Aramco Houston Half Marathon

If I could, I would rip my finisher medal into a thousand little pieces. Then I would have the whole lot distributed among all the wonderful spectators, fellow runners, musicians and volunteers that cheered me on, mentally picked me up, or otherwise helped me today. Without question, I'm a runner that thrives on crowd support and this realization has only been reinforced by my experience today.

This morning I ran my fourth Aramco Houston Half Marathon, and it's my fifth consecutive time to take part in H-Town's Marathon Sunday. Putting aside the terrible year of training that derailed my original plan to run the full 26.2-mile course, I was truly grateful for feeling good enough to attempt this shorter, more familiar path across the city pavement. I haven't been able to run consistently over the past several months, and my long runs had peaked at just the 10-mile mark. So I found myself accompanied by a confidence gap as I began my run on La Branch Street with the finish line a 13.1-mile loop away.

Mile 1: 12:05
We emerged from the corral and onto the course as George Thorogood and The Destroyers asked us, "Who Do You Love?" from the public address system. I'll tell you who I love; I love whoever set the dial for this morning's weather. The pre-dawn temperature was an invigorating 41F with barely a breeze worth mentioning, and the forecast promised to warm things just a little more towards the end of my race.

Mile 2: 10:55
I believe it was here that I saw Felix leading the six-hour marathon pace group. Felix's presence is unmistakable at races. He runs with a pole in hand, topped with an American flag that appears to be 3'x5' or 4'x6'. I gave him a "Looking good! Way to go!" as I passed.

Mile 3: 11:11
Near the IH-45 underpass, I was running behind a couple of young women who looked fresh from some sorority house. "Look," said one, pointing at the 3-mile marker. "This is as far as we've trained." I silently said a prayer on their behalf.

Mile 4: 11:27
Mile 5: 12:18
Mile 6: 11:29
I passed this really cute runner girl in a pink long-sleeve top. I turned to the tall guy next to her and asked, "Hi. Just how old is your running partner?" "She just turned nine," he replied, "and she'll be having her birthday party this afternoon after the race." "You know," I said, looking at their half marathon bibs, "someday this is going to be such a cherished memory for the two of you." He was beaming.

Mile 7: 12:23
My nomination for sign-of-the-day: "Worst. Parade. Ever."

Mile 8: 12:45
I gave a shout-out to some boys on the sidewalk wearing letter jackets from my old high school and gave them some high-fives as I ran by.

Mile 9: 12:43
The U-turn for the half marathon course happens next to the place that somehow believed I deserved a college degree. In a shameless bid for crowd support, I had pinned my number to an alumni T-shirt and managed to elicit a few cheers from the sidewalk here and a high-five from the rotund lion with fuzzy dreadlocks. (I don't know his/her actual name; we didn't have a cuddly mascot when I attended school there!)

Mile 10: 13:09
I gave a shout-out to some girls on the sidewalk wearing letter jackets from my old high school and gave them some high-fives as I ran by. I began to suspect that my long-ago alma mater sent some volunteers to help on this out-and-back section of the course.

Mile 11: 13:44
I got passed by a running couple with matching shirts. Hers: "My favorite team is AUBURN and whoever beats ALABAMA." His: "My favorite team is ALABAMA and whoever beats AUBURN." Truly, a match made in heaven.

Mile 12: 13:56
I sighed with relief as the course was embraced by the skyscrapers downtown. At the mile marker I was singing it out loud in classic Sesame Street style, "1-2-3-4-5 . . 6-7-8-9-10 . . 11-12!"

Mile 13: 11:42
Final .1: 1:12
After making the final turn on Rusk Street and what seem like the longest ten blocks in the world, I hit the chip mat like it was the last square in a round of hopscotch, then shuffled into the convention center. I'll certainly be checking the official time later, but my Garmin Forerunner lists my elapsed time as 2:41:06.

That's about a minute shy of my finishing time from the first time I ran this race four years ago, surely a sign of the struggle I've had with running this year. The good news is that was also roughly forty pounds ago, and I'm confident that I'll be waking up with a lot fewer aches and pains tomorrow morning.

I have to admit, when the marathon organizers raised the entry cap for this year's race, I wondered if the outstanding race-day organization would hold up. Not only did it hold up, but I think they may have brought it up a notch. It showed in all the details that runners appreciate in a race.

I don't make formal counts, but it felt like there were more porta-johns out there. The volunteer crew did a stellar job today, starting with the course marshals that made sure the runner herd made every turn and lane change properly. I finished with a large group of half marathoners and nowhere in the George R. Brown Convention Center did I find myself standing in line for any significant time -- not for my medal, my finisher shirt, or for the food. There were lots of us in line, but the hard-working volunteers kept those lines continually moving. In fact, it seemed as if every 20th person in the GRB was in a blue shirt and eager to point me to my next destination. As someone who has experienced a race or two with poor organization, I do notice these kind of things that makes the Houston Marathon feel like a well-oiled machine.

And once again, the "HEB Food Court" didn't disappoint. The mounds of bananas, bagels, muffins, cookies, ice cream, scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits and potato fries guaranteed that any calorie deficit I incurred would be wiped out quickly. If that wasn't enough, the Girl Scouts were there with an seemingly endless supply of "Daisy Go-Rounds."

This race report wouldn't be complete without mentioning the public appearance by Meb Keflezighi -- last year's Aramco Half Marathon winner -- at the expo yesterday. The 2004 silver medalist and 2009 NYC Marathon champion greeted a long line of fans, signing autographs and taking pictures. I brought the September 2008 issue of Runner's World for him to sign. Below a caricature of himself, he wrote, "To Vincent: Best wishes & run to win. --Meb."

Regardless of finsh times, mile splits and PRs, being healthy and fit enough to take part in this city's great running event is always a winning feeling.

B-b-b-back inside

One of the side hobbies that sprouts from running is obsessive weather watching as race day approaches. The first ten-day forecasts including marathon Sunday in Houston started appearing yesterday. Weather.com shows showers and lo-40s/hi-50s for the weekend that I'm to run the Aramco Half.

It certainly could have been worse. I have genuine respect for the runners, volunteers and spectators that will show up at Sunday's USA Fit Marathon and Half Marathon in Sugar Land. An arctic airmass arrived yesterday and is expected to push nighttime temps below freezing for three days straight. Yikes!

For now, I've retreated to the comfort of the treadmill. I managed a ten-miler on Wednesday night. This included several breaks for calf stretches to alleviate some nagging discomfort from the same achilles tendon that gave me bigger grief earlier this year. Otherwise, I'm feeling pretty good. I think I want to sneak in one more in the double-digits before race day.

In advance of the cold snap, I evacuated my hanging pots (strawberries) and flower boxes (nasturtiums) off the patio. As far as they're concerned, this week will be a balmy one as they spend time basking in the fluorescent glow of the kitchen lights. One strawberry plant is even in the middle of fruiting.

I'm already thinking ahead to what I want to do with the patio when warmer weather returns. Part of me thinks that just sticking to flowers would make my life easier. The tomatoes did somewhat OK, but demanded daily watering. Leafcutter worms massacred my Swiss chard. The most successful food crops out there in 2009 were the green beans and green onions.

Well, the spearmint is a runaway success, too, but I'd like to find more uses for the leaves other than generating an endless supply of mojitos!

Transactional Epiphany

It took the better part of the evening, but last night I finally tackled the chore of setting up Quicken 2010 to track my financial life. In the days following my previous botched attempt at automatic conversion of my Microsoft Money data, I arrived at a simple, yet powerful realization:

"I don't need to carry everything over."

I had more than a decade of account transactions in my MNY file. I had been allowing it to accumulate in size like a rolling snowball as I upgraded to progressively newer versions of Money, never bothering to archive and purge old data. Between ringing in the new year and switching to new software, however, I knew that this was an opportunity to start over. I retrieved the December 2009 statements from only my active accounts and used only those balances to populate my new QDF file.

Manual setup forced me to think about what I really needed to see -- and not see -- from this point forward. Accounts for long-closed store credit cards would only be zero-balance clutter onscreen. The historical graph of my fund balances during the 2001 dot-com bust isn't something I needed at my fingertips every day either. Perhaps most significantly, I didn't bother to copy over data for personal loans which realistically will never be paid back. I had mentally written those off long ago, but leaving them out of Quicken makes it seem more official now.

Eric Tyson authored some really good books in the "For Dummies" series that got me started with managing my own money long ago. More than ever, I now appreciate that the opening paragraphs of his personal finance book begin with a discussion about the emotions and psychology behind our relationship with our financial life. He warns against going to extremes. It's neither wise for a person to lose sight of their basic financial state, nor is it healthy to obsess over the disposition of every penny that comes into his hands.

Sometimes, letting go of yesterday helps us take control of tomorrow.

Back outside

There's something wonderful about inking those first words into a previously blank calendar or journal. I logged my first run of the new year today -- outside for the first time in about four weeks. So there's another building block of confidence.

Last night I rang in 2010 with many hundreds of people at Sugar Land Town Square:



The wind chill at midnight had to have been around 40F. There was a pretty big guy in front of me wearing a short-sleeve cotton T-shirt, shorts and sandals. Naturally my first thought is, "He might be a runner!"

Happy new year, everyone!

Reflections and Resolutions

As we cash in on what little we have left of this year, I couldn't help but click back to previous blog entries and reflect on some of the things I posted during 2009:

• When the year started, I was in pursuit of a new 10K PR. I got it with a 55:38 chip time at the Bayou City Classic. Now that seems like an eternity ago and I wonder if I'll ever run like that again.
• It was both a year of remarkable drought (Houston's historically rainiest month of June was totally dry) and remarkable flooding.
  
• I took home finisher medals from my seventh and eighth half marathons. But I was the most excited to be there as I saw my sister collect her first.
• Internet delivery of movies and television shows became something that happens at my couch, not the computer chair.
• As I got settled into my new apartment, I met some unexpected neighbors.
• While out on a run, I watched a man die.
• While tummy troubles gave me grief in the latter half of the year, achilles concerns weighed down my running in the first half.
• As I suspected, a relay event can be really fun.
• And I still can't beat Gary Kubiak.

Having been a kid intrigued long ago by the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact, having this next calendar year actually arrive is rather cool. Over Christmas, a very special holiday elf gifted me with a runner-centric calendar by Marty Jerome. I'm not familiar with his writings now, but I'm guessing that I will be by the end of the twelve months. I hope it will help me with my perpetual resolution to become more organized. I'm okay with not being a fast runner, or a runner logging monstrous mileage. But I'd like to be consistent. So I'm modestly resolve to log at least 730 miles in that book, or an average of two miles a day. It's intentionally modest because I'd also like to leave myself more open for cross-training opportunities.

Second, I resolve to be a better spender of money. Being fiscally prudent recently through the economic downturn has paid off, and I'm fortunate to be employed and comfortable with my level of savings. So I hereby give myself permission to spend more -- not in a frivolous sense, but in ways that I feel will enrich my life.

I hope to improve my life in other ways, of course, but those are the two resolutions I'll declare on this blog post. May 2010 be blessed and prosperous for my readers, and may it provide reason to celebrate once again one year from today.

Penguinism

John "The Penguin" Bingham has penned his final column for Runner's World magazine.

His "butterfly effect" ponderings in his capstone entry line up rather well with the thoughts I've been having about myself lately. I've felt that my running fitness can be gauged from how the last three to six months have went. It's sort of a "what have you done for me lately" deal. But it's not what necessarily a what-have-you done right now deal either.

What this means is that successfully training for and finishing that full marathon a couple of years ago contributes very little to how I am today physically (although the experience factor is very valuable). On the other hand, having one lousy run in the present doesn't necessarily mean I'm hopelessly falling apart either. I've had quite a few lousy running weeks during this past summer and fall, enough to prompt me to switch races. My confidence was shaken enough to even allow the thought of a DNS for the half to creep in. So I was certainly relieved to be able to log 10 miles yesterday. Despite the cool air and the fantastically sunny skies, I stuck to the treadmill. It seems like a crime against beautiful weather, but making the 10 miles was more important to me this past weekend than experimenting with the environment.

Except for last month's Turkey Dash, I haven't run outside in many weeks. Yes, winter's darkness obliterating the natural light in the early mornings and evenings has been discouraging me from running the trails and sidewalks. But I must also acknowledge the what-if anxieties concerning bad things that can happen "out there" -- ones that didn't seem to bother me in the past. So while I'm grateful that the treadmill has been there for my benefit, I also find myself wishing that my Garmin Forerunner could have seen more use lately.

That Forerunner will certainly be strapped to my wrist as I venture out on Marathon Sunday, though. I've found John Bingham's writings to be really good motivational material, and I find myself returning to his Marathoning for Mortals book again and again. The rise of "Penguinism" in the latest running boom -- even its very definition -- has been discussed and debated. For myself, it has meant being able to tap into an internal desire to get up and move, train, aim for a goal like a distance run, and celebrate the feeling.

Even if you're destined to be confined at the back of the pack, or will never be mistaken for the cover model of a fitness magazine, the "Penguin" has counseled us to believe that running is naturally inclusive activity, and there's nothing wrong with the average (or even below-average) Joe or Jane showing up on race day and being counted.

Waddle on, John, and thanks.

Merry Christmas!

God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

For the few, the proud, the readers of this blog -- may joyful blessings find you, wherever you may be.

I'm not going to pay a lot (and several times a month) for this muffler.

Just a few PC-related musings today....

MS Money to Quicken Converter: It's a Flop.
Microsoft Money is decidedly the single most important application I currently use on my home PC. Plainly put, it works great for my purposes. I launch the program, it scoops up data from my various financial institutions automatically and gives me a true dashboard view of my fiscal situation. It was my trusted co-conspirator during my transition away from paper statements and billing. ("Kids, you know the truck that drops off Netflix DVDs? It used to deliver envelopes containing messages from companies that wanted you to pay them something. We would write the amount we wanted to pay on slips of paper and send those back....")

Know that feeling when you've become totally hooked on a new television show, only to have the network cancel it prematurely? Well, that's what I'm dealing with as MS sends Money off to manage its own retirement. I've been pondering some alternatives as support will fall away over the next year, but I can already report that my number one option of switching to Quicken isn't looking smooth.

I bought and installed a copy of Quicken 2010 Deluxe and followed the prompt to import my existing Money file. The result was insane. The first thing I noticed was that the program downloaded statement updates from the bank that duplicated existing transaction entries and failed to notice the duplication. Not only that, but there is no facility to match the downloaded transactions. The "Downloaded Transactions" tab that is supposed to handle this . . . doesn't exist. Picking out and deleting nine months worth of duplicated transactions isn't exactly my idea of a good time.

It got even more entertaining when I started looking closely at my mangled transactions. All of my purchases from a frequently-visited store were tagged with the memo "car muffler," when that store doesn't even sell mufflers. And all of my PayPal purchases were categorized as gifts . . . for one very lucky individual.

I have a feeling that if I do choose to switch to Quicken, it will be less headache in the long run just to start a new file from scratch and populate it with only my current accounts.

I Wish The Upgrade Advisor Had Told Me My Media Player Setup Was "Obsolete"
For day-to-day CD ripping and music playing, I had gotten very comfortable with using Windows Media Player. My digital music collection is currently on a small NAS device. Under Windows XP, both my desktop and laptop machines had their WMP libraries pointed there. After last month's OS upgrade I was surprised to find out that Windows 7 Libraries simply will not include network drives such as the one being shared from my inexpensive NAS. Yes, WMP will play the individual files, but it's not nearly as nice as having them actually cataloged and indexed in the Library.

I could copy the files over to the local hard drive, but then I'm faced with the organization hassle that using a network server solved in the first place. I'm thinking of upgrading the slow and aging NAS to something like an HP Mediasmart. It would certainly be a spiffy addition to the home network, and it should solve that Windows 7 annoyance. I just wish buying Windows Home Server wouldn't make me feel as if I was rewarding Microsoft for disabling something that worked in an earlier version of Windows.

Or I could use iTunes full-time. On second thought, no I won't. Eek!

So That's Why I Kept That 25-Foot Patch Cable
Oh, there was resolution to my roadblock with wireless networking in Linux. Once I stretched a cable across the room to connect my router and my desktop PC, Ubuntu immediately updated itself by downloading and installing drivers for my wireless adapter. Put that one away in the "chicken-and-egg" file. It's too bad SUSE wouldn't respond the same way.

Perhaps I should try racing sheep?

The morning began with a warmup in the lobby of a skyscraper in downtown Houston. I don't normally run in royal blue jogging pants, but the shimmering fabric of this pair hung comfortably from my waist. As usual, I'm fretting over logistics. I hadn't picked up my race number yet and things were supposed to start soon. Where were they?

I posed my inquiry to the security guard at the desk. "You'll pick up your number soon after the first mile marker," he cheerfully answered. Then he rose up from his seat and looked over the crowd. "Oh, there's no reason why we need to wait any longer. Go on and get going." He started making a shoo-ing motion towards the street. I took the cue immediately and darted through the revolving door. Many inside were still stretching, and as the rest of the pack took notice of the signaling from the behind the desk, there was a mad scramble to get up off the tile floor, pack away bags, and hurry outside. As tangerine streaks of dawn lit the sky above, the gray pavement below was blotted with runners streaking out as a race was suddenly underway.

With my quick exit out the door, I found myself in the lead for the time being. I hadn't checked the course beforehand, but luckily it was well marked. After a looping the pedestrian mall on Main Street, a route marker pointed me into another building. Upstairs, I was directed over a skywalk to the Hyatt Regency on Louisiana Street. Here I found a table where volunteers were distributing bib numbers. First to arrive, I collected mine and bounded down the hotel's staircase back to the street, attempting to run and attempting to affix safety pins simultaneously.

Once outside the Hyatt, faster runners were finally catching up to me, including some elites. Dire Tune pulled alongside (probably at her walking pace) and struck up a conversation with me. I don't remember what we were chatting about, but this was especially unusual because I don't share a common language with her.

And as one might have suspected, it was at this point that I woke up from the dream.

Keep your surprise penguins. I just want to connect to the Internet.

I've been settling in comfortably with Microsoft's new toy -- Windows 7 -- but at the same time, I've become determined to give Linux another try on this computer. I know I said otherwise, but I'd rather lend out some space on this nice and big hard drive than bother with conjuring up another PC right now. After re-partitioning my hard drive, I ended up installing not just one, but two distributions -- openSUSE 11.2 (as I tried right before Thanksgiving) and Ubuntu 9.10.

While messing around with the openSUSE installation from DVD, I noticed something. Most of the time GRUB -- the Linux bootloader -- appears on a screen with a mostly green background. But occasionally, it popped up with what appears to be a holiday season theme, with a Santa-hatted penguin marching back and forth on a menu screen with an igloo in the corner. The last time it happened, I grabbed my digital camera to capture it:

It may be winter, but in computer slang, I think this counts as an "Easter egg."

I'm sad to report that the cute penguins have been the most pleasant surprise so far. My ASUS WL-138 wireless adapter isn't functioning under openSUSE or Ubuntu. When I figure that problem out, it will be worthy of another blog post. But meanwhile, I was going to share some tips for the enthusiast that is looking to dual-boot Windows 7 and Linux:

1) Unless there is a need to change the starting cylinder of the Windows partition, use the "Shrink Volume" option in Windows 7 own Disk Management to create unallocated space. When I used GParted previously for resizing, Windows got confused and I had to pull out my Windows 7 DVD and re-install.

2) I'm planning to use Windows 7 as my main operating system. I did not want the Linux installers to molest the master boot record as I know from past experience that this can make Windows very cranky. So during both installs, I specified that GRUB be installed to the boot sector of the Linux root partition.

3) Once the installations completed, I used DISKPART from the Windows 7 DVD to make my original Windows XP partition (which contains my Windows 7 bootloader) active again. Then I used the utility EasyBCD to add the other operating systems to the Windows 7 bootloader menu. Experiencing the tedium of using Microsoft's BCDedit made me really appreciate EasyBCD. I found out the hard way that the release version 1.72 of EasyBCD is actually outdated. After using 1.72, I would only get a message that the operating system was missing when trying to boot one of the Linux distros. Go ahead and register on the publisher's forum to gain access to one of the version 2.0 betas. Only with the beta was I able to set up my system for a nice quad-boot among Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.10 and openSUSE 11.2. The list appears as part of the bootloader screen that would Identify Windows XP as only a "previous version of Windows."

4) Oddly, I noticed that EasyBCD doesn't really recognize an extended partition at all as possible to boot from, only the logical partitions within. So if you install Linux into an extended partition. be sure to install GRUB to the logical partition so EasyBCD can find it.

As I mentioned, right now neither distro has my wireless network adapter functioning. I suppose I could just string a cable across the room from my router and attempt to update the systems via my wired Ethernet adapter. Maybe that will do the trick? Or I could just keep searching for answers in the online forums. This experience is beginning to look a lot like the days when tweaking DOS and Windows 3.11 was a chore every computer user faced.