Design Gone Sour

Maybe you're like me and saw the new Tropicana containers and thought, "are those from Sam's Club?"  They just looked so generic, even though they were channelling a Helvetica-like font (I am no good at identifying fonts), which some people would love.  But, the brand name is small and off to the side and the emphasis seems to be on "100% orange," which, last I checked, is just a color.  I am not sure how many people out there have been worried about their OJ being a different color than orange.

I kept seeing these cartons on the side of buses and thinking that that they were so odd looking, coming from a major company.  I don't buy orange juice, so in the end, it didn't really matter.  Apparently (according to the NYT and Slate Cultural Gabfest), it did matter to a great many people.  Moms were in an outrage, upset that they couldn't easily find their favorite brand, let alone tell the different pulp types apart.  Design snobs couldn't stand the cartons either.

The packaging, that was introduced in January, was so reviled that Tropicana will be going back to the old carton in March.

Was this a publicity stunt?  Are people going to try to buy as many of these "collecter's item cartons" before they are all gone?  Or will people buy Tropicana in droves once the old carton comes back?  I don't actually care that much, except bad design is just irritating to be around.

Cleaning House

It's the last day of the month and I've been anxious to get stuff done around here.  My room is still in need of love, as is the newspaper, but I did make progress today.

1) The kitchen is as clean as it gets.  I did the dump of all the random condiments.  I have a quick gag reflex for things like this, so I usually just throw all the containers in the trash so I'm done with it.  Today, I decided to be more true to my values and empty all the containers so I could recycle them.  It was successful, as I only threw up twice.

2) I found out that the food pantries around here will take all the paper bags that my roommates bring home.  I haven't cleansed us of them yet, but I am so excited they will get another use.  Yay!

3) I finally got a February playlist on iTunes for you.  You can listen to samples of what I've been listening to this month.  Well, that statement might be a stretch.  I've mostly been listening to the podcasts (of On Point, Backstory, Dirtbag Diaries, Slate, Running Times, TAL, Wait Wait, and Radio Lab if you're looking for some good stuff).  But, in those few hours when I've opted for music, this is the playlist.

4) I'm clearing my brain of all the posts I've meant to write over the past week.  I think there might be one more in me.  Sorry for the overload today.

Yowzah!

That's really the only word I have (Internet appropriate) for what I thought when I crossed the finish line today.  I had an interesting morning, the kind of morning you only have when you've gone crazy while training for a race.

I didn't hear my 3:30am alarm.  That's the alarm I set so I could get some calories in my system.  Instead, I woke up at 4:30, swore to myself (not proud of that), and ate some food.  I then tried to go back to sleep for an hour.  I think I feel asleep right before 5:30am, when my alarm went off again, signaling that I need to get up.

This was a rough week.  I didn't sleep as much as I should have and I had major, major shin trouble on every run.  So much that the shin trouble turned into knee trouble on Thursday, cutting my run very, very short.  So, I guess I'm injured, but it goes in and out, as all my injuries, so it's more tricky.  I didn't get to do one of my tempo workouts this week and so I was not very confident about this morning.

The plan: To run 2 laps of an 8K course (8K = 4.97 miles) plus another mile nice and easy and then race the local 8K, which is the first race in the local Grand Prix.  My workout today called for 16 miles with the last 30 minutes hard, so this is the plan I settled on.  The run did not start well.  My shin was screaming at me (that's how I describe my pain...in terms of the volume that a body part is communicating to me) within a mile.  I had to stop about once per mile and stretch out my shin before I kept running in some pain.  As I neared the end of the first lap, I was going to stop, but the pain was gone.  I ran the second lap with no pain.  This seems so weird to me.  I ran my extra mile, making it 11 pre-race and then got my number.  I ran the 11 miles just under 9 minute pace, which is what I've been doing on my easy runs, so I felt like everything was as it should be (how soon I forget the shin pain).  I had only about 15 minutes to get ready for the race, which was great.  There was no time to do anything but shed the fuel belt, change my shoes, change my shirt, pin my number on, and get to the start.  Oh, and at the start, I saw my podiatrist.  I cursed him under my breath for not caring enough to help me get better.

The start was bizarre.  There were a bunch of kids standing in front of me and everyone was packed tightly, so trying to stand in front of them was hard.  Then, all of the sudden, people were moving.  I didn't even hear a gun or anything.  I took off and hit my watch as I crossed the line.  I was anxious to get ahead of these kids, confident that I was going to beat them over five miles.  

First mile: 7:18.  What?  I don't think I'm supposed to run that fast, but then again, I felt okay.  I was working my tail off and breathing hard, but that's what I was supposed to do today.  But, I probably went out too fast.  

Second mile: 7:22.  Okay, so now I'm thinking the first mile wasn't really a fluke and I should try to keep this going.  This is when I start doing lots of math in my head to figure out where I'll finish and where I want to finish.

Third mile: 7:10.  Oh man, it would be awesome if this was a 5K, because I could have finished feeling great.  I knew that as soon as I hit that 3rd mile marker, things were going to get tough.  Indeed, mile four was challenging.  A few people passed me and the two women I was chasing (who were taunting me by casually chatting the whole time) were getting a bit further afield.

Fourth mile: 7:26.  Yup, it was a struggle, but not disaster.  I was giving everything I had to just keep going as strong as I started.

Last almost-mile: 7:13, finishing at 36:32 (watch time, not "gun" time).  Yowzah!  I really have no idea where this race came from today, but running another PR this month is pretty great.  I keep a list of my PRs as I accomplish them and it's amazing that I can remember every race, not every detail, but I can picture some part of the course that reminds me of that day and in most cases, I can picture the finish line.  I know that one day I might not remember these races, due to old age or too many races crowding my memory, but right now, it's so enjoyable to think about the fun I've had running over the years.

Oh yeah, and legit runner and 2004 Olympian Kate O'Neill won the women's race today.  The running competition out here is awesome and  I think the big guns will continue to come out for the Grand Prix.

I'd like to give a shout out to Brad Hudson, my "coach."  I'm following his book's training plan for Eugene and I'm pretty happy so far.  The only thing I need to do right now is back off a bit to save something for May and take care of my legs.  Ice bath will happen later today, after I nap.

Wet Bikes

Here are some shots from the Tour of California.  What a glorious day!  Look at all the people!  Look how fast the riders are going...a blur to my camera.  And there's a team called OUCH.  That cracks me up.  And you can see Lance a bit in one of these.

More Sightings

I feel like I'm a five year old, seeing things you just don't see every day.  My favorite sighting from the last week was a guy who was crossing El Camino (the main drag here...kind of like a nicer, slower version of Rte. 9).  He was wearing: running tights, black long sleeved shirt, crossing guard reflective vest, and.....NO SHOES!  What?  The benefits of barefoot running are great, but I would never set foot on any city street without shoes.  I don't even like to be barefoot in my driveway for fear of what's out there.  Menlo Park is by no means an unclean place, but it only takes one piece of glass to ruin your barefoot fun.

And, in a brief respite from the rain, I saw a full rainbow stretching across El Camino.  I had to pull over to the gas station to get a picture, which doesn't make for the best scenery.  But, it looks like Shell could be the pot of gold.  I'm not sure what to make of that.

Finally, cow eyeballs.  That's what the 9th graders were dissecting on Friday and I joined them, with many other math teachers to take part.  I'm less squeemish about this stuff than I used to be.  I was totally fine just touching the eyeball with my bare hands and helping kids take it apart.  Of course, that grossed a few of them out, but it was fun.  And cow's eyeballs are really cool.  They have an elliptical iris, unlike ours that is circular.  I wonder what that means about how cows see compared to us.  I also didn't know that our lens is like a 3-D ellipse or sphere, not something flat like a contact lens.  What a fun afternoon.  And then I scrubbed my hands clean.

Things I've Never Seen Before

A dead deer on my running route.  Sad.

Cyclists shoving a section of the newspaper up the front of their jerseys to protect them from the wind on a descent.  That was new for me.  I guess that I've mostly watched Le Tour, which is in warmer weather when cyclists are probably looking forward to the cooling descents.

And this:

I have now run 1000 miles with my little Nike+.  Of course, it's wholly inaccurate, so who knows how many miles I've actually run with it.  The other day, I ran 8 and it told me I ran just over 7.  Today, i ran 18, and it read 16.75.  That's not that cool, but it does give me a vague idea of my instantaneous pace, so I keep using it.  Apparently, I can now legitimately buy a shirt with this recognition on it.  I think that's a bit weird...showing off how much you've run with a device tracking every move, so I think I'll skip it and look forward to some race shirts coming up.

Night Running

It's been ages since I've run in the evening.  Well, maybe that's actually not true.  I think I ran on Sunday evenings last spring as I was trying to transition from running 3 miles as my long run to running 5 or 6 miles.  But from the fall of 2004 to the fall of 2006, I ran after work rather than before.  Those were the days when I got out of work at 2pm, got home by 4pm and could get a run in in the daylight no matter what time of year.

Today, my alarm went off at 4:30am and for the first time in...a very long time, I shut it off and decided that I needed more sleep.  And I was haunted by the pain in my left shin, which forced to me to shorten my Wednesday run considerably.  

So, today, I came home from work and put in the miles.  As much as I love my neighborhood, I think I love it even more in the evenings.  When I run in the mornings, it's also dark outside, but the houses are also dark.  At night, you can see in people's houses.  I feel like I've written about this before, and I don't mean to come across as a voyeur,  but I do love to see families gathered in their homes, spending time together.  I also like seeing how homes are decorated.  I really don't like seeing people's television lighting up the room.  And around here, most people have huge, bloody televisions, so as I run by, I can watch the news along with them.

My dream house: Kitchen at the front with big windows and living room or family room or whatever you call it in the back.  There are a few dream houses in my neighborhood that fit the bill on this.  The problem is they are probably over a million dollars, so I'll have to keep looking.

Beauty upon Beauty

It's not often that I find myself in awe of something's beauty, but today, some Internet videos were the thing that did it for me.  Rapha, a bicycle equipment and apparel company (very swank stuff), recently sent some of their riders to trace the Tour of California course.  They did this sometime in January (I was following the reports on a blog I like, which is written by a guy who rode in this "average" man's Tour).  They had a handful of riders, a crew, and a film guy.  The result, is beauty upon beauty.  The composition of the videos is just stunning and then to see these men powering themselves across my beautiful state gave me goosebumps.  And, you can see what the Tour would have looked like if it wasn't raining buckets day in and day out.

I know not everyone out there loves cycling (and I myself am some bizarre person who does more spectating than doing), but I encourage you to watch for the beauty of the art and the beautiful of the landscape.  Each day of the Tour, Rapha is posting another video.  Here is the first one.  If you like that, go to their website to see the series.



Rapha Rides The Tour of California from RAPHA on Vimeo.

The Daily Top One List

This is the Daily Top 1 for Why I Read Blogs:

1. Because you run across stuff like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_mammals

The first state alone was enough entertainment for me.  And then I read that Massachusetts has a state cat.  It's the Tabby Cat.  Was there a vote on that or just those Tabby Cat lobbyists again?

Hero Spotting

I really don't think that Lance's luster will ever tarnish in my eyes.  Here he is today on the course.  These pictures are from the good guys at Belgium Knee Warmers since mine didn't come out as good.  We were just as close.  The Tour (again, not Le Tour) was awesome.  It was not raining during the time we were outside for an hour and a half (despite it raining hard from 6:30am to 10:30 am).  Our timing was perfect all around.  We parked at 8am at the corner of Rtes. 35 and 84, were some of the first into Alice's restaurant for food and free wi-fi, and got a great view of the guys coming around the bent.  I wish I could have mingled with these guys, rather than just seeing them in a blur (Lance is the only one I could recognize because he was the only one with a yellow helmet).  This race has everyone who is anyone really and I love most of them...Hincapie (!), Leipheimer (!), Voigt, Horner, Sevilla, Basso, the Schlecks, Hushovd (Uff Da!), Jacques-Maynes, Freire, Vandevelde (!), Landis (?), O'Grady, Cavendish, Zabriskie, Sastre, Hamilton (?)...to name a few that have been my foci for the month of July for the past few years.  I am on cloud nine.

Today was just another great day of using the cowbell.  I love those days and I wish there were more of them.  And I had a fabulous 8 mile run: 2 miles easy, 2 x 10 minutes threshold at 8:05 pace with 2 minutes active recovery, 3 miles easy.  The last few minutes of the second threshold stint was tough, but I got through and felt great.  The only hiccup was that right at the end of the second threshold was the only hill on the course.  I walked up it...I was just spent, but I'm happily in a place where doing something like walking up a hill after a tough workout is totally okay.

Ahhh!  It's past my bedtime!

Epic

We are getting some kind of rain.  All day it was just pouring.  You know how when your pants get wet in the rain, they sag and get longer.  My walk from my weekend job is about .8 miles and my pants were so long by the time I got home.  I'm so happy for the rain because we need it.

Tomorrow will be epic.  Not just the amount of rain we will continue to get, but the amazing things that I will do.  Well, really it's one amazing thing that will be sandwiched by very cool things.  

1) Wake up at 0-dark-hundred to run 8 miles.  This will be my first hard core weekday workout of my training plan.  It should be pouring, so I can't say I am really excited.  The reason for my lack of excitement is that I don't have a running jacket that keeps me really dry.  I have a few jackets (3 in fact) that work when it's sort of sprinkling, but this morning, it was raining pretty hard and about 2 miles in, I was feeling the wet rain on my skin...through the jacket and my shirt.  I should just retreat these guys...and I will, but honestly, that will probably be in the future when it's not raining biblically.

3) The end of my day will be at my weekend job, where I have lots of fun.  The people who work there are super cool and funny and the custys (as my co-worker calls them) are nice to work for.  I got some great school sweaters there today on mega sale, so I am a happy camper.

2) I didn't skip #2, but I wanted to save it for last.  Tomorrow, my previously mentioned co-worker and I are going to watch the Amgen Tour of California roll through our backyard.  The riders are going to be climbing the hills up to Skyline Road, where we'll see them.  Hopefully, we'll be able to pick some of them out.  We kind of wanted to ride our bikes up there, but the climb is pretty legit.  It's a Category 2 climb for the riders (where Cat 1 is the hardest...actually "HC" is the hardest, which means "beyond classification), so who knows what that would mean for us.  It's one of those classic bike rides that the cyclists do out here...climbing up to Skyline.  I think I could run it, but I have no business climbing it on a bike...in the rain...when I have to work a few hours later...and right after a challenging run.  So, we're going to drive up and see them on the flat part of Skyline.  We'll be able to sit in the car and chat and read the paper and stay dry until we run out screaming with our cowbells.  Here are some awesome things I just saw regarding The Tour (different from Le Tour). 

a) The guys who run this site came in our store today wanting more rain gear.  They are from Chicago and clearly thought they were going to get a sunny Cali vacation. Their website is pretty sweet.

b) This is a sweet video of a BMC rider's prologue ride.  The prologue, which is such a funny concept...to have a prologue for a race.  Anyway, the video is awesome because there are so many fans!  I totally got goosebumps watching this and can't wait for tomorrow.

Finally, I wish I owned an umbrella.  Not sure why I don't.  I do have a rain jacket this is awesome...just not a good running rain jacket yet.

Catching Up

Today, I didn't have school.  What a treat!  We always get a four day weekend for President's Day and this year it is the Friday/Monday kind of weekend.  I did my long run today.  It was tough because I had to do some 1 minute fartleks for three miles (on the mostly uphill part of my course) and then two miles hard at the end.  I ended up running a good pace over all, but the part where I had to run hard was very challenging.  I wonder what I looked like in those last two miles, when I was trying to run hard, but wasn't going as fast as I was attempting to.  

After my run, I hit up Borrone's for my weekly recovery lunch.  I never have meat in the house, so I like to go out after my long runs and get some animal protein in me.  I also brought three days worth of the paper and got to reading.  They are publishing KenKen puzzles now, which are really fun for me and I tore up the Wednesday and Thursday puzzles.  The Thursday puzzle was especially enjoyable because two clues asked for "Notable born 02/12/1809."  First, I thought that it was currently 2008, so I was mad that the puzzle was asking me to identify people who were both 199 years old, but then I realized that it's 2009 and that Abraham Lincoln and Charles R. Darwin shared their day of birth.  So cool!  It's a good thing I've been paying attention to the news (and that I was able to read this week's Science Times).  

I sat at Borrone's for a few hours, right next to the sun-warmed window, and enjoyed the news and puzzles.  Then, as it has been doing, it started pouring in the afternoon, which was glorious.  This state desperately needs the rain.  The hillsides are not as green as they could be and we are in year three of a drought.  And, for some reason, the people here have never really heard of water conservation.  I want to scream every time I hear the sprinklers on while I'm running in the rain.  I don't want us to have a drought, but I really hope that someone around here institutes a water ban this summer.

Finally, I'm addicted to rice pudding.

What Luck!

This appeared in my blogger today.  I don't think I'll be able to make it, as I'm picking up a satellite dish to make a solar cooker with my kids, but did you know that this competition existed?

Rubik's Cube Competition

Date: Saturday, February 14, 2009. 10:00 AM.
Location: Annenberg Auditorium, Cummings Art Building

Stanford University's Second Annual Rubik's Cube Competition will include speed-solving events for the 3x3x3, 4x4x4, and 5x5x5 cubes, as well as blind-folded and one-handed events for the 3x3x3 cube. This competition is sponsored by Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) and it is sanctioned by the World Cube Association and run by participants from the Stanford, Berkeley, and Cal Tech Cube Clubs.

Bring On The Flats

Well, maybe not "bring on" but I'm ready for flat tires whenever my bike decides that's what's going to happen. Tonight, I was the only student in a free (!) flat and basic bike maintenance class at my local shop.  The guy who ran the class was a great teacher and definitely made me feel confident about changing my bike tires (and did not make me feel silly for having no idea how after 8 years with a road bike).  I am so excited.  

I haven't been on my bike in 10 days, which is very sad, but the weather here has just been weird.  There's rain in the forecast every day, but it rains so randomly.  Like today, it rained on my run for about 20 minutes, was sunny by 7am, and then it rained again later in the day.  So, I don't really know how to prepare for that with clothing and such.  And, I don't have all my rainy biking needs.  I just ordered some rain pants on sale to help solve some problems.

I've Never Thought of This!

I read a great article on Slate.com about washing out containers before recycling.  It's here, and I encourage you to read the whole thing, but the gist is: don't spend resources washing your empty containers.  As long as all the food is out of the container, you could give it a rinse, but you don't need to scrub your PB jars like I do (actually, I eat AB)...they'll get washed and heated and all that at the processing plant.  

There is a caveat (a word I had to define for my students the other day): if you have single stream recycling (paper and metals and glass all in one bin), you probably should wash out your food containers if it prevents contamination of the paper, often making the paper "un-recyclable."

I really can't believe that in all my years of not flushing the toilet every time and taking quick showers and reducing waste...I never thought about how silly it is to wash the recycling.

Redemption

I wasn't supposed to run a PR today.  I really, really wasn't.  There are many reasons why I should not have run a PR.

1) My training plan called for 14 miles easy with the last 20 minutes at moderate pace.  My easy pace is somewhere between 9:00 per mile and 9:30 per mile.  My moderate pace would have been about 8:30 or so.  That would put me at the finish line right around 2 hours for the 13.1 mile half.  I was totally find with doing that and was ready for a nice, easy long run.

2) The half marathon was my master during 2008.  I ran in three of them and did not have success: San Diego (one hot mess), Hartford (great, but I planned to run only 8 miles of it, so I don't know how that would have played out if I had finished), and Nike Women's (one hilly mess).  San Diego and Nike both made me question my marathon aspirations and made me think that my glory days of running were pre-injury.  I think I had mostly accepted that fact in the last few months and had convinced myself that my only goal is to enjoy running.

3) I got a horrible night's sleep.  At 8pm, I turned off my light.  I heard my watch beep at 9pm and  I was still just laying there.  Then, I heard it beep again at 10pm.  At that point, I figured I might as well get up and register for the Chicago Marathon, so I did that right when it opened online.  Around 10:10, I put on The Daily Show, shut off the light, and hoped that it would lull me to sleep.  That took until past 11pm, but I did feel myself getting more and more tired.  There I was, about to get a maximum of 6 hours of sleep.  But, of course, the sleep gods were still not smiling on me.  I had one of the most restless night's sleep I've had in a while (exceeding what I thought was bad last Sunday night when me and half the women at my school were tortured by bad dreams...weird, eh?).  Last night, I was having very vivid dreams about running the half and about what I'm supposed to teach this week and I kept thinking in my dream that I had to go to school the next day.  Not nightmares, but dreams that are so vivid, it's like you're awake.  It was awful.  I was awake again at 3am, but only for a bit, thankfully.  The alarm went off at 5am, and surprisingly, I popped right out of bed and started the pre-race routine.

So, everything was against me.  I even pinned my number on my shirt while it was inside out (I tore my shirt off at Fulton during my warm-up around 7:30am to fix it).  But, the weather was San Francisco at its finest.  That was one good thing.

Another thing going for me at the start were my new shoes (totally singing New Shoes lyrics in my head: "I put some new shoes on, and suddenly everything is right.").  I bought these because they are the "performance" sibling of my training shoes.  I decided to buy these for races and fast workouts so that I could be faster (they are so darn light on my feet) and so I could train my legs muscles to work more than they do in my stabilizing trainers.  These are the Mizuno Wave Elixir.  They were an elixir for my warm-up, at least.

The course was also working for me.  Miles 1-4 were flat, miles 4-7 were downhill or flat (read: very fast miles for me...the same miles that allowed me to cook during Bay To Breakers), then 7-10 were very slightly downhill to the turn-around.  Miles 10-12 were very slightly uphill.  The last mile was uphill...when I struggled to keep my moderate pace, but actually did so.

So, the Kaiser Permanente ended up being a great race.  I PRed by two and a half minutes (my first half marathon in March 2006 was my previous best), I did not totally destroy my body, and only my right foot is worse for the wear (my shoes dug into my fourth toe which bled throughout the race and I have a blood blister on the ball of that foot as well).  So, the shoes were not so much elixir in the end.  Maybe I shouldn't have tried to run fast, and maybe I'll suffer all this week, but after negative splitting the first three miles (faster each mile) and then getting a boost on the downhills to really negative split, I just decided to go for it.  It wasn't until I hit the 10 mile marker that I knew I could PR, so I kept the charge on.  And, I just ran happy.  Well, I ran happy until the last mile, when I suffered.  There is definitely going to be a picture of me near the finish and it won't be pretty.

I'm feeling pretty relieved right now as well as redeemed.  I can now continue with my training plan as prescribed, without wondering what kind of shape I'm really in, and without pushing it just to see if I can.  I have confidence that the training I'm doing is making me better.  I also have rid myself of the half marathon demons that plagued me last year.  And, I beat my principal.