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10
Mar 15

You’re here for the music, I don’t blame you

This evening I did a 1,800 yard swim, toweled off and then had a 5K run. Finished at 75 percent target heart rate. The swim was about at my normal slow and sloppy pace and style. The run was probably at the lower end of my pace. But that’s a brick to start the season of exercise, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m feeling pretty good after, too.

You know, there’s a time when you don’t think about doing those sorts of things. And it doesn’t take all that long to look at those numbers and think to yourself, “That’s all you did?”

The mind is a weird place, is what I’m saying. I do not know what is happening.

So I swam in the indoor pool, naturally. I had the far left lane all to myself, hitting neither the wall or the room any at all. I did these in 50 yard increments, because I’m still trying to find some form of breathing that works. And having completed the mile I staggered out of the pool, into my flip flops, up the stairs, into the locker room, into some dry clothes and my running shoes and then out and over to one of the old gyms on campus. The gym was closed for a boy’s lacrosse practice, but the track above it was open, and I jogged and sprinted along on that, listening to the sounds of my footfalls and wondering just how long that track has been in place. This is what it looks like from underneath it.

And so to the parents that were there, sitting on the bench, watching their sons play lacrosse and listening to me trample 15 feet above you and wondering “Is this going to be the lap? Will this be the time? Are all of my affairs really in order?” I apologize. But you should have seen me in the pool.

I have this mental image that my swim looks really good for about 1,000 yards. Really it probably only looks really good for 15 yards, which is most of the push off the wall and that first stroke. But I can really make a nice streamline shape, boy, and I’m proud of that.

I got through some portion of the run by wondering what I would have for dinner. I can just look at a body of water and my appetite gets out of control, so, to have actually burned some calories, this could be a real meal. But I didn’t want this, and that would never seem filling and … for some reason there were two big burritos wrapped up and sitting on the floor of the track. So I somehow talked myself into Moe’s, because I guess I was getting hungry by then. Moe’s, I said aloud tonight, making it real, seems like a better idea in theory than in execution.

Please remind me of that as necessary. But, at Moe’s, there was this:

So now it is back to the newsroom, where the award-winning staff of The Samford Crimson is working on what will surely be another fine edition of their august publication. They’re celebrating their 100th anniversary this spring, ya know. We should have a party.

Things to read … because reading is always a party.

This one doesn’t surprise anyone, but it is nice to see: Huntsville ranked among top cities for STEM jobs

Turns out there is going to be a lot of stuff going in this summer: Redevelopment of Toomer’s Corner set to start after A-Day.

This is written in a sports talk context, but you get the sense that the anecdote might carry over to other programming: Is Sports Radio Ready For Its Future?:

Two discussions in particular stuck with me and have had my mind racing for the past few days. First, I was in Dallas for the Radio Ink Sports Conference and during my time there I had the chance to moderate a panel which focused on the mind of millennial listeners. I was on stage with three college students. Two were 21-years old and the other was 26.

Over the course of 45 minutes, I hit all three students with a barrage of questions on their perceptions and interest in sports radio and I along with the rest of the room learned that they live in a different world where content is only king if it can be consumed quickly. If it requires sifting through your podcast to find it, waiting through a commercial break or needing to wait for a host to finish rambling off-topic, they’re gone. Even the big name guest means little if it doesn’t include a hook worth sticking around for.

And that whole essay is a pretty nice read.

They got that right. Rickwood Field ranked among best baseball destinations

Really, I just mention that to dust off this Rickwood piece I did some years back. The oldest continually operational baseball park in America, in 20 minutes:

The place is 105 this year. This is a painstakingly recreated manual scoreboard you’ll see in the outfield:

And, over on Facebook, I’ve started The Best Single of the Last 45 Years game. So far there are eight great choices, including mine, which I heard tonight, and whose intro inspired the entire thing:

If you can’t get in a good mood with those horns the very reverend Al Green is right behind them, ready to work everything out.

He’s still doing it, too.

Yep, that’s all you want.

I do not know what is happening. / links / Samford / swimming / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
3
Mar 15

Remembering to breathe

Here’s a fine feature I found will skimming through some archives in an office filing cabinet. Unfortunately the web isn’t so helpful in finding Shorty Harrison or his wife.

The reporter works in academia. The photographer is with a modeling agency in Florida. People doing the real work on campus, I always tell young writers, always offer the best, and usually overlooked, stories on campus.

Got a swim in this evening, the first in far too long. So I guess it is back to training then, which is where I’ve been having the problem of late: starting.

I got in 1,350 yards, which is little more than a trifle, but it was my first swim in a while. About 1,200 in my shoulders complained, “Enough.” Also, I figured out that I don’t actually breathe in the breathing part of my freestyle stroke. There’s a swimming coach that works at the pool, but he’s teaching kids to be competitive swimmers, not me. We talk now and then and I’ve complained about my arms filling up with lactic acid. He has told me a few times I’m not breathing right. Either that’s an observation or just the obvious conclusion. He hasn’t told me how to fix it. Maybe because he’s not my coach. Or maybe because it should be obvious. It makes sense though, I tend to hold my breath when I concentrate or in exercise.

If I can get that fixed, I chuckled to myself, I could progress from being a sadly incompetent swimmer to a merely bad one.

Things to read … because reading always makes us better.

This would be huge on the farm, With Google Glass app developed at UCLA, scientists can analyze plants’ health in seconds:

Scientists from UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute have developed a Google Glass app that, when paired with a handheld device, enables the wearer to quickly analyze the health of a plant without damaging it.

The app analyzes the concentration of chlorophyll — the substance in plants responsible for converting sunlight into energy. Reduced chlorophyll production in plants can indicate degradation of water, soil or air quality.

Social media use of student athletes: 2015 survey results:

Over the last few weeks we’ve been compiling data on our third annual survey looking at the social media use of collegiate student-athletes (can see the results from our 2013 survey here and 2014 here). This isn’t a perfect science but it does allow us a good look into how college athletes use social media. This helps us be more effective in our social media education and training sessions, and also provides valuable insight as we help athletics departments craft social media strategies.

This year we had nearly 1000 student-athletes participate.

An unfortunate tale out of Oregon, Raped on Campus? Don’t Trust Your College to Do the Right Thing.

This doesn’t apply to me, yet. Training for Triathlons at an Older Age.

I’m going to say “No,” while waiting for the courts to say “Of course.” You’ll notice in the story this isn’t about you, the client, but rather the proprietor. Should Hotel Owners Be Forced To Hand Over Guest Records To Police?:

At issue was a Los Angeles ordinance that requires hotel and motel owners to record various pieces of information about their guests — drivers license, credit card and automobile tags, for instance. The hotel owners don’t dispute they have to do that; what they do dispute is the part of the law that requires proprietors to make this information available to any member of the Los Angeles Police Department upon demand.

The city contends the law is a necessary and important tool for fighting prostitution, drug trafficking and other crimes. The hotel and motel owners, some of them mom and pop operations, contend they are harassed by police, who sometimes show up for inspections of their records in the middle of the night. They contend that police should at least have a subpoena in hand, allowing the proprietors to challenge the inspection in court if they think they are being harassed.

You could make tea party jokes, but I suppose you’d have to deal with various interest groups and obtain an EPA release. There’s no limit to the jokes, really, but this is serious. Obama “Very Interested” In Raising Taxes Through Executive Action:

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Monday that President Obama is “very interested” in the idea of raising taxes through unilateral executive action.

“The president certainly has not indicated any reticence in using his executive authority to try and advance an agenda that benefits middle class Americans,” Earnest said in response to a question about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calling on Obama to raise more than $100 billion in taxes through IRS executive action.

“Now I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there is some imminent announcement, there is not, at least that I know of,” Earnest continued. “But the president has asked his team to examine the array of executive authorities that are available to him to try to make progress on his goals. So I am not in a position to talk in any detail at this point, but the president is very interested in this avenue generally,” Earnest finished.

Here at home, some things never change.

Alabama Supreme Court orders halt to same-sex marriages

Gov. Robert Bentley on state budget problems: ‘We cannot cut our way out of this’

This is a really neat, unsurprising and seldom told type of sports story. Beauty of sport: Texas A&M’s compassionate act in Auburn’s time of need:

On Saturday morning, former NBA forward Anthony Mason, father of Auburn guard Antoine Mason, died in Manhattan following complications from an earlier heart attack. Antoine already was with his loved ones, but Auburn rightfully felt compelled to somehow honor the Mason family in a game nationally televised on the SEC Network (or even if it wasn’t).

Problem was, Auburn already was in College Station, and the Tigers’ jerseys were laid out in the Reed Arena visitors locker room, hours before a 7:30 p.m. tip against the Aggies. That’s when Auburn head equipment manager Dana Marquez reached out from Auburn to his friend and counterpart at A&M, Matt Watson.

Watson has served as A&M’s head equipment manager since 2000, but is only 43 – a testament to how diligent and good he is at his gig. This is one more example. Watson received the call from Marquez at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, only four hours prior to tip.

Marquez asked if the Aggies could do anything at all to help the Tigers honor Mason. The result was an example of the oft-untold good in sports.

“It was the right thing to do,” Watson said. “Life happens, and it doesn’t always happen in a timely manner.”

And time was of the essence.

From the depths of history, and the deep of the Pacific, Microsoft co-founder says he’s discovered long-lost Japanese battleship:

Paul Allen says he has found the wreck of a long-lost World War II Japanese battleship near the Philippines.

The philanthropist posted images on Twitter that appeared to show the Musashi, once one of the two largest warships in the world. The discovery was made aboard his superyacht, the MY Octopus, as part of an expedition that Allen launched.

The search has taken Allen and his team of researchers more than eight years.

The images and video were taken by an unmanned submersible deployed from the vessel.

It is simultaneously amazing that we are capable of making discoveries like this and surprising that it often takes so long to make discoveries like this.

adventures / cycling / maps / photo / running / swimming / triathlon / weekend — Comments Off
28
Sep 14

Augusta Half Ironman 70.3

The calm before the chaos.

We were up before dawn. We were in downtown Augusta before dawn. We’d been on a school bus and got down here to the transition area before dawn. The Yankee was a mile up the street, waiting for parachutists to drop in and the national anthem and a canon to blast and all of the waves to start. As we are running a relay, the unwanted step-children of these races, she was in the last wave.

She still beat a whole lot of people out of the water.

We, Jenni (our runner) and her husband Gavin (our cheerleader) sat on a railroad berm and watched the first part of the morning come and go. We watched the sun rise, and that was not a bad seat for it:

At 9:20 The Yankee was finally able to get in the water. She swam 1.2 miles and then worked her way up the boat launch ramp and then ran a little more than 100 meters to the relay pen, in the very back of the transition area, because, remember, we are the step-children of the race. We’ve watched the pros and quite a few of the age-groupers come and go. A few of the relay teams had their swimmers come in and then came our water hero, having done all of the above in just 28 minutes. Not too shabby.

But these races don’t give you a lot of space. More cramped than a dive boat or darkrooms I’ve known.

Anyway, as I was standing there waiting, having done all of the preparing and water-drinking and snack eating and bathroom breaks I could muster, looking at the fancy bikes next to my bike I hear great stories.

One of the age-groupers was pronounced by friends of hers in the relay area as an idiot. Seems she’d completed a full Ironman last weekend and was doing a half today. That’s a 140.6 mile race followed by the 70.3. This makes no sense.

A guy was telling us about his nephew, who went to an Ironman race and was very excited. Ironman! But he was crushed when Tony Stark didn’t show up, just a bunch of people in spandex with bicycles.

That is a bummer.

The Yankee came in, I pulled the timing chip off her ankle — that’s our relay baton, if you will — and put it on mine. Grabbed the bike, ran out of transition and off we go:

Every other race picture the pros took of me is badly out of focus. Because I go so fast.

Here’s the course, a 56 mile joy ride through the countryside. I have made turned this into a ThingLink, which means it is an interactive image. This one is very basic. Mouseover and click on the black-and-white dots to see the notes. The race starts near the left margin and goes in a counterclockwise direction. The notes, as you might imagine, follow suit.

I finished my part, slower than it should have been, but I spent the back half of the race trying to measure my effort so I didn’t blow up the entire race. (We’ve not eaten well enough this weekend and proper fueling is key.) But I made it in, dismounted with great relief and found that the growing pain I had in both feet was something of a problem as I shuffled all the way through the transition area — because we were camped at the back.

I passed off the timing chip to Jenni she was off and running on her 13.1 mile run.

I, meanwhile, suddenly can’t walk. And I’m starting to cramp up. I got a cramp in my quad and made a facial expression and my face cramped. More water. Much more water. Get all of that under control, change clothes, get our things out of transition and back to the car and we got to watch Jenni go by on the run route. Then we had a snack at a nearby restaurant and watched her run by again. She was awesome.

And here she is at the finish:

Pay no attention to the time, as that clock counts from the beginning of the event, and does not account for the big delay in the wave starts. The important thing is that we finished. We had fun. We survived. And we got bling:

We also got massages. Actually we got stretched. The masseuses had closed up — with people still on the course, but whatever, who cares about those people, right? — so we got the active release guys. I put Jenni’s name on the list and then my name on the list. The Yankee didn’t want one initially, because she’d only done 28 minutes of work or something. But I decided she should get the active release stretch too. So I added her name to the list. The guy says he was closing up shop. He’d seen a ton of people. I explained I was trying to get my wife on the list and my name was his last customer. Before I could even think up the “Help me keep the domestic peace” jokes, he conceded.

“Put her on there,” he said, “And then write ‘No more customers!'”

So the four of us had dinner, deciding that the racers don’t like the relay teams not because we could use all of our energy in one event, but because we are athletes with social skills who know other athletes.

After dinner we got on the road. There was a long drive home — and it was a long drive home. We got in sometime just after 10 p.m., just in time to do laundry and put everything away.

Apparently we’re going to do the whole race as individuals next year. I’m exhausted from the requisite training already.

adventures / cycling / photo / swimming / weekend — Comments Off
27
Sep 14

A Saturday in Augusta

Woke up this morning and we went for a ride on the half Ironman’s bike course. It is a 56-mile counterclockwise loop that goes out of Georgia, into South Carolina and back. I rode the hilly part on the back half:

The Yankee was driving along, making sure I didn’t miss any of the turns. She took that picture at one of them, and had I known she was going to do that I would have really leaned into the turn.

I saw several people training today, they’ll all be riding harder tomorrow. I’m just hoping to get up and over the slow, gentle climbs tomorrow. It felt pretty good today, but I only did about a quarter of the route, which seemed pretty fast.

Afterward, we got cleaned up and did the formal check in down town. We then walked from the convention center to the transition area. Walking was a mistake.

You can’t help where the civic center is in relation to where the logical places on the water — in this case the Savannah River — are relative to one another. On the way walking back up I measured the distance. It was 1.7 miles.

In between was where the swim will actually start, so The Yankee had to double back on her walk. When she finished her practice swim, she pronounced it nice and fast, I drove down to get her. So we’ve done more walking than we wanted and not enough eating today. Great way to prepare for a race!

On my walk back up from dropping off my bike in transition I noticed this:

That’s the back of the Augusta Chronicle, which is a fine paper. There was a large man loading his old, beat up car with some sort of publication. It was about 2 p.m., (I know because I was frustrated that I still hadn’t had lunch) so it was too late for the Saturday paper and too early for the Sunday issue.

Back behind him, and seen in that picture, there were two guys sitting on the equipment in the paper’s loading bay. Those aren’t seats, but they’ve probably been used that way for generations, the job done, the rest won, the pressure off the feet. Behind them is that billboard for the Chronicle’s tablet app.

Make of all of that what you will.

We parked near this mural. This is a part of a four picture arrangement, a quadtych, if you will. It is old and in disrepair and it wouldn’t have looked any better if it was still brand new:

We had that late lunch, followed by an early dinner with lots of carbs. Tonight we’ll try to go to sleep early. Tomorrow, we wake up early.

Oh, I walked by this sign, too:

Indeed.

I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / memories / photo / Samford / swimming / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Sep 14

I have an idea about noodles

One of my favorite memories of journalism classes as an undergrad was watching the story ideas form. I wasn’t a natural. I think some people are, and others can be taught. Some people have the ideas spring forth, but others have to work on it. Until I learned to come up with a reliable story idea process, I was enthralled by listening to others just riff off ideas.

That’s not right. I’m still impressed listening to really talented, curious, passionate people spit out story ideas.

So this is, perhaps, my favorite part of the semester. We’ve been discussing this in class. Today I broke them all up into groups and requested, nay, demanded story ideas. And once we got just around the corner from the traditional campus issues of parking and tuition, they had some good ones.

Next I’m going to make them put them into practice.

One of the ideas was the new cafeteria vendors. Things have changed. Some people find the food tastier. Others have pointed out there is an awful lot more pasta. To me, the food varies from decent to bland, with fewer options — once you remove the bushels of pasta. And there seems to be more chaos in the food serving area.

Also, this:

Surely we can do better than that.

I swam again today, about three-quarters of a mile, or 1,300 yards. My flip turns, new yesterday, looked basically the same today. Off-kilter, untargeted and more power than grace. But, hey, it seems to get me back down the lane a bit faster.

Also they are slow. And I forget to look for my knees, which probably explains a lot of the above. But, on those flip turns when I go down more than out I must also come up, which, I think, has the look a whale breach. That amuses me.

I hope no one else is looking.

This evening there were Crimson meetings, where we discussed the story they had on the changes in the cafeteria. It is a popular topic. Today’s was the first issue of the year, and in their critiques I got to brag on them a great deal. The paper looks pretty great for a first effort. There are some things they’ll work on, but there are always things to work on. I’m very pleased, I told them, about where they are starting. They have great potential for the year ahead — and so now I will challenge them.

Anyway, we did not discuss the sign above, but the pasta did come up.

The vendor, Sodexo, says they surveyed students on the campus where they have contracts and found that students wanted more of the stuff, so we have tons of carbs. There’s a lot of pasta in the cafeteria.

Things to read … which is as easy to boil up as spaghetti.

Man, I need a good drone. This was shot by my friend and a Samford grad, soaring high above campus. (He appears several times as the drone does flybys.) It is pretty awesome:

This was a terrific story last winter. Now it is heartbreaking, and touching … Patient saved by doctor who walked six miles in snow to perform brain surgery on him has died:

The couple have seen the doctor several times since the incident, and he always told the doctor how much he appreciated what he did, Andrea said.

“God and Dr. Hyrnkiw gave us an extra six months,” said Andrea Robinson. “And I can see why God gave me those extra six months.”

Did you watch anything from the Apple event? Interested in the mobile payments that were discussed. It is a game changer, as Alan Mutter explained years ago … Get ready for mobile payments

It was fun while it lasted … Twitter CFO says a Facebook-style filtered feed is coming, whether you like it or not:

At a financial conference on Wednesday in New York, the CFO provided some hints about the feature roadmap that new head of product Daniel Graf — who came to Twitter from Google in April — has in mind for the service, a list that includes better search and a move into group chat. But he also suggested that the traditional reverse-chronological user stream could become a thing of the past, as the company tries to improve its relevance.

[…]

The most recent example of how stark the differences can be between a filtered feed and an unfiltered one was the unrest in Ferguson, Mo. and how that showed up so dramatically on Twitter but was barely present for most users of Facebook. As sociologist Zeynep Tufekci noted, that kind of filtering has social consequences — and journalism professor Emily Bell pointed out that doing this makes Facebook and Twitter into information gatekeepers in much the same way newspapers used to be.

The impetus for Twitter to filter is obvious: the service needs to show growth in both number of users and engagement in order to satisfy investors, and finding relevant content as a new user can be a challenge, which is why the company recently updated its so-called “on-boarding” process.

I’d hope there would be a classic version. I count myself in the group of users who have spent a fair amount of time developing a well-curated Twitter stream, and now they’ll turn it into Facebook. And, you’ll see in other stories, let you buy stuff directly from your feed. The ultimate impulse purchase!

The only thing I’d want would be to purchase the original Twitter format, chronological and curated by humans, me.

But that’s a complaint for a different day. Today I can only complain about my flip turns. And the pasta.