This has got to be a hoax...

...right? Right? Jesus H. freakin' Christ wearin' a dashiki on a pogo stick. What are you people thinking?

You're really just not that important.

Event Schedule

May 1, 2010 (with The Boss)

May 15 - 16, 2010

June 5 - 6, 2010 (200 mile route)

July 4, 2010 (with The Boss and Ku)

September 12, 2010

At no time during any of these events will I be thinking "Wow, I really want to get online and tell all my virtual friends what I'm doing in real time!" Kind of like I never do that at any other time.

And if I write them up after the fact, I certainly don't plan to impose any arbitrary length limit on my prose stylings. Why? Why, oh why would people rather talk about their life than give their full attention to experiencing it?

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth

"Sorry about that, bud," I said to the guy behind me in the chow line after stumbling into him. "I'm feeling a little unsteady on my pins."

"Understandable," he said.

* * *

The threatened rain had held off, but the air was as cold as forecast. "There are reports of snow on top of the mountain!" the announcer called out to some thousand or so shivering nutjobs awaiting the start of the 2010 Hyner View Trail Challenge.

I had a liter and a half of water on my back, a GPS-enabled training watch on my wrist and a sour dread in my gut as we listened to the countdown. A final check of my gear, a last wave of encouragement from The Boss, and we were off.

It was a mile or so over road to the trail head. I had seeded myself some two-thirds of the way back in the pack starting out, which turned out to be a bad miscalculation. Once we hit the trail there was no room at all to pass, and I was stuck behind a bunch of lollygagging hikers, oohing and aahing over the trees and river. For the next mile or so we proceeded at a slothlike shuffle, and at times came to a dead stop. Finally hit the first real hill, and though it opened up a little bit, it was hard to get enough momentum to get around the shufflers.

That hill just didn't want to end. Every time I thought I was near to the top, another 100 yard stretch would somehow open up past what I thought was the crest. My calves were on fire, but when the trail widened out near the actual last 100 yards I had plenty of juice to hump it around some of the tourists. I sprinted up to the aid station, chugged a cup of water, and took off down the trail.

I felt great over the next 9 miles or so - two long downhills, some flat meandering through the valley with several stream crossings, a couple moderate ups, and even the dreaded S.O.B., which was much steeper in person.

Passing was still a challenge, as the trail rarely got wider than a foot and a half or so. Had to wait for open areas to the left or right. At one point I saw a chance to blow by a line of 5 or 6 people and I took off through the scrub just to the left of the trail. I had about a three foot gap to get back on the trail before braining myself on a tree, and I realized that my momentum was going to carry me off the other side. Where there happened to be 50-odd foot drop down to the river.

I managed to grab the tree, swing around onto the path losing less than 10% of the skin off my left hand, and keep on rolling.

After the aid station at the top of S.O.B. I started to fade a little. I was reduced to walking even some of the milder ups. And then came the final indignity: a quad-shredding downhill stretch that just went on and on. I pulled aside a time or two to let some columns of stronger finishers past me. I was still keeping a pretty good pace, so I was a little puzzled as to why these people were behind me if they were fit enough to be blowing by me at the end. Maybe they'd taken some rest at the last aid station, but I'd expect people at this position in the race to be more concerned about their finishing time.

When we finally made back to the road I was determined to run the last mile or so back to the finish line. I was pretty much all in at this point, and I was still dropping places to runners who'd marshalled their energy better, but I stayed above a walk back to the final hill leading up to the finish:



The Boss was a sublime sight at the finish line. Some dude shook my hand and collected my chip. Somebody dropped a finisher's medal in my hand. Within a minute after I stopped moving my legs were solid blocks of marble, and I could barely stagger through the chow line. I managed to down some bread, a single ladleful of ziti, and some chocolate cake with peanut butter flavored icing. The walk back to the car was excruciating and slow. It felt like it took me a minute and a half to lower myself into the passenger seat. I showered up at the B&B, and The Boss and I set out through the Pennsylvania hills towards home.

Just 363 days until next year's event. I figure if I train a little and seed myself up closer to the front I might break four hours.

What was I thinking about when I thought about running?

*

I'm not sure why I decided to start running races. I think it was Kona - I'm pretty sure it was Kona. The coverage every year is cringeworthily cheesy, but I found myself nibbling on that cheese and, if not growing to like it, at least not being sickened by it.

Who can finish something like that? Do you actually have to be strong, or is stubbornness enough? Am I that stubborn? Could I be that stubborn?

Anyway, I've been running. Only a few weeks, and mostly on treadmills, but enough to confirm that I've got a base of orneriness that I might could cultivate. If I had enough motivation. Having a long term goal is one thing, but to get there I need intermediate goals to keep my enthusiasm up.

A 5k race just down the road a piece seemed as good a place as any to start suffering. I had two goals going in: finish in under 24:00 (ambitious), and finish in the top half of my age group (looked probable based on past years results).

The Boss somehow let herself get talked into joining in as well. Her goal was not to finish last, which I'm happy to report she achieved.

I woke up that morning with a cold, but I felt fine as we lined up to start. I didn't feel nearly as nervous as I'd thought I would. There was a cop stopping traffic as they started us off across 4-lane Hastings Drive and we took off through the streets of Manassas.

Since the race was affiliated with an elementary school, there was a large group of skinny young kids bunched up near the front of the pack, but they soon spent up their meager stores of energy and I picked them all off in the first few hundred yards. Went around an adult or two as well. I was feeling fairly good, and at the one mile mark there was a guy calling out our splits. "7:16!" he hollered as I wheezed by.

This turned out to be a little ambitious. Over the next mile and a half or so I kept hearing heavy breathing in my ear just before getting run down by yet another racer with better pacing than mine. Must have been at least 20 - 30 people passing me over that stretch. "15:32!" was the call as I passed the two mile mark. My pace had dropped by about a minute.

Nearing the 3 mile mark we turned off the trail through the park and back onto Hastings Drive, into the teeth of a vicious hill leading back to a partial lap around the parking lot to the finish. A volunteer directing traffic called out "Come on, dig!", but I was dug out, and told him as much. No one passed me on that hill, though. Best I recall.

Coming back in to the parking lot, though, I once again heard heavy breathing over my shoulder. Sounded female. Determined not to get run down again that close to the finish, I didn't turn to look, just put the hammer down. As I neared the finish line the clock they'd set up there told me I was close to setting a PR, and I felt weightless as I crossed the line. I didn't beat my goal time but I did cut 4 seconds off my personal best. Good enough for my first race.

The way the timing worked was, someone clicked some sort of clicker to signify a finisher as each person crossed the line, then we had to keep our same order in the chute before ripping off the bottom portion of our bib numbers and handing them over. Then they matched up the clicks and bib numbers in the same order to get the times and positions. Waiting in the chute to hand over my number, I heard the woman behind me (I assume the same one that had nearly run me down) remark that her goal had also been 24:00. Oh well. Tough course, maybe.

I walked back out to wait for The Boss, and finally saw her walking out up that hill towards the parking lot. I saw she had some other walkers behind her, and worried that they'd take her at the finish. Every now and then she'd start into a little shuffle jog, and then fall back into a walk. The women trailing her were doing the same. In the end, they stayed in the same order coming into the chute, and The Boss finished ahead of some 50 - 60 people. Some of those were women pushing strollers, and people hanging back to stay with their families, but still, easily eclipsed her goal. Also cut some 2+ minutes off her personal best.

In the end, I wound up 54th out of 349. Around the 84th percentile, and 10th out of 34 in my age group. The Boss says my result was 80% ability and 20% stubbornness, which sounds about right.

Hey Northern Virginia Drivers...

...stop yielding the right-of-way, you mouth-breathing sub-morons. If you're too stupid to know when you have the right-of-way and/or too stupid to realize that you're not doing anyone any favors and that you're just slowing everyone down, then just stay off of my roads.

That is all.

Tweethics

Suppose there is a button within your convenient reach, and if you fail to press this button, Twitter will be destroyed, but if you do press it, Twitter will be preserved. You believe that no other adverse consequences will result from pressing the button. Is it morally permissible not to press it?

I say yes. I'm of the school that distinguishes between harming through action and allowing to come to harm through inaction, and assigns no moral fault to the latter.

Then, what if instead of a button there is, say, some kind of a pressure plate in the road which acts in the same way as the button - if you fail to drive over it, Twitter will be destroyed, etc. Let's also say that if you turn right on Oak St. to take the most convenient route to the farmer's market you'll cross the pressure plate, but if you turn left to take the longer route you won't. You want to go to the farmer's market, and - all else being equal - you'd like to take the most convenient route. Is it morally permissible to turn left?

I think the answer is still yes. Even though in some sense you are going out of your way to take an action that results in Twitter being destroyed, I think it's more accurate to say that you're declining to take some positive action to prevent that destruction. And in general there is no obligation to take positive actions, only to refrain from those which directly cause harm.

OK then, what if there is an additional pressure plate to your left on Oak St., and if you cross this pressure plate, a bomb will go off, killing three moon-eyed Laotian orphans? Now is it permissible to turn left?

I think now you have to turn right and save Twitter, no matter how much you'll regret it later.

But, suppose the bomb is on a timer, and no longer connected to the pressure plate. Also, there is a good Samaritan approaching to save the orphans, but if you cross the pressure plate, you'll cause an electrochemical reaction in the brain of the good Samaritan which will cause him to value his own safety more than saving the orphans, so he'll wuss out and the orphans will be blown to bits. Now may you turn left?

I still have to say no. Your action can be construed as harming the good Samaritan, since he may not wish to have his value hierarchy re-arranged in such a way. So you'd be taking a positive action which directly caused harm, which is a moral wrong.

But, what if the good Samaritan had told you in advance that he had no preference for his current value hierarchy over any other, and had no objection to his brain chemistry being altered? I'd say that then you're not causing any direct harm. Even though in some sense you are taking an action which will result in the deaths of the orphans, the good Samaritan has no positive obligation to save them, and you have no obligation to refrain from acts that cause no direct harm to either party, So you're cool to turn left.

However, suppose the pressure plate does not switch the good Samaritan's brain from "save" to "don't save", but rather if you don't cross the plate the Samaritan will save the three moon-eyed Laotian orphans from the bomb, but if you do cross the plate, the Samaritan will notice two tow-headed Swedish orphans drowning in a lake before he gets to the bomb. He'll then save the tow-heads, but be too late to save the moon-eyed tots. Furthermore, suppose that, if she lives, one of the Laotian orphans will one day come upon a runaway railroad car hurtling towards three researchers who have discovered, but not yet published, a cure for cancer. She will be able to divert the car, but if she does it will strike and kill a brilliant young neurosurgeon, who, had he lived, would eventually invent a procedure for transplanting brains in vats into cloned human bodies. Of the brains he would restore, most will go on to lead fulfilling, productive lives; one will invent a faster-than-light drive and enable humans to colonize other planets; and one will become the worst mass-murderer the world has ever known.

Now what do you do?

The answer is easy: you turn left and let Twitter die, because Twitter is just fucking stupid.

Rematch Win

Rematch WIN:



Let me tell you: if you ride a bicycle a hundred miles, you really start to feel it in that taint.

The image kind of sucks, but the bottom number is the total distance, and the middle number is my sluglike total time.

What I learned today

Today I learned that if you tell people you have a hole in the crotch of your pants, they won't be able to help but look. The best exchange of the day:

Me: Aww, dude, I have a rip in the crotch of my pants.
Coworker: <looks>
M: Uhh, why are you looking...?
CW: I don't know, I guess I wanted to see how big it is...
M: ...!
CW: The rip! I meant the rip!

Century FAIL

[Revised and expanded from some other site that doesn't even let you write a carriage return.]

Century FAIL.

I thought I had a pretty good shot at it, but my legs started threatening mutiny a little past mile 60 and I wound up at just around 64.25. On the other hand, that's more than 100 km, so, metric century win.

The rest of the ledger looks like this:

• Passed at least 10 times more people than passed me, and the latter were, to a man, decked out in full douchebag cyclist regalia, so most likely they've been training (+).


• "Turtled" once early on when I clipped out of the wrong pedal(!) before stopping and went down like a $5 whore on rent day (-).


• Beat my goal for average speed (by 0.005 MPH[!] - the issue was in doubt up to the very end; really had to find out who I was in the last quarter mile) (+).


• Lost my favorite cap (----).

So in the aggregate I'd say the balance hangs moderately sinister. Still, I can see decent progress from my earliest outing, and have hope for continued improvement.

I blame the heat. And also, I shouldn't have tried to take route 7 to Winchester. Colossal, hulking hills and narrow shoulders. Maybe I'll give it another go in early autumn.

No one but me will think this is funny...

...but I don't care.

If your name is "burrito", shouldn't you think twice before taking on somebody named "tabemasu"? I mean, just step back and think about this for a second.

Truth

Accidentally get a healthy dose of "Maximum Strength" Ben-Gay on your nuts and you'll have a whole new perspective on life.


Word.

Interregnum

I've had this on my mind today. I think I know why.

I reckon I'm going to spend some time offline. Might be back here to post TGD updates, but probably not soon or often. Might update PotD if there's reason to.

Later, fools.

TGD Week 12

[Edit: oops, jumped the gun - we're not up to a quarter year quite yet].

Wednesday 10/29 - John Varley, The Ophiuchi Hotline is now the property of the PWC library.

Thursday 10/30 - Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes, The Barsoom Project, ditto.

Friday 10/31 - Bruce Sterling, Crystal Express, ditto.

Saturday 11/1 - Tossed out were a pair of underwear with worn out elastic and a book of Maleska-edited NY Times Saturday crosswords, obscure and unfinished.

Sunday 11/2 - Two very nice shirts which were nonetheless too uncomfortable to wear were donated to some charity which is probably a scam.

Monday 11/3 - A pair of gloves with worn-out fingers

Tuesday 11/4 - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Oath of Fealty, "donated".

Then and Now

America, circa 1776

Circa 1942

Circa 2008

Doing my civic duty

Like the good citizen I am: