Training Log Archive: iansmith

Long, easy run. I intended to make a Kennedy St - Museum of Science loop, but the July 4 festivities completely blocked off the Esplanade at the Hatch Shell, so I doubled back to the Harvard Bridge. I continued my audiobook To Say Nothing of the Dog; the matter-of-fact humor is accentuated by the English accent of the reader. The tongue-in-cheek commentary amuses me most about the book.

My left Achilles and possibly Soleus muscle ached painfully after the run, which is tremendously discouraging. I hurt worse after this run than after the New Bedford half. I attribute this to a more difficult week, hotter temperatures, and no food before my run.

Today, I helped Krishna and Emilie move. The two apartments were fairly close to each other - one near Davis Square, and the other east of Porter, but the new apartment is better in almost every respect. The posse of movers included Emilie's parents, Krishna's coworker John, and Nora and Darren, both of whom are in Krishna's handbell ensemble. We moved everything from their old apartment into a truck, and then from the truck into the new apartment. Afterward, we had pizza and carrot cake. There was good camaraderie, and we all relished Germany's 4-0 victory over Argentina. I discussed what it was like to move to a new city with John.

Self-restraint is an interesting phenomenon, particularly in the context of achieving happiness. We can define a utility function for each of the outcomes among a set of choices (though curiously, happiness does seem to have a scale, whereas utility is just an ordering on the set of outcomes). I have observed that our desires are often independent of the utility function, even when we are aware of that function.

For instance, I have a large bag of M&Ms. I know consciously that my utility will be maximized if I eat some now and save the rest for later. However, my desire is to continue eating M&Ms until they are done, even though I know that I will get a stomachache.

It is only by application of self-restraint that I can make a decision that maximizes my utility. I suppose that we can conclude that our desires are indicative of instantaneous utility maximization (a greedy algorithm or some gradient function), and self-restraint is the conscious intercession and moderation of those desires in pursuit of an optimal solution to a global utility function.

I should note that in the course of writing this note, I have eaten about 6 oz or 900 calories of peanut M&Ms. One might wonder about the utility of abstract contemplation and reflection of utility.

I originally planned to go on an easy, 30 minute run. However, as I will go on a long run tomorrow, I needed to husband my remaining mileage. Instead, I set off on an aggressive bike ride. My intent was to bike a Museum of Science - Arsenal Bridge loop, but near the Museum of Science, I got a double flat. I don't carry extra tubes or a pump with me, so I had little choice but to walk home. I didn't want to roll my bike on its rims for two miles, so I lifted the bike onto my back. I found a position comfortable enough to run for some distance, but using my shoulders as shock absorbers was too taxing to the run the entire way.

C • double flat 3

I went on an evening run around the river, with the objective of running at a slower pace (> 5:15/km). I deliberately regulated my breathing to 4/4. Conditions were pleasant with a temperature of 17 C and a dew point of 9 C. I listened to To Say Nothing of the Dog. It was a beautiful night to be alive. Earlier today, I had pondered the poem In Flander's Fields, which is one of my favorites.

Lately, my left calf has started hurting in much the same way my right was about two months ago. It's presently a mild pain, but I'm considering taking a break from high intensity running for a time.

I recently saw The Last of the Mohicans, which I read some time ago. I don't remember the book well enough to compare the representations of events. A few things I enjoy about the movie:

1. The classical "noble savage" ideal and the theme and commentary on encroachment upon and destruction of the wilderness by civilization
2. The music is excellent and articulates the wild, irresistible quality of nature. The main theme (alternate version) and the dance-like theme are stirring pieces that I enjoy. While the trumpets and high strings of the main theme are impressive, the low strings and percussion in both pieces sublimely drive the effect.
3. The movie emphasizes the love story between Hawkeye and Cora; I found this touching, if two-dimensional. Cora is (given the social context) a strong female character, unwilling to compromise her judgment.

One of my favorite messages from the movie, spoken by the adopted father of the main character; it has a regretful view of the irresistible changes happening in North America:
Chingachgook: The frontier moves with the sun and pushes the Red Man of these wilderness forests in front of it until one day there will be nowhere left. Then our race will be no more, or be not us. The frontier place is for people like my white son and his woman and their children. And one day there will be no more frontier. And men like you will go too, like the Mohicans. And new people will come, work, struggle. Some will make their life. But once, we were here.

But once, we were here.

While I disdain logging many different components of the same activity, I reset my gps after each of the stages, and I wanted to retain all the tracks without maintenance.

I ran to the Harvard track for a tempo workout with Lori and Alex, but the Harvard track was ripped up. Jonathan and Mark (who were there for the CSU interval workout) graciously gave us and SGB a ride to Danehy Park. After a quick warmup and a magic 400, I ran 4x1000 at threshold pace with 200m rest while reading a map Alex printed of the karst terrain in Croatia.

I joined Lori and Alex for a ten minute core workout. During the workout, a small dog wearing a leash but without an attached person ran past us as her owner frantically called for help. I jumped up and took off after the dog; while I had to run hard to catch the dog, it wasn't difficult to keep up. I considered trying to step on the leash, but I thought I might overshoot, trip, or hurt the dog, so I dove and grasped the leash with my hands. Many people nearby were paying attention to the proceedings, and the dive apparently looked impressive. The owner was very grateful; Alex suggested I could have obtained her phone number, but I didn't know much about her except that her dog has tremendous enthusiasm for freedom, and that hardly seemed sufficient data for interaction.

Jonathan gave me some advice about training for the marathon - adding longer runs in excess of 2 hours and the importance of threshold intervals.

C • that hardly seemed sufficie... 3

I was in the mood for a more arduous run than my typical evening run, so I ran a river loop from the Kennedy St. Bridge to the Harvard Bridge. Conditions were muggy - 25 C with a dew point of 22 C, so even while I ran shirtless in running shorts, I was drenched in perspiration. I am tremendously thankful for air conditioning.

I listened to The Guns of August. It's remarkable how events transpired in World War I; it seems that the leadership in government could not have contrived a more horrible and devastating sequence of events than what occurred. The chaotic implications of seemingly decisions have tremendous potential for snowballing in military circumstances with top down decision-making and information analysis; in particular, the voyage of the German battlecruiser Goeben and the series of poor decisions made by the British leadership had massive consequences. Among other things, Prime Minister Asquith's delay of a few hours in the delivery of an ultimatum of Belgian Neutrality to Germany arguably resulted in the Ottoman Empire's entrance into World War I, the bloody Caucasus campaign, and the Armenian genocide of ~ 1 million innocent civilians. War is indeed hell.

I also pondered the RANSAC algorithm, which is a pretty sexy way of fitting polynomials to noisy data.