Author: splicer

Today’s run: Twin Peaks. As best as I can tell from some low-res topo maps on the web, I ran from 150 feet above sea lev­el to 850 feet in two miles, then back after a flat loop, totalling 4.1 miles in 44:34. That’s a 10:52 pace, hard­ly what I’d nor­mal­ly call speedy, but I don’t nor­mal­ly run hills these days so I call it a resound­ing vic­to­ry. In fact, con­sid­er­ing how long … Read the rest

Got out on the road for the first time in ages. I’ve been get­ting over being sick for entire­ly too long now and it’s kept me from run­ning. Hope­ful­ly today was­n’t too ear­ly, but I’m get­ting real­ly tired of being inac­tive. I feel fine on a moment-by-moment basis, I just keep on cough­ing. So cau­tion went to the wind and I got out there and had fun.

Also: vanil­la Pow­er Gel is like eat­ing cake frost­ing right out of the can.… Read the rest

Less than a half hour ago San Fran­cis­co Police Depart­ment cruis­er #576 was parked in front of the fire hydrant at the cor­ner of 22^nd and Ten­nessee. While the hair on the back of my neck stood up at the thought that law enforce­ment offi­cers are basi­cal­ly exempt from the laws they are sworn to uphold, I calmed myself down by remind­ing myself that it was very pos­si­ble that the cruis­er was there respond­ing to some call, and … Read the rest

• Be com­fort­able on your own before bring­ing some­one else along.
• Go too slow and be left behind; go too fast and crash.
• No mat­ter how thrilled you are, nev­er for­get that you can be hurt badly.
• No mat­ter how care­ful you think you should be, nev­er for­get to have fun.
• If your heart isn’t in it, go home.
• Trust what you ride.
• Buy the object of your affec­tion plen­ty of accessories.
• Nev­er cut cor­ners with maintenance.
• Pay full atten­tion 110% of the time.
• Always wear protection.

I fin­ished this draw­ing about a week ago. I’d thought I’d fin­ished it the week before, but I gave myself some time away from it with the notion that it was pos­si­ble I’d want to go into it again. I went through the whole process with this, col­lect­ing ref­er­ence pho­tos, draw­ing her in pen­cil, going back to var­i­ous parts of her face in my sketch­book and work­ing out the treat­ments I might want to use both with pen­cil and then … Read the rest

This morn­ing’s DSE run was the Rain­bow Falls 5K. My left metatarsal is killing me—I limped the last half of the run.

It’s odd how dif­fi­cult it can be some­times to gauge my pace. Since today’s race was a 5K I fig­ured that I’d be able to turn up the heat a lit­tle bit and run faster. I got out there and was imme­di­ate­ly breath­ing hard­er than I like. I think if the air is a lit­tle cool­er … Read the rest

For years I’ve used the Palm as a lap­top replace­ment. As tempt­ing as the con­ver­gence devices may have been, I kept to a sep­a­rate phone and palm­top, and relied on cables or Blue­tooth to keep them in touch.

In the last cou­ple of years I’ve found myself using SMS mes­sag­ing more and more. It’s main advan­tage is that it takes lit­tle ded­i­cat­ed atten­tion with much less over­head than a quick cell call. Coor­di­nat­ing plans, check­ing sched­ules, touch­ing base can be done … Read the rest

In try­ing to make the deci­sion whether to run the US Half Marathon in eight days, I took the last chance to do a longish run to try it out before I have to take it easy with short­er dis­tances for the next week. I ran rough­ly eleven and a half miles at a 9:40 pace. I don’t think I’ll be beat­ing my 2004 time, but for most of the 11.55 miles I felt like I … Read the rest