm going to have to clean and oil the chain tonight.
Posted by Mark at 08:50 AM | Comments (5)
June 13, 2005
Solar
C|Net's running an article from TheDeal.com on venture capitalists investing in companies working in solar energy. According to one analyst, solar power costs are coming down 18% with each doubling in power output, whereas natural gas costs are increasing at about the same order of magnitude. They say solar energy, currently about $6-7 per watt, needs to drop to $1 per watt for the industry to take off.
Wouldn't it be great if the cost of solar power dropped so low it ended up being priced more cheaply than fossil fuels?
Posted by Mark at 09:01 PM
57:19/160
Ran relatively hard this noon. The first 2.5 km were warmup with Stu. Then I ran the old route along the Isère out under the bridge, back over to the road, up over the bridge and through the office park in Meylan.
Was hoping for rain as I warmed up, but no chance. It'll probably hit this evening while I'm riding to catch the train.
My head is decidedly more comfortable when I run harder. In the 75-80% max. heart rate range the headache might come back. Should try with a shorter run tomorrow.
Posted by Mark at 02:16 PM
June 12, 2005
Côte de Brouilly
Nathalie's friend Anne-Catherine had invited us to a sort of extended housewarming get together this weekend. We left Saturday after lunch since Tim had school that morning.
Anne-Catherine has moved into her new appartment west of the center of Lyon up behind the hill last September, and this weekend had friends and family come to celebrate it. Nathalie went to school with Anne-Catherine in Strasbourg. We'd not seen her often in the last few years, but did have her over once for lunch in Barraux.
Since her apartment was too small to house everyone, she rented a gîte in the middle of the Côte de Brouilly half an hour north of Lyon. There must've been 20 of us. The weather cooperated. We were outside until supper time and even after until late Saturday night, then all day today until coming back home. Nathalie enjoyed it a lot, and the kids had a good time, too. They were so occupied they even more or less behaved themselves.
Tim managed to stay up Saturday night until we went to bed at 1:45 am Sunday morning. He was nevertheless up at before 8 am. Unfortunately on the way back, although the children managed to sleep a little in the car, it was not only too warm, but we mistakenly drove right into the traffic jam outside the tunnel de l'Epine where they're doing roadwork all summer. It took us nearly an hour to cover 3 km. Radio announcers claimed it was even worse on the Chambéry side.
We're home, but it may be tough to get them up for school tomorrow morning. It's almost 10 pm and nobody's sleeping, yet.
Posted by Mark at 09:49 PM
June 11, 2005
1:24:12/159
Ran 4 laps around Pontcharra, which is 19.6 km (12.2 mi). The time includes stops to drink, and one minute to give a guy directions to Montmélian. He was a smoker, and lit up while I was standing there next to his car door. I don't think it even occurred to him that I might not want to take a few lungfuls of secondhand cigarette smoke while out for my jog. He must've seen me as crazy to be out there running on my own, and asked me whether I run with other people.
How could anyone possibly want to go out there and run without even peer pressure to make him do it?
Not sure I have an answer for that. I've been putting off writing email to my colleagues for that reason. The thing is, Jerome suggested we get a coach who would be financed partly by comité d'entreprise money. We need to be a group of at least 5 people.
Jerome was thinking a coach could be someone to motivate you to get out there and run. I was thinking a coach could help you get more out of your training, and help you avoid making mistakes and getting injured. Hal Higdon wrote something up. "Who Needs a Coach?:"
...good coaches (and good coaching) can make good runners.
Coaches can provide inspiration and information, analysis and applause, support and sympathy.
If you don't know why you need to be a good runner, maybe you don't. Most runners probably ask themselves, like that guy asking for directions, why the heck we're doing it. The question usually seems to come when it hurts.
That's when you need the coach, I guess, for the second bunch of reasons. You don't want to turn yourself off to running, or get injured, or perform a lot worse than you could.
Running does have some positive side effects. You gradually get stronger, smoother, and that carries over into sports that are perhaps more fun. You feel less dumpy, and if you keep it up you eventually may even look better. Running can also burn stress away and leave you feeling straightened out. You can get that feeling from other endurance sports, too, but there are few workouts you can do as easily, year round, as running. So I guess I'd better go write that email.
Posted by Mark at 10:26 AM
June 10, 2005
Working from home, part II
Today I was in a hurry to do this 6:30-7:30 pm meeting around docs for OpenSolaris on the phone and PC at home, so I'd be home already when it finished.
Anyway, I was going to catch the 5:20 train and get here with time to do mail. Started on my bike. The back tire was completely, utterly flat. There was a big cut around the valve.
Daniel ended up giving me a ride home. Very cool of him. But I didn't get quite 5 hours of riding in this week yet.
Posted by Mark at 07:23 PM
User friendly
In the evening sometimes I make the mistake of letting my wife and children use the computer on my desk. Almost everything they do is done in a web browser. Occasionally Tim plays games that aren't browser-based, but that's rare.
Inevitably I get to put down the book I'm reading and play onsite support person.
Windows and windowing systems are too complicated. Flash errors are too complicated. The whole browsing model is tough. Popups and dialogs throw people for loops.
We assume so much. It's amazing anyone manages to use any of it.
Posted by Mark at 01:37 PM
41:27/121
Very, very slowly around the 6 1/4 km circuit with Karine and Didier. My legs are a little tired from cycling this week, so this was just to get some fresh air and chat.
Posted by Mark at 10:16 AM
June 09, 2005
Another look
When I wrote about Tantrums, you could imagine the mail I sent to Mom and Dana. I've got no problem with folks in India getting good jobs. More power to them. Let's hope they quickly arrive at European income levels. Let's hope we can all still breathe when that happens.
So I agree with Melanie, who used to work here at Sun in Grenoble, as Tilly chronicles in her blog.
It hardly makes sense to disagree with Friedman's analysis that our system is ever more winner-take-all. Sure, we see more and more of that.
I do however disagree that this particular instance of the system is inevitable, as if there were no point it attempting to fix it. If we consider this system inevitable, our obvious conclusion is that we must win at all costs. Or if we're really feeling charitable, we may help out some of the losers. Maybe that strategy pays off for people who read the New York Times.
But you can do better than that. It's been about 25 years since Buckminster Fuller wrote Critical Path and we're still stuck in scarcity mentality. Scarcity. That's why we compete in the economic sphere. Look it up. Economy comes from the Greek meaning "household management."
The reason we need New York Times columnists to write hagiographically about the movers and shakers of aggressive household management is that if they didn't stoke the fires, people would eventually get sidetracked, look at each other, wondering, "What the heck were we competing at that for? And with such high stakes!"
Posted by Mark at 09:02 PM
Pageant in English
Last night Tim and Emma did a end-of-the-year spectacle with their "English is Fun" club.
Most of the time I could puzzle out what the kids were saying. French accents you could cut with a knife.
Posted by Mark at 08:54 PM
1:14:32/147
This was a ride to Ravel and back with Matt and Greg. For a while there, I was working hard. Don't know about Matt. He said he got a workout, but it seemed I was breathing harder.
Interesting thing is that on a climb like this, I came out with an average of 147 bpm, 76% of max. Yet I was in the 65%-85% zone for only 18:10. On the way up, my heart rate was 170-175 (88-90%). On the way down, it was probably around 50%, not because of work but because of fear around corners.
Posted by Mark at 05:04 PM
June 08, 2005
Working from home
Rode in on the train+bike today. I got stuck with meetings at inconvenient times and had to ride home all the way like a madman, knowing I was almost late. There was a strong headwind coming down the valley.
Got home, called into the meeting conference, still breathing fast and sweating. Nobody.
Open my email... the guy leading it had cancelled the thing only minutes after I left work... I should've given in and stopped at Ludo's in Crolles.
Posted by Mark at 06:30 PM
27:03/151
About 6 km. First part gently chatting with Stu. Second part hard.
Posted by Mark at 06:23 PM | Comments (2)
June 07, 2005
Mouse, touchpad, & xorg
It seems to be xorg and this Toshiba Tecra. Both Solaris and Red Hat use xorg. No matter what I seem to do to the mouse section in xorg.conf, both the USB mouse and the touchpad work, but after a while the mouse pointer drifts off and starts rolling around the edge of the screen. Cannot figure it out.
Posted by Mark at 02:50 PM
Email account phishing
There's been really a lot of this lately:
Subject: Your Email Account
Once you have completed the form in the attached file, your account records will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.
As far as I can tell, almost all of it has been on 3 internal aliases. Somebody must be running an infected PC.
Posted by Mark at 02:44 PM
26:23/155
Had a headache on getting up this morning. It finally subsided after I took paracetamol. Was very apprehensive about running, so I started at a very slow pace.
Going up a slight incline towards the hill behind the mairie in Montbonnot, the headache seemed to be coming back. I was reminded of something Stu said yesterday. Only while rock climbing has he been in situations where he had no other choice but to continue making upward progress. No easy way out.
So it took off up the hill at full tilt. Started losing speed 2/3 of the way up, and had to stop when I arrived at the top. My pulse was only about 182, but maybe being slightly ill prevented me from giving it everything I had. Then I ran hard downhill the long way around.
My head feels okay now.
Posted by Mark at 02:37 PM
Focal reviews
At the close of each fiscal year at work we do what is called a focal review. We review how our performance matched the goals agreed on during the year. The employee writes a summary at the same time the manager writes a summary, and the manager's job is to compare, contrast, and complete the final summary.
I'm sure everybody everywhere does this. Why do I dislike it so much?
Posted by Mark at 09:55 AM | Comments (2)
June 06, 2005
Portrait, part II
Mom sent me some drawings that I'd done a Tim's age. One of them was Darth Vador, not as well done as Tim's.
It's funny how George Lucas, after doing THX 1138 about a guy striving desperately to escape from a sort of consumer culture gone wildly fascist, makes six Star Wars movies, aiming to ensure they time it to sell useless figurines now to all the children of everyone in the whole cohort who saw the first film 47 times, bragged about that, and bought large and useless plastic Wookie figurines.
I prefer this other one, a guy with bigger front teeth than Scott McNealy.
That really reflects my inner life, in which I'm always ready to bite someone's head off.
Posted by Mark at 08:15 PM | Comments (2)
1:00:42/151
Went on the first part of the 6 1/4 km route with Stu, then ran around the longer loop. Made it into a sort of tempo run by speeding up along the Isère by the Bois français.
My head hurt a little during the run, but everything's fine now. Maybe the laryngitis is bothering me. I hope it's temporary.
Posted by Mark at 02:34 PM
June 05, 2005
Wild orchid
Nathalie says this flower the children found and picked is a species of wild orchid.
Apparently people go far into the mountains to get these. It's true that our yard sometimes resembles and alpine meadow.
Posted by Mark at 07:53 PM
Yardwork, part II
My intention this morning was to do much more than mow the lawn. All I ended up doing besides the lawn, however, was to prune the forsythia bushes and tear out a bunch of vines and weeds around the trees and the shrubs next to the stairs.
The hedges are light green with new growth. All the new leaves came this season. It wouldn't have made sense to cut the hedges this spring.
The laryngitis has turned into something that stuffs up my head and causes shortness of breath, the occasional cough. Inhaling clouds of dust and grass clippings probably didn't help. At least we don't have poison ivy over here. The worst I do in the yard is nettles and sunburn on my shoulders and neck if I stay out there long enough.
Posted by Mark at 07:45 PM
Laryngitis, part II
My voice has disappeared to the point that I almost have to whisper. My vocal cords feel sore.
Posted by Mark at 07:43 PM
June 04, 2005
Portrait
Tim drew a portrait of his father.
A little too much Star Wars for him.
Posted by Mark at 04:47 PM | Comments (2)
Passion flower
Nathalie's growing these on a vine that climbs up the fence we have behind the wall in back.
Nice flowers. Wonder what will happen this winter.
Posted by Mark at 04:39 PM | Comments (1)
Pool
Nathalie bought another pool. Maybe this time we won't have to buy a new one next year, since this one is fairly permanent.
The water was cold, but the children enjoyed it anyway. It's gradually warming up. Diane was proud to wear her underwear like a hat.
Posted by Mark at 04:35 PM
Wildlife
This small lizard became trapped in the watering can.
Tim tried to let him out, but we agreed in the end that flinging the watering can around was only going to scare the beast.
Posted by Mark at 04:31 PM
Tantrums
There are lots of tantrums at our house.
Mom, Dana, my brother Matt took my Myers-Briggs and got classified respectively as ENTP, INTP, and INTP. They're thinkers with a tendency to hold judgement until they've uncovered the full story.
I can pretend to be calm like that, but it's fundamentally against my nature. I don't naturally think at all, ever, but instead react on feeling, and quickly. As INFJ I'm instantly incredibly sure, convinced to the marrow, see the realization as something fundamental about reality itself. Until I change my mind.
Anyway, Mom or Dana, not sure, sent a link to an article written by Thomas L. Friedman, who works as a columnist for the NY Times. A Race to the Top says:
Voters in "old Europe" - France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy - seem to be saying to their leaders: stop the world, we want to get off; while voters in India have been telling their leaders: stop the world and build us a stepstool, we want to get on.
You can probably imagine the rest of it. The underlying theme reminds me of his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
The article is interesting. You can almost pull the entire US model out of the implications between the lines. Last night I was exhausted, though. It just brought out a tantrum.
Having INFJ tendencies can be incredibly frustrating.
Posted by Mark at 11:49 AM
44:47/150
After breakfast this morning my body and head felt as if they'd been injected with warm vinegar. Strange and disagreeable feeling, like having heartburn all over. But all I'd had was toast, jam, and fruit juice, so I don't think it was food poisoning.
By 10 am that feeling was gone. I was only tired. For the last few days Diane's been a real pain to put to sleep. Then she gets up before 6 am. Nathalie's had it up to her ears with Diane's tantrums. Cannot figure it out.
As I started getting my wet running clothes on, I wondered whether I was going to get a headache. Thankfully I did not. Running when you're not injured is probably not fun for normal people, but it can be good. It can put your body back in order, and give you a feeling that's on the borderline between a sense of accomplishment and a sense of relief.
No headache, so I'm relieved.
I asked myself for the first three or four kilometers why I run. The answer cannot be fear of getting fat again. Nor am I getting ready to run the marathon in Chambéry. It's not even a habit, because my runs are too varied for that. My nominal goal is a sub-3-hour marathon, but I don't think about that much.
I seem to be running because I... enjoy is too strong... appreciate it, in the sense of seeing some value in it.
No wonder other people would rather play soccer or ride mountain bikes.
Posted by Mark at 11:32 AM
June 03, 2005
Laryngitis
My voice has pretty much gone. It started as an itchy feeling yesterday and caught up with me today. Felt okay until late afternoon. Now I'm exhausted, short of breath.
Posted by Mark at 10:18 PM
1:02:02/145
Ran with colleagues this morning. Karine's idea was that we run before noon to avoid the heat. Didier got in a traffic jam and we didn't get started until after 9 am. It's nice to have a job where you don't have to chain yourself to your desk at any particular hour.
Didier and Phil went ahead, but not too much. I stayed back with Karine. She paced me well. The first lap around the 6 1/4 km route took us 39 minutes. My head was fine, no pain. So I decided to do another lap. That one apparently took me 23 minutes. So my heart rate was 145 bpm average, but that was 125 around the first lap and 170 around the second.
It's probably a good thing Karine started me off slowly. That may have given my body time to loosen up before working hard.
Karine asked me why I always do things à fond. Don't know what to say to that. From my vantage point what I do looks slow, sloppy, unfinished, mediocre. I'm basically a fat, lazy slob in a temporarily healthy-looking body.
In fact what was probably really bothering me about the headaches was not the pain, or even the difficulty of running itself. It was the sense of impending doom. A few months without exercise and I'd blimp out and start having bad skin and back pains.
Posted by Mark at 08:46 PM
June 02, 2005
"Hormone Appears to Increase Trust"
According to HealthCentral.com, researchers found that by getting people to snort oxytocin, they can render them even more gullible and trusting than they already are. I can barely wait until we have to start sniffing oxytocin before each all-hands meeting led by a Director or above. Maybe we can find a way to broadcast it during quarterly earnings calls. Now there's a nice idea for a patent...
Posted by Mark at 09:00 PM
EU constitution, part V
The Dutch, like the French, decided against the proposed EU consitution. Forbes posted a short write up of some statements by European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, who made a good point:
'I think the major debate that is needed in Europe is bigger than the one about the constitution itself. It's a question about what path to follow,' Barroso said.
Seems to me it would be hard to get hundreds of millions of people to agree on any path whose basic specifications run to 265 A4 pages. Maybe that's why the nations opening the question up to all voters are finding it tough to garner agreement.
Posted by Mark at 08:46 PM
1:02:49/167
On the way home this evening my calves were cramping a little. I rode fairly hard. But the hill between La Buissière and Barraux knocked me flat.
So I drank lots of mineral water and ate a bunch of baked zucchini, cold green bean salad, and some lentils, then fresh strawberries with wheat germ for dessert. Aiming to get my vitamins and minerals so I won't get cramps during the night.
No headache, but then of course I don't get them on the bike.
Posted by Mark at 08:32 PM
57:52/177
My bike computer says I averaged 32.4 kph (20.1 mph) from home to work this morning. I've done better. On several descents this morning I got cut off by cars turning left. There were simply too many of them on the road.
By the halfway point I was averaging 33 kph, awash in lactate agony. 177 avg. bpm is about 91% of my max. heart rate running, so something is out of whack. Plus I forgot to tell the mayors of all the towns between home and work that I was doing a time trial today. That explains why they failed to shut down the roads and I had to apply the brakes so often.
Bernin should be renamed, something with connotations of "pain" and "hillside."
Posted by Mark at 08:57 AM
June 01, 2005
Schema repository, part XIII
I have this odd, high-entropy relationship with the half-baked bit of schema repository foundation I've hacked together. Cannot muster the activation energy to finish the job as it should be done, making a web application out of my mess. So far it works fine to generate documentation covering the schema elements, but I couldn't hand it off to anyone.
In fact I'm not sure I could explain why I did it. On the weekends I sometimes think about playing with it while Diane's sleeping, but then get interrupted. Since I'm so messy, interruptions are fatal. All of the context flushes out of my mind and then it takes forever to get back into it. So it's difficult to get into that very satisfying state where I can actually create something. Wish I could do it more often.
In the evening I'm just too tired to concentrate. So I keep putting entries into this silly blog...
Posted by Mark at 09:50 PM
Le Challenge
Matt arrived in 81st place out of 371 finishers doing the long loop of the Challenge du Dauphiné Libéré as a race last Saturday, riding the 180 km in 6:09:03 chip time, 6:10:47 from the start. If you check that site out, you'll notice they did 8 cols, so Matt's avg. speed of 29.3 kph (18.2 mph) including drink stops is less than 5 kph (3 mph) slower than the guy who won (and who probably had people handing him water bottles).
Matt said he had two primary difficulties. First, he got stuck behind many, many other riders starting out, so couldn't draft on people going his speed. Second, he experienced unexplained but sharp foot pain 2:30 into the ride until the end. It was bad enough that it prevented him from riding as hard as he normally would.
He says he's not quite as light as he'd like to be for his power output, and that makes a difference on the uphills. He seems to make up for it however on the downhills where he corners much more efficiently than other riders, thanks to his background in off road cycling. With 8 cols and a couple thousand meters of climbing, good technique makes a difference.
All in all, it looks like he had a pretty good ride for a guy who spends so much of his time hunched over a keyboard.
Posted by Mark at 09:30 PM
Tiredness
A bit more than 48 hours after I saw the chiropractor, exhaustion is still upon me, but I'm afraid to go to bed. I'll be up before 5 am, unable to return to sleep.
Felt listless and depressed most of the day. Just sitting there was a struggle. Continuing to hope whatever he did will work.
Posted by Mark at 09:27 PM
Keeping track
This is the last month of the year I plan to track what I do at work with hours on the old Palm Pilot.
By now I've completely lost interest. I probably won't be able to salvage anything from what I've done, other than how many hours I worked in the past year, and how many I exercised. Although I do some project "management" at work, I'm not a manager at heart.
Posted by Mark at 06:16 PM
To the Ends of the Earth
To the Ends of the Earth covers the Transglobal Expedition led by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who then wrote the book. He and one other guy went round the earth over both the south and north poles from 1979-1982.
I read this primarily because Rob made it sound interesting. Fiennes is someone to admire but at the same time vaguely dislike without knowing why. In any case what he and his team did is beyond imagining. The writing is vivid, all action, yet reserved, leaving the reader sensing the impossibility of conveying in words how the preparation, then expedition must have been for the participants.
In any case it was much easier to read this book about people rising to frightful challenge than to make my way through Madame Bovary about everyday despair. Or the Old Testament, where from it becomes clear that in addition to everyday despair, there will be divine vengeance.
Posted by Mark at 11:25 AM
Sluggish, part II
The headache is mostly gone now. Slept badly again. Very dark frame of mind trying to fall asleep.
Posted by Mark at 11:23 AM