running « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

running

Not sure of my time zone

What day is it? What planet am I on?

Transnational travel in a day is a surrealistic thing. On the other hand, we traversed almost 7,000 miles in a day.

I ran one mile today, having not put on those shoes in a week, and my body feeling pretty terrible both because of that and the travel and the sleepiness and it all just hurt. So I sprinted, which still felt like a slog on my wife’s high school track.

Saw this truck while we were ordering sandwiches. I feel like they got the tint of the paint job just about perfect:

These were our collective fortunes at dinner tonight. One of them makes no sense and, thus, all of the sense in the world:

Things to read: because reading always makes sense.

What passes as sports journalism at home today: Alabama All-Americans on the same bench as AJ McCarron meets Forrest Gump. I’ll leave it to you to decide if I mean the subject matter or just writing things from social media accounts you follow.

Something more important, Exclusive: Sharyl Attkisson on Journalism’s Very Dangerous Trend:

Sharyl Attkisson, an award-winning investigative reporter who resigned from CBS News earlier this year, says the news media are heading down a dangerous path with attempts to “censor or block stories” that don’t align with their preferred agenda.

“There’s a tendency in the news media, on the part of some managers, to censor or block stories that don’t fall in line with the message they want sent to the viewers,” Attkisson said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal. “I think that’s really a very dangerous perspective to have.”

This makes sense, and you’ll see a lot more stories like it. Online, mobile consumption soars among sports fans means you should go where your audience is.

Internet Use Over Time is an excellent resource from Pew.

FAA Weighs Letting Film, TV Industry Use Drones reminds me: I still need a drone.

And, possibly, a good night’s sleep.

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1
Jun 14

The month’s workouts

Here’s what I did last month. The pitiful amount of red represents the bike. The dark blue denotes the running and the light blue marks the pool. I also included the Alaskan hikes that I could measure because the calendar would look pretty awful without them. I have to do more, and now.

adventures / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / running / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
20
May 14

I do believe I ran my foot off

These dogwoods are in the neighborhood park where my wife grew up playing:

This is also the park where we took engagement pictures during a Nor’easter. It is also the park where I come to torture myself whenever we visit her parents. Today I ran far enough that I couldn’t feel my foot.

Yesterday, at her high school track, I ran 440s, which I haven’t done since high school, and which I did poorly back then. But, I told myself, running 440s will build up speed! I do not know what is happening. These are the first two workouts after the most recent triathlon and a day in the car. A handful of 440 sprints and running my way into a numb extremity. I am counting the days until our next race, which is in July. And that will come with only a few weeks of “training” after about two weeks of downtime. What could go wrong?

Here’s something I ran along today. Pretty nice, huh?

I learned something about myself today, as I told my mother-in-law. We were driving from here to there and it occurred to me. I see people running and think Oh, that’s nice. Good for them. I see people cycling and think I wish I was riding right now. I never think Oh I’d love to be running just like they are!

Funny how that works.

Things to read … because reading always works.

Wonder how this plays out: Without changes, Alabama’s pension funds could run dry within decade, study warns.

This is just about the sweetest, saddest story you’ll read today. ‘Best thing I’ll ever see’: McAdory senior receives diploma in bedside ceremony hours before grandmother’s death

5 in China Army Face U.S. Charges of Cyberattacks

Chinese military officials charged with stealing US data as tensions escalate

Poll Says Anti-Semitism Is Global Matter

Businesses are dying faster than they’re being created, and economists are worried

AT&T Aims for TV’s Future With $48.5B DirecTV Deal

Will we run out of adjectives before we run out of scandal? Nope. Exclusive: VA Scandal Hits New Hospital

VA investigating Florida hospital wait lists

Federal health-care subsidies may be too high or too low for more than 1 million Americans

From Idea to Story: Planning the Data Journalism Story

We live at an interesting point in media history. Internet Ad Spending Beat Broadcast TV for First Time Last Year

adventures / Auburn / baseball / cycling / friends / I do not know what is happening. / photo / running / swimming / weekend — Comments Off
17
May 14

A race, a game and a cookout :: A fine, full day

This morning we ran the Ft. Benning Reverse Sprint Triathlon. It is a short course, featuring a 5K run, a 20K ride and a 450-meter swim, in that order. Here we are after the finish:

This is the first triathlon we did last year, making this the first time we can compare times to previous efforts on the same course. I have a few things to be pleased with here.

The run is almost perfectly flat, and there are a lot of soldiers in the race, so they dominate the run, of course. You see them at the start and somewhere on the bike course or in the pool, if at all. So I’m not running with those guys, but I pulled away from a few people in the run. In fact, I didn’t get passed at all. My time was still slow, but I shaved a great deal off of last year’s run.

The bike is a super-fast ride with only two real rollers to think about. I was pleased with the ride last year, and I did it in three-and-a-half minutes less time this year. When you look at the average speed I was on the upper-end of average riders and almost break into the fast rider speeds. Only one guy dropped me here, and I’m not sure how. I looked down at my gears on that first roller, looked up and he was gone. I didn’t see him again until I passed him in the last 100 meters of the pool.

The pool was an improvement for me as well, if only because I was barely swimming last year. Remember, I was still dealing with shoulder problems and couldn’t even pretend to freestyle. I was disappointed in my swim today. The lanes were crowded for the first half of the short swim. Meanwhile, it takes me almost that entire distance to get warm anyway. I also had some energy excuses. (I even came up with a phrase for the latter, the red line of regret. I could have redlined the thing. I should have. Then I wouldn’t have regretted what I left in the pool because I was a little tired and winded. I could have been faster, but I didn’t overcome the red line of regret.)

Overall, my time was 17 minutes faster than last year’s race, which was very slow. This year’s was merely slow. But that’s a fair amount of improvement, with plenty of areas in which to continue to grow.

I’m bummed that I won’t get to do that race again for another year now. I want to measure these performances against another effort.

Today was senior day for Auburn baseball. Here the mother of one player and the grandmother of another shared a big hug and a kiss on the cheek of celebration. They’ve been coming to these games for four years. They’re going to miss each other.

They are sweet ladies.

Here’s another one. This is Morgan Jackson, Bo Jackson’s daughter. We’re buds:

This was the last time we’d see the team on the field this season:

My new Aubie gimmick — no one steal it! — is the Aubie selfie:

Another of Aubie, relaxing with the ladies.

Auburn lost the game, 8-1, bringing their season to a close with a 28-28 record (10-20 SEC). But the friendships are the thing: parents of five different players came to say goodbye to us today and then we had a cookout tonight with the nice group of people with whom we sit. That’s not a bad season at all, captured in one sentence.

After the cookout we picked up the traditional post-triathlon celebratory ice cream:

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10
May 14

Running in the rain

Received an email from a student that read, in part, “I just wanted to thank you for your character and personality throughout this year … ” So maybe I got something right this semester. I receive a few of those a year, and they are all appreciated and gratifying.

Today I graded things, working down the stack to the point where, really, it can’t grow back into something insurmountable. There is only 113 more things to read, if you’re keeping track.

We listened to baseball on the radio and the good guys won, 8-1.

We went for a run. We got caught in the rain:

This is the time of the year, suddenly, where it is warm. And after it rains it is proportionately more intense. On the one hand I could run under tree branches, jump up and shake one down upon me. On the other hand we have 90 percent humidity.

I’d much rather ride my bike in the rain. I don’t know why, but riding in it is just amusing. Running is something else. At least the cleanup is easier.

Things to read … because reading in the rain would be the best.

This is just hard to conceive. After 6 siblings lose houses in Limestone tornado, family ‘home place’ burns week later:

April 28 was the only time the Farrar siblings didn’t consider living in close proximity a good thing. The homes of six of the seven siblings were struck by the EF-3 tornado that ripped through western Limestone County just before 5 p.m., but the family emerged from a nearby storm shelter grateful. They were all unharmed and “the home place,” built by their late mother and father, sustained the least damage of any of the five homes.

The siblings, children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren moved into temporary housing in local motels and tried to regroup.

Then, exactly one week later, on Monday, May 5, the home place on Parker Road burned after catching fire when power was restored to the area.

This sounds like a lovely family. IRONMAN Mourns Passing of Dean Bullock:

It is with great sadness that we pass on the news that 2013 Kona Inspired winner, Dean Bullock, succumbed Thursday to the brain cancer that forced him to call it a day at the IRONMAN World Championship last October.

A day after Bullock was pulled off the bike course, his wife and nine children did the marathon course for him to take care of his “unfinished business.”

[…]

Last August, Gaylia Osterlund wrote a profile on Bullock. “He talked about death openly,” Osterlund remembers of her interview. “He told me if he died tomorrow or when he was 100, he did not want to be remembered for racing. He wanted to be remembered for his now 37 years of marriage, his kids, grandkids and his faith in his Heavenly Father. He truly believed nothing else mattered.”

He was 59, running the Ironman and had 17 grandchildren.

This one is unique: Denmark’s unprecedented media scandal – A gossip mag takes a page from News of the World’s playbook.

Analytics are the key here: Internal innovation report says the New York Times needs to up its digital game or else.

Have a nice day: ‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’.