The official results aren’t posted yet, but according to my wristwatch yesterday I ran a 3:38:37 in the New Jersey Marathon, which I’m very happy with. The conditions on the pancake-flat course were excellent: overcast and cool. Just as soon I finished the sun came out, too, so I wasn’t freezing in my wet clothes.

My splits:
7:54, 7:59, 7:57, 8:03, 8:09, 8:15
8:10, 8:18, 8:34, 8:25, 8:35, 8:45
8:32, 8:38, 8:06, 8:20, 8:13, 8:23,
8:19, 8:21, 8:29, 8:16, 8:29, 8:44
8:39, 8:08, (1:44).

If I didn’t quite run a negative split, I was close! The race is on the Jersey shore in and around the town of Long Branch, just north of Asbury Park. It was a bit of a boring course, with few crowds and no bands or anything like that. At about mile 14 I was first starting to feel a little sore, but knew I still had a long way to go, and these gremlins came into my head. A bunch of the half-marathon participants had steamed by me at what for them was the finish and I started thinking negative thoughts, how nice it would be stop as well. Then thankfully I started talking to two women runners at around my pace, both of whom were going for a 3:40 to qualify for Boston. That was about the pace I was going for as well. One told me I looked nice and relaxed. Talking to them definitely snapped me out of my reverie and spurred me onward. I ended up running a really great second half. My hamstrings normally give me problems during marathons but I’d been stretching them during yoga and it paid off — this time I was hamstring-problem free. My hip flexors, however, did get kinda sore and restricted my stride a little. But nothing too bad — it was a remarkably low-pain marathon.

Logistically, though, there were a number of things that bugged me about this race. Like beforehand we would get weekly “race director updates” in our inbox. Only, they didn’t send the actual updates, just a notice tto go to the website. (And not even a direct link).

Speaking of the website, confusing wording on it meant that a number of runners (including my carload of Flyers) ended up going to the Monmouth Medical Center for the expo and to pick up our bib numbers. It turned out the hospital was just sponsoring the expo, not hosting it.

And I totally missed the soup and other hot food that was in a tent after the race! D’oh!

However I guess I can’t complain too much considering this is my best marathon in many years.

UPDATE: My official time was 3:39:15, or an 8:22 pace. 257 out of 1001 men; 299 of 1699 overall.

Hi, sorry about blog-absence, I am still here alive and kicking. New Jersey Marathon on Sunday! I am hoping for about a 3:40 or so. I am still working the overnight shift at the L.U.N.O. (Large Unnamed News Organization).

Actually I need to think about other career options as the company is “regionalizing” the department where I work. I could likely move to another city such as Philly or Atlanta, or two yet-to-be-determined cities in the Midwest and West, but I’m not sure I want to do that. (Well, I’m sure I don’t want to live in Philadelphia or Atlanta, no disrespect to those places intended).

Anyway I am hoping to transfer internally within the company and stay in New York but need to be exploring other options. I am hopeful that there won’t be any layoffs until 2009, though, so I have time.

In the event I am laid off I am trying to think of things to do, assuming I can’t land a city newspaper job immediately, as would seem likely. Obviously it is a tough time in the journalism business right now. One idea: Take a week or two and apply for various game and reality shows! (Amazing Race, Survivor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, etc.). This website has guide to such reality shows. I also might consider freelancing or something — I understand it’s pretty hard to establish yourself but once you have you can make a v. decent living freelancing.

As for the Ne Year’s resolutions updates, yes I have slacked off on them. Kind of got bored doing it on a weekly basis. But will post an update after the marathon. For the record, I weighed in at 167 lbs. yesterday though. (The current girl I’m dating claims I’m “too thin” in fact and wants me to gain weight).

You’ve probably seen this before if you watch much TV … but it’s still a pretty amazing ad. The performer is Jinny Jessica Jacinto, a former Cirque du Soleil contortionist. The ad is one of a series shot in Prague and features the re-composed music of Andrew Bird. Stunning.

ground zero construction

Originally uploaded by derek7272

Taken April 2, 2008 from my kitchen. You can see the steel pillars for Freedom Tower at the very right of this photo, midway down. Beneath that is this silver roof; that is the new temporary PATH station that just opened this week. You can see people streaming out of the old PATH station with the white awning toward the left.

If you click on the photo, it will take you to my flickr page where I have addeed various annotations using flickr’s notes function.

I’ve also updated this page that shows progress at the “east bathtub” site.

freedom tower construction

Originally uploaded by derek7272

Taken April 2, 2008 from a pedestrian overpass over West Street at Vesey Street. Looking south.

It’s hard to get a sense of scale looking at this picture, but look at the metal platform staircase on the right going down to the bottom of the bathtub to get a feel for the size of this thing.

Interesting story from the Boston Globe on male-female ratios in American cities:

It’s not just that some places have more singles than others. If you’re a single man or a single woman the odds of meeting that special someone vary dramatically across the country.

By far, the best places for single men are the large cities and metro areas of the East Coast and Midwest. The extreme is greater New York, where single women outnumber single men by more than 210,000. In the Philadelphia area and greater Washington, D.C., single women outnumber single men by 50,000. I met my wife outside Detroit, where the odds were greatly stacked in my favor - single women outnumber single men by some 20,000 there.

In fact, single women outnumber single men in many large cities around the world, even though men outearn women at all ages, according to Lena C. Edlund, a Columbia University economist. One reason young women in the prime marriage years - the 25-44 age range - flock to big cities is to compete for the most eligible men. And smart women who gravitate to vibrant cities are more likely to stay single - for longer, at least - because they rightly refuse to settle for someone who can’t keep up with them intellectually or otherwise.

A singles map of the United States of America - The Boston Globe

Tags: dating

My baseball draft on ESPN.com. Rot. league, 10 players, I had the fifth pick. I think people can check out the league here, but here’s my draft.

5. Johan Santana, NYM
16. Jake Peavy, SD another pitcher - my strategy was get big-name pitchers early.
25. Carlos Lee, Hou
36. Brian Roberts, Bal good speed
45. Josh Beckett, Bos hopefully back soon?
56. Rafael Furcal, LAD
65. Torii Hunter, LAA
76. Ryan Zimmerman, Was
85. Roy Halladay, Tor
96. Jason Bay, Pit
105. Adrian Beltre, Sea
116. Howie Kendrick, LAA
125. Matt Cain, SF
136. Aaron Rowand, SF
145. Bengie Molina, SF 3 Giants in a row…
Continue reading this post…

Twenty miles in Rockefeller State Park this morning. It was about 3:03 so just over a 9-minute mile pace. Ran with a female teammate with the Flyers who has a GPS thingee; in the end we were doing lake-loops to be sure we got in 20 miles. I can see how those things can make you OCD. (But who wants to brag to their friends, “I ran 19 miles today”?) In the end we ran 20.02 miles. I plan on being ready for NJ.

Via the NYT, here’s the Myspace page of “Kristen,” the girl in the Spitzer scandal…

Ouch!

Interesting NYT article on push-ups:

As a symbol of health and wellness, nothing surpasses the simple push-up. …

The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one’s entire weight is taxing even for the very fit.

“You are just using your own body and your body’s weight,” said Steven G. Estes, a physical education professor and dean of the college of professional studies at Missouri Western State University. “If you’re going to demonstrate any kind of physical strength and power, that’s the easiest, simplest, fastest way to do it.”

I love push-ups. I should do more of them.

Dear Derek Rose:

Congratulations, you’re officially registered for the 12th annual New Jersey Marathon (NJM) scheduled for Sunday, May 4, 2008.

If you happen to live in New Jersey or are passing thru on business please check-out the great long-distance training runs regularly scheduled by the state running club, NJRRC on their site at www.njrrc.org. There is no better way to log in those 12, 15, 18, 20 milers than in a group setting with nearly 40+ regulars. All paces and abilities are welcome. Please call 732.578.1771 if you’re a first-timer or need more information.

Membership to the NJRRC is not a requirement!

Running regards,

Art Castellano, Director-NJM

President-NJRRC

Okay, so my father requested an update on how I am doing on those New Year’s resolutions. In truth I have been a little lax on the updates. After achieving my weight one, I maybe slacked off a bit. Also my trainers at Crossfit told me I should stop doing sit-ups for awhile as my running has supposedly made me “hunched over” and concentrate on back extensions to open up my back. Kinda a reverse situp. But anyway, here is the update.

Fitness: Did 64 situps in two minutes yesterday, down from 69 on Jan. 20. Hmm. But 19 pullups just now, up from 18. Have a 15K run schedule for tomorrow, so we’ll see how I do on that.

Weight: Part 1 of this goal was achieved: I got down to 168 pounds. Part 2 is to maintain my weight throughout the year at less than 170. And I’ve done that so far … although I just squeezed in at 169.5 just now on my bathroom scale. (Yesterday it read 168). I haven’t been concentrating on this too much. But that was sorta the point; you don’t want to be on a strict diet all the time. And I gotta say: I am NOT going to try to get down to this weight again during winter. Seven percent body fat is just too low for cold weather! I wanna be tough and that is not achieved by sitting there shivering on the subway!

Debt: There has been some backsliding here … I won’t say how much. It made sense, though, for me to pay for a year of Crossfit all at once, rather than do a month-by-month thing.

So anyway, that’s the update. I also been doing a lot of running; making it to the speedwork sessions with the Flyers and doing the odd Thursday night at the races night at the Armory with the NYRR. So I think that is coming along.

So after awhile taking a break from the whole dating scene I have decided to put myself “back on the market.” Which has meant, among other things, reactivating my online dating profile and in fact signing up for a new dating service. (Yes, I’m not Jewish. But hey, as I’ve said before, I seem to like Jewish girls … and I figured I’d just mix things up, after trying other other sites).

Anyway, let me preface this by saying that I’m sure by saying that I’m sure my online dating profile (here’s mine on okcupid) has its flaws too. And I’m sure that there are stupid things guys say on their profiles that turn women off. (In fact, please post examples to comments). However, I don’t browse guys’ profiles so I can’t really talk about that. Here, though, are some of the things I’ve noticed as cliches while browsing women’s profiles:
Continue reading this post…

There are some words and phrases that I feel are good to unlock those last few ergs of power; that are good for pushing yourself through the last repetition while lifting or on through the final leg of a hard run.

I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.

Some of my favorites:

• “Mad dog!” More for lifting, really. When you’re on the bench press or somesuch. I’ll say it to people at the Black Box when they are struggling. It is pretty self-explanatory.
• “Get aggressive!” Or just, “aggressive!” Another one from the Black Box. Doing like a weighted back squat or somesuch can be intimidating and you need an aggressive mentality for it. (BTW, did 135-lb. push-press the other day).
• “Cliffhanger.” From my friend Andrew G. To evoke the amazing opening scene from the 1993 Sylvester Stallone movie. You never know when you might have to pull a girl up from a chasm with sheer arm strength.
• “I am one tough motherf—…” Dylan told me this one. He had read about some guy chanting it to himself under his breath in a race.
• Rock around the clock. The beat and lyrics are so simple, it makes for a good chant while running. I use it even if I can only remember the first couple lines. “One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock / Five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock rock.” Better than counting…

Anyway, I was out running on the West Side Highway on Sunday when I heard a new one. This woman was running with two guys in the opposite direction of me and I overheard her say it to them. I thought it was awesome in its simplicity:

“Giddyup!”

Latest photo, with some snow still on the ground from last week. If you look at the area in the upper left-hand corner, that is East Bathtub. Last week the Port Authority turned over that area, the planned site two office towers, to developer Silverstein Properties 48 days late, incurring $14.4 million in late fees. (It was supposed to be done by Dec. 31 … as a result the Port Authority ran 16-hour shifts for awhile as the $300,000-a-day fine mounted, keeping us neighbors up at night with a lot of late-night hammering).

I have a page of photos here that shows progression on the East Bathtub site.

So one of the thing Crossfit really emphasizes is high intensity interval training. For example one of their classic workouts is the “Tabata protocol“: eight rounds of 20 seconds of intense exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. Typically it is done with such things as situps, squats, pushups and pullups. It is only a four-minute workout (well, 3:50), but the key is to do it all out and really wipe yourself out by the end. It takes its name from a study by Japanese scientist Dr. Izumi Tabata, who found that intervals of exactly that type on a spinning bike (five days a week for six weeks) produced better training than constant-state training for an hour over the same timeframe.

That’s worth repeating: an intense four-minute workout was proven better than a moderate hour-long workout.

Anyway, as a runner, intervals are nothing new. But I was also taught about tempo runs, intense ~30 minute runs that are also supposed to be good training.

I did a little research on the web. Here’s one meta-study that compared high-intensity various training schedules. Like is a hard 1×20 min. run better than 5×3 min.? Interval training at 2-10 minutes seemed to be better than training at shorter intervals, and much better than training at longer intervals. Here’s another study that seemed to indicate that a 5×2 min. hard runs, interspersed with equal periods of light jogging, were better than 10×1 min. workouts or a 1×20 min. hard run.

So maybe tempo runs are just hocus and we should all be doing intervals instead for our hard runs? I know when I’ve done tempo runs by myself — it is just plain hard to keep that intensity, concentration and focus for a full 30 minutes. Any kind of distraction — say, rounding a corner — usually makes me break my rhythm and drop my heart rate a little bit. (From what I’ve read, tempo runs are supposed to be at 85% of max heart rate, hard for me to maintain without someone else pushing me). Anyway, I think I’m going to drop “tempo runs” and just do intervals and races.

kitties

Originally uploaded by derek7272

Coco and Papi taking a nap in my gym bag.

So got up early and did the Bronx half on Sunday. Saw Chelle around mile four or so as we did one of the out-and-backs … she was already a few minutes ahead of me. I took a deep breath and bellowed, “LET’S GO MICHELLE!!” as loud as I could across the grassy median. She flashed me back a winning smile. As I did the “back” portion myself I spied H. — or actually, she spied me first and gave me a cheer.

Around the midway point, somewhere along the way out of the corner of my eye I saw a white-haired runner pacing with me. Depending on my mood there can be certain runners I feel more competitive with than others: older runners, younger runners, woman runners, runners from other teams, runners from my team, runners wearing bright clothing … anything to stay motivated during a race. So anyway I picked up the pace on a downhill and left him behind.

But the Mosholu Parkway (I almost said Mogadishu) was windy. I felt like I was going to get blown away. It interrupted my stride and concentration. Coming back I glanced at my heart rate monitor: only 163. I must have really slowed down. I tried to pick up the pace for the last 5K. Somewhere around mile 11, I spied the white-haired runner again. We were part of a little pack that was passing some people. But then with three-quarters of a mile to go, he pulled off to the side. What the…?

“C’MON!!” I screamed at him as fiercely as I could.

“Aww, all right,” he said in a thick Irish brogue and got back in it. He musta been about 60 or so.

“Just five minutes to go,” I told him.

“I can’t talk,” he replied.

We ran in silence for a little bit. For a guy who was about to take a break, he really had a good kick going and we passed some more people.

“We’re just going to crank on this straightaway and turn the corner and we’re done,” I told him. (Actually, the finish was at the end of the straightaway. Oops.)

“I owe you for this,” he told me. And he cranked it out with me, running hard to the end. I even managed to pick it up a little more for the final 100 yards and he did too. (I was 1:42:49). It felt good.

This is from the NYT as they published it on their Web site.

As a result, the embeds have changed the dynamic of this year’s election, making every unplugged and unscripted moment on the campaign trail available for all to see. One particular video shot of American flags tilting over behind Hillary Rodham Clinton last November has been viewed more than 300,000 times on the ABC News Web site. A video of the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly shoving a member of Barack Obama’s staff at a New Hampshire campaign rally has drawn almost 150,000 views on YouTube.

I don’t understand why they make the “Hillary Rodham Clinton” and Bill O’Reilly clickable (which just goes to a “Times topics” section, not particularly useful) don’t link to the actual video. Soo annoying.