My November 2024 Running, Walking and Swimming Report

November was a pretty active month with running and walking...and maybe not so much with swimming.  At least, though, with swimming, there was a breakthrough as we rejoined our nearby YMCA, complete with their outdoor pool.  I've been there a couple of times, although I'm very far behind with my swimming form and endurance.  I think there's a large potential for great growth in this area, although we're also entering a season of coldness...even here in northern Florida.  I think I'll see if I can't get myself into a daily habit of getting out there for incremental swimming and pool time...well, almost daily since the YMCA is closed on Sunday.  As for the running and walking...

We had some good racing opportunities this past month, and since I was generally healthy and in good shape, I was able to participate in five events...three of them the 5K Depot Parkrun, along with a couple of long-distance races.  The first of these was the Tom Walker Half-Marathon on the western end of the Hawthorne Trail in southeast Gainesville...I speed-walked it all in 2:54:40.  The other event was on the eastern end of the same paved trail: the Mega Cupcake Marathon a week ago: I covered the 26.2 mile distance in 5:07:49 employing the Galloway run/walk method throughout that race.  I feel hopeful about possible future marathons after this one.  Yet I also know that I have a medical issue that needs to be looked into further and resolved...and it's more important in the long run than running races.  So in the month to come, I'll balance the two areas while staying mindful of the big picture...

Quote of the Week...from Fred "Mister" Rogers

Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.       

---Fred Rogers

Fred Rogers (1928-2003) was perhaps better known as the Mister Rogers of the classic, beloved children's TV series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.  Although the series spanned 31 seasons, I was a little too old to be in its target audience of little children when I began watching it in the early 1970's...yet I was drawn to the sweet spirit and attitude permeating the show, clearly transmitted and demonstrated by its host Fred Rogers.  I was digging around for a quote like the one above because today is my final one at work...I've been at the United States Postal Service for 37 years, all of them at the Gainesville processing plant.  And tomorrow I will be a retiree.  I'm happy to leave, but I'm also happy to have worked there: what a blessing!  And Mister Rogers' above quote speaks volumes with just a few words: it's definitely the beginning of something else in my life with the closing of this other chapter...looking forward to the new adventures!

Ran Today's Special Thanksgiving Day Edition of Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K

This morning the Depot Parkrun organization scheduled a special Thanksgiving Day 5K at that park a few blocks south of downtown Gainesville...and I ran it.  The temperature at 7:30 race time was 61 with a 100% humidity, warmer and muggier by far than last Sunday's marathon.  At first I was leaning toward speed-walking the event, knowing that another Parkrun would be held just two days later on Saturday the 30th.  I was also dealing with some pain in my left foot and a blister on a toe on the right foot, but at the last minute decided to run it instead...albeit not with any aim of achieving a personal best.  Starting out relatively slowly, I nonetheless caught up with and passed numerous runners who had started out too fast.  In the end I finished with a time of 28:25...almost two minutes off my personal Parkrun best of just two weeks ago but still, for me, a respectable result.  Although the humidity was a bit weighty this morning, I did appreciate the cloud cover and lack of glare...something to be thankful for!  Click HERE to see the results for today's event...

Kicking the Short Story Review Can Down the Road to Next Wednesday

Normally Wednesday is the day on this blog when I review the latest short stories I've been reading, but this week I fell behind on it...oh, well. I think that things would be better served by passing on it this time around.  I'm still reading the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, featuring Gardner Dozois' selections from the year 1998.  Let's see if I can't come up with something by the time Wednesday rolls around again...

Some More About Last Sunday's Marathon

Since I wrote a couple of days ago about my second "official" running marathon experience, I realized there were a few extra items I thought merited mention.  One is the relatively involved amount of preparation during the days preceding the event.  This includes tapering down of running mileage and intensity, along with a stepped-up consumption of carbohydrates.  The latter is supposed to fill up the body's glycogen stores that normally would be depleted long before the end of this grueling 26.2 mile race.  So I did just that, easing up a bit on my training and stuffing myself with high-carb food.  I also conformed to the advice that I drink a lot of water, prehydrating myself for the expected race-day loss of such.  As it turned out I probably didn't need to prehydrate so much since I hardly even perspired the entire five-plus hours and actually had to take four different porta-potty breaks in the middle of the race.  But I should have ingested more electrolytes and stretch my legs more and better.  That may have largely contributed to my leg cramping issues during the final three miles, as well as during the first two hours following the marathon's completion.  I look forward to correcting these oversights for any possible future races...

During the run...four repeated out-and-backs on a 3.27 mile stretched of paved trail in the woods...I  imagined NYC marathon locations at different mileages on this largely undifferentiated run.  Also, I watched an old YouTube video that someone made going up and down the Hawthorne Trail and picked out a few landmarks to look for on the race course.  The Winnepeg YouTube running brothers, on their NYC Marathon video, scorned anyone they saw walking, because they seemed to entertain the misconception that this wasn't an acceptable option.  I, on the other hand, am an enthusiastic advocate and practitioner of the Jeff Galloway method of tackling long distances by alternating a set number of running minutes with one of walking.  Then again, I thought those two dudes were a little bit two much on the "alpha-male" dominance/pecking order side of the human psyche, reminding me a bit of some old overly competitive high school classmates that were totally into themselves and how superior they were to others (and me).  Still, they did give some good advice in parts of their video...

Right after I finished this marathon, I thought that this is too crazy...I'll never do another marathon again.  But the next day I was already figuring how I could tweak things to achieve a better outcome, both in terms of a faster time and in how I can withstand the stresses that this length of race...especially its ending...puts on my body.  But in the next two months I will be undergoing medical tests and, most likely, procedures that could well put an end to my running this season...or maybe not, I just don't know.  But there's other stuff I can do in the meantime if that happens...

Media Manipulation and Sensationalism: Turn It Off

We're definitely living in an age of media manipulation and sensationalism.  Although I tend to avoid news and opinion channels, the few times I drop in on any of them are loaded with messages of outrage and doom, regardless which "side" is expressing them.  The default position seems to be that the world is falling apart and it's those bad guys over there who keep saying and doing bad things, and we're so good because we vehemently react to them.  Whether it's mass media or a social media site like Facebook or YouTube, the lead into the featured story, is often (if not usually) captioned by some enticement at the viewer's emotions instead of a reasonable representation of what's to come if they keep watching or decide to click on the post or video.  I don't think this is going to get any better in the future.  I do think that when someone around me starts to rant and rave about something political or in the news, my first response...regardless whether I agree or not with their opinions...is to question where they receive their information from and how was it presented.  In the meantime, for people's general mental health I recommend a drastic tapering down of news and opinion input from mass and social media...regardless of the source...and to focus more on what good they can, in their individual daily living and decisions, do for the betterment of themselves, their loved ones, and community.  When it's time to vote, sure, inform yourself and do your civic duty...but you can't live on this crap 24/7...

Ran 26.2 Mile Marathon This Morning in Hawthorne

It has been a long time since I finished a marathon race.  As a matter of fact, I had only run one of them, the Ocala Marathon in 2011.  In that one I was doing well until an IT band injury forced me to walk (slowly) the last seven miles, finishing in a little over six hours. I'm glad I took a race volunteer's advice at the time and stuck it out to the end instead of just quitting it, but it has always bothered me that I never had a marathon race that I knew I could run.  Today I ran the Mega Cupcake Marathon held at the eastern end of the Hawthorne Trail, starting and ending in the town bearing that name just a few miles southeast of Gainesville.  The temperature at 7:30 race time was 39 with a 100% humidity, but it heated up by the time I finished it at 70 degrees and 40% humidity.  I had considered bundling up at the cold start of the race but, heeding the words of a couple of Canadian YouTube distance runners, I just wore the regular shorts and short-sleeve running shirt (and definitely stood out in the crowd).  The only problem I had with the cold was with my aching hands...should have worn gloves, dang it.  I also took some other YouTube advice with this race.  One, every 35-40 minutes (and before the race) I consumed an energy gel.  And two, I treated the first 20+ miles as a light jog, studiously avoiding going out too fast, a fatal mistake for many with this many miles to cover.  I also employed some Galloway Method walking, alternating some 1:30 of speed walking with 3:30 light running.  Thanks to Amazon Music, I was also able to listen to a long playlist of some of my favorite songs...that was cool.  Unfortunately, the gel packs got a little too gooey and got on my phone...have to better separate them next time.  This marathon course was pretty flat and was basically a 3.27-mile section of paved wooded trail, there-and-back for four laps.  I was doing fine until I was coming back on the final 3.27-mile stretch and my lower legs began to ache and ball up...I was hobbling at the finish line.  I believe I had negative splits for the race, which according to my watch should have given me a chip finishing time of 5 hours 7 minutes 49 seconds.  Click HERE to see the posted race results, courtesy of MYLAPS Speedhive. This race is essentially the same thing as the April race held at the same place...that one they call "Run Your Buns Off".  It's all very low-key and small-town...I dug the vibes and the nice volunteers, plus it was fun to wave and cheer on the other runners as we passed each other.  This morning they also held 5K, 10K and half-marathon races. Now let's just see how I recover from this punishing race... 

Congratulations to Florida Gator Football Team

The University of Florida football team has been through a lot of ups and downs this 2024 season with head coach Billy Napier on the "hot seat" in this, his third season in charge.  They played poorly against Miami and Texas (or maybe those two teams played extraordinarily well against the Gators), but have also been very competitive in the other contests.  And in the last two weeks they have beaten favored ranked conference opponents LSU and (today) Mississippi...I'm sure being at home helped a little.  The defense has improved immeasurably and they seem to have found a star quarterback in freshman D.J. Lagway.  So Florida is now 6-5 overall and finished their Southeastern Conference schedule at an even 4-4...they're qualified for a post-season bowl game this year even if they flub up against a clearly struggling Florida State team in their final regular season game.  Go Gators!

Quote of the Week...from Sheryl Crow

Hello, it's me, I'm not at home.  If you'd like to reach me, leave me alone!           ---Sheryl Crow

And so goes talented rock musician Sheryl Crow's wonderful late 90's song A Change Would Do You Good, maybe my favorite one of hers.  Of course, here she's mimicking a telephone answering machine...remember those?  And the message sounds a bit paradoxical, doesn't it?  I mean, how can you convey an intended message without actively engaging with the one who you'd want to receive it?  But that's not really what Sheryl was singing about, I think.  No, it's a blunt statement about someone being overrun by others' unwelcome intrusions on her time and life, no matter how well-intentioned they might be.  Or maybe I'm just imposing my own meaning on these lyrics...yeah, that's probably true.  I truly don't dig being completely immersed in complex social settings where all kinds of subtleties, intrigues and nuanced meanings are being communicated back and forth among various players, some of whom may or may not be trying to involve me in some way with their agendas.  No, give me a one-on-one setting where it's simple, mutually-respectful conversation and I can handle that pretty well.  Otherwise...well, read that above quote again...

Thinking in Target Foreign Languages,

As my retirement date nears, I am looking for new ways to approach various interests and how to make progress in them.  One of these interests is foreign language learning.  One thing I have been hesitant over the past years is thinking in the target languages.  We all think in our own "best" languages, even sub-vocalizing in the process.  That doesn't mean that I instantly conjure up grammatically complete sentences in my mind with any level of sophistication regarding word choices.  But I do think in English, although more in a stream-of-consciousness mode.  The same can be true with languages I am learning, but I need to be intentional about thinking in them since the tendency is always to slip back into English.  I saw a YouTube video on this very subject...click HERE for a link to it.  Another thing about learning foreign languages has to do with the pervasive use of computers and the Internet in this regard.  In earlier years I would read texts and various materials in the foreign language, look up the meanings of new words and record my progress with pen and paper within a notebook. Now some of these language learning sites like LingQ and Anki will track my own vocabulary-building progress as well as providing convenient definitions and sentence examples...that's great! But ultimately, when it comes to reviewing what I've learned...or forgotten that I've learned...I think I need to return to my old tried-and-true comfortable method of writing down my progress on paper because engaging in it this way helps more to reinforce my learning.  Now to set up my system... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 6

Once again Wednesday has arrived, so it's time for me to delve into the next stories as they appear in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, featuring the late editor's selections from the year 1998. Dozois, who had a special affinity for novellas, included two in a row...somehow I managed to get through both in time to write about them in today's article...

THE DAYS OF SOLOMON GURSKY by Ian McDonald

Told in elapsing episodes starting in the present and spreading far into the distant future and throughout the cosmos, a scientist has developed a formula for resurrecting the dead and in the process runs afoul of a megalomaniacal corporate figure who reminds me too much of Elon Musk.  As the novella progresses, the narrative becomes too distant from our familiar points of reference regarding reality and technology...that's my own problem as a reader but it still was difficult to slog through.  The story's ending, though, was awesome...

THE CUCKOO'S BOYS by Robert Reed

Written some twenty-or-so years before the COVID debacle, a scientist comes across a way to transmit, virus-like, his own genes through a targeted female population to produce offspring cloned with his own version of what constitutes genius.  The experiment gets out of hand, becomes a pandemic...and he is left as a mentor to some of his now-teenage products in the face of the violent prejudice arising against them...

Next week: more sci-fi from '98...

Returning to My Old Coffee Shop Routine?

Back in the "old days" of when I first moved to Gainesville...namely the period from 1978 to 1985...I tended to spend a lot of time studying in local coffee/donut shops and diners.  I love to learn, although my knowledge is pretty spread out across the academic spectrum...perhaps a little too thinly, I might admit.  But I do like from time to time getting out and sitting in a public setting. I think my greatest progress in foreign language study has been from doing this, but sometimes I just read, speculate, or plan what I'm going to do in the immediate and near future.  Seeing how I'm retiring at the end of next week, it seems that the future is going to be much more conducive for this kind of activity.  Who knows, maybe I'll actually learn something in depth. I had been considering frequenting a couple of places reasonably near to my home...one sells bagels and the other donuts...but alas they both close at 2 pm, so for the mid-afternoon and later it's going to have to be somewhere else.  And of course, there are plenty of "somewhere elses"...

Why Not Have 30 Kilometer Running Races?

While I was contemplating which of the three offered races I would run in this weekend...along with the multiple distances for two of them...it once again occurred to me that there is a substantial, significant gap between two of the distances.  The so-called "classic" running races are 5K (3.1 miles), 10K (6.2 miles), 15K (9.3 miles), half-marathon (13.1 miles) and marathon (26.2 miles).  I've covered all of these in races since I returned to running in my early fifties, but that huge gap separating half from full marathons is very imposing: 13.1 miles!  Yet looking at it logically, there could be another distance offered that gives people the chance to either work themselves up to that marathon distance or find their own most suitable distance.  And that is the 30K race, 18.6 miles long and a fitting intermediary between the half and full marathons.  I wonder why this distance isn't ever offered...I think it's a shame.  I certainly would be one of the ones lining up to run in one of these..

About the Many Virtual NYC Marathon YouTube Videos

Back on November 3rd the 2024 edition of the New York City Marathon happened, complete with its 50 thousand-plus entrants and the meandering course covering all of the Big Apple's five boroughs...in many ways it has become the most sought after long distance running event, even more than the Boston Marathon.  For a year or two I've enjoyed watching point-of-view YouTube videos recorded by some of the runners, lasting the entire race.  Some runners were fast, some average and there was one excessively slow dude.  Each video revealed some of that runner's personality and background while also showing their experiences as they ran past exuberant, cheering crowds.  For the most part, I like these videos and even exercise to them at home.  But three weeks ago, one of the marathon runners, Matt Choi...who is one of those social media "influencers" who earn money making themselves visible while promoting their sponsors' products...was permanently banned from all New York City races because he violated their rules by having cyclists in the midst of the crowded race, filming him from different angles while interfering with and endangering other runners.  I know that if I were such a runner, having gone through the difficult process of just getting accepted to run the race, then paying the expensive entry fee and making arrangements for staying up there...and then struggling to complete the event...I would have been put out and insulted by this one person acting as if I was "in the way" of his own entitled project.  And apparently the New York Road Runners, the organizers of this race and many others in the area, agreed when they banned Choi.  The incident got me to thinking about all those videos...I've found about nine so far...showing the race and all those other runners alongside them.  Usually the videos show what it would be like from a runner's viewpoint, showing what lies ahead and with the backs of the runners ahead of them on the course.  I'm fine with that, but a couple of the video recorders have a tendency to move their cameras to face backwards, behind themselves showing the faces and numbered bibs of the other racers.  I know that were I in such a race, I definitely would NOT like someone with a camera set on me without my permission...yet these people seem clueless about any such potential objection from others.  This virtual filming of races seems to be a male phenomenon. I have yet to see such a video produced for the NYC Marathon...or any other race shown this way on YouTube, for that matter...by a woman: I wonder if this means anything.  The NYC rule-makers clearly prohibit certain kinds of devices for runners to film the race, yet one of them clearly was violating it (he was one of those panning behind him for stretches of time).   I for one enjoy this vicarious type of racing experience I can do from my own living room, giving me a sense of the race environment and surrounding locale.  But it kind of makes me cringe to see the camera pointed for lengths of time at people who clearly had not assented to it.  On one level, it's a major public event, but on another, there are some privacy issues not being properly addressed...

Ran This Morning's Depot Parkrun 5K Here in Gainesville

This morning here in northern Florida it finally began to feel like the fall season, belatedly now in mid-November.  The temperature at 7:30, when the  Depot Parkrun 5K started, was 51 with a 96% humidity...a little chilly but in all, quite pleasant.  I decided to run the race this time since I had speed-walked a half-marathon last Sunday.  I thought that maybe I could improve on my Parkrun personal best time of 26:51 and started out fast, finding a strongly-paced couple ahead of me to follow closely.  That kept me honest with my own pacing, but by the end of the third lap in this four-lap race, they began to pull away from me.  Still, I stuck to it and finished running hard, attaining that personal best: 26 minutes 31 seconds.  No doubt the cooler temperature helped a lot with my performance, and I'm looking forward to cooler times ahead as fall eventually morphs into winter.  Click HERE to view today's posted results... 

Quote of the Week...from Neil deGrasse Tyson

There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.            Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the best known astrophysicists today because of his communication skills and passion for making science popular through his podcasts and series.  I've quoted him extensively over the years, but I don't think I ever got around to the above quip, which I've heard others paraphrase (or maybe Tyson is paraphrasing them).  It's a great truth that I've lived over my life span, especially during my school years when I learned so much...but not so much from the officially-established curricula I was ultimately graded on.  I have always been independent in my scholarly pursuits, and the areas I have grown adept in aren't necessarily high on the academic totem pole.  I would like to add to Tyson's quote my opinion that another type of important education is the kind that comes from adversity, setbacks, disappointments...and even tragedy.  It's not as fun to point to this aspect of learning, but bad stuff does happen to us from time to time and it's how we learn to respond to it that often makes us stronger, more mature and, yes, better educated...

New Tropical Storm Sara Named, In Western Caribbean

In keeping with my earlier declaration that I would keep up with named tropical storms in this 2024 Atlantic Hurricane season, I'm reporting today on the latest one, Sara.  It's just been named, after forming an identifiable circulation and developing sustained winds now at 40 mph in the far-western Caribbean Sea, just skirting the northern coast of Honduras, Sara is headed westward, destined to make landfall at the country of Belize and then on through the southeastern part of Mexico before emerging in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico.  There the various meteorological computer models have it strengthening and turning toward the northeast...that is, toward Florida.  Great, that's all we need, a fourth hurricane.  It's not all happening at once, though: it shouldn't be until early next week when we'll have some more definitive information on how strong Sara will get and where it will go... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 5

It's Wednesday and once again time to examine some short fiction as I continue going through the extensive year-by-year anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, this volume Sixteenth Annual Collection covering the year 1998 with editor Gardner Dozois' selections.  Here are my reactions to the next two stories in the book as I read it...

DIVIDED BY INFINITY by Robert Charles Wilson

A retired accountant is in deep, suicidal melancholy over his wife's recent death, but at the brink of taking overdoses he always stops.  One day he discovers in the city a used bookstore that contains certain volumes, apparently written by famous authors but which he has never recognized before.  Meeting with the store's aged and eccentric owner, he is given a strange book titled You Will Never Die after that owner informs him that they are both immortal.  How it all works gets revealed as the story progresses...quite a brilliant foray into metaphysics...

US by Howard Waldrop

The tragic kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's infant son in the early 1930's and its aftermath is treated here according to alternative outcomes of the event and how they might end up drastically affecting young Lindbergh's subsequent life course...told in three different narratives. There are always those punctuated events that have a drastic effect on history...such as the Kennedy assassination or 9/11...but each of us in our own more "ordinary" lives get steered in different directions by these types of things as well, occurring on a smaller scale... 

 

Next week: more sci-fi from the year 1998...

Retirement Affords Me Time for Language Learning

I am looking forward to the time afforded me after my impending retirement, time that I can use to pursue various interests.  Among these is language learning. Although I have studied a number of different languages over the years, I've reached the conclusion that in order to develop a truly adequate comprehension of any of them, I need to learn many thousands more words, which involves extensive reading and listening.  So I've pared down the languages I will be focusing on to three, all of which I've studied to a considerable degree already: Chinese, Russian and Spanish.  With the advent of AI and its usefulness with foreign language study, along with the many apps available...free or with subscription, I think I'm quite ready to make the final push in these three languages to becoming comfortable with them.  But I like the process of learning as well: should be fun...

Saluting Veterans

On this Veteran's Day in 2024, I salute all those fellow Americans who have served in our armed forces, some paying the ultimate price during their tenures.  Before 1973, young men, even if not voluntarily recruited, would be drafted in a lottery system, compelled to serve.  And during wars such as World War II, Korea and Vietnam, many were wounded or died...all coming out of the experience irreversibly changed.  After the draft was replaced by a fully-volunteer force, those who enlisted went through periods of relative peace and some of wartime...the Persian Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan were the most intense periods and produced the most casualties since the Vietnam era...but there were also Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Haiti.  And our armed forces are contributing strongly to the maintenance of worldwide stability today. When someone first enters the military, it may be a period of relative peace...but this can quickly change, so for all veterans who performed their duty during both times of peace and conflict, I appreciate your service and sacrifice.  Thank you!