Tag: running (Page 7 of 9)

On Getting “Chicked”

September 28, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Emily has a pretty funny post about mixed-gender running and talks about guys who lie about planning on an easy run only to come out and try to race their female running partners.

Most of the time I’ve spent training has been with women, so I guess I have something to say on this. I’ve trained with all sorts of girls. A couple have been a little slower than me, but they were very experienced runners. I learned a lot from them when I let them control the pace. The Missus is much slower than me, but all I have to do is grab the ~~parachute~~ double stroller and count her miles as a warmup, and I’m happy to run her pace.

A couple of my female running partners have been much faster than me. I remember doing some 1m intervals as part of a longish run with one girl who absolutely took me to the brink on every rep until the last one; that’s when she really opened it up and buried me.

So yeah, I’ve been chicked more times than I can count. And I don’t care. In a training run, it just helps make you faster. In a race, well…there are so many girls who finish so far ahead of me that the one or two who sneak by me at the end are negligible in number.

Most of the girls I’ve run with have had a comparable pace to mine. This can bring out the best and worst of everyone. The upside is that you are in a good position to push each other. The downside is that once the pushing has started, I’ve noticed girls are much more likely than guys are to get mad when you beat them…as if they weren’t participating in the pushing all along.

Of course, their fury (“no…nothing’s wrong…what makes you say that?”) is ultimately expressed in terms like “you drug me into that pace”, not because they got beat.

Bull butter. It’s obvious when you are running with other people exactly who is participating in pushing the pace and who, if anyone, is trying to slow it down. You want to claim after the race that you didn’t want to race? Please.

Personally, I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that they got beat by a guy, at least from my experience. I have a different theory about what’s really going on:

If there’s one thing worse than getting “chicked” , it’s getting “fat-guyed”.

I love fat-guying people.

Investing for Triathletes

August 9, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

During yesterday’s market tumble, I saw this tweet from @lokibeat…

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/lokibeat/statuses/100660260204843008″]

It made me chuckle, but it also made me think of a couple of things triathletes and runners can hopefully relate to. First of all, the practical…

I prefer to think of dips in the market the same way I do water stops. At first glance, water stops cost me time in races because I walk them. But the truth is, water stops gain me time because I walk them. Walking the water stops gives me a chance to take in a lot more fluid than I could if I tried to run through them. That fluid is an investment in my total race. So I think of dips in the market as a chance to buy more of the same thing I was buying a couple of weeks ago at a discount. We’re talking about investing, not trading, right? It’s a ironman/marathon, and I’m not selling next week whether the market is up or down.

Secondly, @lokibeat is right…it is more about the trip than it is the destination. I think a lot of us enjoy the day-in-day-out training more than we do crossing the finish line at a race. Even on race day, when we say we “had fun”, we’re talking about the entire race…not just the finish line.

So chill out, walk the water stops, and take in as much fluid as you can while someone’s there to hand it to you.

And you might as well go ahead and make friends with the pain for now. You’ll feel better in a few miles.

July 20, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Stress fractures suck. And they don’t always heal as quickly as you’d think they would either.

Yeah, that’s more of a Twitter-length thing to say, but it just seems more permanent to post it here.

Stupid stress fracture.

July 12, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I definitely didn’t set any land speed records. No distance records either. Luckily I didn’t feel any pain in my foot. Of course, I was definitely distracted by the pain in my lungs and knees. Baby steps…two weeks without pain and times will start dropping again.

Running, Drinking and Nerding Out Link Dump

June 26, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Long Distance Half-Steppers –

“Self-knowledge is a bitch.”

I have been all of these people at one point or another, and I’ve definitely run with all of them. There are more I could add to the list too!

Desmos Graphing Calculator – I am in nerd heaven. I can’t wait to play with this gadget. I can’t wait until my kids are learning higher math and we can do this together!!!

Get Drunk Not Fat – My knees wish my brain had been supplied this information at an earlier date.

‘Til debt do us part :

Leverage is leverage, and leverage always brings with it increased risk.

True, but what scares me most is the amount of this “leverage” that represents items of depreciating value or Super Value Meals. And that’s just on the consumer debt.

HTC EVO 3D Review – Hope to get mine before it’s obsolete.

iDoneThis – Very cool, very simple service. Every day it sends you an email, and you respond with that you did. Makes TPS reports a snap.

The 5 Switches of Manliness: Provide – Haven’t even read this one yet, but if it’s half as good as the others, it’s a must read.

India’s $35 Android Tablet Finally Ready Ship – Would be hard not to buy at least one of these. HT @_Neville

High-Pressure Tactics Culture At Groupon – More dumping on Groupon. The more details I read about this company, the more I am wary of it.

Forget Student Loans, And Maybe Even College – Can’t say it enough times–student loans are horrible. The whole industry is basically pay day lending that you can’t bankrupt.

Short Groupon – “Groupon is essentially holding a portfolio of loans backed by the receivables of small businesses. If a business goes under, consumers will come back to Groupon for their money back. Unless Groupon is actually doing credit assessments on businesses that it chooses to feature, this is a big risk for Groupon.”

Perfect Iced Coffee – A couple of weeks ago, I decided to give up coffee for 30 days. This post is the first time I’ve regretted that decision.

I’m reading– May 24th through June 9th

June 13, 2011 / Scott / 2 Comments

Make your secondary Google Voice number permanent – Perfect solution for a a reasonable price. I don’t want to give up my old number for old contacts, but only give out my Google Voice number for new contacts.

The 5 Switches of Manliness: Challenge – Part II of this series. Dead on so far.

Texas movie theater makes an example (and a PSA) of a texter – Awsum. This should be rinsed and repeated for pretty much every venue except for phone booths.

Millionaires versus The Aspirationals – I’ll see your $10 wine and raise you a light beer in a can.

TN columnist: No athletics for home-schooled kids – Public school services (classes, athletics, etc.) should be a la carte.

Desmos Interactive Education – Saw this from TechCruch Disrupt. Coupled with Kahn Academy…strong!

The 5 Switches of Manliness: Physicality – Hells yeah.

Running Like Epictetus

April 28, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Awesome post over on The Logic of Long Distance on stoic running.

Finally, and this point is probably hardest to grasp, you are responsible for you. Not your shoes, not your watch, not anything else. Those are tools, to be used with the requisite understanding, but they do not take away your responsibility to yourself.

I’d maybe even take this a step further. I think some of the best long distance running a fella can do takes place when there is no watch, HRM, or iPod involved at all. Just run and figure it out. Pay attention to what’s going on, and let what you’ve learned about yourself dictate what you are doing at that moment. Get rid of the gadgets that are telling you what you should be doing. Get rid of the external influences that may push you to do more than you should or hold you back from doing what you could. Instead, just do what you feel like you should do.

We’re talking about distance here, right? If you’re running any kind of distance it’s because you’ve worked up to it, so you should have learned something along the way. And you can keep learning as you go.

I miss running long.

I’m reading– March 10th through March 16th

March 16, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Digital Will – I could do a whole series of posts on this. Maybe I should. Maybe I will (no pun intended).

Just try to cut off Netflix’s content supply – Can’t wait until the cable companies are skipped entirely and we can buy directly from the producers and/or networks. Win-win-win-lose. The “lose” is for the cable companies. The market will find a way.

Jon Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs for Killed Music – I say Jon Bon Jovi has done more harm to music than Steve Jobs ever could.

Top 20 Obnoxious People At The Gym – I’m #5, @svandyke is #8, and we are both “The Guy Who Sits on the Sofa and Drinks Coffee For 2 Hours and Leaves Without Even Working Out”.

iPad 2 for Distributed Teams – Interesting. Can you RDP with an iPad?

Twitter Drops The Ecosystem Hammer – Then, uh, Twitter…how’s about giving me a UI that’s even half as good as TweetDeck? Are those crickets or birds chirping?

iPad 2 could lead to glut of rival tablets – Oversupplied means under-priced. I’ll wait it out.

Man Trains For Marathon While Eating McDonald’s-Only Diet – HT @DustyOverby I did the same thing with Little Debbie snack cakes and Petro’s chili.

Stricter Limits on Debit Cards Coming? – No worries…they’ll be happy to issue you a credit card to cover larger purchases. Of course, the interest rate on that card will be about 10-20 times the amount of interest they are paying you on the MONEY YOU ALREADY HAVE BUT CAN’T SPEND BECAUSE THEY SET SUCH LOW LIMITS. Better not be late with that payment. Big banks suck.

I’m reading– January 12th through January 17th

January 17, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Portraits of Financial Normalcy – Some financial personality categories from @daveramsey.

Eight Crazy Constitutional Scenarios – HT @kleinheider. This reminds me of those crazy scenarios that can turn up in baseball. In baseball, they seem to actually turn up eventually too.

BMI(wife) < BMI(husband) Means a Happier Marriage – Good news for me. Barring an amputation, no danger of this changing any time soon.

Elected Official Constitutional Knowledge: Disgraceful – HT @russm. Maybe they should not only read the Constitution at the beginning of each legislative session, but also explain it as well.

Record Foreclosures in 2011? – The bright side–these properties (at least the ones I've seen) all need a lot of work. When (if) they make their way back to the market, lots of money is going to be spent to get them habitable again. Even stuff like neglected landscaping that needs to be re-done means jobs for somebody.

Hope Is Not A Strategy (Training) – I like Amanda's approach personally. Stick to the schedule, and don't be a slave to the schedule.

The 5 states where housing will recover first – At least we can be warm in Florida while we wait.

Should I work for free? – Heh

I’m reading– January 6th through January 10th

January 11, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Katherine Coble on College Debt: – “…the Student Loan is in many ways the new subprime mortgage.” Yeah, except you can bankrupt a sub-prime mortgage. This needs to be hammered home.

The Explosion In Sudden-Loan Debt – “…unlike a mortgage, in which a borrower can refinance or—at worst—face foreclosure and bankruptcy, student loans do not go away.” I wonder what percentage of borrowers are aware of that little gotcha when they are sold student loans as “investments”. Debt == Bad.

A Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Treadmill Desk – Thankfully, there’s no article on setting up a spin-desk. That would give me one less excuse.

10 bizarre side effects of exercise – I can think of a few others, but they aren’t topics for polite company.

People Who Drink More Exercise More – Playing rugby with commitment is the most grueling thing I’ve ever done physically. Just saying. Still not sure what excuse all the guys with sketchy practice attendance will use though.

Why Programmers Suck at CSS – I plan on using this, like, A LOT! Hope I don’t gang aft agley.

Training For a 6 Hour Half-Ironman

January 9, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

NOTE (2.7.2014): What you will find below is one strategy. I don’t think it’s the best strategy. In fact, three years after originally writing this, I don’t even think it’s a very good strategy.

This is not the way I currently train for 70.3s. I’ve gained mucho experience and knowledge in the last three years, and you can read most of that in the articles listed here.

There are much more effective ways to train, even with time constraints. And I’ve realized that setting time goals for a 70.3 is maybe not the smartest thing to do, at least for me. A time range is reasonable, but race day is full of unexpected events and factors you can’t control. Read on, but at your own peril.

Ok. I’ve noticed a lot of people are landing here looking for the answer to that one simple question…”What is the best way to train for a half iron distance race (70.3 miles) and finish in under six hours?”

I wrote a longer, more detailed post about one strategy to do this a while back. But if you’re looking for a simple (and logical) approach, I’m going to summarize it here. I’d advise going back and reading the whole post, which contains a little more detail. Keep in mind, I’m not a certified triathlon coach. I have absolutely no credentials other than the fact that I’ve actually done it while weighing over 200 lbs, eating higher quantity and lower quality of food than I should, and skipping a workout here and there.

[amzn_product_inline asin=’1599218577′]

Here’s my strategy: Prioritize the race (and your training) in the order of time spent in the race itself. That means concentrate on bike first, then run, then swim.

The bike is going to be about half of the race, right? So make biking the main focus of your training. That means you are probably not going to get a PR for your half marathon during this race. So be it. If you wanted to PR a half marathon you’d be training for that exclusively anyway, right?

Running will probably benefit from having a really solid base before you start training for the race. Build that up in the off-season, and you can put the running portion of the training on auto-pilot. It probably isn’t necessary to rack up a ton of miles running, but it’s a good idea to be mentally prepared for 13.1 by making sure you still hit a long run every week, preferably on tired cycling legs. For me, I did that along with a 10% brick of my rides, and it worked out. Again, I was a long way from PRing the 1/2 marathon in my race, but I’d banked so many minutes on the bike that I had a huge cushion.

Swim–fuhgetaboutit. If you can swim the distance, you will be fine. No need to spend hours in the pool so you can shave off 3 minutes of swim time when you could spend those hours biking (or resting). If anything, spend your swim time in the open water so you are comfortable with it.

Keep in mind, the point here isn’t to “do your best” or “run the perfect race”. If you want to do that, you should hire a coach, measure everything you eat, take vitamins, etc. Not knocking anyone who wants to do that either, but that’s a different (and very worthy) goal than just trying to arrive at 5:59:59.

I’m reading– January 5th through January 6th

January 6, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

How to get Fat as Fast as Possible (losing weight humor) | 3 Boys And A Dog – How to get Fat as Fast as Possible: Woot! I'm batting 1.000 so far this year!

The most reliable (and unreliable) blogging services on the Web – These rank almost exactly as I would have expected. I kinda sorta don't get Tumblr. Is is like the midpoint between a blog and Twitter?

RunKeeper With Heart Rate Monitoring! – This almost makes me glad I need a new HRM. I hate having to buy a new one, but it's very cool that I can get one to work with RunKeeper!

How Bad Movies Get Seen By So Many People – I get accused of being a movie snob sometimes. Whatever. I don't have a lot of time to spend watching movies, and even if I did, it's not what I want to do with a lot of my time. So I'm not that interested in wasting my movie time on a recycled story or bad writing/acting.

Early Infant “Reading“ With Larry Sanger – Web’s – They really do have fun too. Learning doesn't "suck" until it's made to suck.

Global Food-Price Index Hits Record – Of course, there is no inflation. None. In fact, we need to continue to worry about deflation and "stimulate" the economy by printing more money. Got it?

Changing Huckleberry Finn – A Travesty – Anyone who thinks this is a good idea needs to read the book (again). If they still think it's a good idea, their literacy is questionable.

I’m reading– December 29th through January 4th

January 4, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

China Up, America Down – If them folks cain't swim, they bound to drizown. Hard to argue with these points, until China starts trying to bully other countries. In 5, 4, 3…

RunKeeper Pro– Free Through January – Normally $10 for the pro version, get it free!

Delicious In Purgatory – I would be SO gone already (I already have a contingency plan in place) if all of my Delicious bookmarks weren't being used to generate permanent blog posts for me. And my notes in Delicious (like this one) work better as comments in a blog than they do in Twitter, or my problem would be solved already.

And just like that, the plugin I use to generate posts from Delicious adds support for Pinboard. Outta here Delicious!

I’m reading– December 22nd through December 29th

December 29, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

10 Things We Learned in 2010 – Thanks to Mr. Dave Ramsey, I learned these things in the early 1990s. Almost 20 years ahead of the curve! Matters not…most people will forget this stuff in 5 or 6 years.

Track flight prices and check for airline refunds – Who was I talking to about doing something like this a while back? Oh yeah…emailing this to him immediately.

Will 2011 See App Makers Thinking Android-First? – Now I don't feel like as much of an idiot sitting here at Android 2.1 waiting for a Honeycomb phone to surface.

When the Diagnosis Is ‘Dead Butt Syndrome’ – Wait…so the contrapositive of this argument is that if I don't run I don't have to cross-train either, right? FTW!

How New Entrepreneurs Are Taking Advantage of the Great Reset – In front of and behind the firewall I might add.

Payday Lending Booms as Credit Cards Become Less Available – Two not-so-bold predictions. (1) Politicians will "do something" about this, probably at the state level. (2) As a result, payday lenders will be hurt, and lone-sharking at the street level will become a booming industry.

People always have and always will borrow money with outrageous terms. It's just a matter of whether they are going to lose their car title or the use of their thumbs when they don't pay.

If the market exists…

Stuff You Should See– October 13th through October 28th

October 28, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

‘Stranger Danger’ and the Decline of Halloween – "We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too."

Amazing Beans: Black Lentils/Kidney/Garbanzo – Giving this a shot soon.

YOU are Superman – Mamapedia™ Voices – “If eight park moms and one visionary principal could pull our little neighborhood school out of its twenty-five year nose-dive, surely others could do the same thing. If Waiting for Superman could spark a national grassroots school reform movement that would pull us all out of the giant mess we’re in, now wouldn’t that be something?”

A ‘Do-Over’ on the Mortgage Market? Project Mayhem Fallout – I won't even entertain the idea, but it's an entertaining read.

If Every Website Got A Dramatic Movie Adaptation – Damned clever.

3 Simple Ways You’re Missing Out On Mobile – Great post by my buddy Gavin!

Gettin’ After It!