running


15
Feb 17

A little something for a lot of people

Here’s your mid-week upside down motivation, brought to you by Allie The Black Cat:

She’s always concerned about morale, now if only she could read, so she’d know the words were upside down.

She spends enough time staring at screens and books and paper. Maybe she thinks she can read. Maybe she just looked at that upside down. Maybe I’m the one that is wrong. Maybe she actually can read. Anything is possible, it says.

We went for a run late this evening, before it was time to head back into the studio. I thought we would be running indoors, so I just had shorts and a t-shirt. But we ran outside, where the windchill was 34 degrees. I am smart. So I got in five miles before I had to cut it short to go back to work. I didn’t get my full eight, but I did get this view after I showered and set out to walk back to my building:

That’s going to be a banner on the site one day soon, I think.

These two pictures are from last night. The news show I oversee now has a weather segment. This was from last night, when we finally broke in the green screen. Pretty cool opportunity for the folks studying the weather:

I spent some time in the control room last night, too. Mostly because there are a lot of lights and cool buttons in there:

Things to readHere by the owl:

CADIZ, Ohio — Don Jones supports students as an FFA adviser, represented by the owl during FFA meetings.

In FFA tradition, the owl is a time-honored emblem of knowledge and wisdom, and Jones has served in the adviser’s role for 22 years. Some of his students jokingly refer to him as the “wise old owl.”

In his classroom at Harrison Central Junior and Senior High School, he provides real lessons for real life as the agricultural education teacher. He sees 140 students a day, in grades 7-12.

Being the only educator in the program, with just one classroom, he has to turn away students from his program, which is an elective for the nearly 650 youth at Harrison Central.

That headline is no accident. That’s actually part of the opening ceremony the FFA uses at levels ranging from school meetings to the national convention. The teacher, or the adviser, is represented by the owl.

Last year I wrote about my advisors:

I had many valuable experiences, and this could go on and on, but the most important thing the FFA gave to me was the leadership of two good men. Mr. Swaffield and Mr. Caddell were battle-tested teachers. They are two solid, stand up, good, decent, morally upright father figures I benefitted from as a teenager, when a boy needs them most.

Scott Pelley, Lester Holt, David Muir: The Unprecedented Joint Interview:

And, finally: Lost songs of Holocaust found in University of Akron archives:

In the summer of 1946, the psychologist interviewed at least 130 Jewish survivors in nine languages in refugee camps in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. With a wire recorder — then considered state-of-the-art equipment — and 200 spools of steel wire, Boder preserved some of the first oral histories of concentration camp survivors. He also recorded song sessions and religious services.

A portion of Boder’s work has been archived at The University of Akron’s Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology since 1967. But it wasn’t until a recent project to digitize the recordings got under way that a spool containing the “Henonville Songs,” performed in Yiddish and German and long thought lost, was discovered in a mislabeled canister.

As I’ve said before: A significant portion of the 21st century is going to go toward the preservation of the works of the 20th.


8
Feb 17

Ancient wisdom: Indoors shoulders gather no snow

To break up my 11-hour day I went for a run. And just after we started jogging, The Yankee and I, we went by a window and saw snow flakes. And so being indoors was a good idea. Because I could look like this:

But we ran in this gym instead:

That’s Wildermuth, an intramural facility, where I ran eight miles tonight. From 1928 until 1960 it was the home of the basketball team. And, on this day in 1946, it looked like this:

I’m glad I never had to stand in line to register for a college class. I think my freshman year my alma mater was on their second year of phone registration. At an orientation session they plopped in a VHS tape and made us watch a corny — even by the standards of the day — video about how to sign up for classes. But that system only lasted a few more years. Before I graduated they were doing it all online.

Not in line, online. And that probably changed things, too.

Anyway, a few more views on my snowy walk back from Wildermuth to Franklin Hall, where a sports show was recorded tonight:

You reach a certain point with these sort of pictures where you think “Hey, more snow. Yeah, yeah.” And that is almost always just behind “I can’t feel my hands.”

And as an aside about nothing, we had gumbo for dinner tonight. So I washed the dishes while listening

A Louisiana boy singing Delta and soul blues while snow was on the ground outside.

It makes perfect sense while you’re standing at the kitchen sink.


30
Jan 17

Photos from the weekend

I crossed this creek just after mile two, when there was the coming promise of my calf loosening up and the mistaken belief I could stay warm. It felt like 20° when I started. Small ponds have a thin skin of ice on them. I ran 18 miles. I do not know what is happening.

It was right after this that I wrote this joke about the buzzards and hawks flying overhead It was a treatise on gallows humor, but I was only three miles into my run and that was a little too early for that sort of thing. Three is a warmup, I had 15 to go. Also, at the end, I got to track my miles. I’m doing a year-long challenge and the app says there are some 100,000 participants now. Look where I am:

Not bad for January.

I’d topped the penultimate hill right around 13.1 miles, which equaled the most I’d ever run. And I was close to home, but still had some ground to cover. So I went into a downhill stretch telling myself, over and over, to hold this pace. Hold this pace.

It wasn’t much, but it was jogging. Until the downhill became too steep, when I had to walk a bit on weary, unsteady legs. But I felt good because each step was a new record and I knew, I insisted, I was going to jog UP the last hill — a hill long and steep enough I can’t sprint its entirety on my bike — and there was no way I was cheating myself out of that. I was determined. Besides, by the time I reached that last hill I’d be about three miles from done and you can do anything for three miles.

So up that last hill I jogged, and I was then making bargains with myself, and building strategies to finish this thing. There were places to cut it short, but I was setting personal bests with each step and you don’t end that early. You can do anything for three miles. Which was an argument I began losing in mile 16. And then I couldn’t find my turn and it was cold and I’d been doing this, pretty badly mind you, but doing it, for hours. And then right at mile 17 I saw this and risked bending over for it.

This chunk of cheap molded plastic is the battleship from the board game of the same name and it was in the road at the church near the house. I could be inside in a quarter of a mile, and I wanted to be, because mile 15 was weary and slow and mile 16 might have been worse. But I had to run to 18. So I squeezed this plastic battleship in my double-gloved hand and said “I am running the last mile.”

And I did.

I wasn’t even especially sore the next day.

It snowed yesterday. We took Allie The Black Cat into the backyard:

She walked around on the deck. She prowled around on the handrail and snooped under the grill cover and slinked around in the yard a bit. She did this several times:


25
Jan 17

A shivery run

Early night at the office tonight, so we jogged around campus. This was just a little more than three miles into the run.

We ran eight miles in all. I ran negative splits over the last three. The Yankee tells me this is good.

Must have been because the sun was down and it was 37 degrees by then.

So I’ve learned two things. First, training for a long run in the winter makes you faster. Second, if you have to train for a long run in the winter, don’t.


23
Jan 17

An easy 20 mile weekend

It was sunny and 67 and gorgeous on Saturday. We were supposed to run 12 miles, but you get days like this in January here only so often. Or a day. You only get a day like this in January only so often. (As in, Saturday. That was the one day.)

So instead of running we decided to go for a little bike ride. So we set out for the bike and pedestrian trails around town:

It was an easy spin. Just as well, because it was the first time I’d been on my bike since the end of last season. She was in fine form:

A lot of people were out, because they understand the weather to be an exception to what is ahead of us, so the trails were often full. Lots of walkers and joggers and families and you can hear the briefest of a snippet of conversations on the trails and I’m always hoping they fall together to make some nonsensical story. You’re around people for about a second, and it’ll take forever, but I’m hoping.

And there are a lot of kids on bikes. Whenever I see a kid on a bike I always try to compliment their ride. “Oh I need one that color!” Give a little boost and all that. Not this girl, though:

She went by me too fast.

On Sunday afternoon it was overcast and 60. We were supposed to run 12 miles, but I only got in five miles. It just didn’t feel good (so I added four more miles today). But it looked like this, which is what most winter days look like here:

And this:

We passed that barn going the other direction the day before on my bike. I’d tried to take a picture of it from my bike, but my phone’s iOS decided to confuse my opening the phone app for “Yes, let’s update right now!” I just wanted a photo of the silo and I got an all new operating system, instead. It was good that I found the barn and silo again on foot. I had no idea where we were when we rode past it, which is the best way to start your year on the bike.