boiled frogs and lions

James Fallows has his quixotic struggle against the boiled frog cliche. In solidarity, I am now taking arms against the stupid, mendacious, cruel "when the sun comes up, you'd better be running" so-called motivational running quote, not for the first time. My hope was that it would vanish into well-deserved obscurity. Now, in Christopher McDougall's book Born to Run, comfortably placed on the bestseller lists, he attributes it to Roger Bannister. That attribution is creeping into the internets too, for example at the ironically-named factsleuth site.

Here's the quote. "Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."

I cannot prove Roger Bannister never said it but am entirely convinced that no-one can prove he did say it. Sir Bannister is a scientist, on the evidence of his life and 'The Four-Minute Mile' a careful thoughtful man, who would not knowingly say a false thing. The entirety of this farrago of nonsense is false.

Let me break it down: Gazelles don't wake up in the morning, because they don't sleep at night. Lions don't wake up in the morning, because they hunt at night or early in the morning before sunrise. Lions don't run down their prey, instead stalk it and then pounce, like a domestic cat writ large and terrible. In the morning when the sun comes up, the gazelles may safely graze around the lions, who are probably lounging happily near the carcass of last night's dinner. The time to worry is when the sun goes down, and running won't help you then.

A bravura performance by whoever wrote this, a whole paragraph without a single true fact. I saw it first on a motivational poster in a Fortune 500 company office, its natural habitat. It was doubtless composed by some ignorant cubicle corporate drone in a flop sweat, fabricating motivation for other wage slaves; to sell posters to executives who think talking on the phone and tinkering with spreadsheets qualify as work.

In terms of running quotes, it's a blight and an excrescence. The facts matter. Falsity must be opposed at every level. If you take falsity as your token in small things then how will you resist its blandishments in the large things ? Even on the surface level, perhaps it's just me, but I don't find inspiration in the fear of starving or being eaten. Terror is a fine goad and entirely appropriate to most corporate cultures, but fear is not why I run. If you want inspirational running quotes, Sir Bannister's book is a good place to start. On running as a child: "I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed". Power and beauty: this sounds ridiculous if you don't run, still it is neither more nor less than the truth.
There, I feel better now.

A few notes on Born to Run (whoops, wrong Born to Run, but I think we should acknowledge prior art). Of course I enjoyed the book, it's about running after all so I am bound and determined to interest at the very least. The first few chapters took me aback with their overcaffeinated, Outside magazine neo-gonzo, jaguars-ripped-my-flesh kind of prose. Fortunately it settled down after that, but as a whole it seems a pastiche of magazine articles roughly stitched together. Many of the articles were interesting, though. The standard of research is often poor, as in the misattributed quote that started me off.

Another observation on aging runners - Dr Bramble is interviewed, who says that according to New York marathon times, sixty-four-year-olds are competitive with nineteen-year-olds. This seemed wrong to me. I know my times at sixty-four (when I get old, and losing my hair, many years from now) will be a lot slower than I was running at 19. 

Checking with the WMA Age-grading calculator, using a 21-minute 5k, that performance at age 19 is roughly equivalent to the same time at... age 35. At age sixty-four, that performance is roughly equivalent to a 17-minute 5k by a nineteen-year-old. The same proportions apply to marathon times. 

The WMA calculator uses world age group records as one of its inputs. Looking at the NY Marathon results for 2009, Dr. Bramble's numbers are confirmed: top 3 for 19 and under have times 2:55 to 3:09, top 3 for 60-64 are 2:58 to 3:04. Looking at world age group records, 19 is 2:10, 64 is 2:42. That rather makes a nonsense of the NY marathon times, and the whole contention that sixty-year-olds can compete with the young guns.

Another age-based calculator that uses world bests only, can be found here.
The study on which it is based finds "the estimates show linear percent decline between age 35 and about age 70." That only addresses the aging side of the equation though. Also, I'd contend that using world bests only has an inherent bias. Most runners reach a personal peak after five to ten years of consistent training, and it's very rare that this peak can be sustained for more than a few years. Look at the list of world bests for the marathon, linked above: there aren't many names that appear more than once, those that do are not far apart in time. 

Update May 2020:
Speculation confirmed in a new study by Prof. Jason Hall. This used 40 years of data from the Crim 10-mile race to track performances of aging runners.  58,599 observations from 6,666 individual runners show a consistent decline about 1.1 percent each year for men, 0.9 percent for women, at ages 35 and up. As the paper notes, "the rate of decline is considerably faster than the world record times for age recommended by the USATF for age-grading." So, "Using world best times as a benchmark understates the effects of aging on performance."
- end update.

The WMA calculator also uses age-grading factors from the Masters Track website, motto: "older, slower, lower". I can get behind that.

The mysterious Caballo Blanco has a website where some later history of the Great Race can be found. It is sadder than the story in the book of course.

The story of Louis Liebenberg was fascinating. He was studying philosophy of science in the early 80s at the University of Cape Town when he had an epiphany about the origins of science, believing that tracking animals was the motivation for the scientific method. I took that same course in 1979. The professor was an eccentric who would show up, talk rapidly and eloquently throughout the lecture, then stride out of the room in mid-sentence on the pip of the hour. No epiphanies for me, though I did get a lot of running done, mostly in the forests on the slopes of Table Mountain.

dogs and children

C (7) hurt himself in some fashion, rooting around in the basement in pursuit of a special Lego piece. He refused consolation from his mother, heading instead for the sleeping dog under the coffee table, where he got loving face-licks for ten minutes. According to C, Artie is better at comforting than Mom, since "Artie doesn't press for details".

yurt raising

Memorial Day weekend turned into four days straight: working construction in Palisade, to get the deck down and yurt up. I forgot the camera, so the first picture skates blithely past a days' work of finishing and framing the first subfloor.

Here Keith and I are slicing and installing insulation below the second subfloor. The fibreglass made me cough, probably should have worn a mask. Keith's t-shirt says in Dutch 'horen, zien.. en suipen' which translates in Afrikaans (kitchen Dutch) to 'hear, see, and get happily drunk'. In Dutch the meaning is the same, but there is an extra layer since it's a corruption of "Horen, zien en zwijgen", the Confucian edict.

Rain stopped play quite often. This ensured the insulation got nicely saturated. The menfolk hoped this would translate to a stinky mould infestation, so the yurt would become a man cave, unsuitable for wifely habitation. Here, most of the second subfloor is down and wet, and the bender boards are getting bent around it. Eventually the skirt of the yurt (pause for Marilyn Monroe flashback) is screwed to the bender boards.

Two monkeys in a tree, with hangers-on. The lattice is expanded around the inside of the bender boards, and screwed to the floor. What this means, is the entire structure is dependent on the floor's structural integrity. Hm. The scaffolding holds up the center ring of the yurt, as will become clear.

Young Fernando (orange shirt) works with Keith, came along for a bit of mountain biking, plus helped out with yurting.
We drank all his beer - thought we'd be picking up the necessary from the Palisade Brewery, but never quite got off our duffs and the work site. Sorry Fernando..

While on the subject of youth, Farmer Thomas' daughters were around on the first day. Their track and cross-country spikes were in a box on the back porch, awaiting some event. I had a look at the shoes; a lot better than the Nike Elite waffle shoe which was state-of-the-art at the close of my x-c career. The younger daughter and her boyfriend were setting off for a summer of living in a van in Buena Vista, working as raft guides on the Arkansas river. It's one of my favorite whitewater rivers. I was talking to them about paddling, camping and all kinds of groovy things, but kept getting called 'Sir'. While I appreciate the courtesy, it makes me feel old enough to be their father .. wait a minute, I am.. Oy.

This morning I left Artie the Wonder Dog leashed to a tree, so he wouldn’t get into mischief in the 10 minutes between me leaving the campsite and H following. Some child unleashed him, a different child went into the hen run to play with the chickens and left the door open, carnage ensued. Ian reports Artie came out grinning broadly through a mouthful of feathers, 'mmm, tastes just like pheasant'. One of the girl childs screamed loudly enough that the neighboring farmers came out to have a look. Everyone thinks Artie is an evil dog now, but he's just a dog who likes birds, really. The rooster was still walking when we left, not sure of the longterm prognosis though.

Evan has the instructions. We have nothing to fear but Evan himself.









The central ring looks alarmingly toothy.










OK, so far so good. Now where does the rest of the rocket go ?


A steel cable runs around the top of the lattice, secured by a hook that says '2T limit'. The entire weight of the roof plus any forces generated by the winds depends on the frail lattice. Presumably some vector of the forces is actually outward, onto the cable, but it looks implausible. The background on the right is rows of incipient potatoes.

Practicing for when everything's finished, and we can relax on our shady deck. It may never happen, so we have to seize the day.




A layer of insulation goes over a liner. It comes in halves which have to be taped together. Brian invented a giant Q-tip to press the tape down, here he employs it under our admiring gaze.

Ommm.. here in the center of the mandala, perhaps we can get levitation..




Raising the roof. A couple of people on scaffold-stabilization; two on a rope on the left out of the picture; Thomas and Evan on top; and three of us boosting it from below. A good roar (me on the L) clears the pipes, and might even help with lifting it. I don't remember yelling though, makes me wonder what else happens during the day that I'm missing.

The roof unrolls on each side and is gradually unfurled. We had to wait for a lull in the winds to get it up, to avoid a Mary Poppins moment.

The walls then get unrolled around the lattice, and laced to the roof by a kind of crocheting of rope loops and grommets. No pictures of this, as the wind was picking up and it was all hands on deck. No further pictures either, as we were hoping to get home before the early AM and were focused on work. No such luck in the event - last screw driven at 6pm, a chukar running around the farmhouse as we packed up in the rain, home by 1am in torrential rains.

Finally. There's a spacy plastic dome on top, for light: it can also be opened a bit, to let the breezes through. Now all we have to do is put a floor over the particleboard, add railings so kids/dogs don’t fall off the high side, and make a bathroom arrangement. .. oh well. As Thomas said, soon we'll be coming up to clear out the under-yurt storage. Right now it's beautifully open, spacious and light in there.

rainy day

Here in Seattle-by-the-Rockies, it's been raining for what feels like a month. The grass is lush and soggy. Taking Artie for a walk on the long leash, he runs circles around me dragging the rope through the wetness. The green belt is full of rabbits, which the owls and the coyotes appreciate. When the dog takes off, half-crazed with bunny lust, after one of these, the rope snaps taut: throwing off spray and an occasional rainbow.

Meantime the boys are on summer break, constructing cities and subterranean caverns of Lego on every flat surface in the house. When this palls, Ian painted the grey skies and trees outside the kitchen window. The yellow tree is a honey locust, its leaves a bright green on the yellow side of the spectrum.

Here's the picture with a background of sordid domestic detritus.










In closeup,

The dog that didn't bark

The Barkin' Dog Duathlon, 5k run/30k bike/5k run, now in Cherry Creek State Park. It used to be in Keenesburg, CO, "Home of 500 Happy people and a few soreheads" and featured an utterly flat 30k with one turnaround. There was the occasional agricultural by-product to dodge on the way, but it was a good ride. The farmer's dogs would come out and bark at the bikes, hence the name. The run went along a dirt road next to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad which gave the town its reason, now the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe. At times we'd be hurting ourselves along the road as a massive freight train rumbled by, "ground tremble birdseed fly in all directions", made me feel like a small fragile mammal. Eventually the few soreheads tired of roads clogged with Lycra-clad freaks and the race had to move. In Cherry Creek the locals still don't like Lycra-clad freaks but at least they're used to us.

Last year race day was cold and rainy, perfectly miserable weather for bike riding. Today's forecast was for the same, but in the event was clear and cool. I'd decided to do two 5k runs with a jog in the middle if it was raining. The over-45s all started together, with a modicum of creaking and groaning. A mop of white hair shot to the front and was last seen streaking through the woods - turned out to be Scott Hajicek, 54, running a 17:13 first 5k. It's been twenty years since I could run that fast. In the last 3 Dogs I've done:
first 5k, 19:59, 19:53, 19:54
second 5k, 21:20, 21:30, 21:10
I haven't broken 19:50 on a standalone 5k in ten years. Today's race was 19:05 first, 20:10 second. This was entirely due to a new pair of Newton shoes. They have four fat lugs on the forefoot which are supposed to encourage 'good running form', whatever that is. I didn't really believe it but will try anything once, especially now I'm old fat slow and desperate. The shoe is essentially flat - height of forefoot including lugs is the same as the heel. This I suspect is the key. Whatever it is, a 5% improvement from shoes is astonishing. Now I'm on the hook for $160 for new Newtons every year, dagnabbit.

The 19:05 was good only for 6th place in the over-45s. We are very serious old guys: old enough to have the money to buy aero goodies and engage in the whole arms race of buying speed with bike bits; old enough that we've either made our pile, or have given up trying, so have time to train; young enough that there's something left to train with; "made weak by time and fate", but denying it with all the strength left to us. Though perhaps I speak only for myself, in which case strike out the bit about 'made our pile'.

Duathlons tend to attract strong runners who can't swim and don't bike much, so my relative weakness on the bike becomes a relative strength in these races. The bike too had a winter makeover. Brand new used Hed aerobars, plus high-end tubular tires to replace the Continental Sprinters, which are sturdy but slow. Thanks to AFM, whose indefatigable testing of tires has produced the reference database of rolling resistance, for the idea. To my surprise, spending $100 per tire instead of $50 per tire, does produce a difference in the ride quality. Bike aficionados tend to witter on about 'ride quality' but I've always figured a racing bike is going to hurt and there's no doing anything about that. However these new tubulars produce a distinctly pleasurable sensation, even on the ruts and potholes of the Cherry Creek road. They are also faster I think, though the effect is not currently measurable as the new aerobars confound things.

The aerobars are carbon, which I've previously avoided on general principles. Several different carbon fly rods have exploded in my hand while casting: this is not a problem when footling about in pursuit of fish and standing foursquare on the good hard ground; but exploding handlebars at 25mph, suspended several feet above that same hard ground by two square inches of rubber, would be over-exciting. A lust for speed induced the sleep of reason so now I'm riding carbon. The trick is to not overtighten the bolts holding everything together, a torque wrench is a necessity. My bike mechanic-skills were all learnt by making mistakes in a poorly lit garage at 11pm, after the day's work is done. Wrenching on carbon provides an opportunity for new mistakes.

I’d adjusted the length of the aerobar extensions and timidly tightened the retaining bolts to what seemed appropriate. Descending from Cherry Creek dam road at 30+mph, the right-hand extension came loose. This was still manageable, steered with the elbows on the pads, held the loose bar with one hand and shifted with the other. I thought, "as long as the LH one stays solid, I can finish" so of course about 5km later the LH one comes off too. Stopped, jammed them back in, tried to start uphill in a big gear, cramped, got off the bike and downshifted, retried. This was very annoying as I'd been on schedule for sub-45 minutes over the 30k, which would have been a new land speed record for me, averaging close to 25mph. Bashed on regardless, cradling the extensions in a delicate yet firm grip, to the transition.

As usual both calf muscles cramped rigid in the first few steps of the second run. I'd worn compression socks for the full tri-geek look, also to see if it would help with the cramps, but no luck. Peglegged along for a quarter mile or so, then they began to relent. Mr CEO Challenge, Ted Kennedy, had repassed me on the bike during the equipment malfunction, and was slowly dwindling into the distance. Chased, but did not have the legs for it.

At the end of it all I'd won the 45-9 age group by 20s, and 41s ahead of 3rd place. There were four 50+ guys ahead of me though, so felt a bit of a fraud. On the other hand, I've been fourth in AG at races where I'd have placed in every AG but my own: call it karma and feel no shame. The awards are always a nice beer glass with a howling dog on it. I've heard several people complaining about the awards, having too many of these glasses, but that's not a problem for me. In fact the boys usually fight over who gets the dog glass, so I'm very happy to have two now.


There were several dogs at the finish, none of them barking. Most notable, a big Newfoundland the size of a small island, slobbering genially at us all.

Picture from bike leg is here, looking agonized in full aero tri-geek mode.

Racing is a kind of addiction. The reward is an altered state of consciousness, more precisely the obnubilation of consciousness, a holiday from the quotidian: "the strong life; it is life in extremis". This is true, win or lose: but there are many ways to win, and only one way to lose: which is to let winning matter.

Calvin's eschatology

Dinner-table conversation with the 7-year old. Calvin prompted the dialogue,
C: if I go to heaven where you enjoy yourself being good, but I enjoy being mischievous, how will I enjoy myself in heaven ?
Aged P: maybe you'll live a long time, become an old man like me, then you won't want to be mischievous.
C: do you think you get to choose how old you are in heaven ? How old would you like to be ?
A P: I'd like to be as old as I am when I die, with all my memories: but a 25-year-old body.
C: I think I'd like to be six. Or seven.
.. tires of talking, heads off to climb into the dog's crate with him, an activity C terms 'fur therapy'. I tried to take a picture of this, but Artie saw an opportunity to get in an affectionate lick on my chin. All I captured was two loving brown eyes, closing fast.

Arches NP

This carefully-framed pic elides the popup camper next door, fully equipped with a generator which ran reliably during all permitted hours. In my simpleness I thought the infernal machine could be run for some period within those hours; but the neighbours believed in the ants' dictum, 'everything not forbidden is compulsory'. Breakfast and dinner were accompanied by its steady brrrr. Otherwise, an excellent site, moderately sheltered from the cruel month's winds, with an unbeatable view across the sandstones to the La Sal mountains. The sand was fine and soft, marvellous below the sleeping bag, not so good as a companion in it.

The boys scampered up the rocks to find a sunny warm spot for re-reading the entire Calvin & Hobbes oeuvre.











A short hike from the campground gets us to Broken Arch, which is not in fact Broken. At kid hike pace, stopping to examine and discuss lizard versus snake trails in the sand, create sandslides, pick up attractive bits of sandstone, etc etc: this hike took nearly 3 hours. On another morning I ran the loop in 18 minutes. Still, the journey's the thing.

Broken Arch from below. There's a goodly bite out of it, and a crack across the narrows so it may not be long. On another day we hiked past Wall Arch which isn't there anymore.










From the top of the arch, views to La Sal. The mountains were clouded and snowy all the time we were there. Somewhere in the dead ground between here and there is the Colorado river. Our last trip on that section is essayed earlier in this screed.


Quoth young C, "I'm enjoying myself in two different ways. It's fun climbing on the rocks, and it's fun making you nervous".






SandDune Arch, good for an hour's innocent amusement. Surely there must be a way to climb up top and teeter precariously above one's aged parent ?





Sunset on red rocks.






We'd planned a nice easy bike ride on the Bar M loop but I managed to snap the rear derailleur cable on the Schwinn Continental. It was only 18 years old, can't imagine why it broke. Of course I had a full set of cables and housing languishing in the garage at home for the last several years, awaiting my pleasure. There was a bucket'o'tools in the car, using for a bit of deck construction in Palisade on the way over, but no cable. We needed to visit Arty the Wonder Dog in town anyway, at his lodgings with the Moab vet, so back to town.

I walked into Uranium Bicycles and waited for the owner to finish selling a $6k Wilier frameset with Dura-Ace tubeless wheels, probably a good $10k overall. Then I asked him about fixing a cable on a shamefully dirty $25 bike. He couldn't do the job before the next day and I didn't want to drive the hour-plus back to town, so he was kind enough to cut housing and sell me a cable for $6. They have some beautiful road bikes for rent, thought briefly of getting one for a long ride through Arches: eheu fugaces, I have children and dogs and a campfire to attend to. I replaced the cable while Arty got a walk through the cow pies at the vets'.

Weather rather shut down over the next few days, windy and cold. It rained the last night, then froze. The drive home as always took place through a blizzard.