Running Revyou: Tron: Legacy, 3D, and Why Not, Jeff Bridges

It has been a couple of days since I saw Tron: Legacy (in 3D), and I've finally formed some thoughts about the movie.

I shoulda loved it - this film was targeted like a Predator drone strike at an audience just like me, nerdy Gen-Xers who saw the first one and fell madly a-tizzy, desperately wishing for light-cycles and skin-tight outfits with neon piping and helmets, imagining a created universe where our pale and chubby selves suddenly deserved skin-tight outfits and maybe didn't need helmets anymore but wore them just because they made us look cool.  To give you a sense of how bad it was, I pored over the encyclopedia - Worldbook, not Britannica (we're not made of money, son!) - looking for a "tron" entry, not realizing that it was a fragment of a portmanteau ("electron", duh), but searching for more of that glowy universe with disc battles.  And although Tron: Legacy was entertaining and stylish enough, it just wasn't as satisfying.

Forget the number of licks, I can get to the tootsie-roll filled pith of the problem in just one bite:  the internet is already here.

I mean, that was why we nerds geeked out so hard over the original Tron - unless you were reading William Gibson at the time, or even if you were, no one had ever conceived of an entire world generated inside a computer, Neal Stephenson hadn't yet used the term "avatar" (and forget about James Cameron smurfing it up), and the interwebs hadn't even had a glimmer of Second Life fizzling in a storm of penis-shaped avatars.  Sure, Tron: Legacy was stylish (what does it say about me now that what got me excited was, "wow, are those real Herman Miller chairs?  That's a nice dining set.  I love Kevin Flynn's apartment!"), but unlike the first one it wasn't style-defining.

What they did get right were the light-cycles, and I guess this is where the running part comes in.  Unlike the first movie, where the characters just sort of leaned over and grabbed little rods of light around which their conveyances digitally accreted, Tron: Legacy had a much cooler transformation - the characters run for several steps before leaping into the air hunched over in the stance that they take as they become the cycles themselves.  It's perfect running form, beautifully captured in slow-motion and skin-tight outfits, falling forward and catching themselves with the ideal midfoot strike.  If the movie did nothing else, it serves as a terrific instructional video for good running form.

A brief aside about 3D:  since Tron: Legacy was actually filmed in a 3D format I felt I should watch it that way.  I noticed that filmmakers, or at least this one, seem to be resorting to old 3D gimmicks like having something jump out of the screen to provoke a startle.  Another criticism is that adding depth to the screen seems oddly to diminish it;  adding the third dimension seems to draw attention to the fact that it's stuck in this 1.44:1 aspect ratio, that it's stuck in this box.  It may be because I'm not a creative type, but I just can't imagine a way that adding 3D would enhance a story's dramatic narrative - Precious wouldn't have been made any better had I been able to see Gabourey Sidibe's baby-bump in the third dimension.

Much of the rest of the film is a jumbled cacophony, fun, but a mess.  Jeff Bridges basically plays The Dude from The Big Lebowski inside a computer.  This more weathered Bridges' face is terrifically suited for that expression that says I have just been destroyed, as if Kali had just appeared as a plot-point (c.f. him in True Grit).  By the way, for all that talk about the CG young Jeff Bridges being so uncannily true-to-life, the only accuracy is that it was uncanny - the CG young Bridges just looks weird, I'm talking Polar Express levels of weird.  Wesley Snipes' character was campy and great, but 28 years ago his character would have been played by David Bowie himself rather than just a really good evocation of him.  The philosophical themes were right on the mark for a fan base stuck at the age of 12;  the writers couldn't seem to figure out if Flynn senior was right or not in his cyber-Buddhism - perhaps they were saying that you have to embrace your past and let go of your future, but I kinda think that's both glibly wrong-headed and giving the film too much credit.  If anything, perhaps you could say that Tron: Legacy, with its musings about the Promethean error of human-borne attempts at perfection, forms a better bookend to Black Swan than does The Wrestler.  Or maybe I'm giving myself too much credit.

At least they got the light-cycles right.  Although, perhaps since this is supposed to be a blog about running/exercise and is colored greenly, we shoulda been asking for light-bicycles.

The movie was kinda more this guy:

Actually, he's kinda awesome.

A Very Hilly, Very Muddy Run, No Light-Cycles, No Light-Bicycles Either
6.55 mi.  1 hr:0 min:57 sec.  9:18 pace.

The Holidays Can Be Heartbreaking

Whew!  So the wife and I have survived the sprinkling that Southern California has received over the past week with scant damage;  our little house is in the downtown area of our city so it's surrounded by concrete and adequate drainage, so the only problem I've discovered so far is that the moisture has made the redwood gate to our newish front fence swell to the point that we can't open it, so we've got to wait for a couple of days of sunshine to dry it out a bit - much milder than the flooding some other places have gotten.

A casual run this morning, and then off to work this afternoon.  Now, you'll thank me for this info later, say, in the event that you've got to ever make a trip in, but for any modern Emergency Department the busiest times (and therefore the longest waits) are Fridays, largely because clinics are closing and people can't get in to see their regular doctors and therefore have to see their irregular doctors, i.e. yours truly, and Mondays, because clinics have been closed over the weekend and people haven't been able to see their regular doctors and therefore etc. etc.  (Once everyone else realizes that the world actually runs on a 24/7/365 schedule and doesn't shut down simply because you've put out the "closed for business" sign, perhaps I'll be able to get that cocktail at 4:30 in the morning... besides at airports...)

Besides that, the other busiest times tend be the day before, and then the day after, a holiday.  You can imagine that in addition to clinic closures, the day before a holiday people are rushing around to finish last-minute tasks, tempers flare, anticipation makes the blood boil, and so on.  The day of a holiday tends to be a bit more relaxed, as most people who are well enough to be home stay at home where they spend the day oversalting the food they're overeating, arguing with semi-estranged family members, temporarily trebling their 2,000 kcal ADA diets... it's all of the expectation, I tell you - when you expect people to be happy you're essentially demanding they be happy and when they're not the disappointment can be crushing and then the day following is spent mopping up the destruction that remains.

I'm not encouraging anyone to be grinchy by any means (although I've had that reputation in the past);  rather, I would like for everyone to relax with the expectations, let people be who they are, learn to forgive, learn to be grateful, and when things don't go your way, learn to let go.  The best holiday t.v. show (besides the Charlie Brown Christmas - best holiday t.v. special ever!) was the M*A*S*H episode "Death Takes a Holiday" - remember that one?  (As an aside, I realize that I'm a bit zealous about confirming to everyone that I am, in all of the meanings of the word, an American through and through, but Korean people, you know I still love you, and I want to encourage you all to start writing about something besides the Korean War already - there's so much else to gripe about.) (Double aside - M*A*S*H is the best medical show ever.  It was funny, it was dramatic, it was medically accurate - Alan Alda tells a story about being in South America with a bowel obstruction, and as the surgeon describes the operation he's about to undergo, Alan Alda goes, "hey, that's an end-to-end anastamosis!")  B.J. doesn't want the man they're operating on to die on Christmas Day, so Hawkeye simply turns the clock forward so they can declare him on the 26th - I love me some Hawkeye Pierce.

The message:  stay healthy during the holidays, keep exercising but remember it's okay to take a day or two off, and hey, I like you, so try not to come to my workplace as a guest!

Postdiluvian Sun-Run
5.04 mi.  39 min.:19 sec.  7:48 pace.

Nike Free Run+ Review - Update!

I feel terrific today - 2010 shoulda realized that it's got nothing on me!

And even though it's pouring outside I felt like running outside, except I didn't, because I wanted to be sure that my shoes were dry in time for tomorrow's run, and that led me to think it's high time for a bit of an update, a review review.

The Nike Free Run+ are meant to be worn sockless, with a lightweight mesh upper that's meant to be sock-like, and I tried that in the beginning, but quickly developed a few hot spots that blistered - ugh.  So instead, I did what some other folks have been doing by taking out the insole and wearing socks to make up the difference in inside-shoe volume with the added advantage of lending the sole greater flexibility.  Which is how I've been running for the approximately 500 miles I've put on them since I bought the pair of shoes in August.  So figuring that I've probably given them maybe just enough time to break in I thought I'd try them today the way they were meant to be worn, and with great success.  I might even run the LA Marathon sockless.

I love rain!  My feet don't hurt!  I feel great!  Runner's high, apparently!

Rainy Day Treadmill Run For Dry Shoes and Prevention of Pneumonia
5.06 mi.  45 min.  8:53 pace.  "Wolf Blitzer: The Situation Room" w/Candy Crowley filling in for the Blitz, and "John King: USA" on the t.v.

Running Revue: Mindfulness

It's mid-December and fall has finally arrived in Southern California.

Now, I'm not one for all of that year's-end-new-year reset business, 'cause face it, I'm really at core a Westerner and as such a believer in forward motion and progress, and all of that Eastern cyclicality stuff doesn't resonate with me, but I'm pretty ready for 2010 to be over.

Not only has it been a year of a number of personal setbacks but I'm now also working on my third cold of the season, which means that I'm buying out my pharmacy's stock of decongestants and may have to turn to local meth dealers ("no, you don't understand, I don't want the finished product, I want the Sudafed") for relief.  I'm looking forward to 2010 being over.

But one of the things that I'm learning is to be grateful for the way things are, even the crummy stuff, to be thankful for what is in the present - gratitude is why Thanksgiving rules the holidays in my book, way better than the ambition, the greed, and the crass commercialism of contemporary Christmases.  That mindfulness, presence, means that I appreciate this moment, let go of the past, and hope for the future.  Being in the moment - you can tell that it's powerful and worth something because, ironically, it was when Faust finally learned to be in the present that the Devil came for his soul.  Being in the moment gave the Star Wars prequels their only cool scene, that one where Qui-Gon Jinn is stuck in that weird, pointless series of force-field airlocks while he's giving chase to Darth Maul, and instead of pacing in agitation he just accepts the moment, shuts of his lightsaber and kneels to wait.  *SPOILER ALERT*  Sure, things didn't turn out the way he'd hoped, but accepting even defeat was when Obi Wan became really cool in the first Star Wars movie.

And just like being thankful for the past is part of being now, not being afraid of the future is part of being mindful, not worrying if 2011 will be like 2010, letting go of the what if I do a bad job, what if nobody likes me, what if Darth Maul lightsabers me through the breadbasket.

So even though 2010 majored in Suckness in the undergraduate college of life, I'm grateful, and come to think of it, there's actually a lot of good stuff that happened this year too (like running and starting this blog).  When I run, I can't let the distance ahead of me daunt me, I can't do anything about the mile that just passed, I can only put one foot in front of the other, and it's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you get to date the cheerleaders at the end (and my wife was a cheerleader, thank you very much).  Life isn't a marathon, it's an ultramarathon, with all of the attendant aches, pains, and sweat drying onto salty patches on your skin, along with the good stuff, like Antoine Dodson, double rainbows, and the alleged runner's high that everyone keeps talking about and that I have yet to experience.  And like the cool kids are saying, I've got to pick myself up, dust my shoulders off, and keep going.  Because if I don't keep moving, I don't get to eat.

Wait a minute... overly general platitudes... vague positivity... so this is the runner's high... I always thought being high meant that there'd be more hallucinating involved...

A Casual Jog, More Like a Stroll, in the Damp
6.93 mi.  56 min.:52 sec.  8:12 pace.

I Feel the Need... the Need... For Distance...

I have a dog his name is Fido
I have raised him from a pup
He can stand up on his hind legs
If you hold his front legs up
(If you hold his front legs up)


Little did I realize when I learned that song as a kid (in Boy Scout chorale of all things - my merit badges were in alto soloing and beadwork - could my childhood have been any gayer?) that it was actually a paean of pride in domestic mediocrity, the pleasure the child singing takes in his Woebegone dog's ability to perform a minor feat provided it has some assistance.

It's an entirely natural inclination to take pride in the things with which one identifies, but it's when you start to conceive of a world around you and understand your limitations with respect to that world that you grow out of childhood and become an adult.  It's not that the limitations are a bad thing, but rather a mature understanding of who you are.  For example, when Bruce Wayne says that Batman has no limitations, he's both right and wrong - the persona of Batman is what allows Bruce to extend beyond himself and perform heroic acts, but he himself as Bruce Wayne is the one acting as Batman, and as such it would be healthier for him to begin to understand those limits and thus become a mature superhero (c.f. Aquaman in retirement) (okay, I made that one up.  c.f. the Green Lantern in retirement, or perhaps Middle-Aged Man) (wow, circa 90's Mike Myers, in a tip of the bruque to all you hosers out there) (eh).

The point being that I am under no illusions that I could ever be the fastest and win a race, like the L.A. Marathon.  I mean, there's the educator in me who wants to tell everyone that they can do whatever it is that they set their minds on, sky's the limit etc. etc., but come on, there's no way I'm ever going to be the first one to break the tape at one of these things, and part of the point of the above Batman digression is that I don't have to be.  There's a whole lotta talk about how in a race your only true opponent is yourself, but I think of that as a bunch of new age nonsense, blah blah blah, 'cause I mean, come on, how do you beat yourself, with a mirror?  Punching yourself in the face?  Come on!  To me, the whole challenge has been just to finish, to see how far I can actually run, how long I can keep putting one Nike in front of the other, how far I can challenge myself to keep going (oh - I get that whole "your only opponent is yourself" thing now) despite the desire to stop, sit down and eat a burrito instead.

The point for me is to see how far I can run, the speed thing really is secondary (perhaps I can think of these distances in terms of how much chocolate milk I get to drink - I could say how many Chocolate Milk Equivalents I ran today) since I know I'm not winning.  Which makes me wonder about the giving out of medals to all finishers of marathons.  On the one hand, I get it, just finishing makes you a winner and all, but on the other hand, isn't that kinda saying we're all above average - essentially, that we can stand up on our hind legs provided someone holds our front legs up?  'Cuz after all, the point, and perhaps the new mantra, is just finish.

Two Dam Hilly
10.14 mi.  1 hr:31 min:02 sec.  8:58 pace.

There's No Pace Like "Om" for the Holidays

Okay, so this post has nothing to do with the holidays whatsoever, except that it's now, during the holidays, that I've decided that I need a mantra.  For when I'm running.

Apparently, it helps to have a word or a phrase that you can repeat to yourself (in your head) (so if your mantra is "blood", you're not running down the street muttering, "blood, Blood, BLOOD") that'll allow you to escape your present circumstance and transport you away from your aching knees and into the much-vaunted and I think probably overrated "runner's high" (I mean, come on, how high are you really going to get for free?) (and frankly, I think the "high" is just a bit of cerebral hypoxia making you feel spacey).  Seeing as how namyohorengekyo is already taken, it looks like I've gotta keep looking.

My friend Orrine had offered to let me use hers, but I'm afraid I've already forgotten what it is, and mantras are probably a bit like mnemonics, it's best when you come up with your own.

Like, I was going to try using "Obama, Biden, Obama, Biden," but I guess that one's my wife's.

Another Run on the Former Train Tracks by my House and Then Down to the Park
5.01 mi.  43 min.  8:38 pace.

Pale, Chubby and Slow v. Nasty, Brutish and Short

I've been a city kid all of my life, and growing up on the mean streets of L.A. meant that what outdoors-time I had was limited to concrete and asphalt, and the occasional roll through the prickly grass on the hill of the George C. Page museum, hoping I wouldn't get up with dog poo on my shirt.  My race was pale, personality chubby, and the environment I grew up in was Hobbesian.  Couple my urban upbringing with a love for our local public library and you guessed it, I was the last pick when it came time to choose teams.

As I may have mentioned before, I joined the high school football team for a couple of years on a lark but then discovered that I was slow and not very big, and since the movie "Rudy" hadn't been made yet I decided to quit after my sophomore year of getting concussed.  And although I'd always tried to exercise in some fashion (calisthenics, light jogging) into my adulthood, let's just say that people compliment me on my quick wit and natural beauty rather than my athleticism.

When I started running in earnest this year I even did that indoors, at the gym on a treadmill (ah, climate control) since a big part of my development as a nerd was an aversion to perspiration and getting dirty.  I managed to start getting outdoors this past summer to start running around our local cities and in the process developed a beautiful farmer's tan (my wife likes to say that my face and arms are like Obama, and my torso's like Biden - "Obama, Biden, Obama, Biden" - you could say my wife's a funny lady, or you can say that there's not much excitement going on at our house).  But lately, I've discovered a nascent fondness for trail running.

Frankly, I live in a suburban/urban area (north Orange County) and it's not exactly the great outdoors, but I've found a couple of trails that wind through the local parks.  They're not exactly the Appalachian Trail, unless the Appalachian Trail passes by brightly colored jungle gyms on a frequent basis, but they suffice.

There are trees of varying heights and kinds, grasses, insects, horse and dog poos, perhaps the coyote variant as well, but they're all dirt, and they're all away from the fantastically inattentive drivers who keep forgetting to look for pedestrians.  I've found myself gravitating to them more and more, even the abandoned train tracks by my house that are much more runnable now that the trains have stopped traversing them but even before they've fully been converted to trails, peopled by the occasional huddles of day laborers reading the paper and also escaping the din of motorized traffic.  And it's not that I endorse some absurdist Luddite worldview with a romanticization of preindustrial agrarianism, hells to the no, I love cities 'cause that's where the rock and roll and the museums and the bars are, but when I run, I'm beginning to like running on dirt.

Which is why my current choice of running shoe is a little funny.  The minimalist movement in running endorses less supportive (or perhaps less restrictive) shoes, which was one of the reasons I bought these, the Nike Free Run+:

They're pretty good looking shoes, no?  By the way, the "+" in their name is because of the following:

That grey oval in the footbed is where the Nike footpod of the "Nike+" line of products is supposed to go.  Anyway, those grooves in the sole you saw in the picture above this one are sipes, cuts made into the sole in order to make them more flexible:

And they do the job - the soles are very flexible indeed.  Now, you may be wondering, isn't the point of wearing shoes to be inflexible so you have some support?  Well, the minimalist response is that greater flexibility is important because it forces the arch of your foot to work, which ultimately strengthens it.  By the way, I've always had flat feet.  My childhood summers at the city pool were spent wistfully looking at the elegant wet footprints that other kids left behind, with their curved soles and the toes perfectly arranged above them, whereas since I had no arch I left what looked like a potato crowned by five circles.  But the idea being that more flexibility and less support encourages the bones and ligaments of your feet to do what's natural and thereby strengthening them.

The unintended consequence of using what are essentially urban running shoes on trails is that now, every time I get home I've got approximately a metric ton of pebbles stuck in the sipes.  The shoes themselves are serving their purpose very well, i.e. keeping my Obama-Biden farmer's tan wicked awesome, and I've been very pleased with them, but when I finally wear them out I'll have to start looking in to trail-friendlier alternatives.

And then I'll start looking in to ways to get rid of this crazy farmer's tan.

Train Tracks Trail Run
2.48 mi.  21 min.  8:18 pace.

Born to Blog, or, Speling and Grammars

So this here is a blog about running, meaning that the whole raison d'etre* of the endeavor is writing, no?

And as anyone in earshot will often hear me loudly and proudly, maybe even a little flamboyantly, proclaim, I Was an English Major.  As such I'd like to devote a little cyber-space to me waxing rhapsodaisically about my favorite of all languages, English!

It's the poor bastard child of many parents, the linguistic equivalent of growing up FLDS.  It has just under four times as many words as does French, and while francophones go on and on about how idiomatic their tongue is, English not only buries them, it takes them over preemptively.  There are expressions in English that are used in microcultures, ones that you may never hear until they somehow float into your awareness through books, papers, broadcasts, along with their mutations, some of which make sense, some of which clearly don't.  "Like a kid in a candy shop."  "Dumb as a brick."  "Hit with the ugly stick."  "Hit every branch falling off the ugly tree."  "Kitty-corner", "katty-corner", and "cater-corner", all meaning diagonally situated.  Or "cater-wumped", meaning turned-about.  "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."  One of my new favorites is to describe moments of weakness by telling someone, "you folded faster than Superman on laundry day."

This sort of richness may explain why foreigners, ESL'ers like Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, and Andre Codrescu chose to write in a tongue not their mothers', a palette of colors available to them in English that wasn't in their native languages.  Hmmm, maybe that's the reason why Samuel Beckett decided to write in French, an intriguing thought.

Of course, students of English have to get by the beguiling spelling problems the language has, which, like traffic in Bombay, obeys no rules... usually.  Like, how do you pronounce "cough", "bough", "though", "tough", and "through"?  Who would have thought?  No rules.  Or most of the time, you'd say the "tw" the same way, as in "twill", "twine", "twain" and "twee", but poor old "two" gets second place pronunciation and nothing but trouble.  You'd like "lead by example" but not be "rigid as a lead pipe."  Nor do you want to read what you've already read.  Of course, any time anyone tries to teach you a rule, like "I before E except after C," some sleight of hand introduces another exception.

Politicians give us neologisms like "normalcy", "misunderestimate" and "refudiate", as well as new uses for old words that seem wrong but lack robust grounds for objection, like "growing our economy."  Speling is, of course, important - you want to shoot ordnance and write ordinances (although perhaps you'd want to use ordnance on an ordinance), eat a kernel and salute a colonel, and know if you're there, it's theirs, if the fowl is foul, if you've got caulk or... never mind.  And don't get me started on grammars, because, look, pardon my French, but as failbook has taught us, there's a pretty important distinction between "f*ckin' a, dude!" and "f*ckin' a dude!"

Toss into the mix English's globality - it's a Language Without Borders (N.B.:  Doctors Without Borders = good.  Doctors Without Boundaries = bad.) - and you get England and America, two countries separated by a common language, and the celebratory confusion which may-in-fact-be-purposeful-but-likely-isn't of Engrish, and you get a neo-Babel ziggurat that is the perfect reflection of and monument to the befuddling of diplomacy, commerce, and fiendships - ahem, friendships - that characterize our postmodern world.

Ingliche iz phun!

*So, I refuse to italicize "foreign" words and phrases like "raison d'etre" if they're in common use in English.  My rationale is that if they're in common use, they're ours now, dammit - I drink your linguistic milkshake!


DOCTORS WHO WRITE AND DO NOT SUCK:
Stephen Bergman, AKA Samuel Shem (The House of God)
Ethan Canin
Abraham Verghese
Anton Chekhov
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Khaled Hosseini
John Keats
Stanislaw Lem
W. Somerset Maugham

DOCTORS WHO WRITE AND PUBLISH THEMSELVES LIKE TOTALLY FOR FREE ON BLOGSPOT:
You can thank me later.

Dam Hilly Run:
Who knew there was a dam in Fullerton?

7.07 mi.  1 hr:02 min:06 sec.  8:42 pace.

Running Revue

So, looking at some other (more successful) running blogs, it appears that a lot of them involve the reviewing of gear.

That makes sense;  you review stuff which then directs people to the advertising on your site which then encourages people to buy stuff which then expands the Chinese economy (which should probably have been Guns 'N Roses' album name instead, really).

Given that I can only make so many absurdist observations over a period of time (I'm contractually limited) (okay, who am I kidding, I'd kill even to have a contract that might limit me) (actually, my contract at work might limit me - better check), I'm beginning to think that perhaps I also should review running related stuff on my site, which would with any luck result in endorsements, book deals, and the naming of products and children after me.

If you have any ideas as to what you'd like for me to review, there're a couple of criteria to meet:
1)  Given that I'm stretched for cash (school loans+mortgage+my wife and I subscribe to 30 magazines = cotton, rather than silk, boxers) (okay, if anyone else was grossed out by that image, let me just throw in that I was too), it has to be free, something you can lend me, something that a manufacturer would be willing to send to me, or something I already have.
2)  Nothing illegal.

And that's it!  Now, let the reviewing begin:

CHOCOLATE LACTAID
For those of you who've read this previous post you know about my deep, soul-connection with chocolate milk and why it was so gratifying to discover that I might need it now that I'm a (albeit sloooow) runner.  Well, what I've actually been imbibing has been Chocolate Lactaid.  Now, unlike a lot of Asians, I'm actually not all that lactose intolerant, and I can really clog my arteries with all manner of cheeses and ice cream (and unlike a lot of Asians, whiskey et al does not make me red in the face;  my tolerance for cheese and booze borders on alarming) (but mostly for my weight), but for some reason regular ol' chocolate milk gave me some gastric distress.  Chocolate Lactaid pretty much solved that problem while still providing all of the sugars, fats, proteins, sodium, etc. etc. that's a benefit of drinking chocolate milk as a recovery beverage.  Without all of that uncomfortable shifting around in one's seat trying to avoid the opposite of a gas shortage.  You all know what I'm talking about.

Anyway:

The Run During Which I Discover a Mushroom Village:

Where're the Smurfs?

6.81 mi.  1 hr.  8:49 pace.

The World Looks Different on Foot

Even though I've only started running in earnest this year, I've spent a lot of time with my boots on the ground in a lot of... different places in this old world, and I've accumulated some photos which I've posted here.
All that time and only 97 pics!?

Music (cont'd)

So since I'm not listening to music when I run, I've noticed that at times my thoughts start to race.  This hill is steep.  Those are nice houses.  I wonder how much they are?  I wonder how much my house is?  Why do they call it "underwater"?  It should be something like, "in deep something"... oh, that explains the water part.  I should cut my hair tonight.  Dog poo!  Smile and wave.  Those clouds are pretty.  That cloud looks like Jack Lemmon.  Actually, it looks like Martha Raye.  Did that truck have "F.U. Obama" painted on the window?  No, F.U., man!  Go, America!  Waitaminute, "You" starts with "Y", not "U" - maybe that didn't mean what I thought it meant.  Go, English majors!  Wow, a cemetery.  Look at those kids.  Are they laughing at me?  I wonder if this Fuel Belt makes me look fat.  This hill is hilly.

Nobody Told Me That There Were These Trails in Fullerton, Upon Which I Took the Following Photos:
9.57 mi.  1 hr:27 min:29 sec.  9:08 pace.

Music

Do you listen to music when you run?  I don't.

It's not because I'm a crazy-intense runner or some kinda purist;  the amount of gear I have on me each time I go out for a trot (reminder:  GPS watch, heart rate monitor, Fuel Belt with gels and varying number of water bottles, water bottle in hand, harmonica) (okay, not the harmonica) should remind you that if anything, I'm a bit of a maximalist when it comes to running gear.

And it's not that I corollarily think that listening to music while you run is a bad idea.  It's just that I don't want to be distracted from running, in a couple of ways.  In the most practical sense I want to have some situational awareness so I don't accidentally walk into traffic or something.  But also in the sense that needing to be distracted while one runs makes it seem a bit like needing to be distracted when you're at the dentist (hmm, I politely decline the offer of headphones when I'm at the dentist's as well), which suggests that running is somehow a painful thing from which we need diversion, rather than an activity we need to engage in entirely.

Don't get me wrong, I love music, and it's not that music isn't kinda playing in my head - you see, when I love, Love, LOVE a song I'll play it over and over until I've memorized each little scratchy, off tune bits (most of my beloved music came before Autotune), to the point that I can satisfactorily reproduce a song in my head;  if I'm going to listen to music, I'm gonna listen the hell out of it.  So often, when I'm running, I'll have a loop of music playing through my head.

What I've noticed is that the tune isn't necessarily an inspiring one, e.g. the Rocky theme over and over again.  The thing that I've observed is that the music I replay in my head is something I can set my cadence (that is, the rhythm and tempo of my footfalls) to.  For example, I've had many people tell me that Elliott Smith's music is so somber that it makes them want to stab themselves in the heart twice, but to me songs like Speed Trials and Alameda are perfectly timed for an ideal cadence;  I wonder if their tempos are multiples of 90, which apparently is the ideal cadence for runners.  It's the same idea behind using the tempo of "Stayin' Alive" to maintain an ideal rate of chest compressions during CPR, the thought that a song can set the rate at which we do something;  even though he may not have been a runner, perhaps Elliott Smith was tapping in to our universal need to run when he wrote his music with the speed that he had in mind, and even though I don't listen to music when I'm running, perhaps one of the first things music did to us as humans was set the pace by which we ran.

By the way, one of the songs that also often plays in my head when I run is the Young Chuck Norris.

No Run Today Because I Spent the Entire Day at Work After a Vacation During Which I Took Pictures Like This:

And This:

Ultrarunning is Biblical

Did you know that ultrarunning is in the bible?  Check out the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings, Ch. 18, vv. 42, 46:  "Elijah went up to the top of Mt. Carmel....  And the hand of the LORD was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel."  The dude outraced a chariot and a wicked king by the power of God - holy s#!t - literally!  (Literally holy, not literal s#!t.)

Okay, so there's some dispute as to whether Elijah actually outpaced Ahab's chariot or if the passage means something else, and the actual distance was only 17 miles and not an ultra distance or even a full marathon, but I still like the idea that running is all over the bible.

On Treadmills, You Don't Outrun Anything, Except Perhaps Cardiovascular Disease:
3.37 mi.  30 min.  8:54 pace.