Race #26 – MoDOT Work Zone 5K

March 21, 2015 Colin

The first full day of Spring found me hitting the pavement again, in my fifth race in as many weeks.

I’d heard about the MoDOT Work Zone 5K last year, but for some reason, I never signed up for it. But I remembered the race, and added it to my “Conquer St. Louis By Foot” tour.

I picked up my race shirt and bib yesterday. I really wish more races would do race-specific bibs for their races. This one, like an awful lot of races I’ve run over the last few years, had a generic Fleet Feet bib. Nothing against Fleet Feet, but a race-specific bib would mean a lot more.

And then there was the shirt.

This race was to promote work zone safety. I don’t know what I should’ve expected, but the shirt is bright enough that it can be seen from space. I’m sure someone on the International Space Station gazed down upon St. Louis this morning, and wondered why all those extraordinarily bright yellow traffic cones were all moving around.

One of the problems with running 5K’s around St. Louis — when I can find ones that have medals — is that there’s a few venues that get used all the time. Forest Park. Downtown. Old town St. Charles. I’ve run ’em all. A lot.

This race was held on roads I’d never run upon, which was awesome. It paralleled I-64 on the northside, crossed over the interstate, and then paralleled the interstate again on the south. I liked that! From anywhere on the course, you could see the whole course. I really like seeing the water stops, the halfway point and the end of race as I’m moving along the road. For this, MoDOT scores with this race course!

However, there were hills.

Have you driven through Missouri recently? It ain’t exactly flat, and while rolling hills are cool in my Jeep, they’re a pain when I’m running up them. The first kilometer was an awesome, fast downhill run. But when you go downhill, and have to return to the start line, it’s a fact that you will go uphill at some point.

And so we did.

I started getting close to the finish, and I’d already relegated myself to a “goldilocks” race time — not too slow, not too fast, just right. I turned the corner, saw the clock at the finish line, and couldn’t believe the time. It was much lower than I was expecting. Huh? I looked at my watch (and yeah, there was that whole deal again with chip time and gun time, but you’ve read that before) and realized that the course was short by about a tenth of a mile. That’s not a huge thing, but it definitely made me feel good coming across the finish.

Normally, I don’t hang out for the awards. I already have the only awards I’m gonna get — a race shirt, a finisher’s medal, a bottle of water, and a snack of some kind — and I know I’m not getting an age group award. However, the dude that won my age group did the course in less than half my time. That is stunnnnning. Somehow, I’ve gotta find some speed!

So today was another good race, with good weather, a good course, and another medal on the medal tree. Next week, it’s back-to-back races to close out my winter-into-spring racing until sometime in May.

Race Course:

Running

Did I Mention That I Have a Running Problem?

March 18, 2015 Colin

A few weeks ago, I mentioned on Canapeel that I thought I might have a running problem. I believe now that there is no doubt of that fact.

This week will be the fifth weekend in a row of 5K races, with the sixth (the Undy Run/Walk 5K) being the last race before April. Until… I found another race the day after the Undy, and signed up for it. Another race, another medal.

I told Becky today that race medals have become my Pokemon… gotta catch ’em all.

And with nineteen races planned so far for this year — without a lot of races in the second half of the year (yet!) — I think I’ll have run just about every medal-bearing 5K race in St. Louis this year. And while some of those races are races I’ll probably always do (the Undy, the Cowbell), I’d like to find others to run after. (Get it?)

So how do I solve that? Well, I don’t have a “fifty runs in fifty states” mantra, but I do enjoy destination races where I get to run in new places and courses. After all, I can run in downtown St. Louis and Forest Park just so many times! 🙂 And if you look at states that touch Missouri, I still haven’t conquered Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas and Nebraska. And if you instead draw a circle with a 450-mile radius, suddenly there’s a lot more places in my weekend warrior wheelhouse. (I love alliteration!)

Hi. My name is Colin. (Hi Colin!) And I’m a runaholic.

Geek-Speak, Running

Race #25 – Pi Day 5K

March 15, 2015 Colin 1 Comment

For my twenty-fifth race, I picked a doozy — a once in a century event. You see, Pi Day is celebrated every year on March 14th (3-14) — the first three significant digits of pi. This year, the once-a-century alignment of month, day and year creates an über pi day (3-14-15). So now, start a race at 9:26:53am that morning, and you’ve got a major pi event (3-14-15-9-26-53 … the first ten significant digits of pi).

I drove to Columbus OH for this race, with most of the drive in a rainstorm. Nothing like almost eight hours of pouring rain to get ya off to a good start, eh? Add to that a temperamental GPS — I mean, who sends you through the downtown maze of interstate connections in Columbus at rush hour? — awful traffic, and a tired guy, and you have the ingredients for a grumpy driver. I got there safely, though, and that’s the important part.

Saturday morning, it was still raining, but the temps were in the high 40s, and there was no wind. If it’s gonna rain on a run, those are pretty good overall conditions. And frankly, I enjoy running in the rain. It’s settling, peaceful, and is usually a wonderful experience.

A few days before the race, the race organizer let me know that the packets for the out-of-town participants would be at the race site at the Very Important Pi People (VIP2) table. it’s the first time I’ve been a VIP at a race, so I enjoyed that. They really seemed to be unaccustomed to folks coming from out of state for this fundraising race for the local school district. But with a cool event offering a really nice medal, I’m surprised they didn’t have more out-of-staters in attendance.

The race was awesome. The foot pain that kept me out of the races in Lincoln at the beginning of the year flared back up, so I took it easy, and mostly walked the course, which wound through a suburban park. I had no idea what to expect from the course, but it was a paved trail, and very easy to navigate. And it was flat!

A little over four kilometers in, I started to see people go off-trail, and up into the woods. I quickly saw why. The trail was flooded for about fifteen feet, and they didn’t want to go through the shoe-high water. After earning my water wings in the Sandmine Challenge a couple of weeks ago, I simply couldn’t go around, and high stepped through the mini-lake! And of course, that meant I passed about fifteen folks that were up in the woods. Woot!

I came around the corner, ran to the finish (because you always run to the finish!) and collected my medal. They had engravers on the spot, so I turned my medal over to them, and had my name and time engraved… except it wasn’t.

Like most on-the-spot engravers, they had a feed from the official timing for the event (this time from Fleet Feet Columbus). I got my medal back, and the time was about two-and-a-half minutes longer than my own timing. And suddenly, I realized I was dealing with gun time, and not chip time. Again. Dunno why suddenly this year that’s been such an issue, but it is what it was. As with last week, I’m claiming my “watch time.”

So, race four of six in the back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back race weekends is in the books, and with some irrationality! (See what I did there?)

Race Course:

Running

Race #24 – Shamrock Shuffle 5K

March 7, 2015 Colin

My third race of the year was a repeat of an inaugural event I ran last year, the Holy Infant Shamrock Shuffle 5K. Last year’s course was tough, with lots of hills, and plenty of folks coming forth from their homes to cheer us on.

And it was cold.

I’d seen this year’s course, and while I didn’t know the neighborhood well enough to know the terrain, I knew the course was… well… convoluted. So. Many. Turns. To say I wasn’t excited about running this new course is an understatement.

I showed up early (typical for me!), and found a food truck serving coffee. It was tasty, warm, and just what I needed to get me moving. I watched the Fleet Feet folks set up the start/finish line, and listened to the dj start the music. It was crazy loud, which I’m sure the neighbors of the race site thoroughly enjoyed! 🙂

And, the bagpipes were cool to listen to.

The race kicked off, I hit the button on my race watch as I crossed the finish line, and we were off. In fact, I was zooming. For some reason, I had some good energy, and tore up my first two kilometers (8:35 and 9:37). That’s crazy fast for me, and set me up for a great race time.

I would my way through the weird course. At every turn, it seemed like I was meeting folks that were turning in the opposite direction. It was very, very hard to get a sense of where you were in the course, and whether folks you were encountering were ahead of you on the course, or behind you.

I missed having folks cheering us along the course. While there were plenty of volunteers making sure we stayed on course (and were safe from traffic!), there weren’t many folks out cheering us along. I miss that.

Finally, I turned the corner back toward the race site, and crossed the line. I looked at my watch, and it showed I finished in 50:16, which was a terrific time, and about 50 seconds faster than last week on an easier course. I was thrilled.

There were plenty of food trucks around, so I got a bacon melt from The Meltdown. This was a delicious grilled cheese with American cheese and bacon on the inside, and a parmesan cheese crust on the outside. Exceptional! I paired that with a free beer (the best kind), and had a pretty good recovery.

I walked to the Fleet Feet booth to see my official time, and noticed that it was about 50 seconds SLOWER than the time on my watch. They claimed this was chip time — the time measured when the timing chip on my bib crosses the line at the start and finish of the race — but I believe this was actually gun time, which is measured from when someone says “go.” Since it takes a while for everyone to wind through the start line, gun time is always slower than chip time when you start at the back of the pack like I do. My Garmin is typically within a second or two of the official chip time, so I’m really confident in my 50:16 time. That’s the time I’m claiming!

So, another race down — the third in three weeks, with three more to come over the next three weeks. Next week is the Pi Day 5K in Columbus OH!

Race Course:

Running

Race #23 : Scenic City 5K

March 1, 2015 Colin

A Major Award! A few weeks before the Scenic City 5K, my mother taunted me, sending me info about the race and asking if I was gonna come to Chattanooga for it.

How could I turn that down?

So, yesterday, I ran my first race on the streets of the city in which I was raised. And frankly, it was a great experience, aside from the weather. It was a very, very cold 27 degrees at racetime.

The race was “out and back”, with Finley Stadium (home of the Mocs) serving as the home base. The race both started and ended on the 50-yard line, which probably made this the first time I’ve ever been on a football field.

Frankly, the size of the field surprised me. At one time, it both felt immense and tiny. Football fields look so incredibly large on TV, but your brain says it’s just an optical illusion. And your brain is right, but it’s still really, really large.

The course itself was pretty unremarkable, except that it was really flat, which is something that surprised me about a course in The ‘Noog. With all the hills in Chattanooga, I fully expected the course should be hillier. It wasn’t, and I was thankful. I do wish it had been more picturesque. Chattanooga has so much beauty to it, and having this race run through essentially an industrial area didn’t do it much justice.

However, every race should start and end on grass. The feel of that field beneath my shoes was amazing, and so much easier on my feet and knees. I could certainly get behind a full course run on close cropped grass! Might be a good use for golf courses.

After the awards ceremony, I wandered around the site, and found someone handing out drinks. I guzzled one while I walked, and heard someone say, “Hey, want a beer?”

The answer to that question is almost always “yes”.

I didn’t recognize (nor retain!) the name of the beer, but it was cold, dark and delicious. I started to drink it, when another runner facetiously asked after getting his cup of beer, “Where’s the pizza?”

And that’s when the beer guy said, “It’s right over there.”

Yes, there was a table with about 40 Little Caesar’s pizzas! Slices and beer. Every race should end like that.

And that was really that. It was a great race, I had a good finish, and I had pizza and beer. What’s not to like?

Race Course:

Running

A Problem with Running

February 26, 2015 Colin

I think I have a problem.

This weekend, I’m running in the Scenic City 5K, held in the city in which I was raised, Chattanooga TN. I’ve planned out the gastrotourism places I wanna visit (Krystal, Ankar’s, Sofa King Juicy Burger), along with some time with my family, and you’d think that’d be enough planning for a quick trip to The Noog.

But, I think I have a problem.

See, I started poking around, looking for another 5K (with a medal — a kid’s gotta get paid!) in SE Tennessee or north Georgia, thinking I could run another 5K as long as I’m in the neighborhood, and then drive 450 miles home. (Bupkis, btw. There was nothing.)

Inspired, I did the same investigation for my Pi Day 5K race weekend in Columbus OH in two weeks. Again, thinking I could catch another 5K while there, and drive 450 miles home. (Nothing, btw.)

Not wanting to pass up an opportunity, I did the same thing again for our vacation getaway weekend in New Orleans LA, from where we leave for a cruise in six weeks. After all, we’d be there a day early. Surely, I could find a 5K on the Saturday morning we’re supposed to board the ship. (Nothing.)

I also checked each of the islands we’ll visit along the way, to see if there was some kind of race I could hook into. (Nothing.)

Yes, I think I have a problem. I’d look for a seven-step program to help manage this, but I think I’d turn it into a race, and expect to have a medal at the end of the route. 🙂

Running

Race #22 : SpeRUNking Sandmine Challenge

February 22, 2015 Colin

I’ve never raced in a novelty race. No paint. No glowing. And no obstacles.

Until yesterday.

Somewhere recently, I’d heard about this race. An old mine with temperate conditions in the dead of winter. I looked at some of the race coverage out there, and found the CNN had called it one of the ten ultimate US adventures, right up there with the Iditarod, climbing El Capitan, riding the “vomit comet” or accomplishing the Triple Crown of Hiking. That certainly had some appeal.

But… the obstacles!

I exchanged Facebook messages with someone close to race, trying to understand if it was friendly to walkers (it was), and what the time to complete the course would be for a walker (two hours or less). I was sold, and signed up.

But… the obstacles!

I’d been both excited and apprehensive as the race approached. We had awful weather the night before the race, and I thought that might keep me away from the site (about an hour away). But, the weather held out, and I made the trek to Crystal City MO, and Crystal City Underground.

After a really icy approach to the mine, I walked into the maw of this enormous abandoned sand mine, and was struck by the size of the place. The ceilings were dozens of feet tall, with a great room that is used for parties and events… when there’s not a race going on.

With the weather, I’d left the site really early, but with the decent roads, I arrived about two hours ahead of my starting wave. So I waited. And waited. And waited. And soon enough, it was time to swallow my fear, turn on my headlamp, and head into the mine.

I’m glad I had the headlamp (which was highly recommended by the organizers). Almost as soon as we left the start line, the lighting was gone, and the only illumination was what I was carrying with me.

And after the darkness, came the water.

I hit the water, taking big, careful steps, and little by little, the water was deeper and deeper, eventually gaining about three feet of depth. And even with my headlamp, I couldn’t see the end of it. I waded and waded, and eventually started climbing up and out of the underground lake. Little did I know that I’d just begun to climb.

The next obstacle was a dark hill of solid sand. This hill was almost six feet tall, nearly vertical, and with no steps or hand holds. You had to run … fast … and let your momentum carry you up the hill. My first attempt had me landing right on my knees. My second attempt had me almost get up the hill. After that, I heard someone behind me tell me that they’d cup my feet in their hands to help me up.

And that was really the way the race went. At every obstacle, and all throughout the course, the course stewards and participants were encouraging everyone, cheering them on. And occasionally, someone would lend a hand to help you through something.

Two more significant water crossings, an ascent and descent on an A-frame about ten feet tall built from 2×4’s, balance beams, a tire course, another six foot leap atop a stage platform and a floor made entirely of loose sand… that’s what this race entailed. If I’d heard about all that, I likely wouldn’t have signed up.

But I did, and I finished.

In fact, I finished with a time right in line with a “regular” 5K. Given the delays on the obstacles, and the challenging landscape, I fully expected to finish somewhere between ninety minutes and two hours. To finish under an hour was truly stunning.

So I’ve added another race completion, another medal, and the first of six back-to-back races taking me to the end of March, with travels to both Chattanooga TN and Columbus OH to come. It’s a good start to this year’s races, and a real boost to my running confidence.

Apple Existence, Photography

The Aperture Is Closing

February 5, 2015 Colin

MacRumors updated their sub-site for OS X Yosemite to include info about the new Photos app, which appears destined to launch with the next drop of Yosemite. I’d guess that’ll be in March or April.

Frankly, it’s the time I dreaded.

The news about Photos isn’t good, at least not for me. Aperture has essentially been deprecated (although it still runs, and likely will for a while), but the ecosystem that keeps it functional will no longer be developed. No more versions of Aperture are to come, which is very sad.

Several years ago, I was a Lightroom junkie, and loved the product. However, it didn’t handle geodata very well. While that’s not the most important thing in the world, it’s pretty dang nice. And for files that couldn’t take metadata natively (like RAW files), it was necessary to generate sidecar files to carry that info so you could see it from the OS. That’s all well and good inside the application, but from the OS, it was awful. When I’d do a Spotlight search for some piece of metadata in my images, I’d get a ton of sidecar files as search results, rather than the actual images. This meant that I couldn’t see thumbnails for these images in Finder’s display of the results, so I had no idea if the images pointed to by the sidecar files were of Elvis, space aliens or Santa Claus.

And that’s when I made the switch to Aperture.

It wasn’t easy, but I was careful about my exports from Lightroom, preserving my directory structure that I’d been carrying since 2002, and I got everything into Aperture. I’ve been way happy with it, and its integration into the Mac OS. However, with Yosemite, the announcement was made that Apple would have a new application called Photos, and with that, the speculation about what that meant for Aperture (and iPhoto) began.

When that writing hit the wall, it was obvious that Aperture was going to be shuttered, and with that, there was a huge clatter of noise from pro photographers about moving to Lightroom. Even Apple said that was the right destination for professional photographers. And based on what I read on MacRumors today, I’d have to agree.

Photos will not allow plugins, which is a cornerstone for photo editing in most photography applications. I use Nik, OnOne and other filters in editing my images, and giving up that kind of control and capability within the application is a pretty tough pill to swallow.

And based on what I gather, Photos wants to own the location of my images, meaning that my carefully manicured old-fashioned file folder-based system of filing my images would no longer be supported. Aperture was happy to deal with that via referenced images, and that was perfect for me. Call me a control freak, but knowing where things are lets me sleep better at night.

I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg, however. I’m betting that if you like iPhoto, this’ll feel like a big ol’ improvement. For those of us that loved Aperture, this is a big step backward.

So, Lightroom, here I come. Have the things that drove me to Aperture been fixed? Can I get all the nuggets of metadata out of Aperture, and into Lightroom? Well, that remains to be seen. Adobe has some basic instructions for how to make that migration, and is promising a tool that will make that much more automated. While I’ve got Lightroom 5 installed, I’m waiting for the tools to catch up to the reality of actually cutting over to Lightroom from Aperture.

For now, I’ll just hide and watch, eagerly awaiting the time to actually make the cutover to Adobe’s Lightroom, and turn out the lights on Aperture for a final time.

Apple Existence

Clickety-Clack Goes the Keyboard

February 4, 2015 Colin 2 Comments

Some of the best keyboards I ever used were the old IBM Model M keyboards. I used ’em on old IBM PC’s, PC clones and IBM terminals. They were great, mechanical beasts, weighing a few pounds, and having a very distinct “clicky” sound and feel when you typed. And they have a huge fanbase, despite it being so long since they were last produced by IBM. (Take a look at ClickyKeyboards for some real cool “keyboard porn” about this keyboard from the 1980’s.)

When I moved over to the Mac about a dozen years ago, I found the keyboards to be a little squishy, but they were the “right” keyboards for my new Apple existence. I’ve lived with those for a long time.

Until today.

I got an email from Other World Computing (OWC). These guys are just about the best Mac aftermarket dealers out there, with all kinds of things to enhance the Mac life. I get their emails frequently, usually full of hard drive and memory deals. This week, however, they mentioned the Matias Tactile Pro 4.0 keyboard.

Intrigued by their advert, I started looking into this keyboard, and found a boatload of other folks who lamented losing the clicky, mechanical feel of the old IBM Model M keyboards and had switched to the Matias Tactile Pro. Folks talked about the sound, feel and speed of these keyboards, especially for folks that have a “heavy” typing style like I do.

I was so intrigued that I ordered one yesterday, and found it on the doorstep today.

This thing is awesome. It’s heavy — about three pounds, I’d guess — and utilizes ALPS keyboard switches for every key. They sound and feel so much like the old IBM keyboard, and man, can I fly on the keys. This is a keyboard I can fall in love with.

Now, there’s probably some downsides for some folks:

It’s a cabled keyboard — not wireless — but the cable is a six-footer, which is crazy long, and harkens back to the old IBM keyboards.
It is noisy — I like that, but it may not be for everyone.
To me, the keys seem visually off-center as compared to the footprint of the keyboard. I’m slowly getting used to that, but it’s just a little weird.
It’s a little spendy. Through OWC, it was about $130.

There’s also a some plusses:

Each key has extra notation for some of the other characters that can be generated. For example. the “2” key has the “2” and “@” as expected, but also shows the “™” and “€” symbols, which are created by using the Option key. Pretty dang cool!
Of course, one of the things you’d be concerned about is all that notation going away over time. I think this is less likely to happen than with a printed keyboard, because Matias laser etches the keycaps, which oughta give them a ton of life.
There are three USB 2.0 ports, well-distributed around the keyboard — one on each side, and on on the back of the keyboard. You can’t charge an iPad with those, but an iPhone, memory stick or Garmin USB ANT stick should work just fine.

So, why a new keyboard? You buy a Mac, you get a keyboard, so what’s all the fuss?

Well, when you sit in front of a screen all day like I do, having a comfortable workspace is key. You want the chair to be comfy, the desk to be spacious and useful, and the lighting to be good. Why wouldn’t you want your fingers to have the same level of comfort and functionality as the rest of your home office experience? For me, it was an easy spend to give me a even better experience with my Mac, and so far, it’s been well worth it.

Well done, Matias!

Space

Shared History

January 28, 2015 Colin

Twenty-nine years ago today, the space shuttle Challenger was destroyed in a horrific explosion just a minute into their mission. And I have almost no knowledge or memory of what happened after that.

You see, that was the day I joined the US Air Force.

I was in Knoxville TN, at the MEPS station, awaiting time to ship out to San Antonio TX and six weeks of basic military training. I watched the launch, and stepped away to the restroom, returning to the news that Challenger had been destroyed.

A few hours later, I was on a plane to Lackland AFB, and for six weeks, I heard no news about Challenger.

During my basic training, there was flow of news, and that was by design. We were supposed to focus on becoming members of America’s fighting machine. And we did.

In those weeks of isolation, rumors ran rampant among those of us learning to march, shoot and obey orders. The story we heard the most: The Russians. They destroyed Challenger.

I can remember one afternoon when we were in the dorms, and heard the base air raid sirens go off. We began putting mattresses in the windows (as we were instructed to do), until the all clear was sounded. With the heightened rumors about the potential Russian influence, we definitely took the sirens seriously.

Every now and then, we’d find an instructor who would tell us some news of the investigation, which helped squelch the rumors for a while, before they spun up again. It seemed the lack of information was a breeding ground for misinformation.

And now, almost three decades later, I still hear things about the mission and investigation that I’ve never heard before. It’s as though I was in a coma during much of the first quarter of 1986, and occasionally, it’s all new to me.

Today, I won’t get on my soapbox about our country’s seeming lack of dedication to space exploration, and the benefits we’ve garnered from that. I won’t pontificate on my view that we may need a way to escape this planet someday, and might find ourselves with no way out due to shortsightedness.

It’s all about the Challenger astronauts today, and the memory of those souls taken home far too early.

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can·a·peel (noun) ˈkan-ə-pēl – A meal with a lot of variety, where each participant finds and cooks their own food.