It is what it is

Slow day at the races

It's not a good thing that I knew what the title of this blog post would be at mile three in Sunday's SF Marathon.  I tried to be optimistic, turn that frown upside down and tell myself that it could still turn around and be a fast day at the races. But, the truth was, I just knew.  I've run enough that usually from the very beginning of a run (and definitely by mile three) I know how things are going to go.

For some reason, from the starting line of this run, my legs just had nothing to give me - they just felt heavy and slow.  The first seven miles were particularly uncomfortable as I had added a second insole into my shoes the morning of the race because I'd been feeling like my shoes were a bit big.  Conventional wisdom on marathons tells you not to do anything new on race day - same food, same clothes, etc.  So, new insoles definitely defied conventional wisdom and my toes paid the price (I currently have two fewer toenails than I did when I started the race).  I sat on the curb at mile seven and pulled out and trashed the extra insoles. My toes thanked me, but it did nothing for my thighs which were quite clearly going to be the limiting factor on this run.

I've never given so much genuine consideration to how much I wanted to just bail on a race, but after a little heart to heart with myself, reminding myself that my friend Brad was slugging it out behind me, I decided that it would be better to be DFL than DNF.  There are valid reasons to drop out of a race, but because it's not my day and the running just feels crappy just isn't a good enough reason.  I tried to figure out why my legs felt so crappy - could it have been the cookie and raisinette diet regimen I followed during the movie marathon (Harry Potter and Die Hard) the day before the race?  The fact that I completely discounted the terrain of the race and did all of my training on flat surfaces? The fact that even though I'd done many long runs in training, I'd never really felt like I got into a good groove (I had thought this had a lot to do with the 90-degree temperatures in Boulder)?  Nothing I could come up with could really explain why I just felt crappy from the very first step. I just had to chalk it up to the fact that some days you have bad runs, and it's just a serious bummer if that happens on race day. But, as the title of my blog points out, it is what it is.

So, I decided to think of the run more as a character building experience than an opportunity for a PR (in the end, I was about 35 minutes off my PR). I just had to accept that sometimes a race wasn't going to be about how fast I could get from A to B, but rather that I simply continued to put one foot in front of the other and got from A to B.  I tried to enjoy the fact that I was running in SF along some of my favorite running routes (across the bridge, down by Baker beach, Chrissy Field, through Golden Gate Park.) 

There were a couple of good moments during the run - like when I missed the 23 mile marker and was so hopeful that the next sign I saw coming would say "mile 24" (it did) that I promised I would consider the possibility that there is a god (I'm pretty much an atheist, but as my friend Amy noted to me afterwards "There are no atheists in foxholes". Perhaps the same is true of distance runners.

In the end, I spent most of my time just focusing on ticking off the miles and thinking about how I was going to train differently for next year's SF Marathon. While I have been working on staying more in the moment, I felt that this occasion warranted an exception as it seemed that there was little I could do to improve my lot in the current race, and focusing on the next race distracted me a bit from the present situation which just wasn't that pleasant.

I've always found running to be a good way to clear my head, make some goals and formulate a plan, so, in the end, that's what I came out of Sunday's marathon with - a training plan for the year until next years marathon.   A few key take-aways:

*Lose the 10+ pounds I've known I need to lose (according to a recent Runner's World article, this should shave almost 20 minutes off my marathon time)

*Train on hills

*Get out to the track (I've always avoided track work, but, usually the thing we avoid is the thing we most need to do in these kinds of situations. I avoid it because I'm bad at it, but until I practice going fast, I'm not going to race fast).

*Measure and analyze.  I didn't time myself on any of my training runs this time around, just saying that I didn't want the pressure of time, just wanted to get back into a groove, blah, blah, blah. In the end, what this meant was that my training was more random than it should have been, I wasn't really adjusting training to make improvements and come race day I really had no idea what to expect in terms of pace or overall time.  As the title of a book I saw but never read proclaims: Hope is not a strategy.   Next time around I want a strategy based on hard numbers and real planning.

*Get on the bike. My best running has happened when I've been doing a lot of cycling for cross training.  Time to dust my bike off, get it tuned up and start exploring the hills of Boulder.

I've got a bit over a year (next year's race is August 3) and I'm very fired up.  I had been looking for a serious fitness goal and I've found two - first, to qualify for Boston marathon at SF marathon next year (this will be a pretty ambitious goal, but, I'm kind of in the mood/needing a really ambitious goal) and second, to do the SF marathon every year until I turn 50 (that will give me 15 consecutive SF marathons, 16 overall).

So, in spite of this race not going as I had hoped, I'm glad I did it. I finished with no real injuries, I know that marathons are still something I can and want to do (this was my fourth one, but my first since having Q), I got to spend time in my favorite city catching up with many dear friends and eating (too much?) amazing food, and I'm fired up with some new goals.

Older and (hopefully) wiser

Happy birthday to me!  I turn 36 today right around high noon Cambridge time (that's where I was born).  So that makes me a cusp child, between Cancer and Leo. The cusp of oscillation to be specific.  For people who know me personally, perhaps this additional factoid explains some things about me a bit better.

Increasingly over the years I have come to value the gifts of an experience shared with people I care about more than physical  gifts. (This is compared to when I was a child and my parents needed to implement the one-month birthday rule so I wouldn't start talking about what I wanted more than one month in advance. That being said, a perfect present is still a wonderful thing to behold, and while I've scaled it down considerably, I have no illusions of being so zen that I've completely transcended materialism :))

In keeping with this shift, I have increasingly come to think about my goals or resolutions in terms of less tangible things.  I'm usually a bit more focused on making resolutions or goals around my birthday than I am at New Years simply because of my  general distaste towards feeling so common and  sheep-like to be doing something at the exact same time as so many other people.

While there are some smaller goals or milestones that I'm thinking about, there are two over-arching themes I'm thinking about today - quotes that have been resonating with me for the past few months. I think they're great quotes so I figure I should share them:

From Chasing Daylight:  "The only decision to focus on is the one you can still make."
Most people I know are much better at this than I am - one friend even had a perfect comment on this when he said something to the effect of "I live like I don't have a rear view mirror."

While I think there are clearly things to be learned from experience, for me, I know that I spend too much time looking in that rear-view mirror, trying to adjust the view by mentally re-playing the scene, trying to figure out how to fix things, letting myself wallow in regret about things I should have done differently, wandering off into fantasy-land about how great some road untaken might have turned out.  Instead, my goal for the year ahead is to focus on what's in front of me - what I want to be doing, what impact I want my time to be having, who I want to be and who I want to be spending time with; essentially making the life ahead of me the one I want, rather than worrying so much about the one that's behind me.

And, the final quote for my birthday post, and my other birthday mantra for myself:

From Jonathan Swift (also quoted in Chasing Daylight, I believe):  "May you live every day of your life."

Funding a presidential campaign

I've heard a lot lately on the news about how much money is being raised - and spent - by the presidential candidates. The sheer numbers have blown me away, but I hadn't really looked much beyond the top level numbers I was hearing about. One thing I hadn't heard too much about is the comparative distribution of donor bases. (These are the things that I ponder at times like this when I've got a bout of insomnia at 4 a.m.).

So, I found it interesting to look through this NY Times resource and what struck me in particular was the distribution of Barrack Obama's donor base versus the other major candidates, specifically what a high percentage of Obama's funding has been generated from contributions of less than $200.  I knew that there was a big grassroots effort from the Obama campaign, but I was still struck by the magnitude of the disparity of funding sources.

Sources of Obama's $58,494,900 in individual contributions  (of $58,912,500 total raised)
under $200 - $16,545,600 (28%)
200-2299 - $18,376,190 (31%)
2300 - $23,684,000 (40%)

This versus Clinton's $51,999,800 in individual contributions  (of $63,075,900 total raised)
Under $200 - $4,633,860 (9%)
200-2299 - $13,946,810 (27%)
2300 - $33,958,100 (65%)

John Edwards had a fairly similar ratio to Obama's in terms of distribution of funding sources (albeit at a considerably lesser scale than Obama's):
Under $200 - $5,438,940
200-2299 - $9,511,048
2300 - $8,109,200

The rest of the high-profile candidates fall more in line with the Clinton distribution of funding sources.

It's interesting to me that while the totals are fairly comparable between Clinton and Obama, the funding base is clearly so different.  After a bit of web searching, I came across the approximate number of Obama donors as 258,000.  I couldn't find a recent number for Clinton, but it clearly can't be even as much as half that number.

I'm curious how the distribution of a funding base impacts elections and further funding - I wonder if large or small donors are more loyal to the party or the individual. Instinctively I guess I assume that if Obama won the primary, many of Clinton's large donors (those who have resources for more donating anyway) would flock to support Obama, but I wonder if the smaller donors that Obama has drawn in would necessarily be as eager to support a different candidate (not based on any research, but I think of these donors as more tied to the individual candidate than the larger scale donors).

The tyranny of socks and the burden of choice

I recall a scene in the movie Moscow on the Hudson where the main character has recently defected to America from Russia and is overwhelmed by the choices available in an American supermarket. In some aspects of my life, I'm starting to understand that feeling of being overwhelmed by choice.  While in general I support and embrace choice - think it leads to the best choices, products, etc,  I'm starting to consider the question: when is choice a blessing, when is it an unnecessary burden best shed when possible?

I'm starting to think that in some areas of my life, less choice would be better - simplification in lieu of constant optimization.  I've read of this strategy being recommended as a tool for losing weight (pick a reasonably healthy breakfast, eat it every day, don't give yourself any choices).  For me, my current target for simplification is socks.

I am surrounded by socks. Piles of socks. Literally hundreds of socks (see picture above). My socks, Ryan's socks, Quinn's socks, socks of unknown origin.  I don't want to spend the time sorting them, so the pile remains, with us digging into the pile each time socks are needed, trying to find something that resembles a pair.  We've collected these socks over a lot of years - there was a bag of unmatched socks that we brought here from California a year ago that have remained unmatched; I still have socks that I received when I was an editor at Triathlete magazine over ten years ago and received all sorts of gear from sporting goods companies. 

I don't like to throw things away so there's very little exodus of socks except by complete deterioration.  At the same time, any time I see new socks that claim to be better for running for x or y reason, I've given them a try. Or I like the design. Or I forgot to bring socks to the gym and I don't have time to run home but there's a sports store nearby.

I've caught myself on more than one occasion unable to find matching socks for Quinn and telling him that it's cool to occassionally wear mis-matched socks.  I realize I may be encouraging some rather odd fashion choices, but, sometimes, it just seems easier than diving into the pile to try to find a matching pair. 

But I've been embarking on a new effort of late to simplify our lives and eliminate any unnecessary sources of stress or things that are taking up more time than they warrant. So, today, I've decided to follow Ryan's lead of simplifying this tiny little aspect of my life. 

Ryan had long been a fan of socks as a vehicle for creative expression and had a vast collection of funky socks - Jhane Barnes and Ted Baker were particular favorites.  After ten years together and me being the one who does our laundry, Ryan seemed to finally come to the realization that he hadn't married June Cleaver. Considering himself lucky if I managed to get clean underwear in his drawer each week, it has proved beyond my ability to ensure that he had matching socks on any given day from his vast collection of creative but distinct socks. So, Ryan's solution was a trip to Nordstrom's from which he returned with one bag of black socks and one bag of sports socks.  He told me that he didn't want any of the other ones in his drawer any more - it was to be black socks with gold toes or nothing at all - he told me I could throw away any others.

Of course, I couldn't do that. It just felt so incredibly wasteful. There's nothing objectively wrong with the socks.  At the same time, I realize that the pile hasn't been doing anyone any good, and every time I head out for a run I have to dig into the pile and find two suitable running socks.   For the past month or so, I've started opting to just wearing mis-matched socks and not spend any extra time on the process.

But, today is the day for me.  Earlier this week I bought Quinn 15 pairs of white socks.  And today I'm going to head to the running store and do the same for myself.  Tuesday is trash day and I think I will just pack the whole pile of socks into a bag and dump it. I might have to ask Ryan to do it as I know if I start picking up the pile, I'll see one perfectly good sock and then another and another, and pretty soon I will have the whole pile back on my floor and I will again be forced to spend that time each morning picking out socks for my run.

So, while eliminating the choice of socks is rather low-hanging fruit in the stresses-of-life department, that's my charge for today.  I'm looking forward to getting up for my run tomorrow morning and grabbing two socks - any socks - and having a match.

Response Time

I guess it was when I was working at Excite about ten years ago that I really started hearing people talk a lot about response time - how quickly you get the information you request on websites, how this can be optimized, why it's slow.

For my own part, I've been giving more thought to the question of personal response time.  I actively hate talking on the phone (which is somewhat problematic in that I no longer live near the majority of my friends) so email is my main vehicle for communication.  Sometimes I end up with a technology preference mismatch - I email, some of my friends are much more reachable by phone or text message - this can sometimes lead to big lags in correspondence (eg I don't really check my voicemail that often, other people don't check their email that often)  Setting aside this medium mismatch, and while I realize that email is not IM, I'm amazed at the response lag time that some people seem to think is acceptable. 

I've been trying to monitor my own behavior so as not to be one of those slow responders.  Slow response is particularly annoying when trying to make plans - eg how long are you supposed to keep times available after you offer them up?  If you continue to follow up it can feel somewhere between harassment and chastisement for poor email etiquette. If you don't follow up you can be left to wonder whether the original email was received or if it ended up in a spam filter (only for those poor souls using a non-Postini spam solution).  But exactly when did it become socially acceptable not to reply to invitations?

Personally, I think my worst response time comes with the most personal sort of emails - as the type of exchanges that for many friends are hour long phone conversations, for me often end up in my email queue (per my distaste for the phone). Sometimes I just don't have the emotional wherewithal to have the kind of reply that the email warrants even when I have the best of intentions and the highest esteem for the sender.

I read a book several years ago called Memos from the Chairman, written by Ace Greenberg, then CEO of Bear Stearns.  I remember generally enjoying the book, but the item that most stuck with me was that he made it his goal to always respond to inbound correspondence within 24 hours (or at least that's how I recall that part of the book.)  Sometimes the response was simply that he had gotten the message, didn't have time at the moment to address it but would get a full reply as soon as he had time.  Still, that counts at least as an acknowledgment.  The book was written before the ubiquitous nature of today's email, so I'd guess  he had fewer inbound requests than his successor does today, but he was the CEO of Bear Stearns. If he could get back to people within 24 hours, it's hard to think of many people who can't. I know lots of people who think that they're too important or busy for fast response times, but my own observation is that some of the busiest people I know are the fastest to respond. Sometimes these responses are even incredibly long and thoughtful replies.

I think it comes down to the kind of style that people have chosen to adopt.  It seems that the fast responders basically have a FIFO approach to email management - they read an email, they deal with it, it's done.  I am aspiring to be one of these people.  The approach I have followed too often is the one I see too many other people following as well - essentially random - read an email, sometimes respond instantly, sometimes plan to respond to it at a later point (maybe more information needs to be gathered, a schedule consulted or more time needs to be allotted for the reply than is currently available). Maybe I get back to it or maybe it gets lost in the queue of forgotten emails. Since I've switched to Gmail, even more emails fall off my radar as only 25 emails are in view on my front page.

I'm really trying to reform, and hope others will as well, as I think Ace had it right.  So anyone who hasn't replied to my emails lately, get on it :)

Let's be friends

I'm not making a run for William Safire's job. And I'm not as anal as my pickiness about language might make me seem. But, it should by now be clear that imprecise language bothers me, and hyperbolic relationship descriptions are a particular pet peeve. 

Today I was struck by the ubiquitousness of the overly-friendly issue again when I received a message from Facebook.  I just signed up for Facebook recently (to get some background on a potential nanny candidate) so this was the first 'Friend request' I had received.  I was amused by the language of the email:

"Laurie added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, friends with Laurie."

That doesn't seem quite accurate. What they "need" to do (I would suggest that this is what they "want" to do, but that's not my main linguistic beef here) is to confirm that I want Laurie on my Facebook Friends list.

I spent a bit of time cruising around the Facebook website, and it's quite clear that many people's "Friends" lists are populated with people who aren't exactly friends.  Perhaps associates. Colleagues. Acquaintances. People you may want to have as a friend, be employed by, sleep with. All legitimate relationship types, but none I would categorize as 'friends'. Many of these clarifications are available on the follow-on page where you can detail the relationship further - after you accept the general premise that "you are, in fact, friends."   

While I'm not thrilled with the imprecision of the "Friends" list, I understand the constraints of presentation on a website and that simplicity often trumps accuracy.  But I can't help but think that the umbrella of friendship in Facebook's universe hearkens back to the overused "BFF" (best friends forever) in a high school yearbook.

(side note... after reading this post, Ryan pointed me to a WSJ article that is more expansive in its discussion of this issue...)

Peace and quiet

Ryan and I just got back from a few days in Aspen. We've been there before and I was again struck by what a fabulous place it is. To me it's pretty close to perfect - breathtaking natural beauty, focus on active outdoor lifestyle, nice downtown area, great culinary, cultural and intellectual offerings; perhaps a bit too moneyed-feeling for my taste, but you certainly understand why people with the money would choose to live there.

It was nice to have time to ourselves, eat amazing meals (D19 and Matsuhisa were particularly good), do some great hiking (great for the first hour anyway, until we both ran out of water), good yoga, and just generally be spontaneous with no particular agenda for the day. We had a requisite celebrity sighting (Michael Eisner at the next table over at lunch) and even ran into a friend from business school who we ended up having lunch with, which was a nice surprise.

But perhaps more than anything else on this vacation, I just enjoyed being able to sit or hike or read in absolute silence.  Much as I adore Quinn, hanging out with a three year old all day can sometimes feel like a cross between a filibuster and the inquisition. His insatiable curiosity and intensely verbal nature are qualities I absolutely love (and I can certainly tend towards being a big talker myself) but I also sometimes really love and need (and am often sorely missing) silence. 

Our first day back in town I had a bit of whiplash with all of the talking and questions, but I feel back in the groove on day two.  This trip did confirm what I've felt on some other trips I've taken over the past year which is that my nature really just needs quiet time to fully recharge and re-center myself.