On running

Did you see Franz Ferdinand is supporting Green Day on their new tour?  I am pretty excited for it.  I tried to get tickets for the “secret” Green Day show at Webster Hall in NYC, but didn’t.  That is going to be awesome.

Mark after surgery, about a year ago, not sure why I am sharing this - I had a broken arm and postponed this surgery for a work function in Philadelphia - Surgery was on a Saturday, went off the pain meds on Sunday - Didn't miss a day of work

Franz Ferdinand Badge for Aftershow access

Franz Show - Lead guitarist pointing at us (with broken foot), good view of photographers lane

More on the East Coast soon, but a note about running as I am about 2 weeks from my marathon.

I ran 24 miles today, and it felt great.  I ran strong, finished strong, felt good after, and in pretty decent heat.

The cool thing about running  is that you can have a goal that seems out of reach, and then reach it.  Despite my success today, I had a recent failure.  I was supposed to do 24 miles Friday, but ended up doing 20 and walking half the way, basically I failed.  There were some heat issues, but in the end I didn’t have the mental toughness that day to power through.  Today, with a better breakfast, and comparable  heat (hotter?),  I got the mindset right and didn’t just survive the 24 miles, I destroyed them.  Gobbled them up.

All forms of exercise release endorphins and give a natural high, perhaps more interestingly running gives me a psychological sense of control, and I doubt I am the only one.

I did see The Wrestler last night, and perhaps that motivated me on today’s run?  Perhaps I got a better nights sleep.  I don’t know why it went so well, but it did.

Regardless, there is an important connection between running, and having your sh*t together.  Follow me into the lyrical genius of Fountains  of Wayne (they did “Stacy’s Mom” from the iconic Dr. Pepper commercial).

They sing “And if I make it home alive … I’m gonna get my sh*t together” in one of my favorite songs.  Champions of Office Space like characters, they tongue in cheek riff about ordinary struggles of ordinary people.  One of my favorite lyrics is “It all looks the same when you stump for the man”.  But that is a topic for another post.

There is a movie on HBO right now called Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  This is a fantastic movie.  I saw its premiere at the Vail Film Festival in spring 2008.   The whole concept about being spurned and rising above is saccharine sweet and obvious, yet so enjoyable!

Frank Black of the Pixies last year in Aspen, he has a song in FSM

I re-watched it and noticed something interesting.  Towards the end of the movie the protagonist makes a big mistake that sends him to reevaluate his life, a montage of shots show him figuratively getting his shit together, and in one 2 second clip you see him jogging on a treadmill in his distinctive apartment.

The message … runners have their sh*t together, or at least don’t and are trying.

I met Fountains of Wayne and talked to them about that lyric, the lead singer would only insist that HE had his sh*t together.

In this lifetime, the world is not Pleasantville and not everyone is a Mickey Rourke sized trainwreck.  Most days I am in the middle, like the man in the mirror, and I bet you are too.

But I’ll tell you what, after destroying today’s run, I felt like I had my stuff together, good and stink-free.

My goal is a 3:40 for the full 26.2, a lot will depend on the course and luck, but I think I have a shot.  Stay tuned.

Post-Script:

If you do any kind of endurance training you know that there is an interesting mental degradation associated with strenuous exercise.  While reading through this I noticed I typed department instead of apartment, and two instead of  too.  I feel normal, but my typing and experience tells me I shouldn’t do any puzzles right now.

Dev Doc Typos v2

Previously on this blog I mentioned a typo I found in the Apple SDK Docs relating to iPhone development.

Today I found this typo in the Twitter API documentation:

The image update methods require multipart form data. They do not accept a URL to an image not do they accept the raw image bytes.

Like the last one its one of those “the spellchecker won’t catch it” typos, and its inconsequential, but it furthers my theory that developer documentation rarely gets the attention that say, marketing copy might receive.

–

Today is tax day. I filed my taxes early this year.  This is the first time in 4 years my taxes got in on time (anyone see the pattern?).

–

In 1888 Mark Twain wrote:

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Which brings me to wood pussy.

During a scrabble game recently, this word highlighted at the top of the page of my Merriam-Webster’s hardcover dictionary was noticed, with much amusement, obviously.  It’s a noun, go ahead, go look it up.

–

Finally, one last note on language.  Do you know the word peripatetic?

It can mean Aristotelian or to describe something that wanders about (both are related, by the way).  I first learned this word this year when reading Snowball, the biography of Warren Buffet.

The author liked to show off her vocabulary, often in ways that made one wonder if she was writing the book with a thesaurus nearby–to increase character count.  I can’t say if she used peripatetic correctly, but she did use some other words in places where simpler words would have fit better.

Snowball is still a good book and you should read it, but after I looked up peripatetic, I never thought I would ever hear or read the word again.

But I was wrong.

I watched the moral drama that is the play turned movie, Doubt recently.  It is fantastic and the acting by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams is really superb, complementing the writing by John Patrick Shanley.

It joins Glengarry Glen Ross in my list of excellent movie adaptations of plays.

In the movie, Meryl Streep says:

“The wind is so peripatetic this year. Is that the word I want?”

I had to rewind the movie to replay the line, and sure enough there it was.

So go rent Doubt, and keep your vocab fresh.

You dirty wood pussy.