Excepting the blog, my site now adheres to the XHTML 1.0 Strict standard.
Pages on this site that pass the standard bear the w3c logo at the bottom.
I will see about getting the blog up to snuff, but since I’m using Wordpress, it involves a bit more digging around.
The blog doesn’t look any different, but my site does. The content hasn’t changed but I updated the look and style to bring it up to the standards of modern web browsing. You know, cuz that’s what I do for a living, and I suppose my site should reflect something or other about my mad skillz.
Yes, it still looks hideous. But the way it looks hideous is so much more elegant, and that’s what matters. Style is everything.
Someday I’d like to translate that hideousness over to this blog, but writing css for Wordpress is a bit daunting. Until then, let your eyes be grateful for my laziness.
Anyway, please let me know if things are out of whack (you may need to do a [ctrl]+F5 to clear your cache) and I will whack ‘em back in, post-haste.
12:43. When I ran track in high school, that was my best 2-mile time. I don’t know why I remember that number. It’s not very good for a serious runner; I never even broke the 12:00 barrier. But it was my personal best, on a cool day on a brand new track. The conditions couldn’t have been better, and for an undisciplined athlete, I think it’s not a bad time.
On Sunday, after buying a pair of running shoes, I ran 10.75 miles in 1 hour, 39 minutes and change, which works out to around 9 minutes 15 seconds per mile. I’m a little disappointed with my pace, but I don’t think I’ve ever run that far. Apparently I’ve begun training for a marathon.
One day I want to take that skinny little high school kid to task. I may be 50 pounds heavier but what I’ve gained in weight I’ve also gained in discipline and drive. 12:43 will not stand.
The San Diego Rock & Roll Marathon is on June 6. I marked the calendar with a bunch of question marks.
Do I really want to do this?
One of the blogs I follow is that of the Fat Cyclist.
Apparently he got the running bug and just ran a marathon.
I just want to state, for the record, that my running kick has absolutely nothing to do with Fatty’s. Nothing.
It’s just a coincidence, and let’s leave it at that.
Yesterday I ran 5.7 miles during my lunch break at work. Today I ran the same loop. I’m a little stiff but more distressing is that I have a blister.
Perhaps I need to take things a little more slowly. Perhaps I need a better pair of shoes. Incidentally, my knee problem is completely gone now that I’m running in a different pair of crappy sneakers than I started out with.
When I rode my first cycling century, I was putting in around 120 miles of cycling a week without any soreness or other adverse effects. If I carry that over to running, then it seems sensible that if I can run 30 miles a week without any soreness, blisters, or other physical malady, then I can run a marathon. Right?
I need to toughen up my feet.
As a web developer, I have always despised Flash. I’ve never really been able to fully articulate exactly why, but here are some basic reasons:
My basic issue with Flash is that it makes it a lot more difficult to maintain a website. This is more of a personal bias against Flash than anything else, but I just finished reading this blog post which decries Flash for not adhering to basic HTML standards. Well spoken, good sir.
I’ve been keeping at the running thing, though I’m noticing my right knee is not very happy with it. Ignoring it does not seem to work. I wish I had a brain radio so I could tune the knee out, much in the same way I use my car’s radio to tune out the squelching sound from my car’s right rear wheel under braking. The knee feels great when I’m running. It’s all the time in between running that it decides to be unhappy. Ibuprofen.
Three laps is almost exactly five miles. I’ve done it twice in the last two weeks, and each time I start out stiffly but by about mile 2 I get this strange feeling, like I could run all day, and that I could easily do a marathon. Alas, I believe that to be my “second wind” since by mile 4 I’m ready to be pithed.
The weather has cleared and therefore I took the car to the shop to have them assess my wheel situation along with a 60k mile service, so I rode my bike to work today. I’ve missed bike commuting. The longer I spend off the bike, the harder it is to convince myself that I want to bike commute, but that feeling disappears the moment I swing my leg over the top tube. I love to ride. I love the cold morning air. And it’s nice to spend time outside.
I wasn’t sure if the bike path through Mission Valley would be open since Murphy Canyon creek, which runs through the bat cave, floods during storms and washes tons of silt onto the path. Fortunately the silt was cleared, though the creek has changed dramatically. It’s one of those concrete culverts, and it is now half-full of silt. There is a chain link fence between the bike path and the creek, and one section has completely toppled, the steel poles bent at 90 degree angles. I would really like to see what the creek looks like during flood stage.
Last year, I made a new year’s resolution to stop caring so much about the number of miles I cycled. I failed miserably, logging the miles of each ride and comparing where I was in relation to where I needed to be to reach 7,000 miles. I did reach 7,000 miles but I feel that they were somehow empty, devoid of meaning other than mileage for the sake of mileage.
This year, I’m taking that resolution to a whole ‘nother level. Also, it’s been raining a lot, and I just don’t have the gear (or willpower) to commute by bicycle in the rain. Also, the rain causes Mission Valley to flood, which really screws up the bike commute.
A seed was planted in my head a long while ago, during the Athens Summer Olympics, as I watched the marathon events. The seed began to germinate when I started to think, “I could do that.” Since then, the seed has been in stasis, partly because of my focus on cycling, and partly because of my prejudice against running:
A few days ago I looked out at the rain and thought “That looks like fun. I think I’ll go run in it.” So I put on a crappy pair of sneakers and set out, marveling at how easy it is to just go out for a run. No special clothing, no gloves, no checking tire pressure, none of that bike stuff. I found an easy loop near my house and did it twice. According to the Gmaps Pedometer, the loop is about 1 2/3 miles so on my first outing I did a nice 3+ mile run.
And you know what? It felt great. So great that I did it again the next night, though by then I was pretty sore. It was strange: my cardio was ready for more but my legs just don’t have the right muscles yet, and they began to protest. Mainly by stopping to move. The next day I could barely move them but I’m recovering quickly and I think I may go out again tonight.
Screw my droopy body, and screw the pain. I might just start training for a marathon.
This post is mostly for myself: I want to document my year in cycling. As such, you, the reader, will probably be bored stiff. Consider yourself warned. Now’s your chance to stop reading and go somewhere more interesting.
In this, the year 2009, I:
