Sony Reader

In a fit of extravagance, I bought a Sony Reader. I must admit that the ad about never again finishing your last book while on the plane half way to California got me. I'm intending to use it for traveling and carry it around for unexpected waiting time; I haven't actually sat down to read a book on it yet.

But some first impressions. The easiest thing to do with it is to buy books from the Sony Connect Store . They have over 12,000 titles, which if you aren't into bestsellers isn't really very many. But certainly I can find books there for traveling, when I like to hide in a mystery anyway. Those books are easy to read, with three choices of type size, though I hear illustrations aren't always good.

The next easiest option is Manybooks, which has taken books from Project Gutenberg and formatted them for Sony and made them available for free. They say they have over 16,000 books. Silk Pagoda has 10,000 books on a DVD for $24.71 (free shipping) formatted for Sony. Other Project Gutenberg books can be read on the reader, but in PDF form the type is much too small for my old eyes. It is a little better in landscape mode, but still hard to read. There are several programs available to translate PDFs and documents into more readable form, but I tried two and couldn't get either to work. MobileRead Network is the place to find geeks discussing these. I tried downloading a Project Gutenberg book as plain text, and the text size shows up fine (and adjustable) on the reader, but with very irregular line lengths (the plain text file had hard line breaks for lines longer than the reader accomodated, even in landscape mode).

Note: a later post has solutions to some of these problems.

Race Report: 10 K

In honor of Thomas Green Clemson's 200th birthday, the Sons and Daughters of Dear Old Clemson Road Race ran from Clemson University to the green in Pendleton. Fun to run from one town to another, but with a long hill from 4 to 5 miles. This was the first time I had run a stand-alone 10 K.

I ate oatmeal (with heavy cream and strawberries) about an hour and a half before the race and a Lara bar maybe 15 minutes before the start. The main excitement waiting around for the start was that busses kept snagging the starting line banner; finally the rope broke. I was frustrate to turn on my Garmin Forerunner 305 and have it say low battery--since I last charged it I used it only for an hour's run Wednesday. Now I know to be more cautious about fully charging it before a race.

There were fewer than 100 people running, a lot of them students. But then I met some people, I think employees of the campus police station, who clearly weren't serious runners, so I had hopes it wouldn't be so lonely a race. I also taked to the folks from Terry Times who were doing the timing and they assured me they would keep the finish line up for all the finishers and post all the times.

The course started out downhill and then was pretty steadily uphill for a mile or so. My GPS only lasted half a mile, so I focused on running by effort, and particularly keeping my effort up when going downhill. A man in front of me was doing walk run intervals--he would walk until I had nearly caught up and then run much faster than me. I had the feeling he was pacing himself by not letting me catch up. But there were two women ahead of us who weren't pulling farther and farther ahead. The first water stop had run out of cups, but they still had water so I cupped my hand under the spigot and drank from that. The two women ahead were doing walk run intervals even on the long downhill, so I figured that was my chance to catch up with them. I actually passed the man first, when he stopped with stomach problems. I passed the two women on the long uphill after 4 miles, even though I walked the steeper parts of it.

The last mile was downhill and then gently up. I saw a couple more people ahead, but I didn't succeed in gaining much on them. The last .2 miles was uphill and hard. I finished a few seconds over 1:17. My PR for the distance is 1:15, and that in a triathlon, but I was still pretty pleased. It was nice to have passed three people, and my pace of 12:23 was almost a minute per mile faster than the 10 mile race two weeks ago (13:19).

I thought I might win my age group, as my fast friend wasn't there and there weren't many runners over 30. I got beat just by a couple of minutes in my age group, though the winner of women 60-69 was more than five minutes faster. I did win a prize at the drawing--a $35 gift certificate at a flower shop. I couldn't think of anything to save it for so I stopped on the way home and used it to buy yellow lilies, purple flowers whose name I don't know, and white snapdragons. It makes a handsome bouquet on our kitchen table.

what is deepest

Dr. Hinson told this story in his sermon today about a Quaker thinker who was one of his teachers:

One last word should be added about Douglas Steere’s understanding of his vocation. I think he practiced it before, but he got a phrasing for it from Martin Buber in 1951. In a Meeting at Haverford College someone stood up and said, “The greatest thing one can do for another is . . .” I don’t remember the complete statement. Buber did not immediately respond, but a short time later he said, “No, the greatest thing one can do for another is to confirm what is deepest in another.” Douglas Steere made confirming what is deepest in others the object of his life and ministry. source

Dr. Hinson called on us to do the same. Yes.

Kanuga

We are at our church's annual retreat at Kanuga. Much to my surprise (it turns out a new member of the church has much better connections to retreat leaders) we have an amazing leader, Glen Hinson. He taught for more than 30 years at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. How he avoided getting kicked out sooner is not clear to me.

When Southern Baptist Convention President Bailey Smith [said] in 1980: "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew." A furor ensued, with then-Southern Seminary professor E. Glenn Hinson saying that statements like Smith's "are the stuff from which holocausts come." (source)

Hinson now teaches at a Baptist seminary in Kentucky associated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (breakaway moderate southern Baptists). He told some good stories and spoke in a way that got through to me about how we struggle to believe in our core (not just in our head) that God loves us. I asked him if he knew my former therapist, and he said K. was one of his first five Ph.D. students.

I enjoyed my afternoon bike ride despite a very strong wind, though it left me a bit windburned. The river was still flooded from Thursday's hard rain; in fact I came to one place where the road was closed because of high water. I was 20 miles into a 25 mile ride and didn't have a map of anything but the route I was following (so I didn't know a way around). The water had gone down and there were only a few inches over the road at the yellow line, so I snuck through the barrier and rode the flooded road.

Nutrition

I just saw a link and was reminded that I love the article Michael Pollan published in the New York Times magazine a few weeks ago on nutrition. I don't follow all of his ideas, for example I eat a lot of meat in order to eat low carb to control my diabetes. But it is one of the few mainstream places where I have seen the idea:

indeed, many date the current obesity and diabetes epidemic to the late 1970s, when Americans began binging on carbohydrates, ostensibly as a way to avoid the evils of fat.

But I particularly like the debunking of the latest-research approach to nutrition. I do take a vitamin pill since I was diagnosed with diabetes, but I carefully picked one that had moderate rather than high amounts of vitamins and did not try to include all the minerals (I've read too much about copper that sounds worrisome).

monthly totals

swimming: 10 workouts for 11 hours 45 minutes
biking: 5 rides for 54.5 miles in 4 hours 30 minutes
running: 12 runs for 59.2 miles in 14 hours 45 minutes

With some cold weather and some weekends away I didn't get much cycling in, but 31 hours for the month isn't bad for February. It's still close to 8 hours a week.

race results

The results from Saturday's race are posted, but only through runner 207 who finished at 1:59:58. So apparently there was a 2 hour cutoff time, though I saw nothing on the web site about that and there were still people and a clock at the finish line when I finished (and they took the tab off my race number). I suppose I don't need to know how far I was behind the second-to-last finisher, but it bothers me some not to be listed as a finisher. I emailed the race director a couple of days ago but haven't received any reply.

Ah well, I'm looking forward to my next race: the Sons and Daughters of Dear Old Clemson Road Race. I've not done a stand-alone 10 k before; from two international distance triathlons my personal best for 10 k is 1:15:06. A good goal to try to beat. It may not be easy--the fourth mile of the course is a very long fairly steep uphill on Pendleton Road into Pendleton.