Refuse to Be Terrorized

As usual, Bruce Schneier gets it exactly right.  Below is a short excerpt (complete with Bruce's hyperlinks), please read the entire post here.

And refuse to be terrorized.

As the details about the bombings in Boston unfold, it'd be easy to be scared. It'd be easy to feel powerless and demand that our elected leaders do something -- anything -- to keep us safe.

It'd be easy, but it'd be wrong. We need to be angry and empathize with the victims without being scared. Our fears would play right into the perpetrators' hands -- and magnify the power of their victory for whichever goals whatever group behind this, still to be uncovered, has. We don't have to be scared, and we're not powerless. We actually have all the power here, and there's one thing we can do to render terrorism ineffective: Refuse to be terrorized.

It's hard to do, because terrorism is designed precisely to scare people -- far out of proportion to its actual danger. A huge amount of research on fear and the brain teaches us that we exaggerate threats that are rare, spectacular, immediate, random -- in this case involving an innocent child -- senseless, horrific and graphic. Terrorism pushes all of our fear buttons, really hard, and we overreact.
 

Again, continue reading the rest of Bruce's piece here.  It's worth it.

I've never been fast enough to run the Boston Marathon, but I have run on the streets of that old city.  I cannot imagine the fear and the, well, terror, that must have flashed through everyone's heart who was there.  Sending all the good vibes I can muster.

 

The Abomination of Timing Training Runs…and Ultrarunning

I used to run with a guy—call him John--at an Army base where we both worked.  Owing to a corporate fitness program for us civilians, we could run for an hour 3 times a week (I still have this GREAT benefit!).

Anyway, John always had this dream of qualifying for Boston, but family and work demands always seemed to impede his ability to get those critical long runs in that are necessary to marathon success.  So he’d run the noontime runs at a great pace, Boston-qualifying pace, but never could get over the hump of being well enough trained to maintain such a pace over 26 miles.  That is, until the fall of 2009, when John qualified at the Steamtown Marathon in PA to finally earn—and I mean earn—his way into Boston in April 2011.

But the point of this post is to point out a huge philosophical difference between John and I.  Whenever we would run the military base perimeter, there were a couple road crossings at the gates, and in the main part of the base.  John would always start his chronometer at the beginning of our training runs, and whenever we would get stopped at a road for cars, he would pause his watch until we were clear and able to run again.

It drove me absolutely nuts. I never said anything to John, but to be that anal—to my way of thinking—was the absolute antithesis of everything that running is supposed to be: the freedom of movement, the flow, the pleasure of being a good animal.  To time to the second an ordinary training run, and to parse the seconds to cull out traffic and other delays, was just beyond my comprehension.  I figured that in any run there are delays, and you just accept that.

That said, I am mindful of the clock during training runs, but only to a point.  It is important to me to know whether a particular stretch of the Appalachian Trail usually takes me about 4 hours, and if today it takes me 5, I do note that and try to figure out why.  Was it the heat?  Did I stop to take photos?  Was in rainy and wet and slippery?  Did I just not have it today? 

But I limit that analysis to gross terms and times.  My benchmark unit of measure is the quarter hour or even the half hour…certainly NOT the second.

But then again, I never qualified for Boston.