My dad used to say, “Sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you.” This race was definitely in the latter category.
I’d never heard of this race, and probably for good reason. It was only the second time they’d run this event, and it included a 5K and 10K, along with a 10mi, 20mi and 30mi ride. However, it was to benefit a broad set of good causes. With that kind of coverage, and a medal at the end, how could I say no?
The race site was in Washington MO, which is about 45 minutes west of my house. That’s about the same time it takes for me to get to downtown St. Louis for a race, so that wasn’t a bad thing. However, that meant waking up at 4:30am in order to get ready, and be in Washington around 6am for packet pick-up.
I got there, and went to pick up my packet — shirt, bib, and sack o’ goodies. The registration person asked my name, and then flipped to the second sheet of paper to find me. Yep, there weren’t many folks signed up for the race — maybe 40 folks across both the 5k and 10k. By far, this ended up being the smallest race I’d ever been part of.
After some opening comments by the organizers — reminding us to stay hydrated due to the heat advisory, and not to drink the water because of a boil order in the area — we were off just after 7am. And much of the first half kilometer was downhill — sweet! And then it was up-down-up-down through Washington. And the hills just kept on coming. I kept watching for a hydration station, which was supposed to be around halfway… and never found it.
Now, I learned a long time ago to always carry water when I’m running, walking or cycling. You just never know when you’re gonna need a slurp, and whether you can find any close-by can be a crap shoot. Today, carrying water was the smart money. Apparently, someone had been stealing the course signs, so many of us at the back of the pack were actually off the race course by a few blocks where it mattered the most — around the halfway point where the hydration station was. Add this to the hills and unrelenting heat, and it became a pretty miserable race pretty quick.
I never come to a full stop during a race, but I stopped on the course a couple of times to talk with the traffic marshals. I needed rest, and that was a good way to do it. And for the first time in a long time, I really questioned if I would finish the race. In fact, I questioned everything — why I was doing this, whether I could possibly do races in the future, my own existence… 🙂 Sometimes, there’s just a little too much alone time on the route!
Finished!
But, I finished, having gone a little more than 5K due to the hijinks with the race route. I felt kinda bad for the poor kid that had to stand there and wait for me to show up to put a medal in my hands.
I never expected this race to be so tough. I think the frequent hills were part of that, but I also think the lack of water (for my course), and the fact that I rarely saw another member of the race or staff during the race certainly added some mental challenge to the event for me.
Done is done, though, and I’m happy to drop another race in the books.
Apple is incredibly good at building sexy hardware… hardware I have a tough time avoiding!
A while back, I bought the then-brand new MacBook Pro with Retina screen (MBPr). I fell in love with the luscious new screen, with it’s high resolution and vivid color. Add to that a solid-state drive, and even with the big 15″ screen, the machine was a pound lighter overall than a regular MBP. And it was fast. Screaming fast.
At the time, I was really trying to build a very portable footprint, and the MBPr was a big part of that. As it ends up, I began working from home last summer, and I began growing a less mobile desktop platform based on the new cylinder MacPro.
And then Apple announced the new MacBook.
Frankly, this new machine hit me a little funny. This little laptop was gonna be light — just about two pounds — but have a pretty slow processor (by modern standards), and a 12-inch screen. Add to that some shenanigans around a lack of built-in ports for USB3 and Thunderbolt, and this new machine was a little ho hum for me.
As I took in through some spring destination races this year, I kinda found that I needed something a little more laptop-like and less iPad-like for races on the road. I didn’t like carrying the MBPr to away races, because that usually meant carrying a laptop bag, and while that wasn’t a ton of extra weight when packing for an “away” race, it did make things a little more clunky for travelling.
Those away races made me reconsider the little MacBook, and little by little, I started to fall for this wee beast.
Looking at how I use a laptop, I really wasn’t doing powerful photo processing, massive spreadsheets, or using other high-powered solutions when I was away from my desk. Even with my MBPr, I was only using it to surf, write, and do a little light Photoshop work.
Suddenly, the little MacBook started to look a little more attractive.
I even came to terms with the weird situation with external ports. The new MacBook only has a lonely USB-C connector, which is used for power and just about anything else, and a headphone connector. That’s it. Anything that’s externally wired has to go through the USB-C connector, which means a handful of dongles for USB3, Ethernet, video, Thunderbolt… and the list goes on.
Again, thinking about my use case, all that connectivity wasn’t that big a deal most of the time, and I didn’t mind too much having a dongle or two for those rare instances when I needed them. Heck, I was doing that with my MBPr occasionally anyway, so that wasn’t exactly new territory.
I’d finally rationalized all the perceived shortcomings, and was ready to buy not long after they began to ship in April. That’s when I discovered a wrinkle in my newfound excitement for this new laptop.
There was no availability. Anywhere. Apple couldn’t ship them out fast enough, with five week ship times for standard configurations. Third party providers didn’t have them. The supply pipeline just wasn’t full, which is pretty rare for Apple with a new product. It’s usually demand that dries up the pipeline, but in this case, Apple simply didn’t have very many to ship out.
I watched for quite a while to see if the ship times from Apple would get better. They didn’t. And then one night I was looking at Best Buy’s web site, and on a lark, did a search for the new MacBook.
And shockingly, in mid-June, Best Buy had them in stock for shipping, and in the configuration I wanted: 1.2Ghz Intel M processor, 8GB RAM, and 512GB SSD — one of the standard configurations. I wasted no time in making an order, and in a few days, the shipping box arrived with my new laptop inside.
The first thing that struck me was the weight of the box when the UPS delivery guy put it in my hand. It weighed nothing. I kinda wondered if the box was just empty.
Opening it up, I found the Apple box inside, and once again I was struck with the diminutive size. The white-box was really tiny. I had just packed up my 15″ MBPr for its new owner, so I was used to seeing a bigger box. This thing was itsy-bitsy by comparison.
I opened the box, unpacked the machine and lifted the lid, firing up my new 12″ MacBook. Once again, the Apple setup experience for the new machine was simply amazing. It’s easy, quick, and everything just works, right out of the box.
And now, about a month downstream from my unboxing, the experience has been great.
So, to be fair, there are times when I notice the difference in processor speed… for a second. That’s barely noticeable, and certainly not impactful. I regularly use the Adobe Cloud apps, Microsoft office apps and iLife apps, and never find myself questioning the speed of the laptop. It’s fast enough for what I need, and I think that’s the niche this machine fills… fast enough.
You’re not gonna do processor intensive work on this machine. But, to be fair, it’s really not designed for that. It’s designed to be the lightest OS X footprint device you can buy, trading weight for power. It’s kinda like the lovechild of a full-sized MacBook and an iPad Air. For me, that’s perfect.
The screen is really nice, with (apparently) even tighter pixels than my 15″ MBPr. In fact, they’re tight enough that even with a 12″ footprint, you can watch full HD resolution content, and have some screen real estate left over. The colors are vivid, and text is ultra-crisp. And with the less powerful processor, there are no fans in the machine. It is dead silent when running… almost unnervingly so.
Apple also introduced a new butterfly switch under the keys on the keyboard. This has a really different feel than anything I’ve felt from them. The keys have great tactile feedback, but don’t travel very far. I know there are a lot of folks that don’t like the new feel, but for me, it seems pretty natural. The other keyboards Apple’s been shipping always felt kinda “mushy” to me. This one definitely doesn’t feel like that. The key illumination is much better too, with each key having it’s own LED to brighten it up in dim conditions.
There’s also new trackpad. And if I have any issues with the new MacBook, it’s with the new Force Touch trackpad. This new trackpad allows for sensing how hard you click. So, for example, a light click might do one thing, and a harder click might do something different. For me, that’s taken some getting used to, as I’ve discovered I’m a heavy clicker. It’s taken a lot of practice to get the real click-action I intended, and at times, that’s still a work in progress.
But, wait, there’s more! The new trackpad is big, and with the smaller dimensions of the laptop, there’s not much room around it to rest your wrist while typing. It’s very common for me to be typing, and suddenly have some kind of force-click action pop up. If you’re a classically trained typist, and are used to keeping your wrists up, this won’t be a problem. If you’re a lazy typist — like me! — that close proximity to the keyboard might be an issue.
Realistically, though, I’ve had nothing but fun with this new laptop. I use it a ton, and am getting used to the subtle differences the new design introduced. It’s crazy light, fully functional, and does everything I could possibly want.
Now, I’ve just gotta find an “away” race to give it a full road test!
Summer has arrived in Da Lou. This week, it’s mid-90s for highs, with mornings starting in the mid-70s. With that kinda heat, I’m left with morning runs, which puts me into “weekends only” mode until this weather breaks, and cooler temperatures return.
Last night, I decided that I would get the Jedi Challenge virtual race checked off the list today — it seemed like my only chance this week to pull it off. Do you know how hard it is to get up at 5:15am to get ready to run at 6am? 🙂
That’s one of the cool things about this quest of mine, though. While I’m not a fan of getting up early like that, it’s an awesome feeling to get home and cleaned up, realizing that the day is just starting, and I’ve already got miles under my feet. That’s a great feeling, and worth every lost wink of sleep.
It was definitely hot this morning, and I started working up a pretty good sweat pretty quickly. However, I had one new thing on my side.
Two weeks ago, I put a new Garmin running watch on my wrist (a 920XT — more on that another time) that will sync through my iPhone. However, carrying my iPhone isn’t always convenient. I have a SpiBelt to help with that, but it’s a little constricting, and I’d rather have my phone in my pocket Of course, that means securing the phone so it won’t fall out, and that means zippered pockets.
I found these guys on Amazon, and started looking at them pretty closely. Looking at their blog, I see that their shorts are American-made, and that they’re runners. It seems like there are a bunch of running products out there, with some zoomie-zoom runner behind it. These guys are faster than me, but are just normal folks out running, and I dig that.
I wound up with a pair of gray shorts from them, and took them out for a test run this morning. They were light, didn’t soak up a bunch of heat, and have two wonderful zippered pockets. The pockets extend toward the front, so my phone stayed on the front of thigh, and didn’t move around. Perfect!
The other thing I liked about these new shorts was how they fit across my belly. I carry a little extra weight — something I’m working on! — but beyond that, I have a little bulging belly scar tissue from my surgeries when I was fighting colon cancer. These shorts don’t stretch too tight across my lower belly, and frankly, sorta give my belly some support as I’m chugging down the trail. These are winners, and I will have more!
I was telling Darla this weekend that I’ve done fifteen races in the last nine weeks or so. That’s just amazing to me. A little over three years ago, I was still on the mend from colon cancer, and just barely decided to do a little running. I’ve already run more races this year than I ran all of 2012, 2013 and 2014. I think I’m hooked.
And I get why I do it. This crazy race to run races plays right into my obsessive nature. It’s measurable, has a collecting aspect to it, and the only person I’m competing with is me. It doesn’t hurt that I’m seeing other benefits. For example, I’m down about twenty pounds over the last two months. Part of that is paying attention to my diet, but I know that putting 6-10 miles a week under my feet certainly doesn’t hurt!
My next scheduled race is the Wheels and Heels 5K in Washington MO on Saturday. See ya then!
Man, there were a lot of virtual races available this year around the 4th of July! I saw this one from Moon Joggers first, and frankly, of all of them, this one had the coolest medal.
I really wanted to get out Wednesday and run. We had amazing conditions in Da Lou. At lunch, it was about 63°, but the rain was pretty intense. I enjoy running in the rain, but this was a real storm, and I figured that it’d be best if I didn’t tempt fate by running amongst the trees with a storm overhead.
So, yesterday ended up being my running lunch day.
It was still pretty dang nice, with clouds and about 67° outside. I took a new route that kept me off the big roads, which meant laps on Wren Trail. I’m not usually a fan of laps, but the laps actually went by quickly, and made for a pretty safe feeling run with no cars to deal with.
And really, the time on the trail was great. It was a pretty easy go, and I think I’ve now found a new neighborhood course for some variety.
With that, race #42 is in the books, and another medal is on the tree!
Yesterday, I ran my third Freedom Four Miler. And once again, I found myself in Forest Park, chugging through a hot course replete with hills.
Fog in Forest Park
The morning started cool — about 65°, way cool for July — with a foggy sunrise. I got to the park early, knowing that parking was gonna be at a premium, and that it was a long walk from the parking to the start/finish line.
It’s full of stars!!
Pre-race is always weird for me. There’s usually some activities going on — usually beginning about thirty minutes before racetime — but there’s normally not much to do other than hang out. I talked with other racers, stretched, and watched for good photo ops.
Schnuck’s Shopping Cart
This race always features a little bit of military hardware — this year, a Humvee — but the coolest hardware was a crazy, giant, motorized shopping cart. I’ve seen this at the Bristol Speedway for some NASCAR races, but this is the first time I’ve been this close to one. It’s a pretty cool rig, with plenty of noise, and a cool “gee whiz” factor.
Shortly after it pulled up, we all lined up for the start — about a thousand of us. With the performance of the Star Spangled Banner, and a quick toot of an air horn, we were off.
The first third of a mile was a pretty quick flat, and slight downward hill, only to be followed by upward and downward portions of the course. I’m just not a hill guy! I broke into a quick walk, and watched as many folks passed me by. That’s something I’m kinda used to, being a back-of-the-pack guy!
Somewhere late in the first mile, I was joined by a another runner, Kate. This was her second race, and we stayed together, chatting through the remaining miles. Frankly, the miles just seemed to melt away, and in no time, we were crossing the finish line.
Close to the finish!
This is the first race in a well over a year that I’ve run with a partner — even one “discovered” on the course. I’d forgotten just how much a difference that can make. Chatting about life, the universe and everything really takes your mind off the footfalls and the miles, and makes the race so much easier to complete. Thanks Kate!
I was thrilled to cross the line, put another race in the books, and make a new friend along the way. All in all, a really great Fourth of July!
(This race benefitted the USO of Missouri. As a former military member, this is an outfit that I can’t help but support, and appreciate.)
Yeah, I know the medal has 2014 on it, instead of 2015. There’s a story behind that. (Isn’t there always?!)
I’d been signing up for a few races through the Virtual Nerd folks. They sponsor races that fundraise for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and with my connection to that disease, I couldn’t resist hooking up with them. Of course, the races were cool … Star Wars themed, Back to the Future themed. (Both yet to come for me!)
A week or so ago, I got a note from them that some of the race medals from last year were still hanging around, they were selling them cheap. I was a Beavis and Butthead fan a long, long time ago, and the Cornholio medal tripped my trigger. It helped that the guys’ shirts have “Cancer Sucks” across them. My sentiment exactly.
Once I ordered, I made mention to the Virtual Nerd folks on Facebook that I’d ordered this up. I told them that I’d survived colon cancer, and that mom was fighting CML — and that both of us agreed that cancer sucked. 🙂 They were impressed by mom’s fight, and said she must be a very tough lady. Who am I to argue with a stranger on the internet!
Fast forward a few days, and the envelope came with the medal. Scribbled on the outside was “Best of luck to your mom! (one 4 her too)”. I opened the padded mailer, and there were two medals in there, one for me and one for mom.
And once again, I was reminded just how wonderful the running community is. I’m so touched by the kindness of someone to just do a simple, kind thing for another runner. All I can say to Joe and Amanda (who operate Virtual Nerd Runs) is thank you from the bottom of my heart. The medal will be in the mail to mom this week.
Oh, and the miles today were hot, but pretty easy on a flat course. There — race report done. 🙂
I love that we have a place like Forest Park for events in St. Louis. It’s the second largest public park in the US (behind Central Park in NY), and it seems like it’s almost always got some kind of big event taking place on the weekends. And naturally, there are a lot of races that take place there, given that it can be blocked off and not foul up “regular” road traffic.
But there’s something about running in Forest Park that just brings out my average races. Today was no exception.
I hadn’t originally had this race on my calendar. I’ve supported this race financially in the past. A co-worker of mine, Sandy Butler, contracted brain cancer some years ago, and succumbed to it just a year ago. Sandy was a fun person, and happened to also be married to another co-worker of mine, Rick.
I’m in the office infrequently, and happened to see Rick on a recent visit. He follows my crazy racing, and knew that I was chasing medals. New for this year, he told me, was a finisher medal.
Done.
It’s a nice event, very reminiscent of the Undy, with teams supporting cancer victims, and keeping the memory alive of those folks no longer among us. In the case of Sandy’s team, we were the third largest team, and the second largest fundraiser. I was pretty proud to be a part of that.
The race course was familiar, using many segments I’d run on so many courses at Forest Park over the last three years, and as usual, I was sluggish in the park. My first kilometer was smoking (for me) at about 8:30, but I think I used up my tank of fuel, and wound up sorta just chugging through the rest of the race.
Like last weekend, I kicked it in at end, and ran like a crazy person to the finish line. I still love the response of the crowd when they see an old, fat guy kick it in turbo mode, and hustle across the finish line. That definitely takes the edge off how tired I am at the end of a race, and is thrilling for me.
(Beneficiary: Head for Cure Foundation. From their website: The Head for the Cure Foundation mission is to raise awareness and funding to inspire hope for the community of brain cancer patients, their families, friends, caregivers and other supporters, while celebrating their courage, spirit and energy.)
Today’s race was another of the Go! St. Louis race series, second of the three they’re holding this year. I’d been watching the weather, knowing that we’d had a tropical depression move over us, and that a cold front was to move through today. Last night, it looked like it would be 77° with sun at race time. As it ends up, it was cloudy, about 68°, and storms were moving across the northern parts of our area.
Tut, tut, it looks like rain
Siobhan had come up for Father’s Day, so all three of us piled into Darla’s Acadia, and headed toward Kirkwood. The ominous clouds continued to drop southward as we drove, and we could hear the thunder growing.
We found parking — which was pretty scarce! — at the start line. This race is a one-way, mostly downhill race, so Darla and Sio were gonna drop me off, and then drive to the finish line to meet me as I finished. Great plan.
George Sells from KTVI was there, and interviewing folks about the race, all the rain we’d gotten and whether we liked to run in the rain. He interviewed me and Sio, and that probably aired while we were at the site. There’s a piece up on their website, but it was after it was all over, and didn’t include our fifteen seconds of fame. 🙁
Sio and Darla decided to go back to the Acadia, and wait to see if the race was gonna go off. With the storm approaching, and lightning visible, it was a pretty good question.
Enter the rain.
And I’m not talking little sprinkles, I’m talking soak-you-to-the-bone-try-to-find-shelter-wherever kind of rain. It poured, and we lined up for the race. The horn sounded promptly at 7:30am, and we took off.
I was expecting this race to be kinda fast. It’s billed as the fastest 5K in St. Louis, and after looking at the elevation profile, I see why:
All-American 5K Elevation Profile
I took off at the gun, and began running. And, as I frequently do, I walked part of the course. However, I made it a point to run all the downhills. On two of those hills, I really kicked it up, and ran faster than I’ve ever run in a race. The cool thing was that one of them was as I was going to finish line. When a big ol’ overweight guy turns on the afterburners at the finish, the crowd absolutely starts cheering for you. That’s pretty doggone cool.
Typically, I shoot for less than 10min/km, although my races over the last year or two have been frustratingly shy of that.. That’s a 50-minute 5K, and a number generally just above all the time. In my splits today, they were ALL under ten minutes — significantly — except one segment. That’s amazing, and the first time I’ve pulled that off. And as you might expect with splits like that, I had a great finish time. In fact, it was the best race finish time I’ve ever had in a 5K, and the fastest 5K distance I’ve run in three years.
I get that I’m not all that fast, and my time isn’t exactly remarkable. But, to me, it was like I’d won the Olympics. And that’s the deal for me. I run “against” me, and sometimes have a great day doing it.
I’ve been using Apple networking gear for a long, long time. I started switching the house over to Applely things in 2005, and about five years ago, I succeeded in getting everything in house sporting a Cupertino logo.
And it’s largely been a great experience. But sometimes, bad things happen to good gear.
Over the last week, I’ve been having some weird things happening on the network inside the house. I’d set it up years ago with a 4th generation Airport Extreme downstairs, close to the U-verse gear, and a 2nd generation Airport Express upstairs to extend the wireless network through the house. Great plan, and it’s been solid as a rock.
At the time, I’d gone to great lengths to logically separate Uverse’s physical/wireless from my internal network. I’d had some real trouble with AT&T’s DNS being really slow, and that drove me to separate the networks for a reason I coulda solved so much easier. That was years and years ago, and needless to say, I didn’t document what I did, how I did it, or what should be what on the network. That little lack of detail kinda hampers troubleshooting.
After working most of the week thinking there was a problem on the U-verse side (resetting their gear twice), I finally began to realize that something on my side was obviously wrong. As I worked through it last night, my trusty Airport Extreme would no longer take a configuration. That was a sign.
Apple Airport Extreme 802.11ac
So, I started researching what Apple had out there, and found the Airport Extreme 802.11ac. This unit was two generations later than mine, and would talk more quickly with our recent devices by using 802.11ac. Nothing wrong with that. Repair and an upgrade? I’m good with that!
We have the good fortune living with fifteen miles of two Apple stores, and three Best Buy stores with Apple sections. If I need something Apple, I can usually get it locally. (Unless you’re looking for the new MacBook but that’s a story for another post.) I looked at the closest Best Buy, and they had exactly what I needed in stock … and I had a 4x Reward Zone points coupon. Perfect.
And it was on sale ($11 off). Even better.
I walked in, and the shelf sporting the Airport Extremes was empty. Ugh.
Have you tried to find a floor associate at Best Buy on a Friday night? Apparently, that’s either the point of lowest staffing, or the time during the week when the whole staff is pulled into a meeting. I waited, and waited, and waited, and finally found someone who could help me. He was quick to tell me that he thought they were out of ’em, because someone was looking for them earlier in the week and couldn’t find them. I told him that I had their website up on my iPhone, it said they had them, and I could order one online right now, and pick it up right there. He walked off to find one. 🙂
Despite the portents of inventory-related doom and despair, he was able to find that they had plenty in stock. He just didn’t know where they were. Five or ten minutes later, he turned a corner, Apple goodness in hand. Woot!
I got it home, prepared Becky for all the swearing she was gonna hear from the basement — me and networking don’t get along — and proceeded to start trying to bring the new device up. Now, when you can’t get into the current network device, it’s hard to capture its configuration to transfer to the new one.
Did I mention I had no documentation on what I’d done?
I plugged ‘er in, attached the WAN and LAN cables, and hoped for the best. I brought up the Airport Utility on my laptop, and it found the new device quickly. And then, the heavens smiled upon me.
The utility asked me if I was gonna replace the old Airport Extreme with the new one, and proceeded to move the configuration over. I was stunned. In fairness, I still had to do a little tweaking, as all that weird separation I did years ago didn’t entirely move over.
And frankly, I didn’t need all that separation. There was no reason to separate the networks just because of DNS. I changed the DHCP server on the new Extreme to propagate a different DNS than AT&T’s, and all was well with the world.
But, the upstairs Airport Express still wasn’t playing nicely. I tried resetting it several times, including taking it back to factory defaults, and never could get it connected to the network correctly. A little time with Uncle Google, and I found someone mentioning that you could take a newly refreshed (or purchased) Airport device, and configure it in the wi-fi settings of the iPad. That was new news to me.
So I tried it. The wi-fi settings saw the “blank” Airport Express, and asked me if I wanted to use it to extend the existing network. YES!
And sonofagun, it actually worked. The Apple networking magic was truly wonderful, and saved the backside of both me and my network. Color me very, very impressed.
