Sky Show

The biggest advantage to running outdoors is that the environment demands that you pay attention, which keeps your mind engaged. Earlier in the week my attention was drawn to the ground. Wednesday's run on the dam featured several deer sighting, but with multiple snakes also encountered directly on the trail in front of me I was watching my every step.

During this morning's six-miler, it was just about the exact opposite. My eyes were scanning what was above me from beginning to end. Not only did I want to get my run over and done before the sun was up and scorching, I also wanted to experience the uncommon treat of a partial lunar eclipse. I got some pictures, but my digital camera fails to convey the true beauty of the moon's colors and light very well. The shrinking moon fell away to the west, almost as if it was being melted by the heat of the rising sun to the east.

When I began my run, I wasn't decided on which direction on the trail I would go. At the end of the eclipse viewing, my eventual choice was rewarded as I found a crew firing the burner under a large ready-for-the Fourth balloon. A hot air balloon is a simple pleasure made nearly larger-than-life and I stood admiringly and snapped a few photos as balloon and basket sailed up and away over the trees.

On the sun-drenched return leg of my journey, I thought the sky show was over, but it wasn't. A pair of nesting birds -- sparrows I believe -- are raising a brood close to the driveway right off the road. As I approached, I heard them squawk, then turn and perform a high-speed fly-by towards my head. They kept repeating this, pursuing me for about a tenth of a mile as I scampered past, waving them off with my arms.

Good luck finding a program for this stuff on any treadmill.

Everyone else is doing it, and I might not

Happy Summer Solstice! This is the time of year when the words "torpor" and "estivation" become my favorite vocabulary words. This past weekend I found it really difficult to get out and run with the rays of morning sun heating up the previous night's dew. I'm not quite ready to commit myself to the treadmill, but it does seem that the only sane time to be outdoors on the trail is at twilight. And because of the late sunsets, this ends up messing with sleep cycles. It's hard to win this game.

In the height of summer, the running community is already hot about the coming winter. I've been sampling some of the online reaction since the Houston Marathon announced the introduction of a lottery into the registration process. Most of the comments are angry and to be honest, I think they're misguided. Let me put this bluntly:

What will happen with a lottery: Registration hopefuls take their chances; some will be shut out.

What will happen without a lottery: Registration hopefuls take their chances; some will be shut out.

We saw what happened last July when the registration servers got pummeled. Just like a concert for the flavor-of-the-year pop act after Ticketmaster lights up the cash registers, the demand simply outstrips supply. Looking back, I now see how I was part of a cresting "running boom." My first Aramco Half in '06 was the last time that a sellout did not occur. Since then, the day the "SOLD OUT" press release has went out has gotten earlier and earlier, despite a rising registration cap.

If 22,000 is really the limit to the number of participants the George R. Brown Convention Center can handle on a single morning, then I have to ask if it's time to run the Aramco Half on another day. I have to believe that the convention center is the limiting factor, because surely organizers could easily alleviate on-course choke points simply by staggering wave starts more creatively.

Meanwhile, I think my chances are 60-40 (maybe dropping) that I'll even bother to enter the lottery. If I do enter and don't make it in for my sixth consecutive hustle past the ABC13 cameras, I won't be sad. It's been a great five-year "run" and nothing will change that now. The good part of the "boom" is that there are significantly more options now than in 2006. As for Marathon Sunday, I could see myself on the volunteer side of the fence this time in January.

Heights Fun Run

I was reaching around to pat myself on the back. Before I even crossed the start line at this morning's Houston Heights Fun Run, I was pretty darn proud of simply getting up early enough to have breakfast, leisurely drive myself towards Marmion Park in plenty of time for packet pickup, and even get a relaxing warmup before gun time. Yes, the Green 6.2 fiasco still stings.

Beginning at 18th Street, the 5K course is a very straight and flat shot down Heights Boulevard to 5th Street before turning around and returning back to 18th Street -- 26 blocks in total. As the starting horn sounded, I thought I'd be clever and entertain my mind by meditating on a letter of the alphabet on each cross-street.

"A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . E . . ."

At a half-mile in, I felt the need to go ahead and reach for a PED. In my case, the "PE" stands for Puke Evading, not Performance Enhancing; I had simethicone with me to soothe my guts.

"F . . . G . . . H . . . I . . . J"

We cheered the race leaders coming back northbound as we arrived at the first water station. Mile 1 came for me in 9:23. I knew this pace realistically couldn't last, but it did feel great to lay down one mile at this speed.

"K . . . L . . . M . . . N"

At the turnaround I could already feel my fast-twitch muscles going down for a siesta. Fast Vince was beginning to feel like Fat Vince again.

"P?"

Mile 2 in 10:02: Now with roughly one mile to go, I was struggling to hold pace. I had also lost track of my alphabet musings. This might have been a poor time to attempt a sobriety test. At 13th Street I let go of my fantasy goal of breaking 30:00, because five blocks in four minutes wasn't going to happen.

Mile 3 in 11:05: With the finish line in sight, a couple of other runners and I were mutually encouraging each other in Wizard of Oz fashion. "Follow the yellow big sign! Follow the yellow big sign!" we chanted. I hopped onto the finish mat, looking down to confirm that the D-tag timing chip was still attached to my ankle Road ID. 31:34 was my elapsed time per my Garmin Forerunner. If I didn't fade so much by the end, I could have had a shot at a 10:00/mi overall pace or faster.

Two years ago, I defined success at the Heights Fun Run as making it to the finish line before all the breakfast tacos were eaten. Phil's Texas Barbeque did a great job in covering us, because despite coming in four minutes slower than I did in 2008, I was able to enjoy not one, but two small brisket-and-egg-stuffed bundles of tortilla bliss.

Now what? I'm not sure. But just being within sniffing distance of a 30-minute 5K again is a welcome confidence booster.

Running America

After hassling with more than an hour of Houston rush hour traffic to cover 13 miles to the theater, I settled in with a few hundred others in one of the Alamo Drafthouse's larger auditoriums for last night's Houston premiere of Running America.

This documentary follows ultrarunners Charlie Engle (Running The Sahara) and Marshall Ulrich in the fall of 2008 as they attempt to break a time record for crossing the United States on foot from San Francisco to New York City. Their adventure coincides almost too neatly with the fall presidential campaign. Remember back when we thought that terrorism and the wars on foreign soil would be the dominant issues of the campaign? Well, as Ulrich and Engle started their trek in California and Nevada, the financial crisis story takes center stage instead as the political fight ignites over the proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout. The filmmakers spent a lot of time interviewing random folks they met in America's heartland about where they think the country is heading.

I found myself with mixed emotions about this movie by its end. On one hand, the actual running portion of the story was great. And outside of the closeup blister-popping scenes, this is a beautiful one to watch, with many great views of America from the road. But I did feel emotionally manipulated as the words of Barack Obama's acceptance speech overlaid scenes of Ulrich arriving triumphantly in Manhattan on Election Day. (Engel found himself sidelined with plantar fascitis earlier in the attempt and couldn't complete the mission.)

After the film, Marshall Ulrich and his wife Heather took the stage for a Q&A period. I had some fun while livetweeting some of their responses via my still relatively new Backflip:

• Ulrich lost only a net four pounds during the entire trip. He was eating 10,000 calories a day -- the same as his entire four-person crew.
• Colorado was Ulrich's favorite state to run in, because he's from there and does like hilly terrain.
• Ulrich used 32 pairs of Pearl Izumi shoes, not because of outside wear, but because the inners were breaking down.
• Charlie Engel is working on a future run across Cuba, after Badwater.
• Ulrich has a book coming out in 2011 about his experiences on this run.
• The best way for a marathoner to transition into ultras is to run a lot! (Duh!)
• Heather Ulrich accompanied her husband during Running America as part of the support crew. She admitted that she was yelling "quit" in her head numerous times, but managed to keep her mouth shut.
• Ulrich has "circumnavigating Death Valley" as a future goal. I'm not sure what this means exactly, but he said it's something that hasn't been done yet.

After the show, I bought one of the DVDs and got it autographed.

Cool: Going home with an autographed DVD
Not Cool: Discovering that it won't play in any player in my living room (three so far).

I have Ulrich's business card, so I'll be sending him an email to describe my problem. Let's hope his organization can make this right.

Astros Race for the Pennant 5K

All I had to do today was simply show up on time and the 2010 edition of the Race for the Pennant would be considered a success to me.

But as long as I was there, I figured I'd run the course too, finishing the 5K in an even 38 minutes according to my trusty Forerunner 205. This might have been closer to 35 minutes if I didn't take a few stops to take some snapshots with the Backflip. This was my first time to return to the RFTP since the switch to the out-and-back course over the Elysian viaduct. While I have a hate-hate relationship with this roadway overpass, tangling with it many times on Marathon Sunday and on Rodeo Parade mornings, it can reward the amateur photog with some nice vistas of the north face of the downtown skyline.

With the fifth anniversary of my first 5K behind me, it's time to look forward to one of my favorite neighborhood running events -- the Houston Heights Fun Run on June 5.

Shelter From The Storm

I'm in a feel-good mood today. Last night we took a figurative trip back in time with the sounds of Toad The Wet Sprocket at the House of Blues. It was my first time at the venue and my first time to see this group live. As far as I was concerned, they were still every bit the band that left its mark in the 90s, all the way from the curtain opening with "Something's Always Wrong" to the encore farewell with everyone singing with the wistful "Walk On The Ocean."


I'm also feeling good about running too. I've been a decent job of getting out there recently. The nausea and achilles issues of last year have abated. I'm readying myself for a rematch with the Heights Fun Run. There are 21 miles going into my running log for the week last completed, including a seven-miler yesterday -- my first rain run since the thunderstorm that killed off my old cell phone.

Speaking of storms, I was relieved that rain stayed out of the picture for as long as it did. The bane of my home life this past month was the renovation project at my apartment. It all started innocently enough with a notice at the beginning of April that we'd be seeing some stucco repairs that would take approximately six days.


Well, one thing led to another over the past six weeks, and basically the entire perimeter of my apartment was eventually sucked into the renovations. At various points in the project, I was worried about my porous walls, with accidental holes in the drywall that led directly to the exposed stucco frame. As I watched rain pounding the windows on Friday night, I felt as if Providence held off that deluge until every chink in the structure was patched up. This weekend I've been able to return stuff back into my bedroom and living room. My patio garden will be basically restarted from scratch. But it's over and getting "my place" back to myself is cause for feeling good!

I could feel this blog going stale, so it's it's nice to come back with an upbeat post. Last night as "Toad" rocked the House of Blues, I was wondering to myself why I don't go see more rock concerts. I was also thinking about the contrast between last night's show and the last concert I saw, The Steep Canyon Rangers fronted by Steve Martin.


On a geek note, that bluegrass concert in April was my first time to see the new Apple iPad in live use. Martin was using it to organize his setlist.

I hope all my readers had a good spring. I can feel Houston's trademark humidity returning as summer comes back to rule.

Seven days with the Motorola Backflip

My well-loved Nokia 6820 -- a text messaging powerhouse -- succumbed to water damage a couple of weekends ago. While running I got caught in a spectacular lightning storm and made the mistake of taking the phone out to reply to a text message. Oops!

While losing my phone was bad, in retrospect it could have been a lot worse. At the time another runner and I were running home along the trail on the top of the Addicks Dam, which is at treetop level. We remarked that we were some of the tallest objects out there when a bolt of lightning struck less than a half-mile in front of us. After seeing the resulting red sparking fireball in our path, I can honestly say that we were pretty foolish for not descending to lower elevation sooner. So here's my public service announcement for today: People and massive discharges of static electricity do not mix!

Returning to the phone discussion: In need of a new cell phone, I shopped for a new model just as I do for running shoes: I read reviews to develop initial impressions, then did a lot of test-driving in the store to select a final winner. After nearly thirty minutes of giving in-hand time to all the display models in the AT&T store, I had confirmed that my number one candidate, the Motorola Backflip was the right choice for me.

At first glance, the reverse-clamshell design struck me as odd. But the more I have handled it, the more brilliant this arrangment appears. Opened, the screen and keyboard are aligned at virtually the same angle as the two halves of the Nintendo DS Lite, and it's nearly as natural to handle. Closed, the Backflip operates as a simple touch-screen slab, just like the Apple iPhone.

By the way, I really wanted to like the iPhone, but a combination of three things put an end to that:
1) An iPhone (and Motorola's Droid for that matter) is a half-inch taller and a half-inch wider than a closed Backflip. The Backflip is a better fit in the palm of my hand and is better at sharing space with the wallet in my pocket.
2) After being spoiled by the old Nokia, I really do want a tactile physical keyboard on my phone, and it has to be well-sized. (I can't help but think that the Blackberry engineers at RIM are all dainty ladies with tiny hands.)
3) iTunes for Windows makes me want to tear my hair out. The less I have to see of it, the better.

In the closed position the Backflip's keyboard is disabled, so there's no worry about the dreaded "butt dialing" phenomena. And despite being always exposed, I'm not very worried about the keyboard. It has no discrete keys, having one imprinted and continuous sheath covering the keyswitches.

The camera in my old phone was terrible, so the Backflip's 5-megapixel camera with LED flash is a welcome step up for me. I discovered that the reverse clamshell design enables the use of the LCD screen as a viewfinder in both directions. Want to take one of those phone-in-outstretched-hand self portraits? The Backflip makes this easy. I'm surprised that none of the reviews I've read has pointed out this fun fact.

On the back of the touchscreen is a small trackpad called "Backtrack" used to scroll and select items on screen. I'm rather lukewarm about this feature. It sounds great in concept, but so far it doesn't seem to be much more effective to me than the arrow keys on the keyboard. Perhaps I just need more practice to appreciate its true value.

I trashed the Motoblur widgets that display by default on the home screen of the phone. It's supposed to be like a running ticker of social networking notifications, but I find it more showy than useful. In addition, the default setting of Motoblur to continuously get background notifications is a battery drain. Instead, I've installed full-featured clients for Facebook and Twitter (Twidroid) and just refresh their listings only when I want to.

I do like finding so many free apps in the Android Marketplace. So far the most expensive app I've splurged on is the MLB At Bat 2010. I'm listening to streaming audio play-by-play broadcast of a Cardinals-Braves game right now as I type this.

Now what I might really enjoy is a dependable Blogger app. I actually began composing this post originally in the application AndroBlogger right on the Backflip itself, but it crashed on me ("force close") right as I was nearing the end. AndroBlogger is a free app, and I suppose I got what I paid for!

Green 6.2

For Sale: One (1) wildflower-seeded race bib and one (1) D-Tag from the debut running of the Green 6.2. Potential collector's item, pristine condition, never used. Will take pint of frustration-soothing chocolate ice cream or best offer.

I remember being so pleased with myself this morning -- getting up early after a good night's sleep, getting a decent breakfast and leaving home when I intended. It was quite a surprise when I arrived at CityCentre and was told that I had completely missed the start of the race. As it turns out, for weeks I had the wrong gun time written on my calendar. I was so late that the course was already dismantled, except for the finish line welcoming back the last stragglers.

I had come prepared to run anyway, of course, so I simply took off on my own unsupported run around the Town and Country area -- an impromptu eight-mile double loop, featuring an up-and-down the five levels of the CityCentre parking garage. For this morning, score me as "DNS due to incompetence."

"On your left" . . . times thirteen thousand

I planned today's six-miler so that I could take a break in the middle and watch one of the starts of this weekend's BP MS150. Shortly before dawn, I reached my perch overlooking the Omni Hotel just as the singer began belting out the first bars of the national anthem.

Over the next 45 minutes, wave after wave of cyclists pulsed out over the Addicks Dam and down into the misted forest. The State Capitol in Austin -- their final destination -- waits for them 180 miles away. It's a sight you don't see every day:

As I was leaving, I couldn't resist snapping a final picture of the Brightroom photographers. After having them capture my not-so-glamorous side at so many events, turnabout is fair play, I say!

Dear Jerry

Has it really been a year since you hurtled into my life while being rudely hurtled out of your own? Not long after the hit-and-run accident that brought us briefly together, I saw that your loved ones had planted a cross in the ground at the crash site. I've wondered if they needed the landowner's blessing to do this.

This eventually developed into a two-part memorial to you. Close to the curb where your motorcycle went airborne, a heart-shaped patch of mulch marked "JERRY" faces Katy Freeway traffic. The cross still stands on the downslope a few yards away, on the edge of the detention pond where your body came to rest until LifeFlight arrived to take it away.

Eventually, I became comfortable enough to resume running in this area again. (I run exclusively facing the oncoming traffic now. I still carry my cell phone with me and I'm very good about wearing my Road ID -- two choices that I still heartily endorse for anyone who runs outdoors.) During those runs, I could pause by that intersection to look at the changing selection of seasonal items that they're leaving in your memory. During my last run-by, I took note of the Happy Birthday balloons. You're certainly on their minds.

The driver of the truck that hit you is still unidentified. Sadly, a year later no one has been able to come forward with information that could hold someone accountable. Crime Stoppers still has the Jerardo Luis case in their "unsolved" files, and a reward could still be out there for the right person that picks up the phone and dials 713-222-TIPS.

With the passage of some time, I came to accept that there was really nothing I could have done to save you that night. Anyhow, I resolved to do something to make myself feel less helpless in a crisis, so a couple of months ago I took part in a mass CPR/AED training by the Red Cross in the NFL Texans practice "bubble."

During the class I got really good pointers on how to remove rubber gloves without getting cooties on my hands and how to roll unconscious persons into a "recovery position" so they wind up in a good place to gain consciousness and puke. Oh, and I also learned that delivering sets of chest compressions are a pretty good workout in itself. By the end of the morning, I joked that perhaps I should bring one of the dummies home as cross-training equipment.

Doing a thousand practice compressions on dummies couldn't have helped your situation last April. But I guess I do feel better knowing that maybe I'll be better prepared to help someone else in a different type of emergency. I suppose that's one important takeaway I gained from the whole ordeal: We can't change the past, but with a little foresight and preparation, maybe we still have a shot at making the future better.

I'd like to think that I'm now driving sober more often. Mind you, to me driving sober is much more than just a BAC number. It's the having the mindfulness of the responsibility we take when we pilot a car on the roads, and a focused awareness of what's around you. Uncontrolled, the amount of kinetic energy that two tons of steel and plastic has at highway speeds can really ruin a lot of lives. I've wondered if your hit-and-run driver may have been occupied on a cell phone, or simply neglectful of checking a blind spot that terrible night.

As I remember all this, I am affirmed in my belief that the act of running is a declaration of my vitality. To go outdoors, draw breath under the skies and propel my legs over the ground is my acceptance of an innate directive to pursue the horizon. All the while, I'm mindful that this ability -- and my very life -- could be taken from me at an hour and in a manner we have no way of predicting. As a witness pointed out to me afterwards, I was crossing that very intersection less than a minute before the wreck.

Once in a while, especially when crossing that curb at Memorial Brook Boulevard, I feel like I truly am running some of these miles for you and others who won't run on the earth again. Rest in peace.