The Yin Blog

Run for the Roses 5K recap

Today was the Uberthons Run for the Roses 5K in Sherwood, my second race of the month (and probably the last one until the fall). I didn't sleep all that well the night before, which is usually the case before races (and law conferences); in this case, it was added by the fact that I had eaten for the first time last night at the vegan restaurant Native Foods. Quite tasty, but I probably ate too much, and apparently all that vegan food has a low glycemic index, so I felt full, really full, all night.

Race time was 8 am, and there had been no early bib pick-up, so I wanted to get there around 7:30 or so. Sherwood is about 25 minutes away, so figuring on some time for eating, I had set my alarm for 6:50 am. (Why am I getting up at 6:50 am on a Saturday?!?) No need for the alarm, as it turned out, and in fact, I still felt full, so I just hydrated and drove off.

The race course started on the Sherwood High School track, with the check-in station set on the football field inside. For some reason, I didn't show up on the preregistered list, but the woman recognized me as a frequent participant and had me fill out a "day of registration" form but didn't make me pay again. (It might have helped that I was wearing an Uberthons tech shirt!) I had bib number 1524.

I wandered around and saw my race friends Eileen and Brent (and Eileen's son) and chatted with them while we waited for the race to get started. Apparently, there was a problem in that a big gate behind the stadium was supposed to have been unlocked, but the city worker hadn't showed up yet. Eventually, the organizers gave up on waiting and told us we'd have to cooperate to go single file through a more narrow opening, and hope/expect that it would be opened by the time we headed back.

Here's the course, and Uberthons' description of the route:

All events start and finish at the high school track. Every distance will follow the 5k course, take 3/4 lap on the track and then exit behind the stadium. Then we get onto the Woodhaven trail until just after mile 1. We will then find our way over to Sunset Blvd, head East. At Main St, head North going into old town Sherwood. Then on to the finish of the 5k at the track.

I started off in the third wave of runners and kept telling myself, "Don't start too fast, don't start too fast!" I keep running the dreaded positive splits in these races.

I ran the opening segment on the track at what felt like a steady, easy pace. By the time I hit the trail portion, the line of runners was spreading out. I hit the 1 mile marker at 6:51.

Well, so much for starting slow!

The map shows a straight stretch along Sunset Blvd for a little more than 1 kilometer. More than half of this was downhill, but for some reason, this was the hardest part of the race for me. I didn't race the downhill parts but instead used them to recover a bit while keeping more or less to my overall pace.

The second mile took 7:08, so 17 seconds slower than mile 1 (although the mile markers haven't always been perfectly accurate, as far as I can tell).

I felt okay for the third mile, but I didn't have much of a kick left. From my watch, I had a sense of how much distance was left, and I was thinking to myself that I could manage a sprint for the last 1/4 mile or so, which would be around the 6:30 time mark for the third mile. (That 1/4 mile including the extra 0.12 miles in the 5K after 3 miles.) But I couldn't quite pull that off, although I think I did have a decent sprint for the portion on the track.

My watch read 21:28, but the initial chip time was 22:50, which I knew was way off. Eventually, however, the time got updated (after I'd left to go home) to 21:27. Yea! That's a PR and it's not even close -- over half a minute better than my previous best. I finished 13th overall out of 122, and first in my age group.

Another reason runners rule!

Via Instapundit, check out this story:

According to a study conducted at the University of Westminster, stronger men make awful boyfriends. The study surveyed 327 straight British men, more than a third of whom were single, and discovered that the more muscular the participant, the more likely he was to have sexist beliefs and hostility toward women. Yikes!

Well, I am happily married, so this is of no use to me, but single male runners out there can rejoice!

How we're bad at estimating food portions

Hmm, this may help explain how I've maintained my weight even though my food journal logging says that I run about a 1000+ calorie deficit:

In one study, dietitians were asked to estimate calories in three fast-food meals. The baseline meal consisted of a three-inch ham sandwich, six chips and a 10-ounce cup of soda. The portion size was doubled in the second meal and doubled again in the third meal. Yet even the dietitians failed to see it, guessing 13 percent to 26 percent too low on the calorie counts. Of course, each of these mistakes is small on its own, but over time, our errors in portion perception can add up. For a weekly moviegoer who orders a supersize soda to sip on, the misperception translates to about 8,000 unintended calories a year.

Or it could be that I've overestimated my daily burn rate.

Portland's "rat out your neighbor for using the wrong trash bin" plan

The rest of Portland has been introduced to what we've had for over a year now, which is the compost/trash program. (We were in the group of households that were the pilot test group.) We used to get our yard waste picked up every other week, and our trash and recycling picked up every week. The change was that we could now compost food scraps in our yard waste bin, which would be picked up every week, and the trash would be picked up every other week.

It's not exactly an even trade, since we don't generate that much food waste; if our yard waste/compost bin fills up, it's because of grass clippings from mowing the lawn. But it hasn't been terribly onerous for us either.

But for some people, it is a problem, and they've taken to dumping, say, poopy diapers into the recycling bin. Eeeeeww. The city doesn't like that, and it sounds like it's going to encourage people to rat out their neighbors.

Really???

I can't imagine that our soon-to-be (thank goodness) ex-Mayor and city councilmembers approved of something like this back in the Bush Administration, when it was called Operation TIPS. Of course, the difference was that TIPS was about reporting suspected terrorism, rather than misplaced poopy diapers. If you're going to be encouraging people to rat out their neighborhoods, shouldn't it be for something serious?

Run for Kyron 5k recap

Today was the Uberthons' Run for Kyron race. For those not in the Portland area, Kyron Hormanis a little boy who disappeared 2 years ago on a school day, when he was 7 years old. It's a story that's been in the local news quite a bit, with a resurgence yesterday after Kyron's birth mom sued his stepmom based on allegations that the stepmom is responsible for his disappearance.

Race time was 8 am for the 10K and 8:10 for the 5K. I had gone to bed early last night (well, early for me -- 11:30 pm or so) and got up today at 7 am. Breakfast was cherry yogurt, and then I headed out to Cook Park in Tigard.

There was a good sized crowd present: race volunteers, Kyron-cause volunteers, Kyron's dad Kaine Horman, a 3-person musical band, and even a news crew from KATU (the local ABC affiliate). I picked up my racing bib and then did a short interview about Uberthons and racing with my friend Eileen, who's a consultant with them.

It's a familiar race course; I ran it back in late April, and an earlier variation of it in March and last November:

Knowing that I've run positive splits (not a good thing) the past few races, I had in mind that I wanted to go out slower at first and then speed up. I even positioned myself near the front of the 5K group. Yes, it's chip-timed, but I don't like having to keep huffing "pardon me, excuse me, pardon me" as I pass people.

The first mile felt okay, and I thought I was going slower, but I hit the first mile marker in 6:37. Definitely not slower! Predictably, it took its toll on me. Since my goal was to go under 22 minutes, I figured I could let up a bit and try to speed up for the last mile. Mile 2 was kind of miserable. Even slowing down, I felt that kind of running-discomfort -- not injury-pain -- and this segment had a short but steep uprise.

Finally, I hit the mile 3 marker. Mile 2 had taken 7:20. I was still on pace to ge tunder 22 minutes at least, but I didn't feel recovered at all. Mile 3 ended up being slightly slower, 7:27, but I had enough saved up that I was able to race the last 0.11 miles.

According to my watch, my time was 21:59. According to the initial race results, it was 8 hours, 32 minutes(!). Ha ha, chip glitch of some sort obviously. It was later corrected manually to 22:09, which is quite a big difference from my watch.

Anyway, I finished 4th overall out of 75, and 1st in my age group.

 

2011-12 TV season wrap up -- CW & Fox shows

Previously I've looked back at ABC's and CBS's 2011-2012 TV seasons. Next up alphabetically is CW (aka what used to be UPN and WB), but I only watched one show on that network, so I'll also cover Fox.

CW

"Nikita" somehow remained on my TiVo Season Pass despite the wooden acting by leads Maggie Q and Shane West. It did seem to get a bit more interesting in the later part of this season, with all kinds of shifting alliances. I think I might have given up on it, except that its ratings were so horrible that I fully expected it to be cancelled and hence put out of my misery. Yet, somehow, it got renewed. . . . Unbelievable.

 

Fox

Veteran shows

It's hard to believe, but "Fringe" was the only returning scripted show that I watched on Fox. I can remember the days when Fox carried about half of everything I watched . . . like when "24" and "Prison Break" were good. Ah, those were the days. Speaking of "24," I've been rewatching season 7 on DVD lately. It's so much better than most of what's on right now.

Anyway, "Fringe" is certainly thought-provoking with not just parallel universes, but now parallel timelines(!). It demands attention, which sadly, I haven't been giving enough of. As with "Nikita," the ratings would have easily predicted cancellation, and yet, here we are, getting a 13-episode final season to wrap things up.

New shows

Fox had three high-profile new shows this season: "Terra Nova, "Alcatraz," and "Touch." Well, four if you count "The X-Factor." 

I had moderately high hopes for "X-Factor," as I stopped watching "American Idol" during Simon Cowell's last season. I also liked the format of having the judges coach teams, an idea that NBC's "The Voice" used last year to great effect. And in the beginning, I enjoyed "X-Factor." Judge L.A. Reid impressed me with his observations and critiques. Yet . . . something was missing: blunt, caustic, funny Simon. Eventually, I got bored with the show, and as I write this right now, I can't remember who won. Or who was runner-up.

"Terra Nova" was the high school angst crossed with Jurassic Park show, with people going back 70 millions years into Earth's past via a wormhole to escape the environmental degradation of the planet in the 24th century. Of all of the new Fox shows, I guess this is the one that I would have chosen to renew, but that's more of a negative statement of the others. The main problem with "Terra Nova" was too much focus on annoying teens and their melodramatic problems, and not enough focus on dinosaurs eating people who do dumb things.

"Alcatraz" was the brainchild of J.J. Abrams, who was behind "Lost" as well as the excellent "Star Trek" movie (and "Mission Impossible 3"). It was kind of like a bag guys on the loose version of "The 4400" -- i.e., a bunch of people from the past who disappeared mysteriously are showing up now, with SOMETHING BIG BEHIND THEM. Unfortunately, as far as I could tell before I got bored, there was no real development of the characters, no real variation in the types of baddies they were chasing, and so on. (Yes, I know there were some key reveals about the scientist helping the task force chief, but it really wasn't that interesting.) I gave up on the show about five or six episodes before the end, which turned out really to be the end, since this did not get renewed.

Finally, "Touch" did get renewed. I had really high hopes for this because of Kiefer Sutherland, but this also got repetitive quickly. Too many scenes of Kiefer running after his genius/mute son, calling out to him, "I don't understand!"

Now, at some level, you could criticize many shows of being repetitive -- my favorite "24" has so many scenes of Jack Bauer screaming, "We're out of time! Tell me what I need to know!" The difference for me, I guess, is whether there's an arc that gets advanced quickly enough -- but at the same time, with enough scope and size to build on itself. Shows like "Touch" and "Alcatraz"  -- and one can look to older, short-lived Fox dramas like "Brimstone" (Peter Horton as a guy released from Hell to chase down escaped evil souls as a bounty hunter for Satan) -- fail on that front. As the opposite end of the spectrum are shows like ABC's "FlashForward," which certainly advanced an overall arc, only the arc was seemingly being made up as it went along, to the point where the show collapsed under its incoherence.

And now back to "24" on DVD . . . .