A foolish consistency

My Fastest Marathon Yet

This morning I ran the 2006 Seafair Marathon here in Bellevue, finishing with a unofficial time of around 4:11.  That's a bit faster than the 4:17 result last year, and my fastest marathon yet.  I'm happy with the result, and although I didn't finish nearly as strong as I did in April at Ironman Arizona, I don't think I'm injured (avoid injury is goal #1).  Stiff and sore, and it was disappointing I had to drop my 2nd goal (finish in less than 4 hours) at mile 24 when it became apparent I was probably going to miss 4 hours by a minute and injure my quads.  And I need those next weekend. So I walked a good part of mile 24 and mile 25.

This year the course was a easier with fewer hills, but I wasn't as well trained. In fact, I sort of did this marathon cold - most of my training has been cycling with Tony to prep for STP next week, and my running has been of the "once or twice a week, 5 miles on a weekday, 10 or 14 miles on the weekend" variety. I didn't put together a training plan and follow it.  It's obvious that would have enabled me to easily beat 4 hours.  Well, maybe on the next marathon. I'm thinking the Portland Marathon, which is in the fall on a fairly flat course.

Update: I wrote an analysis of my heart rate and pace data here.   And I did break 4 hours in the Portland Marathon.

Bellevue's Family 4th

My wife and two of my daughters spent the evening at Bellevue's Downtown Park for the Bellevue Family 4th. Lea didn't go with us since she's returning from her trip to Europe with the Girl Scouts. 

We go to the Bellevue fireworks show just about every year, because it's a good show, a nice park, and traffic is bearable.  Just about everything you'd want in a 4th of July fireworks show.

We got there about 7:30, apparently right after a heavy rain shower had passed. Uh-oh!  No rain for weeks, and here it is raining on the 4th!  It rained again as we walked in from our parking spot at the lot near California Pizza Kitchen, so we took shelter under some trees for a few minutes.  It stopped soon enough, so we ventured out and found a great spot to settle in.  We brought books and iPods to keep us busy, and we chatted and people-watched for a while, read, etc.  A pleasant way to spend a summer evening.

The show start a little after 10.  They launch from the top of the Bellevue Square west parking garage, and we had a good view.  It was a great show, IIRC better and longer than last year, maybe 20 minutes or a little longer.  And we were back home just a little after 11.

Ares I and Ares V

NASA finally woke up to the obvious fact that it's damn difficult and expensive (not to mention dangerous) to launch megaton gliders to space and fly them back, just to get 55,000 pounds into low Earth orbit. 

The new approach seems to be "let's just go back to capsules and parachutes, and while we're at it, lets just make our rockets damn big and be done with it.  And we'll start with tried-and-true technology, rather than try to invent something new, nifty, and ever more expensive."  Check out the Ares I crew launch vehicle and Ares V heavy lift vehicle, and follow the PDF links for more information.

I'm thrilled that they're building these. I'm a huge supporter of space flight.  It's just that the Space Transportation System (aka Shuttle) has been an incredible failure in the most important metric: lower the cost per pound into orbit.  There has never been a more expensive way to put a pound of stuff into orbit than fly it on the Shuttle.  That's been obvious from the start, and the Challenger and Columbia disasters certainly didn't lower costs.

Maybe manned space flight won't continue to be the waste of money and time it's been for the last 15 years. Manned flight has been too long without real purpose, other than the circular logic of "we need to fly people into orbit to study how people live and work in orbit".  The return-to-the-moon plan may be an invention of President Bush (the "vision thing", right?) but at least it's a purpose.

For more information, check out the Wikipedia Space Shuttle Program article.  Especially note the section on design limitations and the section on costs.