Run, Turtle, Run!

This article from the New York Times Magazine scares the bejeezus out of me - and makes me thankful for my relative web anonymity. I’ve seen “trolls” on various web forums, but I’ve never witnessed anything like this.

RUN: I Need A Better Camera-Phone

Originally uploaded by t.turtle

Got caught in a downpour on my way to my track workout today. Any sane person would have decided to call it quits and head for shelter from the rain. But who ever said runners are sane people? About 25 of us from the Central Park Track Club showed up at the track anyway, and completed our speed work, despite the fact that half the track looked more like a moat.

The rain stopped right before we started, and one of the brightest and most vibrant rainbows I’ve ever seen appeared over the East River. I tried to capture it, but as you can see, my camera phone kind of sucks. I should really carry a real camera around.

Been a while since I posted. I’m sort of on track with my marathon training.  I’m a couple of weeks behind a typical schedule because my knee injury has kept me from ramping up my running mileage, though I’ve been doing some cross-training to maintain some fitness.

My knee is recovering nicely - I’ve decided that the injury is probably tendonitis (”jumper’s knee”) and not chondromalacia patella (”runner’s knee”).  Jumper’s knee is inflamation due to strain or tearing of the tendon under the kneecap, which makes sense, since I can pinpoint the occurance of the injury to on particular step I took during a sprint interval during a track workout.  Runner’s knee is a softening of the cartilage under the kneecap caused by improper tracking of the kneecap.  In any event, I’ve been crosstraining a lot more by cycling and strength training and gradually building up my runs, and it seems to be working.

One interesting side-effect of my injury rehab is that I’ve noticed my running form has changed.  Typically, most runners strike the ground with their heel first and the roll to the toe for push off - particularly since modern running shoes have so much cushioning. This is actually an unnatural way to run (try running barefoot on a hard surface if you don’t believe me).  A Russian Olympic Triathlon coach named Nicholas Romanov has been popularizing a new running technique he calls the Pose Method, which emphasizes striking with the midfoot, with your lead foot placement landing more under your hip than out in front of you.  Pose adherents describe it as constantly falling forward, with your foot coming out to keep you from falling.  The benefit is that you don’t decelerate the same way you do if you swing your foot way out in front of you and plant your heel, because instead of fighting gravity, you’re letting gravity pull you forward.  Also, Pose Method is supposed to dramatically reduce the impact absorbed directly by your joints and spread it more evenly through the muscles of your leg and body.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve accidentally fallen into Pose Method running - apparently it takes a great deal of practice to deprogram the bad neuromuscular habits we’ve all developed and requires some practice and training.  But, because of my gimpy knee, I found myself unconsciously shortening my stride and landing more on the ball of my foot, because landing on my heel seemed to be a really bad idea - instinctively it seems like landing on my heel and rolling to my toe was an invitation to re-aggravate my knee problem.    The payoff has been that my knee has been doing much better, and today I was able to complete a 10-mile run without a re-occurrence of knee pain.

The downside? According to Pose Method trainers, Pose Method requires more muscular strength and endurance than typical heel-striking  - which means reduced performance initially until your body adapts to the new style of running.  This would explain my horrendously slow times and elevated heart rates.  I’m just happy I’m running again, and if it means that my new running form will be more biomechanically efficient and better for my joints, then I can wait a couple months for my legs to adapt.

This Fall I’ll be joining over a hundred thousand people in the NYC Marathon. Hope my knee heals soon, I have to start covering a lot of miles…

I hate computers.

Originally uploaded by t.turtle

This happened sometime during a 7-hour backup process, after about 3.5 hours when I went to sleep.

For a while now I’ve been hoping to break free from the clutches of Microsoft, and particularly Microsoft Outlook.  It’s not that I think Microsoft is evil or anything, and many of its products are pretty useful, but a lot of it’s products are clunky and bloated and force you to work the way the software works.  This got me thinking about possibly using primarily web-based software for my workflow, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what’s out there.

This is really more of a reference list for me to remember the tools that I’m using or hoping to use.

• Email - Gmail is the hands down winner.  Plays well with BlackBerries and other mobile devices, and can serve as a store of ALL of your emails for quick and easy searching.  Just TRY and tell me that I didn’t email you.  Go ahead. Try.
• Calendar - Google Calendar is really nice, especially now that Google has released sync tools.  I’ve heard good things about 30 Boxes as well.
• Notes/Reference - I’m constantly jotting down random information - restaurants to try, music to check out, books to read, names and addresses of people, recipes… the list goes on and on, and I need a place to store all of that that also allows me to search and find the stuff quickly.  Google Notebooks is useful, but I’ve recently reacquainted myself with Evernote.  I don’t particularly enjoy the web-interface right now, but it has both Windows and Mac clients that sync, and if I ever get an iPhone, it’ll have a neat interface for that as well.  Allows you to send an email to a unique address that gets saved as a new note, which is an excellent feature because you can be working in any context and still enter notes easily if you have access to email.  This is particularly useful to BlackBerry users.
• Tasklists - Remember the Milk is a pretty good tool, and Backpack is kind of like tasklist on steroids that lets you keep notes, pictures and other supporting materials that you might need to complete your projects (it’s great for big projects like weddings).  I’ve shied away from keeping my tasks online for now, if only because sometimes it’s easier to keep things on paper for when I need to work on them or review them and don’t want to go to a computer to do so.
• Collaborative Project Manager - Basecamp has been a very useful tool for many (myself included) when you need to work on a project with multiple people.
• Document production/Editing - I haven’t played around with Google Docs much, but I think I could easily switch to that to generate the documents I need.  I really only need a word processor these days.  I’ve heard that Google Docs isn’t as good with spreadsheets as Microsoft Excel.
• Personal Financial Management - There’s a slew of options.  Mint.com, Wesabe and Buxfer are the one’s I’ve played with.  If you can get past the initial discomfort of putting your financial records online, these sites will download all of your statements, help you keep a budget, and, in the case of Wesabe, features a community of users who support each other in achieving financial goals.  Also, both buxfer and wesabe allow you to send an email or a text message to add a transaction to any of your accounts, so if you’re tracking your spending and you just spent 5 bucks at Starbucks, it’s as easy as sending a text message to update the balance of your cash account.
• Customer Relationship Management - A CRM is essential if a critical component of your work is developing and maintaining relationships, as it is for salespeople, entrepreneurs, lawyers, etc.  On the non-corporate side of things, I strongly believe that community organizers and other non-profit sector workers should really adopt CRMs - relationships in this sector are arguably even more critical to success that it is in for-profit ventures.  (Anyone doing non-profit development work who isn’t using a CRM solution deserves a kick in the head.  I promise you, using CRM software will change your life.)  I’ve started to use Highrise for my law practice.  It has a clean, simple interface.  It’s very easy to redirect all your emails into the system, and it automatically files them with the proper contacts so you quickly have a record of all email communications with a particular person, with the ability to enter notes into the record as well, which is perfect for documenting phone conversations and meeting notes.
• Case-management - Not really relevant to most folks out there, but I use a web-based case-management solution to handle all of my cases.  It’s beautiful, not having to worry about installing software on multiple machines, or maintaining my own server with all of my case files.  Plus the provider updates it with all of the latest forms whenever the government decides to change things up.

Of course, there are downsides to web-based software.  You always need to have an internet connection to do work.  You’re entrusting your data to someone else - if their servers die or if they have a fire or something, you’d better hope they have backups somewhere (though some of the services I described above give you the ability to download backup copies of your data).  Web-based tools sometimes just aren’t as snappy or responsive as software you install on your own machine.

But the benefits, to me, are starting to outweigh the costs: Never having to install software (except a web browser).  Being able to work on any machine - be it Mac, Windows or Linux.  Developer responsiveness and the ability of developers to deploy updates and improvements to ALL users instantaneously.  Also, because everything is browser based, you won’t need to upgrade your computer as often because you only need to be able to run a browser.

There might come a day when almost all of our computing will be done via browser based software.  Unfortunately for me, I’m hampered by the fact that my case-management software (which is web-based) links a critical aspect of my workflow to the use of Microsoft Outlook.  Bitter irony.  So, despite all my enthusiasm, I still find myself bound to Microsoft Outlook.  One day I’ll break free though.

This makes me a sad, sad turtle.

I’m posting this to serve as motivation and a reminder.

Motivation: Keep training.

Reminder: Don’t be and idiot and injure yourself while training.

I ran the Hunts Point Hustle yesterday.  I think I did everything I could to let my knee heal up leading up to the race without completely putting a halt to training, but apparently it wasn’t enough.  First mile was fine, I hit it at 6:20, and I felt like it was a pace I could maintain.  Then at 1.4 miles in, my right knee screamed in protest.  I briefly toyed with the idea of pushing through as hard as I could, but then images of me in a wheelchair and never being able to run again flashed through my mind, and I slowed down.

Runners passed me left and right.  All ages, all sizes.  I finished at a very disheartening 25:01.  And my reward? Knee pain and a few weeks of not running to look forward to so I can finally let my knee heal.

I’d like to say I learned my lesson - I know I’ll definitely be more careful about building up my milage and increasing my training intensity the next time around.

… is paved with frustration. Ran a difficult 4 miles today, at a pathetic 9-minute-plus pace (better than two days ago, where I shuffled along at a 10-minute-plus pace).

I’m in the impossible position of trying to rehab my knee while trying to also get some training benefit, considering I have a race scheduled in 8 days. I’m at the point where I may have to make the decision to just run the Hunts Point Hustle, and not race it. But it’s either that or face the possibility that I might blow my knee out completely and be out for several weeks or longer.

Still, it was good to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather along the river. Reminded me of Cali weather a bit.

It’s a difficult thing to grow up eating seafood and meat and be confronted with the reality that food production - particularly in the areas of seafood and meat production - is not only environmentally destructive, but also (particularly in the meat-packing industry) creates conditions for some of the most exploitative labor conditions for immigrants in this country. The most obvious solution would be to become a vegetarian (a choice which is not without it’s own contradictions) - but that’s a step I am not prepared to take.

However, choosing to live with this contradiction doesn’t mean I feel free to simply eat whatever I want. Since taking a geology course in college on water, I’ve known that the world’s fisheries are in danger of being depleted, but it’s my friendship with Eric that has hammered home how destructive the process of harvesting seafood is to the ecosystem.

A recent NY Times Op-Ed by the author of a new book on how to eat seafood ethically reminded me that it’s not enough to have a vague sense of what’s good and what’s not - in order to be a responsible consumer, we have the responsibility to educate ourselves. I’m notorious for researching a gadget or gear to death before I purchase it, yet for food, I’ve been basing my choices on vague notions of “sustainability” and “carbon footprints” without any real idea of what I’m doing.

So I’m committing myself to be as good as I can be about the food choices I make, which includes being as educated as I can be about the subject. On the seafood front, I’m going to re-read the Seafoodwatch website run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and start carrying around the handy pocket-guides again. (Also, for anyone who has a mobile web device - ahem, iPhone users - there’s a mobile version of the site when you go to seafoodwatch.org, so you have no excuse to make poor choices about seafood consumption, unless you just don’t care.)

I encourage anyone who eats seafood to print out a pocket guide and keep it in your wallet. It’s not that hard to do, and the more people who make good choices about what they choose to eat, the more likely it is that we can avoid a future for our grandchildren where the ocean’s biodiversity is destroyed because we enjoyed our sushi and our all-you-can-eat popcorn shrimp a little too much.

I’m just starting with seafood, but it’s a start. Next up I’ll have to tackle the meat question.