NYC Marathon

My friend forwarded me a pretty cool spreadsheet that calculates (roughly) what time you'll cross each marker at the NYC marathon based on your bib number and your expected time of finish. My times are below. if you want to download the whole spreadsheet, you can get it here.

Marathon Training

October 30, 2007
2 miles easy run
19:53

October 28, 2007
5 miles
58:52
11:46 per mile

Did the Poland Spring 5-mile kick off. Was supposed to do 8 miles total, but some late night partying did me in...

October 25, 2007
2-mile warm up to Astoria Park

Was supposed to do 3 miles at 8:59
Actual splits:
1 8:18
2 8:28
3 8:06

1-mile cool down

Total: 6 miles

Marathon Training

Marathon Training October 18, 2007
Because I was heading out of town early Thursday morning, I did my tempo workout early Thursday instead of in the evening.

I was supposed to do seven miles, one mile warm up, five miles at 8:53/mile and one mile cool down. I ended up doing a one mile warm up and only four miles in
43:16, a pretty miserable pace. But I had gone to Djoniba's dance class the night before which killed my legs, so I think I deserve a mulligan for that workout.

Marathon Training October 21, 2007

My final endurance run!

I ran 18 miles in Central Park (3 loops all heading north from the 72nd St east side entrance) in 3:14:05 which comes to 10:47 (rounded) per mile. My work out calendar said my pace should have been 10:17 per mile but Central Park has a number of hills that the training calculator doesn't take into account. I felt great and from here on out, it's time to taper until November 4th!

Marathon Training

Supposed to do a long run of 16 miles at a 10:14 pace. I got to the Staten Island Half Marathon early and ran three miles in roughly an 10:30-11:00/mile pace. Then I did the actual half marathon (13.1 miles) in 2:09:21 for a 9:52 pace.

Here is the actual result:


Comments:
I felt very very good during today's run. I didn't push myself too hard and gradually descended my splits (roughly 10:30-11 for the first 5, down closer to 10 for the next 5, then 9 for the final three 3 miles). Next week's long run peaks at 18 (yikes) then I begin to taper.

Chocolate Thunder!

On my ongoing quest for inspiration I'm still reading The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a collection of essays, stories etc. by some serious heavy hitters in social justice movements (Marian Wright Edelman, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela etc.), but its the very personal writing in this collection by the people I don't know as well that have affected me the most (e.g. Billy Wanye Sinclair refusing to bribe his way out of prison at a huge personal cost, Diane Ackerman wondering if her work at a suicide hotline makes any difference at all on the "pageant of humankind").

The story I have been reading most repeatedly has been Do Not Go Gentle by Sherman Alexie. He describes being in the hospital with his wife and his dying new-born baby. To clear his head he goes out shopping for baby toys but ends up in a sex-toy store. Suddenly, he is inspired to buy a vibrator and create a new ritual to save his baby. He rushes back to hospital inspired and a bit delusional. But what he describes is so moving, I felt his emotions, his hope, his despair but refusal to give up on the life of his son (the line breaks are mine, not his):

I ran into the fourth floor ICU, pulled Chocolate Thunder out of its box, held it up in the air like a magic wand, and switched it on.

It was sex that made our dying babies, and here was a huge old piece of buzzing sex I was trying to cast spells with. I waved it over our baby and ran around the room waving it over the other sick babies. I was laughing and hooting, and a few others didn't know what the hell to do. But pretty soon everybody was taking their turns casting spells with Chocolate Thunder. Maybe it was blasphemous, and maybe it was stupid and useless, but we all were sick and tired of waiting for our babies to die.

We wanted our babies to live, and we were ready to try anything to help them live.

Maybe some people can get by with quiet prayers, but I wanted to shout and scream and vibrate. So did plenty of other fathers and mothers in that sick room.

We humans are too simpleminded. We all like to think each person, place, or thing is only itself. A vibrator is a vibrator is a vibrator, right? Everything is stuffed with ideas and love and hope and magic and dreams. I brought Chocolate Thunder back to the hospital but it was my magical and faithful wife who truly believed it was going to bring our baby back to life.

Sherman Alexie from Do not Go Gentle from Ten Little Indians

A vibrator is a vibrator is a vibrator huh? I love it. Is it a pipe? I've been reading this story repeatedly, I'm not sure why. I'm not a parent, but Alexie makes me feel like what it must be to be one and I think it's that unconditional love and faith (irrational as both may be at times) that he expresses so beautifully that keeps calling me back.

Marathon Training

Did a speed workout last night.

1 mile warm up to Astoria Park Track

Supposed to do 4 miles at an 8:14 pace followed by half mile jogs. Actual splits:

1mile 7:50
half mile jog
1mile 7:51
half mile jog
1 mile 7:40
half mile jog
1 mile 7:26
half mile jog

1 mile cool down jog

Total: 8 miles

Comments: I felt very good and was surprised how easy it was to do what was for me fast splits. Next up, Staten Island Half Marathon, a key tune-up run for the NYC Marathon.

Marathon Training

10 miles in Central Park, time about 2 hours.

I experienced the first major setback of my training so far. My workout schedule called for 14 miles at 10:23 but my legs gave out at 10 miles and I had only been going at an 11:00+ pace. I hope this was just a temporary setback and hopefully it happened because I did a tempo run on Friday night instead of Thursday like I usually do.

And Then There Was The Word...

I grew up a Christian (Protestant, First Baptist) and so naturally scripture was a big part of my reading growing up. As I’ve become more disengaged from the church in the last ten years or so I haven’t really been reading much of the Bible. But in a weird coincidence I’m currently reading three things that have taken me back to my church days but also have me thinking more critically about the Bible. How it has been assembled from myriad sources, how much translation is more art than science and how much historical context can affect interpretation of the texts, especially one written over hundreds of years.

In The Impossible Will Take A Little While, there’s an essay by Walter Wink, Jesus and Alinksy, in which he parallels Christ with the famous community organizer, Saul Alinsky. He argues that Christ’s instructions of passiveness, when examined in the context of the harsh Roman occupation of Judea at the time and common social norms, can be interpreted as instructing people to non-violently resist imperial authority through the assertion of dignity rather than meekly to submit to their earthly conditions in hope of a glorious after-life. Wink takes a closer look at three famous examples to make his case.

To Wink, the oft-referenced example of turning the other the cheek (especially cited when Christianity is being criticized for its role in colonizing people) does not mean that you are to be repeatedly pummeled in a fight between equals. It’s instead a dignified response to a very specific situation of a backhanded slap to your right cheek by someone who has complete power over you. In Jesus’ time, one could only hit the right cheek with the back of the right hand because the left hand was only to be used for unclean tasks. Wink argues that Jesus’ audience would have recognized the unequal power dynamic of the right cheek slap and understood his instruction of offering the other cheek to be an assertion of dignity (any other kind of protest in that situation would have been unthinkable) and a non-violent, but obvious message of protest.

Another example is Jesus’ instruction to carry a Roman soldier’s equipment for two miles if asked carry them one. Roman soldiers were actually not allowed to ask anyone to carry their things for more than one mile and this was well known. To try to exceed that limit would have been recognized as an attempt to diminish the dignity of the occupying soldier and assert your own. The third example Wink offers is the offering of your clothes in a debtor’s court to the point of nudity. Wink points out that nakedness was such a taboo that shame would have fallen not “on the naked party but the person viewing or causing the nakedness.” In a situation of complete powerlessness (destitution) Wink’s argument is that Jesus is teaching his audience how to assert power where there seems to be none available.

James Wood, in his review of Richard Alter’s new Translation of the Book of Psalms, looks closely at how Alter has tried to stay more faithful to the rhythm and brevity in the original Hebrew sources and how the King James Version [KJV] translation may have taken some liberties in translation to ensure a more docile people.

Wood compares Alter’s compact translation to the KJV:

He [Alter] is particularly alive to formal aspects of ancient Hebrew poetry and prose such as repetition, internal rhythm, and parallelism (in which a phrase amplifies and almost repeats a preceding phrase, as in “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth,” from Psalm 72). Because the Psalms are poems, he wants to preserve in English what he calls the “rhythmic compactness” of the originals, “something one could scarcely guess from the existing English versions.” His helpful introduction is more polemical than the exegeses he has provided for his other translations: he argues that even the King James translators, whom he, like everyone else, has always admired, pad out their versions with filler.

Later on, he looks at particular aspects of Hebrew syntax that Alter tries to remain faithful to such as the fact that in many Hebrew sentences the subject of a verb in a sentence is often left unstated and simply referred by the conjugation of the verb (I found this interesting because it’s actually similar to Korean sentences which almost always leave the subject unspoken, but assumed by conjugation and context).

Besides trying to staying faithful to Hebrew structure, Alter tries to clean the Psalms of their ‘Christianization’ and some of the liberties that the KJV translators must have made to align the mercurial, vengeful God of the Old Testament with the forgiving salvation-offering God of the New:

…he is determined to remind his readers that they are reading ancient texts with hybrid origins, not Christian prayers with dedicated destinations. The Psalms (like the Book of Job) were relentlessly Christianized by the King James translators.

Alter also makes the focus less on the after life and more on the current one:

Suddenly, in a world without Heaven, Hell, the soul, and eternal salvation or redemption, the theological stakes seem more local and temporal: “So teach us to number our days.” Psalm 23, again, is greatly refreshed by translation.

The K.J.V. has the last half line of the psalm as “and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” Alter slaps a term limit on the eternal, and suggests “And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD / for many long days.” Again, a footnote anchors the decision: “The viewpoint of the poem is in and of the here and now and is in no way eschatological. The speaker hopes for a happy fate all his born days.”

Lynne Truss, in the hysterical Eats, Shoots and Leaves, looks at how the choice of one comma placement can lead to “huge doctrinal differences.”

“Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shallt be with me in Paradise”

“Verily, I say unto thee this day, Thou shallt be with me in Paradise”

The first being the Protestant interpretation that takes the crucified thief next to Jesus “straight to Heaven.” The second sentence is the Catholic interpretation, which leads to Purgatory. (“You’ll be with me in Heaven but I’m not saying when you’ll get there”).

These three articles/books are really helping to me look at something intimately familiar to me with fresh eyes. As much I’d like to think of myself as a critical reader, I was taught to accept the Bible as one unified book with one author (God working through the writings of various men) rather then a collection of writings and translations that are the products of incredibly diverse people and social and historical contexts.

Marathon Training

Tempo Run

1 mile warm up, jog to Astoria Park Track

5 miles at 8:59 pace
Actual total time
42:11 for an 8:26:2 pace per mile

1 mile cool down (jog/walk home)

Total miles: 7

Comments
I did this work out after a big dinner at Saravanaas so it was pretty unpleasant (the workout, the food was great, the service not so much). I felt nauseous during miles three to four.