Dirigibles really seemed like a good idea, right?
Balloons have a downside: there's not much of a steering mechanism. The development of the cucumber-shaped dirigible, though. Now there's something. We've got an aerodynamic design powered by (first) hand cranks and (ultimately) an internal combustion engine, allowing von
Zepplin's first flight in 1900 too achieve speeds of up to 18 mph. Not half bad.
Not only were dirigibles relatively fast, but they were also big and reliable. By 1910, cities in Germany were regularly visited by scheduled airship flights, making the dirigible (arguably) the first commercial airline.
Things all went bad.
First, like we can learn from Ken Burns' National Park series (on PBS now!), humans like to screw everything up, so in 1914 Germany's dirigibles were painted black and used in bombing raids on London. The world is a forgiving place, though, and after the war, dirigibles
were bigger than ever (and fast, too, with a cruising speed of 68 mph).
Now comes disaster.
Back in (some of) my grad school days, I once caused a not-well-controlled hydrogen explosion. Let me tell you, it is only through the grace of high-quality lab safety glass that I still have my eyebrows. It was rapid and terrifying, and there are a lot of reasons I am no longer a lab scientist, but this is definitely on the list.
Imagine, then, Lakehurst, NJ in 1937.
Or don't imagine -- my grandfather, the illustrious Silver Beaver referenced here, was there.
"I was a teenager when I saw the Hindenberg blow up at Lakehurst, N.J. Along with some friends, we piled into a pickup to watch the airship land. It was late afternoon and quite cloudy. We parked on the road alongside the airfield to watch this giant of the skies come in. As it very slowly approached to land, it dropped many lines and whoosh, the tail lit up and the airship settled tail first into the ground. The entire airship had burst into flame. It's hard to believe anyone could have survived that crash. We were parked about a mile away and as I recall, could feel the heat of that explosion. What caused this to happen, I could not even guess. It certainly, in my opinion, was not the weather. The whole event happened in less then a few minutes."
So why did the Hindenberg go down?
Tune in tomorrow, kids.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Track and field
Oddly, I've been putting this (near-final) Athletics badge requirement off, but with the help of John's poker night, I'm finishing up once and for all. It's time to post the rules for one track and one field event.
I think, strangely, the rough part for me has been choosing which events to write about. I don't have a ton of interest in this particular aspect of the Athletics badge, I'll admit, and its just been feeling more like homework than like entertainment. Of course, I'm in the minority in my general lack of sports-interest, I'm sure -- drive past any college campus in the fall and see thousands of sports fans out to prove me wrong (and to watch football, too, I'm sure, but I like to think they're just out there in a "so there, Emily!" kind of way).
So, given that I'm a less enthusiastic sports, um, enthusiast than most, I asked two of the card-players to pick track and field events for me to investigate. Matt chose the pole vault, and team Ro and Evan chose the 400 m hurdles (specific, but we'll go with it).
This one's for you, dudes.
I've pole vaulted once in my life, in middle school gym class. I believe I cleared the same jump level that at least one slightly taller kid stepped over, which gives you an idea both of my size in middle school (rather petite) and my jumping abilities. That said, I also have a very dear cousin who, I believe, was some class of pole vaulting champion when she was in high school, so I'm aware that some folks can be quite successful at this kind of activity. I just don't quite understand how.
In order to pole vault, you're going to need, um, a pole, usually fiberglass, and usually from 10 to 17 feet long. You'll also need a mat (3-5 feet thick), a crossbar, ad a 40-45 m long runway. In order to successfully vault, you must, first and foremost, clear the crossbar. It's acceptable to hit the crossbar so long as you don't knock it down, but since the crossbar falls quite readily, it's for the best to avoid it altogether.
There are other ways to mess up your jump, too. Touching the mat before jumping would count as a jump failure, as would taking more than two minutes to complete a jump attempt. Finally, remember that a single failed attempt isn't the end of the world -- generally, a competitor will receive a maximum of three attempts at any given height and will be eliminated after his third unsuccessful attempt.
Finally, there are a few very specific equipment rules: no gloves are allowed, nor is more than two layers of adhesive tape. Jumpers may use chalk or rosin, though.
For the 400 m hurdles, we'll get a little more complicated. Men's hurdles are 36 inches tall and women's are 30 inches tall, while the hurdles are evenly placed 35 meters apart, with the first and last hurdles each 40 m from the starting and ending points. (Is it a testament to international unity that we're mixing units of measurement here, or is it just poor coordination? Does it matter?)
It used to be that knocking down 3 hurdles led to instant disqualificiation; however we're either kinder or more effete now, and competitors are disqualified if they intentionally knock down hurdles, but not otherwise. (Also, competitors may not jump over another runner's hurdles, though I can't imagine why they might want to.)
General race rules apply, as well -- runners may not begin running before the race actually starts, may not shove other runners, and so forth, though these things seem obvious as well.
I think, strangely, the rough part for me has been choosing which events to write about. I don't have a ton of interest in this particular aspect of the Athletics badge, I'll admit, and its just been feeling more like homework than like entertainment. Of course, I'm in the minority in my general lack of sports-interest, I'm sure -- drive past any college campus in the fall and see thousands of sports fans out to prove me wrong (and to watch football, too, I'm sure, but I like to think they're just out there in a "so there, Emily!" kind of way).
So, given that I'm a less enthusiastic sports, um, enthusiast than most, I asked two of the card-players to pick track and field events for me to investigate. Matt chose the pole vault, and team Ro and Evan chose the 400 m hurdles (specific, but we'll go with it).
This one's for you, dudes.
I've pole vaulted once in my life, in middle school gym class. I believe I cleared the same jump level that at least one slightly taller kid stepped over, which gives you an idea both of my size in middle school (rather petite) and my jumping abilities. That said, I also have a very dear cousin who, I believe, was some class of pole vaulting champion when she was in high school, so I'm aware that some folks can be quite successful at this kind of activity. I just don't quite understand how.
In order to pole vault, you're going to need, um, a pole, usually fiberglass, and usually from 10 to 17 feet long. You'll also need a mat (3-5 feet thick), a crossbar, ad a 40-45 m long runway. In order to successfully vault, you must, first and foremost, clear the crossbar. It's acceptable to hit the crossbar so long as you don't knock it down, but since the crossbar falls quite readily, it's for the best to avoid it altogether.
There are other ways to mess up your jump, too. Touching the mat before jumping would count as a jump failure, as would taking more than two minutes to complete a jump attempt. Finally, remember that a single failed attempt isn't the end of the world -- generally, a competitor will receive a maximum of three attempts at any given height and will be eliminated after his third unsuccessful attempt.
Finally, there are a few very specific equipment rules: no gloves are allowed, nor is more than two layers of adhesive tape. Jumpers may use chalk or rosin, though.
For the 400 m hurdles, we'll get a little more complicated. Men's hurdles are 36 inches tall and women's are 30 inches tall, while the hurdles are evenly placed 35 meters apart, with the first and last hurdles each 40 m from the starting and ending points. (Is it a testament to international unity that we're mixing units of measurement here, or is it just poor coordination? Does it matter?)
It used to be that knocking down 3 hurdles led to instant disqualificiation; however we're either kinder or more effete now, and competitors are disqualified if they intentionally knock down hurdles, but not otherwise. (Also, competitors may not jump over another runner's hurdles, though I can't imagine why they might want to.)
General race rules apply, as well -- runners may not begin running before the race actually starts, may not shove other runners, and so forth, though these things seem obvious as well.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Kitty!
My kitten is sick.
Charlie the cat is on fluids and is spending the night in the vet's office, so forgive a little lack of focus today. (Poor kitten! If he were home, he would totally be sitting on the couch with me watching Project Runway right now.)
My main interest in the Aviation realm, lately, has been Samuel Langley, who spent serious time in the 1890s building steam-powered airplanes, and time before that testing the aerodynamics of taxidermied birds. (On a similar note, I'd like to refer you a fantastic John Hartford album, for what it's worth.)
In the 1880s, he was launching unpiloted, steam-driven planes via catapult, and they worked -- one in particular (his number 6 model) could fly something like a mile. Of course, this isn't the same kind of aviation our badge is talking about -- first, there's no pilot, and second, many of these planes were models, scaled down to something like 1/4 size.
However, the really interesting thing about Langley comes some years after his flight experiments. See, he donated one of his planes (the Aerodrome #5) to the Smithsonian where, after significant refurbishment (including a new engine), a Smithsonian refurbisher was able to make a few small, short flights in it. Clearly, since the Aerodrome #5 was in service prior to the Wright Bros. Kittyhawk flight, that would make it the first "man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight." Right?
The Wright Bros. were furious, and reasonably so, especially given that the Aerodrome #5 had, well, crashed, which is generally not a characteristic of a successful airplane. There's a lot of weirdness in this story, especially given the fact that Langley was the secretary of the Smithsonian and received much of his research funding due to his position there. (It's porbably important to clarify something here -- Langley, despite the whole mess surrounding his planes, was not invovled in the situation. He died in 1906, just 3 years after the Wrights' flight, and more than fifteen years before the disputes.)
Ultimately, Orville Wright (Wilbur was long-dead) sent the Wright Flyer to London, where the British might respect the venerable plane. And there it stayed, until a 1942 report by the Smithsonian ("The 1914 Tests of the Langley Aerodrome") essentialy recanted their story -- finaly, they admitted that, well, the Aerodrome #5 as originally built was unsuccessful.
And there we have it. In 1948 the Wright Flyer returned to the Smithsonian. It does not share a hall with the Aerodrome, which today occupies the "Early Flight" exhibit, with the Wright military flyer (a later model). The Wright Flyer itself, currently in its own special exhibit, is usually located in a place of honor in the center of the "Milestones of Flight" gallery.
So much for the Aerodrome.
Charlie the cat is on fluids and is spending the night in the vet's office, so forgive a little lack of focus today. (Poor kitten! If he were home, he would totally be sitting on the couch with me watching Project Runway right now.)
My main interest in the Aviation realm, lately, has been Samuel Langley, who spent serious time in the 1890s building steam-powered airplanes, and time before that testing the aerodynamics of taxidermied birds. (On a similar note, I'd like to refer you a fantastic John Hartford album, for what it's worth.)
In the 1880s, he was launching unpiloted, steam-driven planes via catapult, and they worked -- one in particular (his number 6 model) could fly something like a mile. Of course, this isn't the same kind of aviation our badge is talking about -- first, there's no pilot, and second, many of these planes were models, scaled down to something like 1/4 size.
However, the really interesting thing about Langley comes some years after his flight experiments. See, he donated one of his planes (the Aerodrome #5) to the Smithsonian where, after significant refurbishment (including a new engine), a Smithsonian refurbisher was able to make a few small, short flights in it. Clearly, since the Aerodrome #5 was in service prior to the Wright Bros. Kittyhawk flight, that would make it the first "man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight." Right?
The Wright Bros. were furious, and reasonably so, especially given that the Aerodrome #5 had, well, crashed, which is generally not a characteristic of a successful airplane. There's a lot of weirdness in this story, especially given the fact that Langley was the secretary of the Smithsonian and received much of his research funding due to his position there. (It's porbably important to clarify something here -- Langley, despite the whole mess surrounding his planes, was not invovled in the situation. He died in 1906, just 3 years after the Wrights' flight, and more than fifteen years before the disputes.)
Ultimately, Orville Wright (Wilbur was long-dead) sent the Wright Flyer to London, where the British might respect the venerable plane. And there it stayed, until a 1942 report by the Smithsonian ("The 1914 Tests of the Langley Aerodrome") essentialy recanted their story -- finaly, they admitted that, well, the Aerodrome #5 as originally built was unsuccessful.
And there we have it. In 1948 the Wright Flyer returned to the Smithsonian. It does not share a hall with the Aerodrome, which today occupies the "Early Flight" exhibit, with the Wright military flyer (a later model). The Wright Flyer itself, currently in its own special exhibit, is usually located in a place of honor in the center of the "Milestones of Flight" gallery.
So much for the Aerodrome.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Aviating
Big secret (okay, not very secret): I hate flying.
Upon reflection, though, much as I may think I hate flying today, I really, really, seriously would have hated flying in 1911.
Now, while a lot of people (myself included, secretly) are thinking back to junior high school history class and trying to remember if planes even existed when the Handbook was published (they did), we need to handle something more important here. Planes were indeed available. But they were much, much simpler and much, much scarier.
(This airplane is from 1912. Hence, when the Handbook was published, this was the future of aviation. The future of aviation involved buddying up to some other dude in a suit while dangling your feet off of an airplane.)
The airplanes our 1911 scouts were learning about were only a step ahead of the Wright brothers' plane, with canvas stretched over wood-framed, parallel wings, steered by a network of pulleys and wire cables by a pilot who sat on seat mounted to the bottom wing (or, in the case of many planes, on the wing itself).
The planes we're talking about here were also much, much less useful than the planes we think about today -- the maximum speed we could achieve was perhaps 40 miles per hour (and this was the record-breaking "Silver Dart," made out of a reassuring combination of "steel tube, bamboo, friction tape, wire, wood, and silk"). In general, speeds and ranges were lower still.
Hold on for discussion, tomorrow or Thursday, about a few more aspects of early planes -- I'm looking into some information about the early altitude record-holder, but work is getting in the way. Boo.
Additionally, I'm trying to decide how to go about model-building. The Aviation badge requires a flight of 25 yards, which is hardly much, but is exactly enough that I feel like I want to approach this as seriously as possible. While some folks are pretty intense R/C model builders (some of whom I'm hoping to speak to, as well), I do want my model to be at least a little bit 1911-accurate. Ideas?
Upon reflection, though, much as I may think I hate flying today, I really, really, seriously would have hated flying in 1911.
Now, while a lot of people (myself included, secretly) are thinking back to junior high school history class and trying to remember if planes even existed when the Handbook was published (they did), we need to handle something more important here. Planes were indeed available. But they were much, much simpler and much, much scarier.
(This airplane is from 1912. Hence, when the Handbook was published, this was the future of aviation. The future of aviation involved buddying up to some other dude in a suit while dangling your feet off of an airplane.)
The airplanes our 1911 scouts were learning about were only a step ahead of the Wright brothers' plane, with canvas stretched over wood-framed, parallel wings, steered by a network of pulleys and wire cables by a pilot who sat on seat mounted to the bottom wing (or, in the case of many planes, on the wing itself).
The planes we're talking about here were also much, much less useful than the planes we think about today -- the maximum speed we could achieve was perhaps 40 miles per hour (and this was the record-breaking "Silver Dart," made out of a reassuring combination of "steel tube, bamboo, friction tape, wire, wood, and silk"). In general, speeds and ranges were lower still.
Hold on for discussion, tomorrow or Thursday, about a few more aspects of early planes -- I'm looking into some information about the early altitude record-holder, but work is getting in the way. Boo.
Additionally, I'm trying to decide how to go about model-building. The Aviation badge requires a flight of 25 yards, which is hardly much, but is exactly enough that I feel like I want to approach this as seriously as possible. While some folks are pretty intense R/C model builders (some of whom I'm hoping to speak to, as well), I do want my model to be at least a little bit 1911-accurate. Ideas?
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Apples and honey
In honor of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, we had people over for a celebratory dinner last night. I made a noodle kugel, pasta with pesto, tomatoes, and zucchini, and Anzac cookies, which were experimental but kind of delicious. (These were partially a tribute to my mother's cherished belief that, when having folks over for dinner, one must always provide two dessert types: a fruit and a chocolate. My friend Wendy brought a chocolate cake, so the fruit spot was left unfilled, hence coconut/honey/oatmeal cookies. Yum.)
How does this relate to the Handbook? Simple. Honey.
Traditionally, on Rosh Hashanah, the meal (or the holiday itself) is capped with apples and honey. There are all sorts of explanations for each -- the apples as representative of the tree of knowledge, as references to the Song of Songs and so forth, and the honey as a nod to the "land of milk and honey." I've always liked the old standard the best, though. It's simply that apples and honey are both damn sweet and delicious and represent a wish for a sweet new year.
Our honey this year was the Tremblay Apiraries honey I'd sampled at Union Square a month or so ago, and let me tell you, while not the hit of the party, it was a delicious and seasonally-appropriate addition.
PS: I took a picture of apples, honey, challah, and the Anzac cookies last night in hopes of posting today, but ew. I am not a sophisticated enough photo editor to make a photograph of such delicious food look anything but disgusting. Instead, as a special bonus, my kugel recipe!
Now, many people think they do not like kugel. These people are incorrect. They do not like other people's kugel. Other people's kugel is dry and bland (sorry, other people). Mine is spectacular. Remember, this is a special occasion kind of dish, and fat = flavor.
You'll need:
1 pound of egg noodles
1/2 stick of butter
1 quart of buttermilk
4 eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1/4 tsp of salt
1/2 cup (or more) of raisins
For the topping, you'll need:
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of crushed cornflakes (though I've made it with Kashi Golean, as well as with granola.)
2 Tbs of melted butter
1/4 tsp of cinnamon (though I use a lot more, often.)
To make the kugel, first preheat the oven to 375 F. Cook the noodles however you prefer to cook 'em. Drain them, then add the butter and stir the whole shebang around until the butter melts.
Add the buttermilk, eggs, sugar, salt, and raisins to the buttery noodles and mix them all around. Put the whole mess into a 9 x 13 baking pan, put some tin foil on top, and bake for about a half hour.
While your kugel starts to bake, get to work on the topping! Mix up the four ingredients. (This does not take the entire 30 minutes the kugel is baking unless you crush each flake of cereal individually. Don't do this.)
Sprinkle the topping over the partly-baked kugel, replace the foil, and continue to bake the kugel for another 30-45 minutes. It's done when the whole thing is semi-solid, with no buttermilk sloshing around.
Eat it. Seriously. You will not want to stop.
How does this relate to the Handbook? Simple. Honey.
Traditionally, on Rosh Hashanah, the meal (or the holiday itself) is capped with apples and honey. There are all sorts of explanations for each -- the apples as representative of the tree of knowledge, as references to the Song of Songs and so forth, and the honey as a nod to the "land of milk and honey." I've always liked the old standard the best, though. It's simply that apples and honey are both damn sweet and delicious and represent a wish for a sweet new year.
Our honey this year was the Tremblay Apiraries honey I'd sampled at Union Square a month or so ago, and let me tell you, while not the hit of the party, it was a delicious and seasonally-appropriate addition.
PS: I took a picture of apples, honey, challah, and the Anzac cookies last night in hopes of posting today, but ew. I am not a sophisticated enough photo editor to make a photograph of such delicious food look anything but disgusting. Instead, as a special bonus, my kugel recipe!
Now, many people think they do not like kugel. These people are incorrect. They do not like other people's kugel. Other people's kugel is dry and bland (sorry, other people). Mine is spectacular. Remember, this is a special occasion kind of dish, and fat = flavor.
You'll need:
1 pound of egg noodles
1/2 stick of butter
1 quart of buttermilk
4 eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1/4 tsp of salt
1/2 cup (or more) of raisins
For the topping, you'll need:
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of crushed cornflakes (though I've made it with Kashi Golean, as well as with granola.)
2 Tbs of melted butter
1/4 tsp of cinnamon (though I use a lot more, often.)
To make the kugel, first preheat the oven to 375 F. Cook the noodles however you prefer to cook 'em. Drain them, then add the butter and stir the whole shebang around until the butter melts.
Add the buttermilk, eggs, sugar, salt, and raisins to the buttery noodles and mix them all around. Put the whole mess into a 9 x 13 baking pan, put some tin foil on top, and bake for about a half hour.
While your kugel starts to bake, get to work on the topping! Mix up the four ingredients. (This does not take the entire 30 minutes the kugel is baking unless you crush each flake of cereal individually. Don't do this.)
Sprinkle the topping over the partly-baked kugel, replace the foil, and continue to bake the kugel for another 30-45 minutes. It's done when the whole thing is semi-solid, with no buttermilk sloshing around.
Eat it. Seriously. You will not want to stop.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Thursday run
I know I promised you guys a run on Tuesday, and, straight up, that promise was the only reason I did it at all today. It's been a stressful few days at work, and the very, very beginning of fall is just starting to show up in the air. When I left, around 5, I could feel just the tiniest bit of a chill in the very tips of my fingers. (I'm cold all the time, dudes. Really.)
I headed out towards the library, untimed because of the last traces of Elmo-titis. I was slow tonight, I think, but in general, it was straight up glorious. There are certain early-evening moments where the quality of light and the buildings are working together just right, and even the guy jumping rope in the middle of the sidewalk didn't slow me down.
On the way home, though, I got distracted, and just went to the library instead of past it. I'd just returned two (Collette's Cheri and The Last of Cheri, which was absolutely heartbreaking, and Shelby Foote's The Civil War, which was intermittently excellent and way more than I could handle), and I was sort of in the market for something different.
Today's haul: Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, which has been on my list forever, Clare Boylan's Emma Brown, cobbled together from an unfinished Charlotte Bronte manuscript (hard to say how this one is going to go), and Vincent Louis Carrella's Serpent Box, which I saw on the shelf and grabbed, without any prior knowledge whatsoever. We'll see how it goes, right?
At this point, I'm going to sign off with a plea for help: oddly, finding private plane airports/folks who are interested in recreational aviation is proving more difficult in the city than I think it would have been anywhere else I've lived, ever. Does anyone have a hot tip? I've got some feelers out, but I think there's a very strong suspicion of weird, airport-related requests that I hadn't entirely anticipated.
I headed out towards the library, untimed because of the last traces of Elmo-titis. I was slow tonight, I think, but in general, it was straight up glorious. There are certain early-evening moments where the quality of light and the buildings are working together just right, and even the guy jumping rope in the middle of the sidewalk didn't slow me down.
On the way home, though, I got distracted, and just went to the library instead of past it. I'd just returned two (Collette's Cheri and The Last of Cheri, which was absolutely heartbreaking, and Shelby Foote's The Civil War, which was intermittently excellent and way more than I could handle), and I was sort of in the market for something different.
Today's haul: Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, which has been on my list forever, Clare Boylan's Emma Brown, cobbled together from an unfinished Charlotte Bronte manuscript (hard to say how this one is going to go), and Vincent Louis Carrella's Serpent Box, which I saw on the shelf and grabbed, without any prior knowledge whatsoever. We'll see how it goes, right?
At this point, I'm going to sign off with a plea for help: oddly, finding private plane airports/folks who are interested in recreational aviation is proving more difficult in the city than I think it would have been anywhere else I've lived, ever. Does anyone have a hot tip? I've got some feelers out, but I think there's a very strong suspicion of weird, airport-related requests that I hadn't entirely anticipated.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Traning to run
The Athletics badge asks the applicant to explain, in 500 words or so, how to train for an athletic event. Now, I'll admit, I'm not much of a competitive athlete, so instead, I'm going to address how I went about practicing for the 2 mile run I've been working on (for the Army Physical Fitness Test), and how many, many things I've done wrong. (After a weeklong cold, I'm shooting for another run on Thursday, since I'm hideously busy Wednesday nights.)
Hey, after all, Goofus was always much more interesting than Gallant, right?
To begin with, I started running after something like a 2-year period of nonrunning, as well as a 2-month period of exerciselessness. In general, this is a bad way to start. Honestly, though, these 2 months have been the longest period of time I haven't exercised since I was something like 16 or 17 and going to the gym with my parents after school. Even through college and grad school (especially grad school), I was religious about exercise. Since moving to Brooklyn, though, things have really fallen by the wayside. And for an incredibly stupid reason: there's no available gym that's easy to walk to. Somehow, taking the train to the gym seems like it defeats the entire purpose of going to the gym. (On this front, I feel similarly to the way I used to regard people at my tiny New England college who would drive to the athletic center, which, on a residential campus maybe a mile square, seemed absurd. Does this make me a snob? Maybe.) There are regular promises to open a second branch of the YMCA, and my stubbornness is compelling me to hold out for this new, easier-to-reach branch. I will not take the train to exercise, though it's only punishing my own self.
Regardless of all that, I used a modified version of the couch-to-5k running program, which had served me well in the past (well, moderately well, in that it got me up to being able to run for some distance without stopping, but wasn't all that useful for the building up of speed). Rumor has it that if I legitimately want to become fast, I'll have to train for it -- doing things like the hilariously-named fartleks (Swedish for "speed play," or "running real fast for a couple minutes until your brains fall out, going back to regular pace, and repeating ad infinitum). There are legitimate explanations for fartlek, including all kinds of ideas about how fartlek can increase aerobic capacity, can simulate actual athletic events (sprinting to catch an opponent, for example), and theories about how doing this will allow you to actually run fewer total miles in training. Frankly, I've ignored nearly all of this with the explanation (to myself) that I don't need to get that much faster.
In terms of equipment, my dear shoe-selling uncle would recommend that a new runner might see some class of expert who could recommend shoes with appropriate arch support, correction for pronation, and so forth. I did this, too, once, and it was pretty great (I wound up with a pair of Asics I still have). The truth? Um, remember how I said I still have those Asics? Yeah. I'm running in them, three years later. I've swapped out the insoles for a pair of prescription orthotics (hey, I'm a teacher and on my feet all day, and these orthotics were my last gasp of health care benefits before a multi-month gap in coverage). I was actually extremely interested in an article in the NY Times last week suggesting that shoes, in general, aren't actually all that necessary. However, I've seen what people do on the street, and I refuse to haul around my neighborhood with my poor toes a'hanging out. Hell, I've seen what the soles of my feet look like on a day around the city while wearing flip flops. It's not pretty.
So, to sum up: minimal training, no emphasis on speed, old shoes.
Up next: Running Thursday, then on to beginning the next badge. Aviation?
Hey, after all, Goofus was always much more interesting than Gallant, right?
To begin with, I started running after something like a 2-year period of nonrunning, as well as a 2-month period of exerciselessness. In general, this is a bad way to start. Honestly, though, these 2 months have been the longest period of time I haven't exercised since I was something like 16 or 17 and going to the gym with my parents after school. Even through college and grad school (especially grad school), I was religious about exercise. Since moving to Brooklyn, though, things have really fallen by the wayside. And for an incredibly stupid reason: there's no available gym that's easy to walk to. Somehow, taking the train to the gym seems like it defeats the entire purpose of going to the gym. (On this front, I feel similarly to the way I used to regard people at my tiny New England college who would drive to the athletic center, which, on a residential campus maybe a mile square, seemed absurd. Does this make me a snob? Maybe.) There are regular promises to open a second branch of the YMCA, and my stubbornness is compelling me to hold out for this new, easier-to-reach branch. I will not take the train to exercise, though it's only punishing my own self.
Regardless of all that, I used a modified version of the couch-to-5k running program, which had served me well in the past (well, moderately well, in that it got me up to being able to run for some distance without stopping, but wasn't all that useful for the building up of speed). Rumor has it that if I legitimately want to become fast, I'll have to train for it -- doing things like the hilariously-named fartleks (Swedish for "speed play," or "running real fast for a couple minutes until your brains fall out, going back to regular pace, and repeating ad infinitum). There are legitimate explanations for fartlek, including all kinds of ideas about how fartlek can increase aerobic capacity, can simulate actual athletic events (sprinting to catch an opponent, for example), and theories about how doing this will allow you to actually run fewer total miles in training. Frankly, I've ignored nearly all of this with the explanation (to myself) that I don't need to get that much faster.
In terms of equipment, my dear shoe-selling uncle would recommend that a new runner might see some class of expert who could recommend shoes with appropriate arch support, correction for pronation, and so forth. I did this, too, once, and it was pretty great (I wound up with a pair of Asics I still have). The truth? Um, remember how I said I still have those Asics? Yeah. I'm running in them, three years later. I've swapped out the insoles for a pair of prescription orthotics (hey, I'm a teacher and on my feet all day, and these orthotics were my last gasp of health care benefits before a multi-month gap in coverage). I was actually extremely interested in an article in the NY Times last week suggesting that shoes, in general, aren't actually all that necessary. However, I've seen what people do on the street, and I refuse to haul around my neighborhood with my poor toes a'hanging out. Hell, I've seen what the soles of my feet look like on a day around the city while wearing flip flops. It's not pretty.
So, to sum up: minimal training, no emphasis on speed, old shoes.
Up next: Running Thursday, then on to beginning the next badge. Aviation?
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