Did 6 miles, and I really do feel better. I wonder if the fact that it had been 3 days since I'd run was part of my downishness? People talk about how they feel bad if they don't run. Perhaps I can try to be aware of my feelings (I generally hate those things) when I do and don't exercise. I've still not been aware of "runner's high," another commonly reported phenomenon.
(Diana Krall doing Isn't It a Lovely Day. I always enjoy her stuff.)
I do have to say that I really felt good throughout this run. I like running best when I don't try to run too fast (duh...). Still, even though I "stayed within myself" on this run, I didn't have any miles over 9 minutes. So I am getting faster, perhaps.
I had an interesting moment tonight, in fact. As I reached exactly 6 miles and my wrist beeped I looked down and I was at 51:36. I immediately thought of last summer when I was so pleased with myself for finishing 6 miles in under 60 minutes. It made me feel pretty self-satisfied to see that I'd progressed to the point where 51:36 actually feels comfortable. (Even though I'm really not hung up on times, I'm telling myself....)
I know it takes time to build muscle memory and simple base fitness. I think maybe I'll declare that my life running goals include a sub-4 marathon (if I haven't already done that). Once I've done that, I think (I think right now, anyway) that I'll be satisfied and will be able to subside to fun maintenance running for the rest of my life. I hope so, anyway.
Of course, I still want to do a triathlon. So we'll see how that affects everything.
It was good to feel my left ankle/foot on this run. I've been having some pains, and wondered how it would go in a run. Once I'd gone a quarter of a mile I didn't feel it (pain) again until I was walking back to the car. What kind of pain is it that hurts when walking but not when running? Maybe I'll find out tomorrow. I'm doing a "VGA" (video gait analysis) tomorrow with a local chiropractor. He has a treadmill and takes video of you running to isolate issues or problems with your gait. Ideally he'll be able to help me fine-tune the way I run and give me some more shoe advice. One can never get enough shoe advice! ;-) Just like one learns to simply ignore minor aches and pains.
This chiropractor is a guy who does this as a free service for groups like DRC or TNT. I guess he gets business out of it. I've heard really good things about him (meaning, I've been told he won't tell me something just to try to get me to hire him). And as I've seen and talked with him several times at races, my impression is that he's an honest, straight-ahead guy. We'll see.
Re: my frustration about the guy who was a jerk during my last run. I realized one thing while running tonight. He was just a Fred. Fred is a derogatory term used by cyclists to describe a cyclist: who owns a much nicer bike than he can do credit to (someone who has an $8,000 Orbea but does 6-hour centuries, for example); or who is the type who will sprint past a "real" cyclist who's just out for a recovery cruise and congratulates himself on how fast he is; or who is always 'half-wheeling" (when out for a casual or LSD ride, stays about a half wheel ahead of his riding partner and sort of pushes the pace inappropriately); or who otherwise fails to abide by the understood standards of behavior among cyclists.
I expect runners may have a similar name for rude runners. There's less opportunity for Fredness among runners, though, because there's less equipment. Perhaps there's no name, though, because I haven't heard it yet. I'm sure it was more than a year into my cycling before I heard "Fred" though. I don't think I'll ask around. I'll just go with Fred for that dude. It seems to cover it.
(Tony Bennett singing "Who Can I Turn To?" Love that song.)
Well, I had just meant to come back tonight to say I felt better, and I typed on and on. So that'll be it for now...
Friday, January 25, 2008
I think I hate everyone....
... with not too many exceptions.
Well, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration. But only slight.
There's my president, who started a needless war for the wrong reasons. There are his advisers, some of whom think it's a fine idea to torture captives. There are Osama and all his medieval ilk, who also think it's just fine to torture anyone they don't like, not to mention that it's their idea of a good time to blow up pretty much anyone who would prefer to live in a world that has progressed since the 15th century. (Or, what the heck, pretty much anyone else too, for that matter. Why be picky?) How about a large number of my students, who I now know agree that it's alright to torture "our enemies." But perhaps they're too young to know better. (And anyway, I shouldn't think that, because I have to be objective in assigning grades, don't I?) And the list goes on, capped by a guy I saw during my last run.
I was at the lake running a loop, and the weather was pretty miserable. Cold, windy and drizzly. Almost no one out there. The least crowded I think I've ever seen it, in fact. Far fewer than either Christmas or New Year's Day. I was on the newish winding section of trail leading to the new bridge on the north end when I saw two people ahead. Both with dogs. One running and one walking. The runner slowed as he went past the walker and looked at him, and then went on. I was perhaps 30 yards behind, so I couldn't hear, and my glasses were blurred by drizzle, so I couldn't see very well, either. When I got to the walker a few seconds later I could see that he was "disabled." Walked very awkwardly with a cane. I slowed so as not to startle him or his dog, and as I went by, said hello. He called to me: "Hello, sir! Could you help me?" By his voice I could tell he did not simply have a bad leg. Some sort of neurological disorder. Anyway, I of course stopped to see what he needed. He repeated: "Could you help me?" and handed me the end of the dog leash. With his cane he then managed to knock a chunk of wood out from the heel of his shoe, which had a big exposed spring into which the wood had gotten lodged. He then was effusive in his thanks, seemingly disproportionately so. He said "You're the greatest! You're only the second person I've seen out here in the last hour." I just said "You're welcome. It was no problem. Stay warm!" And I ran on.
It wasn't until I was about up to the runner that the import of his words struck me. The runner I was about to pass had to have been the other person the walker had seen, if it was true that the walker had seen only two people in the last hour. The runner, it follows, had declined to stop to help the walker. I was going a good bit faster than the runner, and as I was passing him it was dawning on me that this was probably the case. Say something? If so, what? Make an assumption that he'd refused to delay his run by 5 seconds to help the clearly-in-need-of-aid walker?
But as I approached the runner an odd thing happened. He started to speed up. At first I thought it was my imagination. I do not yet have the best instinctive sense of my pace without looking at the Forerunner. But it quickly became clear that I was not imagining it at all. This guy was speeding up. And the only possible interpretation was that for some reason he didn't want me to pass him. What a total ass!! Well, you can be sure I sped up, too, and left the ass's ass in the dust. Or actually the mud, as it were. I didn't say anything. But at least I kicked his ass.
OK. That sounds completely testosteronish. "Kicked his ass" indeed. But it was about the only thing I could think of to do right then and there without confronting him over something I couldn't honestly be sure he did. Speeding up like that just isn't done. It's outside the code of behavior, except, of course, in a race. Only assholes do it. People like me, who sort of speed up a little bit when being passed just on the basis of inexperience, get a pass, because we don't speed up anything close to as much as this guy. He went from a 10 or perhaps even a 10:30 to an 8. I know, because I was doing about a 9 when I reached him and after finally leaving him I looked and was doing a 7:45. That's a big difference. Far more than simple drift.
I don't know. Perhaps I don't really hate everyone. Perhaps I'm just feeling frustrated right now. And perhaps I'm feeling a little sensitive about the disabled guy out walking his dog in the miserable weather who has to suffer the indignity (yes, I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that he would consider it an indignity) of asking for help with a simple (it would have been simple for me, in any case) task like clearing the bottom of his shoe, and then to have that request rebuffed! Or maybe the problem is that we've been discussing Civil Liberties in class. I think that's always hard for me because teaching about it makes me so aware of how far short of our ideals we have sometimes fallen. And then to have more than half the class think it's just fine for us to torture prisoners. Sigh.....
Or perhaps I'm just feeling a little lonely right now, for some reason. And I'm taking it out on the world around me.
I think I'll go for a run....
Well, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration. But only slight.
There's my president, who started a needless war for the wrong reasons. There are his advisers, some of whom think it's a fine idea to torture captives. There are Osama and all his medieval ilk, who also think it's just fine to torture anyone they don't like, not to mention that it's their idea of a good time to blow up pretty much anyone who would prefer to live in a world that has progressed since the 15th century. (Or, what the heck, pretty much anyone else too, for that matter. Why be picky?) How about a large number of my students, who I now know agree that it's alright to torture "our enemies." But perhaps they're too young to know better. (And anyway, I shouldn't think that, because I have to be objective in assigning grades, don't I?) And the list goes on, capped by a guy I saw during my last run.
I was at the lake running a loop, and the weather was pretty miserable. Cold, windy and drizzly. Almost no one out there. The least crowded I think I've ever seen it, in fact. Far fewer than either Christmas or New Year's Day. I was on the newish winding section of trail leading to the new bridge on the north end when I saw two people ahead. Both with dogs. One running and one walking. The runner slowed as he went past the walker and looked at him, and then went on. I was perhaps 30 yards behind, so I couldn't hear, and my glasses were blurred by drizzle, so I couldn't see very well, either. When I got to the walker a few seconds later I could see that he was "disabled." Walked very awkwardly with a cane. I slowed so as not to startle him or his dog, and as I went by, said hello. He called to me: "Hello, sir! Could you help me?" By his voice I could tell he did not simply have a bad leg. Some sort of neurological disorder. Anyway, I of course stopped to see what he needed. He repeated: "Could you help me?" and handed me the end of the dog leash. With his cane he then managed to knock a chunk of wood out from the heel of his shoe, which had a big exposed spring into which the wood had gotten lodged. He then was effusive in his thanks, seemingly disproportionately so. He said "You're the greatest! You're only the second person I've seen out here in the last hour." I just said "You're welcome. It was no problem. Stay warm!" And I ran on.
It wasn't until I was about up to the runner that the import of his words struck me. The runner I was about to pass had to have been the other person the walker had seen, if it was true that the walker had seen only two people in the last hour. The runner, it follows, had declined to stop to help the walker. I was going a good bit faster than the runner, and as I was passing him it was dawning on me that this was probably the case. Say something? If so, what? Make an assumption that he'd refused to delay his run by 5 seconds to help the clearly-in-need-of-aid walker?
But as I approached the runner an odd thing happened. He started to speed up. At first I thought it was my imagination. I do not yet have the best instinctive sense of my pace without looking at the Forerunner. But it quickly became clear that I was not imagining it at all. This guy was speeding up. And the only possible interpretation was that for some reason he didn't want me to pass him. What a total ass!! Well, you can be sure I sped up, too, and left the ass's ass in the dust. Or actually the mud, as it were. I didn't say anything. But at least I kicked his ass.
OK. That sounds completely testosteronish. "Kicked his ass" indeed. But it was about the only thing I could think of to do right then and there without confronting him over something I couldn't honestly be sure he did. Speeding up like that just isn't done. It's outside the code of behavior, except, of course, in a race. Only assholes do it. People like me, who sort of speed up a little bit when being passed just on the basis of inexperience, get a pass, because we don't speed up anything close to as much as this guy. He went from a 10 or perhaps even a 10:30 to an 8. I know, because I was doing about a 9 when I reached him and after finally leaving him I looked and was doing a 7:45. That's a big difference. Far more than simple drift.
I don't know. Perhaps I don't really hate everyone. Perhaps I'm just feeling frustrated right now. And perhaps I'm feeling a little sensitive about the disabled guy out walking his dog in the miserable weather who has to suffer the indignity (yes, I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that he would consider it an indignity) of asking for help with a simple (it would have been simple for me, in any case) task like clearing the bottom of his shoe, and then to have that request rebuffed! Or maybe the problem is that we've been discussing Civil Liberties in class. I think that's always hard for me because teaching about it makes me so aware of how far short of our ideals we have sometimes fallen. And then to have more than half the class think it's just fine for us to torture prisoners. Sigh.....
Or perhaps I'm just feeling a little lonely right now, for some reason. And I'm taking it out on the world around me.
I think I'll go for a run....
Saturday, January 19, 2008
You know you're a Southerner when...
... you go to White Rock lake at 7 a.m. when it's 27 degrees outside to run a lap and from miles 5 to 9.5 all you can think about is how much you're looking forward a bowl of grits for breakfast.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Tired...
Did a long brick today. Thirty-two miles (I was always taught never to begin a sentence with a digit. Is that right?) on the bike followed by running a full loop (a little over 9 miles). And I was and am really tired. In fact, when I was getting out of the car at home afterward, my left leg cramped. I rarely get cramps, except after (or even more infrequently, during) an exceptionally hard effort. Even "only" a half Ironman is 56 miles on the bike and 13.1 miles running. And that's after a 1.2 mile swim. So I have a lot of training to do if I'm ever going to honestly consider something like that.
I actually felt OK most of the time, except when the strong wind was right in my face. Wind can be a little discouraging, because you clearly are having to work harder to achieve the same effect (go the same speed) as when it's not windy. Of course, my response to that is just to slow down. Not that I have much choice.
(Big Bill Broonzy on Early Blues singing Black, Brown and White. Never heard that song before. "If you's White, it's alright. If you's Brown, stick around. But as you's Black, whoa brother, get back, get back, get back...." Fascinating song. Kinda early for too much of that. In fact, Pandora says the song's release was delayed, and then only released in France. Too much for us to hear.)
One or two brief comments about my 5K last weekend. The last timed 5K I did was a long time ago (late last summer) and was about 29:50. My goal was sub-30, so that was fine with me. Now, though, that would be really slow. So my goal (public) was sub 26 and my goal (private) was sub 25.
(All that "public/private" stuff is purely self-motivational. No one cares how fast I run, so having different goals is meaningless to anyone but me. Really. Saying I have a "public" goal implies that people are asking how fast I'm going to run. But no one actually is. Except Doug, who's a LOT faster than I am and is exclusively encouraging, no matter what I do. I'm still trying to figure out how to run races, how to pace myself, and how to make an appropriate effort (which is really the point of this current 5K discussion.))
In fact, I ran a 23:29. That was **great** from one perspective. It was faster by a whole minute than I thought I'd be able to run. I was 75th overall out of 343 runners, and 11th out of 23 in my age group (male 50-54) (There are some really fast guys in my age group, including Chris Phelan, who 2 years ago was ranked #1 in the nation in the triathlon.). Everyone at the end (my running friends from the Pace Group) was very impressed.
(Another positive result was that I finished ahead of EVERY person pushing a baby jogger. (No joke.) And I was only beaten by one person under 12 years old. (An 11 year old boy whom I think I will trip at the next race. If I can find him.))
On the other hand, it was **really** hard to run that fast. I was completely knackered by the end.
I had a sort of weird semi-out-of-body experience during the race. During the last mile, I was very tired. My brain had a conscious conversation with itself. (I certainly couldn't actually talk. I couldn't really talk even for a couple of minutes after the race was over. All the oxygen I could take in went to places other than my vocal chords.) Half of my brain was saying "Slow down, you dope! This hurts! Why are you doing this?" The other half was saying (without apparent thought) "It's a race! Gotta run! Gotta run fast!" In the end, I think my brain just got out of the way and my legs took over, entirely unsupervised. They decided not to slow down. Fully under the control of the limbic system.
This may sound weird, but I mean it sincerely. It was as if "I" didn't really have a choice. That "conversation" was happening without "my" input, whatever that means. I was just providing the vehicle. Once the race started, some other internal (instinctive?) forces took over. Is it possible to learn and internalize behaviors so thoroughly that they entirely take over? If there was a controversy about this, there is one no longer. The answer is yes. If I had asked myself, I would have wanted to slow down. But I never gave myself the option. It was a little spooky.
I suspect that's the same theory used by the military. They use various techniques to ingrain behaviors in soldiers that allow the soldiers to do things they otherwise would never do -- not if they stopped and asked themselves if they "wanted" to do whatever it is.
And religion. Isn't that the same thing? Ingrained belief and behavior patterns that are not subject to question.
In case you're wondering, involuntary competitiveness when playing Scrabble is another phenomenon entirely. Perhaps. ;-) At least they say awareness of the problem is the first step to a cure! Maybe there's hope for me yet.
All this and I haven't even gotten to politics, which I wanted to do.
Let's just say for now that the real race has started. Hillary has that little totally staged "crying" episode. Someone is digging up Ron Paul's past. It's about to start getting really nasty. I fully expect to hear something soon about Romney's connections to polygamists, Giuliani's connections with terrorists, McCain's failures as a soldier, Huckabee being gay, Obama secretly reaffirming his Muslimism, and on and on.
More on politics later....
I actually felt OK most of the time, except when the strong wind was right in my face. Wind can be a little discouraging, because you clearly are having to work harder to achieve the same effect (go the same speed) as when it's not windy. Of course, my response to that is just to slow down. Not that I have much choice.
(Big Bill Broonzy on Early Blues singing Black, Brown and White. Never heard that song before. "If you's White, it's alright. If you's Brown, stick around. But as you's Black, whoa brother, get back, get back, get back...." Fascinating song. Kinda early for too much of that. In fact, Pandora says the song's release was delayed, and then only released in France. Too much for us to hear.)
One or two brief comments about my 5K last weekend. The last timed 5K I did was a long time ago (late last summer) and was about 29:50. My goal was sub-30, so that was fine with me. Now, though, that would be really slow. So my goal (public) was sub 26 and my goal (private) was sub 25.
(All that "public/private" stuff is purely self-motivational. No one cares how fast I run, so having different goals is meaningless to anyone but me. Really. Saying I have a "public" goal implies that people are asking how fast I'm going to run. But no one actually is. Except Doug, who's a LOT faster than I am and is exclusively encouraging, no matter what I do. I'm still trying to figure out how to run races, how to pace myself, and how to make an appropriate effort (which is really the point of this current 5K discussion.))
In fact, I ran a 23:29. That was **great** from one perspective. It was faster by a whole minute than I thought I'd be able to run. I was 75th overall out of 343 runners, and 11th out of 23 in my age group (male 50-54) (There are some really fast guys in my age group, including Chris Phelan, who 2 years ago was ranked #1 in the nation in the triathlon.). Everyone at the end (my running friends from the Pace Group) was very impressed.
(Another positive result was that I finished ahead of EVERY person pushing a baby jogger. (No joke.) And I was only beaten by one person under 12 years old. (An 11 year old boy whom I think I will trip at the next race. If I can find him.))
On the other hand, it was **really** hard to run that fast. I was completely knackered by the end.
I had a sort of weird semi-out-of-body experience during the race. During the last mile, I was very tired. My brain had a conscious conversation with itself. (I certainly couldn't actually talk. I couldn't really talk even for a couple of minutes after the race was over. All the oxygen I could take in went to places other than my vocal chords.) Half of my brain was saying "Slow down, you dope! This hurts! Why are you doing this?" The other half was saying (without apparent thought) "It's a race! Gotta run! Gotta run fast!" In the end, I think my brain just got out of the way and my legs took over, entirely unsupervised. They decided not to slow down. Fully under the control of the limbic system.
This may sound weird, but I mean it sincerely. It was as if "I" didn't really have a choice. That "conversation" was happening without "my" input, whatever that means. I was just providing the vehicle. Once the race started, some other internal (instinctive?) forces took over. Is it possible to learn and internalize behaviors so thoroughly that they entirely take over? If there was a controversy about this, there is one no longer. The answer is yes. If I had asked myself, I would have wanted to slow down. But I never gave myself the option. It was a little spooky.
I suspect that's the same theory used by the military. They use various techniques to ingrain behaviors in soldiers that allow the soldiers to do things they otherwise would never do -- not if they stopped and asked themselves if they "wanted" to do whatever it is.
And religion. Isn't that the same thing? Ingrained belief and behavior patterns that are not subject to question.
In case you're wondering, involuntary competitiveness when playing Scrabble is another phenomenon entirely. Perhaps. ;-) At least they say awareness of the problem is the first step to a cure! Maybe there's hope for me yet.
All this and I haven't even gotten to politics, which I wanted to do.
Let's just say for now that the real race has started. Hillary has that little totally staged "crying" episode. Someone is digging up Ron Paul's past. It's about to start getting really nasty. I fully expect to hear something soon about Romney's connections to polygamists, Giuliani's connections with terrorists, McCain's failures as a soldier, Huckabee being gay, Obama secretly reaffirming his Muslimism, and on and on.
More on politics later....
Monday, January 7, 2008
Some running and some non-running thoughts
First, the memory story. Have I already written this? I don't think so.
I have a very vivid memory of going with my father to Fayetteville, Arkansas when I was 10 or 11 years old for a Tennessee-Arkansas football game. We were big SEC fans. (I still am, so far as it goes. I'm not much for any of that stuff anymore. But if I watch football I'd still rather watch SEC. Or maybe Big 12 now that I'm a Texan. Basketball, ACC is tops, followed by SEC and Big 12. But none of that matters....)
Anyway, here I am, an 11 year old kid in this electric environment. If you've never been to a big-time SEC football game, you really should go, even if you don't like football. It truly is exciting. The atmosphere is like nothing else. 75,000 or more people talking and laughing and yelling in their bright red (U of A) and orange (UT) clothes, and cheerleaders and players on the field looking trim and fit and fast and the smell of hotdogs and beer and the announcer and the bright sun and the green grass and the TV cameras and all the paraphernalia that goes along with such an event. So I'm sitting there absorbing all this color and sound and movement when I realize that a new sound is starting. It turns out that before each home game, a local Fayetteville radio station would broadcast about a half hour of hogs snorting. You know -- Arkansas Razorbacks. Woooooo pig, Soooiee (or however it's spelled -- I can't remember). All the Arkansas fans in the stadium -- probably about 60,000 of them -- tuned their transistor radios to this radio station at full volume.
All those radios tuned in and turned up. An unimaginable din of hogs. And 60,000 people standing and shouting and Wooooooo Pig, Sooieing. The entire stadium was rocking with the noise. And then the team comes back out on the field from their brief pre-game retreat for final preparation and pep talk and the stadium becomes, for 90 seconds, Fayetteville, Krakatoa.
All in all, an indelible, unforgettable experience. I can still see, hear and smell it almost as vividly as when I was sitting right there in the middle of it. Except for one thing....
Apparently it never happened.
I must have told that story a hundred times over the years. A few months ago I was telling it to a customer at REI. He sounded doubtful. He'd been a season ticket holder for decades, he said, and he didn't remember anything like that. I've asked several people since then, including my father, and no one else seems to remember it, either. I've gone to hogwild.com to look up Arkansas football traditions, and there's no mention of it. I seem to be alone with my unforgettable memory.
So, what's up? Perhaps it really did happen that one time, but because it was just a one-off event, most people have forgotten about it. Perhaps they did do it regularly in the past, but by the time I was at that game and the man at REI was a ticket-holder it was already just a memory, and I heard someone talk about it and just thought it happened. Perhaps I long ago thought how cool it would be for them to do that, and over time I turned that into a memory of their having done it.
I don't know. It's a mystery.
One level of its significance to me, as a very amateur student of fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories, is how unreliable memories can be. When someone is talking about their memories of the JFK assassination, for example, many believers love to say "Why would they lie?" While there are many reasons why they might lie, they need not even be lying. They may honestly believe what they remember actually happened. But their honest belief has no bearing whatsoever on the likelihood of the event's reality. The only use memory has is to provide ideas for investigation. No memory can be reliable evidence in such a case.
Well, it's late, and I haven't talked about my 5K last Saturday (I did great, but it created some inner conflict) or my experience during my run today, or my growing desire to run in the Texas Independence Relay or a number of other items. I'll have to do all that....
Later....
I have a very vivid memory of going with my father to Fayetteville, Arkansas when I was 10 or 11 years old for a Tennessee-Arkansas football game. We were big SEC fans. (I still am, so far as it goes. I'm not much for any of that stuff anymore. But if I watch football I'd still rather watch SEC. Or maybe Big 12 now that I'm a Texan. Basketball, ACC is tops, followed by SEC and Big 12. But none of that matters....)
Anyway, here I am, an 11 year old kid in this electric environment. If you've never been to a big-time SEC football game, you really should go, even if you don't like football. It truly is exciting. The atmosphere is like nothing else. 75,000 or more people talking and laughing and yelling in their bright red (U of A) and orange (UT) clothes, and cheerleaders and players on the field looking trim and fit and fast and the smell of hotdogs and beer and the announcer and the bright sun and the green grass and the TV cameras and all the paraphernalia that goes along with such an event. So I'm sitting there absorbing all this color and sound and movement when I realize that a new sound is starting. It turns out that before each home game, a local Fayetteville radio station would broadcast about a half hour of hogs snorting. You know -- Arkansas Razorbacks. Woooooo pig, Soooiee (or however it's spelled -- I can't remember). All the Arkansas fans in the stadium -- probably about 60,000 of them -- tuned their transistor radios to this radio station at full volume.
All those radios tuned in and turned up. An unimaginable din of hogs. And 60,000 people standing and shouting and Wooooooo Pig, Sooieing. The entire stadium was rocking with the noise. And then the team comes back out on the field from their brief pre-game retreat for final preparation and pep talk and the stadium becomes, for 90 seconds, Fayetteville, Krakatoa.
All in all, an indelible, unforgettable experience. I can still see, hear and smell it almost as vividly as when I was sitting right there in the middle of it. Except for one thing....
Apparently it never happened.
I must have told that story a hundred times over the years. A few months ago I was telling it to a customer at REI. He sounded doubtful. He'd been a season ticket holder for decades, he said, and he didn't remember anything like that. I've asked several people since then, including my father, and no one else seems to remember it, either. I've gone to hogwild.com to look up Arkansas football traditions, and there's no mention of it. I seem to be alone with my unforgettable memory.
So, what's up? Perhaps it really did happen that one time, but because it was just a one-off event, most people have forgotten about it. Perhaps they did do it regularly in the past, but by the time I was at that game and the man at REI was a ticket-holder it was already just a memory, and I heard someone talk about it and just thought it happened. Perhaps I long ago thought how cool it would be for them to do that, and over time I turned that into a memory of their having done it.
I don't know. It's a mystery.
One level of its significance to me, as a very amateur student of fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories, is how unreliable memories can be. When someone is talking about their memories of the JFK assassination, for example, many believers love to say "Why would they lie?" While there are many reasons why they might lie, they need not even be lying. They may honestly believe what they remember actually happened. But their honest belief has no bearing whatsoever on the likelihood of the event's reality. The only use memory has is to provide ideas for investigation. No memory can be reliable evidence in such a case.
Well, it's late, and I haven't talked about my 5K last Saturday (I did great, but it created some inner conflict) or my experience during my run today, or my growing desire to run in the Texas Independence Relay or a number of other items. I'll have to do all that....
Later....
Friday, January 4, 2008
Need to talk
But can't talk long tonight. It's already 10:45 and I'm tired. And I have to be at the lake at 6:15 tomorrow morning to fill my volunteer slot before the race, in which I am running. But it's just a 5K so I should be fine. I'm going to try to go sub 24. I don't know if I'll make it. We'll see. My ankle is sort of bothering me. That's never really gone away completely. And I haven't really eaten right for a race. Plus it's supposed to be really windy, which slows me down. Not necessarily relative to other people, but that's not the point. I'm not worried about anyone else.
Someone asked me the other day if it bothered me having "girls" beat me. I just looked at him as if he was crazy. I just said "No. Girls have been beating me all my life at one thing or another. Since I started riding the bike, I've ridden with lots of "girls" who can leave me in the dust. Running may be even worse, though it's hard to compare." (Or that's something like what I said.)
I don't know why I went into that little tantrum. That was kind of out of nowhere. It's not what I was going to write about at all. But when I start writing sometimes it's that way. What comes out is not what I expected or intended. I believe listening to novelists talk about how they write, I've heard some of them talk about how they have to wait and see where characters or plots take them, as if they were not in control of themselves when writing. I think I believe that. I'm no writer, but I've experienced a sense of "Why am I writing this?" before.
I don't understand something. Mississippi John Hurt is singing "Shake That Thing" and I don't know what "that thing" is. "Bought my babe a diamond ring, went back home and told her "Baby shake that thing."" Oh well, it's a mystery.
Anyway, what I'm thinking about is my shoes. As you know, I've struggled with shoes since the beginning. I think I'm starting to have issues because my shoes are worn out. I just checked and I've run about 410 miles since I started uploading from the Forerunner on Sept. 22. That day was a 16.8 mile run. I'd put a lot of miles on the shoes before that. Most of those miles have been on 3 pairs of shoes, though I have a 4th pair I stopped wearing because (close your ears if you are too delicate to hear this) (or skip the next 27 words) they stink so badly I can't stand to be near them. My other shoes don't smell like roses, but they are pretty innocuous. Very innocuous by comparison.
The rule of thumb (Does that phrase bother you out there? Some people at least pretend to be offended by it. Silly, I think.) is that one should wear running shoes between 300 and 500 miles at the outside. After that they are too beaten down. And one should not wear the same shoes every day. I don't know how much I've worn any one pair of these shoes, but at least some of them are getting up there. Say I've done 700 miles or so altogether. That's a WAG. But probably close. 3 pairs of shoes would be 233 miles per pair. If I did 50 miles in the stinkies, then the average would go down to 215 or so per pair. But since my Burns (one of the pairs -- my "racing flats") have seen fewer miles, there's a chance one or the other pair is over 300 now.
I guess this is not as bad as I was afraid it would be when I started this post. But it is definitely time to buy a couple more pairs of shoes.
I did not do New Year's Resolutions. Did all of you out there? I was thinking today I should set a goal or two for myself for the year. Run 2 marathons? Do a triathlon? (long sprint? Olympic? 70.3? Full Iron?) Goals are not the same as resolutions, are they?
But now I've got to get to bed. My eyes are burning. Do yours do that when you're tired?
I want to talk about writing, Tour de Georgia, and other stuff. But not tonight. Have I ever told my unreliable memory story? I was telling it tonight at REI. It's bad when I can't remember things I've talked about in the blog.
Someone asked me the other day if it bothered me having "girls" beat me. I just looked at him as if he was crazy. I just said "No. Girls have been beating me all my life at one thing or another. Since I started riding the bike, I've ridden with lots of "girls" who can leave me in the dust. Running may be even worse, though it's hard to compare." (Or that's something like what I said.)
I don't know why I went into that little tantrum. That was kind of out of nowhere. It's not what I was going to write about at all. But when I start writing sometimes it's that way. What comes out is not what I expected or intended. I believe listening to novelists talk about how they write, I've heard some of them talk about how they have to wait and see where characters or plots take them, as if they were not in control of themselves when writing. I think I believe that. I'm no writer, but I've experienced a sense of "Why am I writing this?" before.
I don't understand something. Mississippi John Hurt is singing "Shake That Thing" and I don't know what "that thing" is. "Bought my babe a diamond ring, went back home and told her "Baby shake that thing."" Oh well, it's a mystery.
Anyway, what I'm thinking about is my shoes. As you know, I've struggled with shoes since the beginning. I think I'm starting to have issues because my shoes are worn out. I just checked and I've run about 410 miles since I started uploading from the Forerunner on Sept. 22. That day was a 16.8 mile run. I'd put a lot of miles on the shoes before that. Most of those miles have been on 3 pairs of shoes, though I have a 4th pair I stopped wearing because (close your ears if you are too delicate to hear this) (or skip the next 27 words) they stink so badly I can't stand to be near them. My other shoes don't smell like roses, but they are pretty innocuous. Very innocuous by comparison.
The rule of thumb (Does that phrase bother you out there? Some people at least pretend to be offended by it. Silly, I think.) is that one should wear running shoes between 300 and 500 miles at the outside. After that they are too beaten down. And one should not wear the same shoes every day. I don't know how much I've worn any one pair of these shoes, but at least some of them are getting up there. Say I've done 700 miles or so altogether. That's a WAG. But probably close. 3 pairs of shoes would be 233 miles per pair. If I did 50 miles in the stinkies, then the average would go down to 215 or so per pair. But since my Burns (one of the pairs -- my "racing flats") have seen fewer miles, there's a chance one or the other pair is over 300 now.
I guess this is not as bad as I was afraid it would be when I started this post. But it is definitely time to buy a couple more pairs of shoes.
I did not do New Year's Resolutions. Did all of you out there? I was thinking today I should set a goal or two for myself for the year. Run 2 marathons? Do a triathlon? (long sprint? Olympic? 70.3? Full Iron?) Goals are not the same as resolutions, are they?
But now I've got to get to bed. My eyes are burning. Do yours do that when you're tired?
I want to talk about writing, Tour de Georgia, and other stuff. But not tonight. Have I ever told my unreliable memory story? I was telling it tonight at REI. It's bad when I can't remember things I've talked about in the blog.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Happy New Year
Good way to start the new year: 8.5 mile run. That's pretty weird, I guess. But I wasn't the only one. Bunch of folks out there. Went slowly. Still feeling the effects of the blood donation. No full sentences. Boring.
OK. I'll do some full sentences now. Just finished reading Jennifer's blog, in which she was talking about life after teaching. New artistic pursuits. Or if not exactly new, then more focused and serious, because she'll be counting on the income as a supplement to her (no doubt vast) post-teaching income. As I mentioned, I'm giving some thought to a new life pursuit, as well. Haven't heard back from Bronwen, though, so my thinking is not very productive yet. I've got to find out if it's realistic to really consider it.
Phone....
Sorry, that was Michelle asking if I want to go see Sweeney Todd, which we had talked about doing. Looks like I'm going to the 2:20 show at Northpark. I've been looking forward to this movie. It's a great broadway show. And I seem always to enjoy Johnny Depp. Did y'all see Benny and Joon? Interesting movie. If I'm going to the movie, I need to get going.
Later...
OK. I'll do some full sentences now. Just finished reading Jennifer's blog, in which she was talking about life after teaching. New artistic pursuits. Or if not exactly new, then more focused and serious, because she'll be counting on the income as a supplement to her (no doubt vast) post-teaching income. As I mentioned, I'm giving some thought to a new life pursuit, as well. Haven't heard back from Bronwen, though, so my thinking is not very productive yet. I've got to find out if it's realistic to really consider it.
Phone....
Sorry, that was Michelle asking if I want to go see Sweeney Todd, which we had talked about doing. Looks like I'm going to the 2:20 show at Northpark. I've been looking forward to this movie. It's a great broadway show. And I seem always to enjoy Johnny Depp. Did y'all see Benny and Joon? Interesting movie. If I'm going to the movie, I need to get going.
Later...
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