I think this drive may have problems.
Tag: video
The Training Camp
This past weekend was my cycling team’s training camp in southern Illinois. We spent four days riding on some very hilly roads (particularly compared to the very flat roads of Champaign County) in what turned out to be some fairly nasty weather (much like last year).
The ride schedule was mostly the same as last year. About half the team went down a day earlier this year to get in one additional ride. We started out on Thursday from Giant City State Park and did a quick climb from Makanda up to route 51. This is a two mile long climb that got the heart pumping right away. On the way back down I hit 45.3 mph trying to keep up with fearless Jay. Last year on this same hill I only hit 39.1 mph.
From there we headed to Bald Knob, the highest point in southern Illinois. This is the same climb we would be doing on Friday, so this was just a warm up. We intended to go nice and easy, but those intentions never seem to work out. We rode a litter harder than we planned, and probably a little harder than we should have.
I was pretty exhausted by the time we returned to our cabins in Giant City to clean up. We drove to Carbondale for dinner at the Italian Village, followed by some window shopping at closed bike stores, before picking up Dan who took the Amtrak train from Champaign. After returning to Giant City I slept for 10.5 hours.
Friday we rode to Lick Creek to meet the rest of the team members who were staying in cabins there. From there we rode over to Bald Knob again. The entire group was much bigger and rode much faster. I was pretty tired from Thursday’s ride, so it was tough just getting there.
At a gas station stop I made the mistake of taking too long to strap my little Flip video camera onto my bike and ended up missing the group as they rolled out. I had to chase for a couple miles, including the really big hill were the group split up. I caught up with several riders on that hill and a few of us hauled ass to try to catch up with the lead pack. We didn’t quite make it as they reached the Bald Knob climb before us and we picked our way through the remnants of that group on the way up the climb.
The remainder of the ride was much easier as everyone was tired by this point. We refueled afterward with a big dinner at the Giant City lodge, which, despite not having any vegetarian entrees on the menu, has a number of delicious sides, including wild rice, mashed potatoes, corn, salad, etc. After dinner I quickly fell asleep for 9.5 hours.
Saturday’s ride was 100 miles, going from Lick Creek to Golconda and back. At the start of the ride it was 50˚ and drizzling rain. The rain came and went all day, but the temperatures got colder. During one two minute stretch I was even pelted with pea-sized hail. We split into two groups. Given my fatigue from the previous two days (and the fact that I am supposed to be tapering for the marathon) I wisely chose to ride in the slower group. We faced a stiff headwind the entire first half of the ride. Despite the nasty weather we had a pretty good time. It was a tough ride, very hilly. The group would split up on the uphills they we’d come back together on the flats and downhill sections.
Half of our group chose to turn around at 37.5 miles rather than ride the full 50 to Golconda. The first 10 or so miles after we turned around were actually somewhat pleasant. Sure, I was soaking wet, but we had a good tailwind and as long as I kept moving I stayed plenty warm. Around this time the sun actually came out for about 30 seconds. Soon after came lighting, thunder, driving rain, hail, a drop in temperature, and a change in wind direction. We faced a headwind the rest of the way back.
After the ride I changed into dry clothes, munched on some snacks and chitchatted while we waited for everyone else to finish. Then we all packed up and headed over to the Giant City Lodge for a team banquet. Saturday was all you can eat fried chicken night at the lodge. This is going to sound crazy, but that’s actually what I ordered. I simply didn’t eat any of the chicken. The meal also had all you can eat mashed potatoes, corn, rolls, etc. Everyone placed the same order and huge plates of food were served to us family style.
We awoke Sunday morning to temperatures in the mid-30s, howling winds, and damp roads. The ride was much shorter, but still challenging. We coasted down to Makanda then took turns climbing the two big hills heading out of the valley. One was long and gradual, the other was short and steep. I did five climbs before deciding my toes would fall off if I did any more.
And that was it. Training camp was great fun. We had some tough rides in tough conditions. Most importantly, I don’t think it screwed up my marathon preparations. We’ll know for sure in less than two weeks.
The Macintosh
Today the Macintosh computer is 25 years old. The Macintosh 128K was released on January 24, 1984. This machine had no hard drive and only 128 kilobytes of RAM (currently available computers typically have 2 gigabytes of RAM, or roughly 16,000 times as much as the original Macintosh 128K). It was the first computer available to consumers that had a mouse and a graphical user interface. While much has changed in the Mac’s user interface of the past 25 years, most of the original concepts (mouse pointer, icons, windows, menus, buttons) are still used.
I actually owned a Macintosh 128K, though not when it was released in 1984, but rather when I found one in a pawn shop in rural Virginia in 1999. I had a day off my job at ASP when I was exploring the area. I browsed around this pawn shop when I was shocked to find four “classic” style (the original all-in-one design) Macintosh computers. I had to have them. Even if they didn’t work, I always wanted to have a fish tank. The price tags said $20 each. I examined the machines and found that two of them had been completely gutted and had no hope of ever working, but the cases were still intact. The other two seemed to have all the parts, but they were so old the chances of them working were pretty slim. I explained to the shop worker that they probably didn’t work, but I would still pay $20 for all four of them. We had a deal.
The two that didn’t work were a Macintosh SE and a Macintosh SE/30. I was delighted to learn the two that had all the parts were a Macintosh 128K (the first ever Macintosh) and a Macintosh 512K (the second ever Macintosh). Unfortunately, the 128K didn’t work. However, the 512K did work. These machines don’t run without a system floppy disk, which didn’t come with the pawn shop computers and which I clearly didn’t have. So I found one for sale on the internet for a few bucks and once it arrived I had a working 1984 era machine.
Now, this machine isn’t terribly useful for anything other than nostalgia, but it still works to this day. It still surprises me how fast these old machines boot up. Here’s a video where the machine can go from off to fully booted in 16 seconds.
I have owned dozens of computers over the years, all but two (I think) have been Macs:
| Image | Model | Introduced | Acquired | Status |
 |
Performa 6200 | 1995 | 1995 | recycled |
 |
PowerBook 5300 CS | 1995 | 1996 | in my closet |
 |
iMac | 1998 | 1998 | sold to relatives |
 |
Macintosh 128K | 1984 | 1999 | recycled |
|
Macintosh 512K | 1984 | 1999 | in my office |
 |
Macintosh SE | 1987 | 1999 | recycled |
|
Macintosh SE/30 | 1989 | 1999 | recycled |
 |
9 x Macintosh IIcx | 1989 | 1999 | 9 x recycled |
|
Macintosh IIci | 1989 | 1999 | in my storage room |
 |
PowerBook G3 (work) | 2000 | 2000 | returned to work |
 |
iBook SE (Melissa) | 2000 | 2001 | gave to relatives |
 |
PowerMac G4 | 2000 | 2001 | in my office |
 |
PowerBook G4 (work) | 2002 | 2003 | returned to work |
 |
PowerBook 12″ (Melissa) | 2003 | 2003 | in my office |
 |
PowerMac G5 | 2004 | 2004 | gave to parents |
 |
Mac mini | 2005 | 2005 | gave to in-laws |
 |
MacBook Pro (work) | 2006 | 2006 | returned to work |
 |
MacBook (Melissa) | 2007 | 2007 | Melissa’s primary computer, in Melissa’s office |
|
MacBook Pro (work) | 2007 | 2007 | my primary laptop, in my office |
 |
Mac Pro | 2008 | 2008 | my primary desktop, in my office |
 |
PowerBook Duo 250 | 1993 | 2008 | in my office |
The Major Award
Gawking Neighbor: Say Parker, what is that?
Old Man Parker: Not now, can’t you see I’m busy?
Gawking Neighbor: Yeah, but what is it?
Old Man Parker: It’s a major award.
Gawking Neighbor: Gee, I wouldn’ta know’d dat. It looks like a lamp.
Old Man Parker: Well, it is a lamp, you nincompoop. But it’s a major award… I won it.
Gawking Neighbor: Sam hell, you say you won it?
Friday evening was the Second Wind Running Club annual banquet. Melissa & I attended, as we have in previous years. We ate food, shared injury stories with friends (runners have a lot of injury stories), and watched an awards presentation. The club awards prizes for participating in the most club functions or succeeding in a circuit of local races. I finished the year leading the race circuit standings for my age group. I competed in many of the circuit races and did quite well in each of them. For this I received a nice pair of gloves (something I can always use).
The club also hands out runner of the year awards for males and females in the following categories: high school, masters (40+ years), ultra-marathon, new runner, and overall. Once or twice in the past I thought I might have a chance to win one of the runner of the year awards, but even when I had good years, there was always someone who had a better year. Since recovering from my knee injury I had never even given them a second thought.
I was curious to know which of my friends would receive these awards. I listened intently as the winners of each category were announced until they reached the final award, male runner of the year. I found it a bit strange that Melissa chose this moment to get out her camera and turn it on. Before announcing the winner, the club president started listing the winner’s 2008 racing accomplishments. They sounded all too familiar, for you see, they were my 2008 racing accomplishments. Indeed, I was honored by the club as the 2008 male runner of the year.
I can honestly say that I was quite surprised by this. Don’t get me wrong, I had a good year, but the list sounded much more impressive with somebody else reading it…
It turns out that Melissa knew about it beforehand. It was her duty to make sure I showed up to the banquet. I was actually just as surprised that she was able to keep this a secret from me. I wonder what else she could be hiding…
The Practice Meet
I didn’t have time to write about it earlier, but the Tecumseh marathon wasn’t the only race I did last week. I do swimming workouts with the UIUC Masters swim team. Thursday (two days before the marathon) was our last practice of the semester and we had a practice meet where we raced against each other. Melissa even came to watch the meet and take pictures (she was the only spectator). Afterwards we had a pizza party.
The turnout was relatively small. Each event only had a few people swimming, and there were only enough people to fill two four-person teams for the relay events. I am one of the few people doing Masters who didn’t swim competitively when I was younger, so a swim meet is a really foreign and interesting experience for me.
Unfortunately, I’m very bad at jumping off the starting blocks. My legs flail about and half the time my goggles fill with water.
I swam the 500 yard freestyle (what, no 1000 yard race?). I was the only one who swam the 500 yard freestyle. Most people consider it a distance race, but it’s almost a sprint to me. I really only have one speed when swimming anyway. My 1000 yard pace is pretty close to my 200 yard pace. My time was 6:53, which was a bit slower than I hoped.
Aside from that I swam the 100 yard breaststroke and the 100 yard individual medley. Then I also go talked into the 200 yard medley relay (where I swam backstroke), the 200 yard freestyle relay, and the (joke event) 200 yard “corkscrew” relay. The (new to me) corkscrew event requires always rotating the same direction, alternating one stroke freestyle then one stroke backstroke. It made me incredibly dizzy. 35 yards into my 50 yard leg I just started laughing uncontrollably. I was so dizzy I kept running into the lane lines and I could barely stay afloat.
I had a really fun time. I was a little concerned about doing any type of race so close to the marathon, but it worked out okay. My arms and shoulders were pretty stiff on Friday, but they loosened up in time for the race on Saturday.
The Christmas Decorations
We spent some time putting up Christmas decorations tonight. I took the opportunity to use the remote timer I built last year for my old camera to shoot a time lapse movie of the process, which I included below. If you pay close attention you can see where we dropped (and broke) one of the ornaments, then swept it up a short while later.
The Line Art
Mathematica: Import + ListContourPlot + Export = easy line art conversion.
Update: I explain in detail how I did this on my company’s blog.
The Indy Marathon Chase
“Whoa, check out that guy! He makes Speedy Gonzalez look like Regular Gonzalez!” –Philip J. Fry
Melissa runs marathons. I chase them.
Saturday she ran the inaugural Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.
I rode my bike to several different places on the course to cheer her on and take pictures.
The marathon went rather well for Melissa, and as a result, less well for me. For you see, she ran so fast that half of the places where I went to watch the race I arrived too late and missed her. The first time it was clear that she had already passed so I didn’t wait around long. The remaining times I waited several minutes before I could be sure she had already passed.
We were both wearing GPS watches, so using that data I put together this animation using Mathematica that shows our locations throughout the race. Melissa’s path is blue, Rob’s path is red. It’s kind of funny to watch my red path wait around at a certain location while Melissa moves farther and farther away.
Update 2009-04-17: I have written an entry for my company blog showing in great detail how I made this movie.
The Big 3-0
Q: Was there a defining moment in your life when you made a decision that changed the course of the rest of your life forever?
A: I walked out of a bar on my 30th birthday and ran 30 miles cold turkey. It hurt bad, but it changed the course of my life ever since that faithful event. –Dean Karnazes (Ultramarathon Man)
Today is my 30th birthday. The Big 3-0. We spent the last two nights partying with friends and family. Today, I spent much of the day running. Inspired by the story of Dean Karnazes, now one of the best endurance runners in the world, I decided to run 30 miles on my 30th birthday. And as if that weren’t enough, I also chose to run the 5.5 mile Allerton Park trail race.
Last night at dinner with my family we reminisced of my first trip to Allerton Park as a young boy with my grandparents, aunt, & brother. My grandmother and aunt talked with disgust about rumors of wild parties & orgies that supposedly took place at the Allerton estate while Robert Allerton was living there decades ago. They then asked me if I knew what an orgy was, to which I (as a 9 or 10 year old) apparently responded, “No, and I don’t want to know.”
In addition to the beautiful gardens on the grounds, Allerton Park has some of my favorite trails in the area. The only other time I ran the race was 2003. That year I was in very good shape. I ran the entire race in 10th place. Then in the last half mile seven people passed me. This year I am in roughly equally good shape and I hoped to equal or better my previous result.
I arrived early to get in a good warmup (and start working on my 30 for the day). I’ve run this trail 4 times in the past month, so I knew it fairly well. I was amazed to see how high the water in the Sangamon River was, givin the small amount of rain we had this week. Apparently this river has a very large watershed. The trail was very muddy, and flooded in dozens of places. Most of the flooded areas could be avoided by running to one side of the trail or the other. There were four or five places where the water simply could not be avoided so we had to run through. A few were only ankle deep. One was close to knee deep.
I started the race near the front. I was in 6th place at the first turn when we headed into the woods. I stayed in 6th place almost the entire race. I passed another runner around mile 3 to move into 5th, but that runner passed me back around mile 3.5.
With my heart rate over 180, I was really starting to tire by the time we reached the Sun Singer. I generally try not to look behind me in races, but I did at this point and I was kind of glad to have a lead of around 40 seconds over the next runner behind me. From there I eased up a little and cruised the remaining 1.5 miles. I still ran hard, but I tried not to overdo it. I finished in 6th place overall (out of 396 finishers), 2nd place in my new 30-34 age group. I was very happy with the placing. My time was slower than I would have liked, but so was everyone else’s time. The trail was really slow today.
I chatted with some friends at the finish line, grabbed some water and bananas, walked back to my car, changed shirt/socks/shoes, and started running again. Very slowly. Along the way I helped out my friends from Second Wind Running Club (who organized the race) by taking down the flagging tape that marked the course as I ran. I cut the loop a little short so I could make it back to the finish line for the awards ceremony. I received a race towel for finishing 2nd in my age group. As I sat on the grass I stretched out quite a bit. Running that hard really left my muscles tight, and by that point I had only run 12 miles.
After the awards I ate more and started running again, still very slowly. It was rather uneventful until mile 22 or so when I started to have a lot of pain in my right hip flexor. I stopped to walk, but that didn’t help much. Around that same time Melissa called me on my cell phone to offer moral support, which helped. My plans were in serious jeopardy and I was still 2 miles away from my car. So I walked about a mile. My hip wasn’t getting any better. I started running again. I immediately noticed my hip hurt less when I was running than when I was walking. If that wasn’t motivation to keeping running I don’t know what was.
I limped along at 12 minute per mile pace for the remainder of the run. I passed the imaginary 26.2 mile mark (marathon distance) at 5:09, probably the slowest I’ve ever covered that distance in five attempts. I’ve previously done 2 marathons and 2 ultramarathons. Even though this 30 miler wasn’t actually a race, I’m probably going to call it an ultramarathon anyway.
Running through the water crossings on the last lap of the 5 mile trail was pretty unpleasant. My feet and been wet for over 5 hours and now they were sopping and I feared I would get blisters. I looked at my watch as I passed 29 miles and realized I could finish under 6 hours if I didn’t dally. So I actually picked it up and ran closer to 10 minute pace for the last mile. I finished the 30 miles in 5:59:04.
After the run I hobbled back to the car, took of my wet shoes & socks, and drove 30 miles home barefoot. I shoveled food and gatorade into my mouth the entire way home. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to stand up without too much difficulty when I got home and my hip no longer hurt at all. Even now, 7 hours later, I’m still able to move around. Tomorrow will be another story though.
This was the farthest I’ve ever run (I’ve done 28.4 miles on two occasions) and it hurt. It hurt more than I expected. It was the race that did me in. Had I run slowly the entire time I don’t think I would have had as much difficulty. Fortunately, I never bonked, and my muscles never cramped up. Had it not been for the late hip flexor pain (or the water crossings) it would have been a truly delightful day in the woods.
The Carpenter Park Cyclocross Race
On Sunday Melissa and I headed to Carpentersville, a northwest suburb of Chicago, for the Carpenter Park Cyclocross race. This race is #4 in the Chicago Cyclocross Cup, a weekly series of races each fall.
Cyclocross is a fascinating type of bike racing. It began a hundred or so years ago as a way for road cyclists to maintain their fitness in the off season. The race organizers go out of their way to make the race as hard as possible. The races have…
etc.
Riders make loops on a relatively short course for a set amount of time, kind of like a criterium. Cyclocross bikes are kind of a cross between road bikes & mountain bikes. They basically have the frame of a road bikes, but wide knobby tires and cantilever brakes to allow mud/grass/leaves on the tires to pass through.
This particular event had multiple races for different categories of riders. I raced twice, first in the Masters 30+ race in the morning, then later in the category 4a race in the afternoon (this is why I’m wearing long sleeves in some of the photos and short sleeves others).
The masters race lasted 45 minutes and it was exhausting. Cyclocross is anaerobic–a 100% effort the entire time. I started towards the back of the pack and moved up several places during the race. Passing is a challenge, because there are so many tight turns. I ended up 19th out of 31 riders in the 30+ division. My friends Greg & Gene raced at the same time, though in different divisions. Gene was 18th in the 40+ division and Greg was 4th in the 50+ division.
Between my two races we watched our teammate Anona finish 4th in her first cyclocross race, the womens category 4 race.
The mens category 4a race was much bigger, with 52 people starting at the same time. I got off to a bad start and spent most of the race wasting energy passing people. Fortunately this race was only 30 minutes, and it went much faster. I finished 29th. Two other local riders fared slightly better. Nick was 7th, and Dan was 18th. They both intended to ride the cat 3 race, but they arrived too late and rode the cat 4a race instead.
After the 4a race we checked the results and we were about to leave when I looked up and saw Erik the Bike Destroyer riding the cat 4b race, so we stuck around and chatted a bit with him as he collapsed onto the ground after the finish. Ah, cyclocross.
So, I wasn’t terribly successful, but I finished both races (unlike my 1st cross race) and I had a great time. I’m still pretty new to this. These were my 3rd and 4th cross races and they were good learning experiences for me. I’ll probably try some more this fall.
After the race we made the obligatory stop at Veggie Bite in Chicago. We met my cousin Scott and his lady friend at the Wicker Park location (to which we had never been). It was much busier than the south side location where we’ve gone before. The BBQ tofu was fantastic.