How to give directions. (Or: not.)

The scene: I am taking my morning run down Green Bay Rd, a busy 2-lane street, in the direction of Ravinia.

Well-dressed Man in shiny black car: (Turns down street in front of me and pulls a u-turn.) “Excuse me, how do I get to Ravinia Park?”

Me: “Go back that way, and it’ll be in a half mile or a mile. It’s on this side of the street.”

Man: “OK, thank you.”

Me: (Thinks to self: “It’s actually closer to a mile or a mile and a half. Hm. I hope he doesn’t turn around again before he finds it.”)

Well-dressed Man #2 in another shiny black car: (Turns down street in front of me and pulls a u-turn.) “Excuse me, where is Ravinia park from here?”

Me: “Um. It’s back that way, maybe a mile or a little more, and it’s on this side of the street. It’s a little harder to see from this direction because the entrance angles back this way, but you’ll find it on the left.”

Man #2: “OK. So it’s definitely back that way.”

Me: “Yes!”

Man #2: “Thanks!”

Me: (Thinks to self: “OK, I did better that time. Hm. I should have told him that if he hits Lake Cook Rd, he’s just gone too far.”)

Conclusion: I am a Directions-Second-Guesser.

Foursquare: annoying, but not particularly dangerous.

The internet always needs to be a-flutter over something, and the past couple days it’s been a-flutter over how dangerous Foursquare is to its users’ unattended homes and personal belongings. In particular, the website Please Rob Me boasts a Twitter feed that offers details about where to find “all those empty homes out there.”

Foursquare, in case you’ve missed it, is a service that lets you “check in” via your mobile device to different locations about town when you go, like restaurants or museums, and it keeps track of how many times you go. You can earn different “badges,” like “Mayor of Wally’s Szechuan Castle,” if you frequent it often enough. You just have to check in each time, and your lucky followers get to see these check-ins on your Twitter feed. And they can see if you overtake someone else, or if they overtake you. It takes Twitter Minutiae (which I champion) to an extreme: not only do your followers get to learn that you like Wally’s Szechuan Castle (which is great, I enjoy the recommendation), but they get to learn that you go there all the time. So much so, in fact, that you’re now the “mayor” of the place. Great data, thanks.

And so the paranoid among the internet are now claiming that Foursquare is dangerous because each time you announce you’re visiting Wally’s (yet again), potentially millions of people can learn that your home is vacant, and ready to be ravaged. Sure, I can see the reason for some level of concern here.

But let’s think a moment. What are these Foursquare Bandits going to do? Visit Please Rob Me, and pick a guy who is sitting down to dinner. Through some unknown number of clicks after that, try to learn where the guy lives. If the house is in a convenient location for the Bandit, he can run on over there and steal all his possessions. Right? Well, what if the guy doesn’t live alone? What if his mother, sister, wife, or teenage son is home? What if he has an alarm system? What if he lives in a hellhole? What if he has large dogs? What if he just doesn’t have anything worth stealing in the dinnertime-window the Bandit has to work with?

This makes no sense to me.

A proper bandit cases a house. OK? He goes to a nice neighborhood, cases the houses on a block, learns when people are home, when the homes are vacant, which homes have the kind of loot they want. Score.

Bandits case homes and learn when people are away. They do not case people to learn when they are away from home.

So, I may not give a rat’s ass that you’ve overtaken @KungPaoLuvr as Czar of Wally’s Szechuan Castle, but I do defend your decision making skills, intelligence, and right to do so.

2009 Chicago Marathon: It’s a race report.

Long distance running, without a group of 44,999 enthusiastic running-mates, that is, is so mind-numbingly boring that it’s a shame anybody ever has to do it at all. But one day each year, the city of Chicago is nice enough to put on a 45,000-runner event, and just before noon on Sunday, October 11, 2009, I completed my second running of the Chicago Marathon. [Insert applause!] It’s an impressive achievement, but mainly it’s a six-hour party which, if you’re lucky, takes only three or four.

The Chicago Marathon is a world-class event that draws elite runners from all over the world who hope to break world records on this fast, flat course. In addition, 17,000 first-time marathoners ran the course this year, participants came from 120 countries, and the event is an economic win for Chicago, bringing $140 million in tourist dollars to the city in 2008.

I can’t say I broke any world records, traveled from another country, or spent much money in Chicago because of the marathon this year, but I still had a unique set of experiences that won’t contribute to the city’s history but will always remain a special part of my life. Here I will share some of those experiences.

Runner, Pace Thyself.
My first challenge was to decide how fast I wanted to run. I never sign up for a race with any intention other than to perform better than my last race. This was my second marathon so I had a clearly defined “Can’t-Do-Worse-Than” time (4:28, set in 2005). I trained with that in mind, despite the fact that I started from nearly zero in the spring when I started thinking about, and then training for, the marathon. So I stayed pretty disciplined, didn’t stray too far from my schedule, and even lost 15 pounds along the way. But due to a variety of factors I did just about everything wrong in the final three weeks leading up to the marathon, so I was a little nervous about what pace I should be setting.

The first problem was that the pace groups at that level are for 4:30, 4:15, and 4:00. There are no choices in between. Running with the 4:30 group in 2005 landed me at the finish line at 4:28. (I passed the group at some point during the final few miles.) But with my recent training flubs in mind, could I count on being able to keep up with the 4:15 group? (Never mind that throughout my training I secretly wished to finish in four hours.) When I entered the start corral on marathon day I was forced to make a decision. Would 4:15 really be that much harder than 4:30, or would 4:30 just take that much longer? In the moment, I picked the 4:15 group since there was no 4:20 group to fall back on, and 4:30 was not the group to run with to beat my previous time.

The second problem, that I was not aware of until after the race began, was that the pace groups this year ran with teeny tiny little pace signs. In 2005 they ran with enormous, 2-3′ diameter placards that could be seen a couple blocks back. But in 2009, while they held those large signs in the start corral so they could be easily found, the pace leaders didn’t actually run with them during the race. In addition to the “4:15″ bibs that people who had officially signed up for the group wore on their backs, there were a couple pace leaders carrying bib-sized signs on sticks that were difficult to see unless you were very close to them. So after the race began I was never sure if I was actually anywhere near the experienced pace leaders or if I was just running behind some group of yahoos with “4:15″ bibs on their backs who had long since fallen out of the group.

What ended up happening was that I paid attention to the largest groups of “4:15″ runners, watched the clock at every mile, and found that my natural pace was right on target. It helped having the “4:15″ people around (even though during the race I also saw a lot of “4:00″ and “4:30″ bibs, plus times in the three- and five-hour ranges), but I was very pleased with myself to find that the pace I wanted to run seemed to be the pace I was best suited for that morning.

Say Cheese!
One of the things you do to keep yourself occupied when you have nothing to do for the next several hours besides RUN is to stay on the lookout for photo opportunities. There are fewer of these than you’d like. And you don’t want to end up with a whole bunch of pictures of yourself with your finger up your nose, so it’s best to scan the sides of the streets and the overpasses for the guys with the big lenses basically the entire time. And so I did, and I either waved or mugged for the camera in some way each time I saw one.

Alas, only one photo taken by MarathonFoto.com (the official photographer) during the race caught me in any such pose. That is, except for the finish line photos, for which I prepared by raising my arms above my head about 20 seconds before crossing the finish line just to eliminate any doubt I was victorious.

This year I purchased the finish line photo, as that was the photo I purchased in 2005. I may as well have a matched set.

The Mile 25 Debacle
Well, I can’t usually have a long run without having an intestinal ailment. There, I said it, and now the world knows it: running upsets my wittle tummy. In 2005 it happened around mile 21. I had to walk for maybe a half mile until things settled down, and it wasn’t too distressing. But this year, it happened after mile 25. Not only was it after mile 25, but it was after mile 25.2, where they put up a big sign shouting that you have only one mile to go. One mile to go. That was the point at which my tummy got all rumbly, and at times like that I have to find a porta-potty, and I mean I have to find one NOW, or else I have to stop and walk and clench up every muscle in my body to avoid having an extremely embarrassing accident in front of thousands of people.

This is really the hardest thing for me about long distance running, except for the mind-numbingly boring part. Not all runners have this problem, but enough do that they made a term for it. But that’s enough about that.

So there I am at mile 25.2, a point at which I really wanted to push it. I had been watching the clock and it was looking like I had a shot at finishing in 4:10. I was really elated at that possibility, considering that on the drive downtown I wasn’t sure if I should even set my sights on 4:15. My pace was great. The weather was wonderful. I wasn’t winded. I had no injuries, not even a sore heel or toe. And suddenly, I’m looking at the doors of storefronts to see if any place is open and might be willing to offer me their restroom. I’m looking for large bushes I can possibly get away with squatting behind. I’m hearing people on the sidelines telling me that I have only five blocks to go. I’m seeing the guys with the “4:15″ signs on sticks passing me.

The 4:15 group is now passing me??

Something shifted inside me, and I picked up the pace. I was able to start running again. I didn’t want to overdo it, but I gradually gained on the pace leaders. I was in the semi-home-stretch, those blocks on Michigan Avenue before the turn on to Roosevelt Road that is home to the infamous hill. The hill that lasts about a block before turning on to the REAL home stretch, where the finish line is so close it’s jarring. And when I got to the real home stretch, there were the 4:15 pace leaders with their little 4:15 sticks, looking at their watches and kind of dancing around, realizing that they were ahead of pace. Right there I turned on the heat and zipped past them, racing past every last runner that I possibly could before reaching the end. And as I crossed the finish line with my arms up and a smile on my face, I realized that I never even thought to cry, because I had left all that emotion back around mile 25.2. I did it, I did it, I did it.

Now, the Results.

Name: Jennifer Swofford
Bib: 34515
Division: 35-39

Split	Time
Start:	7:42:01am (00:12:01)
5k:	00:30:14
10k:	01:00:01
15k:	01:29:50
20k:	01:59:16
Half:	02:05:41
25k:	02:28:47
30k:	02:59:18
35k:	03:29:35
40k:	03:59:39
Finish:	04:14:24

Totals
Place (total):	14,632
Place (gender):	4,420
Place (division):	740
Total (net):	04:14:24
Total (gun):	04:26:31
Pace:	9:42 min/mile

 
Next?
Right now I’m just looking for my next race. In marathon afterglow, you’re never sure if the Next Thing will be to try out a few more distances, to run a marathon in every state, or if you’re looking at qualifying for Boston next year. (That’s a 3:45 finish for my division.) I’ve only run once since the marathon, a quick four miles yesterday that seemed to set back my legs’ healing process by three or four days. It’s early to speculate. Only time will tell.

Parsley plethora recipe: parsley pesto

First, some light housekeeping that you may skip if you’d like:

1) Last week’s Wordless Wednesday post is a photo of Snowy and Molly, a friend’s Cornish Rex cats, taken last Saturday, 6/27/09. The white cat, Snowy, passed away Monday. Rest in peace, Snowy.

2) It’s a lot easier to blog consistently when one is virtually unemployed for six months. Be sad that my posts are few, but be happy that I have work and can start thinking about possibly paying off some debt now. Thanks.

Now, down to business.

So, what do you do when your parsley looks like this…?

Why, you stop buying overpriced basil and make parsley pesto, of course.

I was trepidatious over the idea of parsley pesto. Who eats parsley, anyway? Isn’t parsley merely a garnish? Isn’t parsley just for show? I wanted to grow it in my garden because so many recipes call for a little bit of it, and I hate buying a whole bunch each time. So I planted some, and now I have a lifetime supply.

So I figured I’d at least try the parsley pesto recipe. When life gives you parsley, make pesto … isn’t that how the saying goes?

The recipe for parsley pesto (linked above) is very similar to the recipe for basil pesto. You use parsley, pine nuts, some garlic, olive oil and salt, just like basil pesto (substituting parsley for basil, of course). You do not add parmesan cheese. But then the explosive difference is the addition of lemon juice. The lemon adds such a nice tangy zing, some might even say a ZANG, to the herby concoction. Especially when you use bottled lemon juice, as I did, because bottled lemon juice is so flavorful. (After Googling around I’ve found some basil-lemon-pesto recipes, which I’ll probably try in the future. But until now, I’ve never used lemon in pesto.)

When you first taste parsley pesto, you can’t go into it expecting basil pesto, if that’s what you’re used to. They’re different animals. But they can be used the same way, and I think that the addition of the lemon juice actually makes for a far more flavorful pesto in general.

My favorite way to use pesto is to add it to noodles. Really, any noodles will do. My first dish with the parsley pesto simply involved some rainbowy-shell-type pasta noodles with grated parmesan cheese on top:

But the next dish I made was fettucine noodles with shrimp that had been marinated in the parsley pesto. The lemon and the shrimp tasted wonderful together, along with the noodles. This is my current favorite dish, though I’m on a shrimp kick. Photo next time; today I was too hungry to stop to take a picture.

Wordless Wednesday

The plopping of the peonies

I don’t have a particularly green thumb, especially when it comes to growing flowers in the garden. Over the 10 years I’ve lived in this house I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on perennial flowers (I don’t even bother with annuals … planting flowers each spring isn’t a chore I want anywhere near my radar) and in the end they all just … go away. Whether I plant them in the wrong place, whether they get crowded out by weeds, or whether they get eaten or trampled by my pet tortoises I do not know. But I plant them, and they disappear.

Luckily my land did come with some established flowers. There are some fantastic batches of lillies in a couple areas, and I also have about a half dozen peony plants. I really enjoy the peonies. The large plants grow without any help from me, and all I have to do is keep them under control.

My peonies are the really large double hybrids. They’re big and fluffy and very, very heavy. So as soon as the stems start filling up with blooming flowers, the plants (bushes, really) start to flop over. And before long, all their petals start to plop onto the ground. The aftermath of a beautiful double hybrid peony flower is a gruesome mess.

This year I decided I would take better advantage of these beautiful flowers by clipping them and bringing them inside. I figured this would help keep the stems just a little bit lighter, and then, of course, I could enjoy their beauty indoors. So last weekend I brought in a few and placed them on my coffee table.

This morning, I awoke to the plopping peony petal carnage:

Luckily, there are always plenty more waiting for me outside:

I wish I had more white peonies to mix with the pink, but the pink far outnumber white. Plus, I moved the white plant last year so it’s still working on growing back up to its previous state of glory.

It just needs a name…

Thank you for visiting again. I know things have been a little sporadic and all over the place around here lately, but that’s why this blog is called “Mad Mad Life!”

It’s time to reveal my “because everyone needs another personal project that they don’t have time for” idea. If you recall my tease from the other week, I’m going to spin a new web site off from this one, one with a more concentrated direction, so I can go much more in depth with a topic that has probably meant more to me over the past couple of years than almost anything else. It will tie together interests that I’ve visited here such as backyard vegetable gardening, conservation, environmentalism, and even facial scrub (really!), and bring them all together into a resource that will be useful to people form all over the globe who are interested in living in a way that has a less negative impact on the earth, with a focus on self-reliance. And the topic is something that I (and 1,790 other web page authors call) “backyard sustainability.”

Backyard sustainability is the term I use to describe what we can do as individuals as a matter of course in our daily lives, to ultimately reduce carbon emissions and the destruction of our environment (ecocide). It’s basically as simple as that. As individual citizens, particularly in the cities and suburbs, we are faced with probably 100 choices each day that can result in either a greater or lesser impact on our environment. From the container we use to hold our morning coffee to the method we choose to dispose of that container (or the choice not to dispose of it at all) to the place we buy our food and the products we use on our lawns, in our kitchens, and even on our bodies, it is amazing how many seemingly small things we can change that can ultimately not only reduce our carbon emissions but also result in a far less destructive impact on the plants and animals on this earth, and ultimately, on ourselves and our children. This site will focus on actions that we as individuals can take to have a direct impact (or, direct negative impact) on the environment, as opposed to things that corporations or whole societies could or should be doing. Thus, my idea is that each of us in our own little corners of the world, in our suburban or city homes, can all make little changes to ultimately have a cumulatively positive effect on our earth.

I’ll go into more detail when I launch the new site, which should happen soon. The main hangup at this point is deciding on its name. I have several ideas that I’m excited about except they bear the usual web site naming problems: 1) The name is too long for a URL, or 2) The name is already taken by another site. So, since the site can’t have a home until it has a name, I’m holding off until that’s all finalized. Meanwhile I’m getting some of the content started so that once it goes live, it’ll have something to say for itself.

Naturally I’ll announce its grand opening, and I hope you’ll tune in.

(If you have any ideas for a great name for my new site, please feel free to do some brainstorming in the comments section, or send me an e-mail!)

When is YOUR Month of Awesome?

I am very happy to report that there is someone to carry on Month of Awesome — a month-long event designed for individuals to set and achieve their personal goals, even if for only one month — after mine ends on Thursday. My Twitter friend KianaB is the first to do so, and is using the month of May. It sounds like she’s trailblazing so far.

With my Month of Awesome coming to a close, I’ve been taking a look at what I’ve accomplished. And it’s a little hard to judge at this point. My personal goals centered mainly around self discipline: eating better (eating less), exercising more (4-5 days/week), sleeping according to a better schedule (fewer naps, no days starting at 9 or 10am), accomplishing more during my work day. All of these things happened. But the first two weeks were such an improvement over the days leading up to Month of Awesome that the last two weeks feel like nothing more than a plateau. And nobody wants to plateau; moving up is the goal.

So with my month winding down and with this nagging feeling that I don’t have enough to show for it, I’ve felt like making this last-ditch effort to add something on, to do something drastic, just to somehow quantify the awesomeness. And the main thing that I keep thinking of doing is to sign up to participate in the 2009 Chicago Marathon. I ran the 2005 marathon and at the time I had wanted to continue to run it yearly, but the long runs burned me out in 2006. So here I am in 2009 in the middle of this month of personal improvement, and it seems like something I could do. Regular registration for the race has been closed for some time, and the only way to join is through a charity team. I ran with a charity team in 2005 (Inspiration Corporation), so running with a charity seems like the obvious choice anyway. (PAWS Chicago has become my default charity in the Chicago area, and they would be my choice this year.) It would seem as if the stars are aligned. I’ve become comfortable with running again (my base run is up to 5 miles now), PAWS still has openings, I’m looking for something to do to punctuate my Month of Awesome, and the window to register is going to close soon … so what am I waiting for?

I just remember how burned out I got in 2006. I love running for fitness, but 8 hours of running per week over 5-6 days, which I’ll have to be doing in just a few weeks’ time … it’s a lot.

So I think that committing to this event just so I can feel better about what I achieved during Month of Awesome is a case of doing a good thing for a bad reason. It’s not something I need to decide just yet. So I’m not going to sign up between now and May 7, my last day of Month of Awesome. I’m going to give myself until June 14, or until I can comfortably run 8 miles, whichever comes first, because according to Hal Higdon’s Marathon Training Schedule, June 14 is the day I’d first have to run 8 miles.

And so Month of Awesome ends on Thursday, and the rest of May will be just a normal month for me. I look forward to seeing if my good habits from the past four weeks stick. And I’ll revisit the marathon idea from time to time, seeing how I feel about that. I’m definitely considering making June into Month 2 of Awesome, but again, it’s not something I have to commit to just yet. Month 2 will always be there, waiting, whenever I need it.

Thoughts on influenza A(H1N1) (swine flu)

I’m as opposed to media hysteria as the next halfway rational person. Members of the media have a job to do, and that job is to make money for their network/media corporations. Picking up an exciting little piece of news and turning it into a media blitz is good for business. And it’s partway sport and partway art to make fun of this phenomenon. We all do it. I myself have laughed at and sent along all the swine flu jokes, quips, and quotes.

To wit:

I forwarded Junior Minister Sion Simon’s quote: “I’m not saying Susan Boyle caused swine flu. I’m just saying that nobody had swine flu, she sang on TV, people got swine flu.”

I linked to the Visual History of Flu Pandemics, a graphic clearly showing how insignificant the swine flu is compared to pandemic influenza strains throughout history.

I circulated this 1976 Swine Flu Propaganda ad:

On Twitter I linked to a quote on a blog that I read on another blog, which was subsequently picked up by my Twitter followers and circulated around the Twitterverse for a day or so: “90 people get the swine flu and everybody wants to wear a mask. A million people have AIDS and no one wants to wear a condom.”

And there’s more, but I’ll spare you.

Yeah, it’s funny. Because 36,000 people in the U.S. die from the “regular flu” every year! And most of them are little children and the infirm elderly, not us, the normal, media-consuming demographic. Besides, all the mortality is mainly confined to Mexico. We can live without our vacation south of the border this year. So we’re safe, and taking all these ridiculous precautions is just plain silly. Silly, silly, I say! I mock your face mask.

But seriously now, a 22 month old child has died, right here in the United States. (I don’t want to hear that the child was from Mexico. It’s irrelevant.) Just because we already have and seem to accept a constantly mutating strain of influenza virus that kills 36,000 individuals each year doesn’t mean that we need another, whether it kills one, 100, or 10,000. Killers do pop up. Our regular influenza isn’t pandemic, but it’s an organized killer. HIV is another one: we’re lucky that HIV is transmitted only sexually. Sure, the media hysteria surrounding swine flu has been entertaining, just like the shark attack hysteria that pops up every once in a while. But H1N1 is a pretty new pathogen and it does deserve a little attention before we dismiss it as a mere disorganized, unprofessional killer.

Thoughts on the 135th Kentucky Derby

If you watched the Kentucky Derby yesterday, you treated yourself to a great race.

After the favorite I Want Revenge bowed out early, the first time the morning-line Derby favorite scratched on the day of the race, the top contenders were thought to be horses such as Friesan Fire, Dunkirk, and Pioneerof the Nile (no typo there). Friesan Fire was ultimately the favorite for many, owing to the sloppy track the horse is said to love.

But it was Mine That Bird, running as a 50-1 longshot, that stole the show. Despite having Belmont and Travers Stakes-winning Birdstone as his sire, despite having previous Derby-winning jockey Calvin Borel (Street Sense) on his back, Mine That Bird didn’t have a lot of respect going into the Derby, receiving such high praise as, “As good as the top few are in this race, some of the bottom feeders, like this guy, are really weak.”

Indeed, nobody seemed to have any faith in this plain brown horse, not even NBC’s Kentucky Derby announcer, who doesn’t acknowledge Mine That Bird’s move into the lead until he was already a few lengths ahead of the rest. Here is the proof (the first two minutes comprise the race):

I can understand how it was difficult to see Calvin Borel lead Mine That Bird out from the depths of the pack to squeeze past Join in the Dance at the rail from the low angle we see on NBC. But the announcer clearly has a love for star jockey Garrett Gomez and Pioneerof the Nile, enthusiastically calling his name as Mine That Bird poises himself to take the lead. Eleven seconds later, now many lengths ahead, Mine That Bird is finally acknowledged to have taken the lead, seven seconds before he wins in an “impossible result.”

If you go back up to the video and tune in at 7:27, you can see a much better aerial view of the last part of the race. (An added treat: at 8:26 you can see the aerial view of Borel’s similar Derby win on Street Sense in 2007.) This view makes a much more exciting race, as you can see Borel make his move from near the way back of the pack, passing 13 horses to take the lead and win the race.

Had NBC’s announcer been calling the race from that angle, I don’t imagine he would have been able to wait until Mine That Bird was several lengths ahead of the rest before noting his move.

The call of this race reminds me a bit of the quiz show scandals from the 1950s, where the contestant gives the correct answer, “Emily Dickinson,” and the show’s host replies, “I’m sorry, Jim. (pause) Did—Did you say Emily Dickinson?”

Sorry, Pioneerof the Nile, we know that you were supposed to win, but in the end, Calvin Borel and Mine That Bird had the right answer. A stunning, but not impossible, victory.