running

I woke up this morning a little earlier than I wanted to, and realized after a while that "I want to run" was running around and around in my head. That seemed a little bizarre even to me, but I decided to listen. I usually run Mon. Wed. Fri, but I decided to go ahead and run Sunday instead of Monday. It was a lovely morning, but my hip does hurt more now. I had this problem when I first started and I kept going slowly and it slowly went away. It came back a couple of weeks ago when I tried picking up my feet more when I run. I've stopped doing that and I got my new orthotics and I'm putting ice on it and trusting it will go away.

Ride Report: Tour de Paws

I did a 40 mile ride last weekend, the first ride over 30 miles I've done since mid-June. So signing up to do a rolling 61 mile ride today was pushing myself, and I had no goal to go fast. My riding partner and I decided to get an early start while it was still cool and we got off about 8:15. The peloton didn't pass us until after the first rest stop. The ride was extremely well organized--mostly lightly traveled roads and good rest stops and sag. We started and ended at a church that was open with bathrooms, etc.

The first 20 miles seemed easy, the second section was harder (and with one particularly steep hill). My riding partner started to have bad cramps in his legs and turned back after leaving the second rest stop. But after riding the sag wagon to the third rest stop he got back on his bike. I rode on when he stopped because of cramps again, but after pushing his bike up that hill he was able to ride the last 10 miles. He was having cramps in several different places in his legs so it may have been an electrolyte issue--I gave him a couple of succeed capsules, which I take when I ride long in hot weather. I started after reading the stories of the marathoners who were dangerously low on electrolytes--the newspaper coverage tended to say they drank too much water but the other side of that is not taking in enough sodium. It is hard to drink too much water--someone in a running group did a weight test recently and found he was losing a pound of water for every 20 minutes he ran.

The last 10 miles there were a couple of sections where I was hot and my back was sore and I wasn't enjoying myself. But then I would cheer up again when there was something interesting to see. I passed a big plant compressing natural gas and an apple orchard with branches so loaded with apples they were bent to the ground and I was passed twice by a tractor with a disk plow (uphill--I was as fast as he was downhill). After the ride I ate hot dogs without buns and tiny amounts of baked beans and chips and my blood glucose still went a little high--I don't have that post-exercise carb uptake that other people write about. Still, I did a couple of errands on the way home and got home feeling charged up, though my legs feel virtuously sore.

middle school

I gave a talk to my daughter's middle school class today, on the history of computers. I got lucky, I started out by asking them what questions one might ask about the history of computers and what I got from them had about a 60% overlap with what I had planned to cover. Then they didn't want to stop asking questions, some somewhat random. The school's computer projector turned out at the last minute to be missing--I should have commented on the dangers of dependence on technology. But I always somewhat enjoy having to wing it when the technology is down; the pieces tend to come together in interesting ways.

bike ride

I had a lovely bike ride before dinner today in the new cooler weather. I just did my Old Six Mile Highway loop of a little more than an hour. About 3/4 of the way home I saw an owl fly over me and land in a tree near the road, and I stopped my bike to look at it. It was big and brown with no ear tufts--a barred owl. It felt like a good omen.

Hurricane Katrina

I believe in the principle that if you can't help someone who is in pain, at least don't avert your eyes. But I've been slow to understand and haven't had anything of my own to say. I read some of the live blog from New Orleans. I remember the mud we shoveled out of houses north of Charleston when I went for a weekend to help after hurricane Hugo. I invited my students to write reflections on what we might learn about technology from the situation in New Orleans.

What I would like to see discussed further is the future impact of global warming. Does it make any sense to rebuild a city much of which is already below sea level if sea level is going to increase 3 feet by the end of the century? That number comes from a Japanese environmental site, many estimates are lower but at least some of those presume no increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Could New Orleans the commercial center be rebuilt somewhere else, leaving the old city as a tourist attaction only (as when Houston replaced Galveston)?

visiting my son

My son's boarding school is less than two hours away, so we drove up this afternoon to take him out to dinner. He clearly is adjusting well. Still no complaints (though it is typical of him not to talk about problems until they are over). I asked him if the adjustment was still hard or whether it had started to get easier and he said it has gotten easier, the week had gone very fast. Progress reports from teachers are beginning to trickle in and look pretty good. The report from the math teacher was phrased rather negatively, but the learning resource teacher said my son understands his math so hopefully it is a matter of figuring out expectations. My son is rather proud that he is neater and more organized than his roommate--he is used to being the one everyone else tries to organize.

My new hero

is Sister Madonna Buder. She recently won her age group at Ironman Canada: swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles and running 26.2 miles, all in 16 hours and 46 minutes. She is 75 years old and a Roman Catholic nun. She started running at age 48 and then took up triathlons. She holds two age group records at the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii and four for Ironman Canada.