Beethoven's 9th...and Ultrarunning

One of my running buddies--who seems about average in musicality and artzyness--sent me a link to a YouTube video.  I usually don't watch YouTubes if they are much over a minute or so, but I clicked it anyway and sat mesmerized for 5+ minutes.
 

Must be my retirement mentality, of not rushing, of now having time....

I'll let my buddy introduce it:

What a special experience this would be.  Out for a stroll in Sabadella near Barcelona in Spain and a symphony orchestra, accompanied by a popular choir, appears out of nowhere and begins playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony. 

Watch the children's reactions.

It will lift your spirits! 

Here's the link in case the embedded video below does not play.

 

You really should click it and enjoy.

The link, of course, to Ultrarunning, is music.  While I never use any musical device when I run, I always have music playing right here in my head. 

And I am sure that this symphony will be front and center during my next run.

Biology...and Ultrarunning

I once read that humans and canids (wolves, foxes, dogs) are the only trotting carnivores ever evolved on the planet.

I don't know enough evolutionary biology to evaluate that statement, but I did just read this recently, about why humans can run long--long enough and steady enough to outrun horses--but can't outjump a cat:

At first glance the annual Man vs. Horse Marathon, set for June 9 in Wales, seems like a joke sport brought to us by the same brilliant minds behind dwarf tossing and gravy wrestling. It was, after all, the product of a pints-fueled debate in a Welsh pub, and for years its official starter was rock musician Screaming Lord Sutch, founder of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. But the jokiness is misleading: When viewed through science’s clarifying lens, the funny marathon is one of the few sports that isn’t a joke.

 

The oddsmakers would have known better if they'd been following the work of Harvard anthropologist Daniel Lieberman and University of Utah biologist Dennis Bramble. They jointly proposed in a 2004 paper that we're superlatively endowed by evolution to go long. Our long-striding legs are packed with springlike tendons, muscles, and ligaments that enable us to briefly store elastic energy as we come down on a foot and then recoil to help propel us forward. Tellingly, the most important of these springs, our big, strong Achilles tendons, aren’t found in early human precursors such as Australopithecus—it seems that the high-end tendons evolved along with other adaptations for distance running in the genus Homo when it appeared on the African savanna about 2 million years ago.

So there you have it: we are actually designed for long-distance running.  It's not just a sport we pick up for the hell of it.

 

The Worst Person in the World...and Ultrarunning

I know that at the blog Eschaton, blog owner Duncan Black runs a regular feature called "The Worst Person in the World."  Keith Olbermann used to do the same on his MSNBC show as well.

 

My list?  Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi rises to the top of the heap with this one (link here). 

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) postponed an execution originally scheduled to take place Tuesday night because it conflicted with a fundraiser for a member of his cabinet, The Tampa Bay Times reported.  

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) requested that the execution of Marshall Lee Gore, 50, be pushed back to avoid being held the same night as her re-election kickoff event at her South Tampa, Fla. home. Gore was convicted of killing two women in South Florida in 1988.

Although Bondi did apologize later, the Worst Person in the World label still sticks.  Just another example of elected (or high level appointed) officials being so far removed from "the people" that the rarefied air they breathe must somehow alter their consciences.

Oh, and the link to Ultrarunning?  I've harped on this theme before, but it bears repeating: I am convinced that we are kinder, gentler, more laid-back, whatever, compared with the rest of the world.  Now whether we gravitate to Ultrarunning because of those traits or the sport gradually instills those traits in us, I can't say.  It's just powerful anecdotal evidence.

Flower Beds and Ultrarunning

No politics today--I do have a gardening and landscaping hobby as well.

The bride and I are largely finished with a major new flower bed, approximately 120' long by 20' wide.  Here's a view of the last portion still needing to be mulched (all in all I used some 15 cubic yards):

 

 



Steps of the process:

• Sink landscape timbers at ground level to delineate edge with neighbor and to create mowing strip (on left above)
• Spray Roundup to kill the grass in place
• Build decorative rock wall (top center of photo)
• Dig holes and place bedding plants
• Snake soaker hoses around for dry times
• Mulch 4" deep
• Enjoy!

The connection to Ultrarunning?  After several days of labor I am pretty beat and sore from the unaccustomed physical activity.  That tells me I'm out of shape and need to get back on my BowFlex machine. 

Although my legs are in great shape, being toned all over will definitely help me run better.

UPDATE 20 Sep:

Oh, and one other tip that I forget to include: when you mulch, go deep. I use shredded bark that I get by the truckload, and I go at least 4" deep. The mistake many people make is to scrimp on the mulch, going only an inch or two deep...then wonder why they get weeds. 

 

Cats in Art: Common American Wild-Cat (Audubon)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. Currently I'm turning for a couple weeks to John James Audubon. 

Image credit The Philadelphia Print Shop, here, Common American Wild-Cat, John James Audubon.

Why is Audubon important?  Per Wikipedia:

John James Audubon (Jean-Jacques Audubon) (April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book entitled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed.

What many folks don't know is that Audubon also set out to depict all North American quadrupeds (primarily four-footed mammals). His three-volume The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, published in 1845, contained this illustration.

Although much more famous for his bird art, Audubon managed to do a couple of kitties as well.  The cat above (assumed to be what we call today the Bobcat) looks almost psychotic in its face, and the remainder of the animal seems to be covered with curious scripts and faces.  All in all, it's an odd painting.

I once had the great fortune on a trail run near Monterey, CA, of encountering a juvenile bobcat, and it was one of the most memorable wildlife experiences of my life: grace, power, stealth.  So for me, Audubon's print above is a pretty disquieting rendering of a bobcat.

 

Weird, Weirder, Weirdest...and Ultrarunning

In the world of endurance sports, I fully admit that runners are weird.  But bikers are weirder.  And swimmers are the weirdest of all.

Yet I have a grudging respect for the accomplishment early this week of Diana Nyad in swimming from Cuba to Florida.

This feat took some 53 hours.  My longest Ultrarunning effort (Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 Mile Run) took me 35 hours, and I was pretty much played out when I finished. 

Nyad was awake and swimming for an additional 18 hours.   Oh, and she's 64 years old.  These facts absolutely boggle my mind.  Her mantra? "Never, ever, give up."

Which is good advice for me right now.  See, my motivation levels for running, much less for committing to and training for a specific event, have been at near-record lows over the summer.

However...this morning's 5 mile run on my beloved Harshman Road route may have been a watershed event.  The temps were cool, the humidity low, the sky a perfect deep blue.  My mind wandered to possible Ultra events that I could yet enter this fall.  I fully admit that part of my thought process was triggered by Nyad's effort.

I felt full of the possible. 

Which is about the best feeling a person can have.

 

The Real Soution for the Sticky Syria Issue

Looks like we're going to war in Syria.

The Very Serious People will tell us in solemn tones how we have to send a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and how since there will be no American boots on the grounds it would not really be a war anyway.

But footwear aside, it would be a war, and we'd just be following through on our death threats, with no good outcome really expected other than saving face.

Before I get to my solution, better read this.  It's from The Onion, a satirical web site, but it tells you better than the conventional media everything you need to know about the state of current affairs with respect to the whole Syrian issue.  Go ahead and click over, I'll wait.

Done?  Well, President Obama seems caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, with no good options on the table.

But there is one option, in fact a very good one, so here's my advice to President Obama, in the form of the short address he should use to the world when he announces his course of action:

Pressident Bashar al-Assad is batshit crazy.  So crazy, in fact, that sending him any sort of military message would probably be futile.  It might make some of us feel better--you know, that whole eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth Old Testament stuff--but in point of fact any leader who would use weapons of mass destruction on his own people is already around the bend and immune to ordinary lesson-teaching.

Plus, no matter how well we'd target our weapons there would be more dead civilians.

So, we are not going to make a military response.  The hawks here in this country and around the world will get their panties all in a bunch, but what I've decided the United States will do instead is this. 

Our military strategists have figured out their recommended "proper response."  That is, just enough blown-up stuff to try to teach a lesson to al-Assad and for us to save face with the world, but not enough blown-up stuff to upset the balance in the ongoing Syrian civil war.

But rather than launch those munitions, we will instead take the $_____ billion that would have been expended on bombs and missiles and use it for humanitarian aid for the millions of Syrian civilians displaced or affected by this war.  We will fund doctors, nurses, medical supplies, food, safe drinking water, schools, and rebuild homes, villages, and infrastructure.  We invite our allies and others to join us in that effort.

That will send the correct message to al-Assad and the rest of the world, better than any missile could: that of beating our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks.

Cats in Art: Marcella (Kirchner)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

Image credit here.  Marcella, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1910, oil on canvas, 39" x 30", held by Brucke Museum, Berlin, Germany.

Zuffi tells us:

Marcella is huddled on a divan, in a solitude that is emphasized by the liquor bottles on the table; her wide eyes gaze into the distance..  Almost in the same pose, and on the same divan, is a white cat; but unlike the girl, the cat is sleeping soundly.  In the apparent similarity between the poses, Kirchner appears to want to stress their opposing attitudes: the pensive anxiety of Marcella, and the peaceful, almost philosophical abandon of the cat.

Me, I just know that cats like to be with you while pretending they are not actually with you.