My parents appear to be all ready for the 4th of July celebration complete with the Marine Corp flag. There is a marine "in da house."
Above is another picture of said Marine's organic garden. Apparently they try to grow whatever they want??? I've never seen a plant like the one above. I would imagine it is very popular amongst the members of the military.
And now for my vacation science lesson. For you to be reading this, about a trillion floating atoms have assembled in a precise and integrated way to become "you." It is an assembly so complicated and precise that we can only hope that these trillion floating atoms agree to stay assembled in a somewhat similar fashion. Although to move faster in triathlon, we actually have to guide a few billion atoms here or there to add some mitochondria, muscle mass, an expanded vascular system and some better abdominal muscles so we could look better for our race photos.
I'm not quite sure how or why these atoms have assembled in such a manner. Being "us" is a thankless job with very little appreciation thrown the atoms way. In a nutshell, they do their job for zero glory or gratitude. For all of their attention to their precise roles, they don't really care about our USAT rankings. I'm not even sure they know that we ride carbon? What makes it all the more interesting is that the atoms that compose us (in our entirety), not a single one of them is actually alive. They are just a bunch of protons, electrons and neutrons bound together and temporarily agree to staying intact.
Now the interesting thing about our atoms is that they eventually agree to part ways and go on to other projects after a period of time. Atoms come together to form triathletes for about the same amount of time they come together to form ice-skaters, hot dog vendors, lawyers and Polish endurance junkie bloggers; approximately 650,000 hours (or about 75 years although for the record I'm living to at least 100). That's on average. After that, they move on to other contract assignments. I'm not even sure who gives the orders or why they decide to split and move on to other projects. But all things come to an end, even the Jackson 5 and Milli Vanilli. We may think we become a pile of dust, but in reality, the atoms just move on to form other things, maybe even Slowtwitch readers or a piece of carbon.
It's a very amazing process and an extraordinary chain of events that allows a trillion atoms that are not alive themselves to come together and become something that is very alive and real that is capable of screwing up their nutrition on race day or doing too much intensity within a base building period. I'm not sure how my atoms came together to form such a slow 5k runner but I wish they would figure out how to travel 140.6 miles a whole lot faster. Sheesh!
What A Difference 30 Degrees Makes
This morning I went out for a 5 mile run. It was 62 degrees when I walked outside in Niagara Falls, New York (right on the Canadian border). I've had about 4 weeks in a row of running 90+ degree temperatures so a drop of 30 degrees felt wonderful, almost amazing.
What was interesting is the effect of running faster than I have been in the lower temperatures. My body no longer has to allocate blood flow to my body's cooling system. All the blood flow can go straight to the legs and the aerobic system. I ran 5 miles at an average pace of 7:59's with an average heart rate of 141 bpm. Holy smokes I was pleased. However, running at 141 heart rate in 90+ degree heat results in a dramatically different running pace than running at 141 heart rate in 60 degree heat. As a result, my legs were tired from running so much faster. It was muscular fatigue that started catching up with me.
It highlighted how important it is for me to find ways to run in cooler temperatures over the next few summer months. That means either running earlier, or later (when it is dark) or inside on a treadmill. But if I continued to run all summer slogging away in the wicked heat, I'd end up just training myself to run slower than I should be running because my heart rate would cap out not because of aerobic limitations, but because of cooling system limitations.
I also wore a brand new pair of Asics Kayano 15's for the run and the left foot did wonderful in the new shoes. No pain while running and just a little tightness later in the day. But a huge improvement just being back in my normal running shoes (thank goodness).
By the numbers;
- 183.2 - today's weight (January 1, 2009 weight was 184.2) Goal weight for 10/25/09 is 165
- 115 - Days until the Marine Corp Marathon
- 171 - Total days trained in 2009
- 24 - Missed days of running in 2009
- 5.00 - miles run today
- 5.00 - miles on current pair of shoes
- 960.25 - Miles run in 2009
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