Training Log Archive: barb

To Melrose starting 5:40 am. DD w/JJ. To work. Home in the afternoon.
Still a little under the weather, so took it kind of easy on the biking.
Returning from Melrose at 7:45, there was more rush hour traffic than I'd ever dealt with, but not too scary because they were stopped or moving very slowly. I passed hundreds of cars.

Read "The Golden Compass" yesterday, after seeing a blurb about how the Christian Right are disturbed by the movie.

C • ...and what did you think? 10

Very much enjoyed this movie last night: Antonia's Line (1)

Started the cinnamon rolls last night; mixed up the dough and put it in the fridge to rise overnight. Got up early to finish them up. Rode bike to Dunkin Donuts for a Box O Joe, then school for Isabel's class breakfast. Dave and I played an addition game with her.

Felt somewhat encouraged about orienteering in the school because (and I was not the first to bring up the topic of orienteering in any of these cases):
* Casey's dad thanked me in class for all the orienteering work I've done with the kids.
* I walked past a group of parents of soon-to-be-kindergarteners touring the school. After I passed, I heard the tour guide saying, that was Barb; she's a parent who has built curricula around orienteering bla bla bla...
* I went by Linda's grade 1-2 class to pick up compasses she'd borrowed. This week her student teacher did map activities: first they took our old map of the courtyard and figured out what had changed and updated it. Then they used the compasses in the playground to find a buried treasure. All without me! It's catching on!!
* I went past David's (former) 6th grade teacher Toby, and she asked whether I could make myself available if one of her student teachers chose to build a math unit around orienteering. It's catching on!!
* Isabel's teacher said she'd give me the reflections the kids wrote about orienteering.

So on the ride back to work I decided it's time to put materials together for the school teachers so that they could run any of the dozen or so exercises I've done at the school. Because maybe there's enough momentum that the teachers would use it now - and particularly it seems like a good source of projects for student teachers. I can provide maps and instructions and lists of what's needed and connections to the standards that are required teaching. I need a place to host this stuff. I thought about NEOC, but I don't know if there might be issues with any copyrighted material that I might have (like a picture pulled from the web in my presentations). I don't have my own web site; I wonder if we should get one. Don't know how to do that.

C • teaching materials 5

Trying to will my sore throat / cold to be done now. Felt pretty happy biking today, but probably due to that caffeine. Heart is still racing and feeling strained with not much activity.

Cold ride from the Aquarium, where the water taxi let us off, to home. The return trip from Logan wasn't nearly as satisfactory, because we had to wait about 45 minutes at the C terminal for the 66 bus to the boat dock. Looking at a map now, it seems it's about a mile walk, which would have been a lot faster. I guess Sunday morning the bus driver was taking it easy.

Jog to the market for breakfast supplies.

Group run at Volunteer Park in Seattle, with Eric S, Eric B, Terry, John, Dave. Followed by yummy Indian dinner at Ellie, Rob & Rosemary's house. Followed by me crashing on the couch and then a red-eye to Boston.

Whidbey Island hill

About Thanksgiving training, perhaps the less said the better.
A scrumptious dinner with friends; homemade music; some familiar old favorites like Dead songs and pumpkin pie, and some new experiences. Like the stuffing, laced with locally grown spices.

Work commute plus Hvd Sq round trip.
After work, Dave and I rode our bikes to the Aquarium, and took a water taxi to Logan, to fly to Seattle. It's the first time we got to the airport that way. Pretty nice when there's a lot of traffic, because it doesn't affect us at all.

Right knee hurts a bit. In the middle, under the kneecap.
David finished the Blue Hills Traverse T shirt drawing at the very last minute, in the airport waiting for the plane taking him & Isabel to their dad's for Tgiving. I think the design is quite nice.

C • Excellent! Who did he inher... 3

This morning I had a choice of going out to run or catching up on overdue work, and I chose the latter.

Tonight David gave a speech at the junior high Democracy Symposium.



David turned in his report on the Differential Grasshopper today. Here's the drawing he did:

C • WT... 7

Had a great moment this evening where I was really wanted. David was upset and needed comforting, and Isabel was struggling with her homework and wanted help, and Dave was holding the phone out to me because my ex wanted to talk to me.

C • Wanted 6

Home to Quincy. Cold.

This barely counts as orienteering. After doing a couple controls from an old Traverse course, Dave and I just ran trails.

Biking between Quincy Center and the Blue Hills

So my computation for the O marathon goes like this: 75% of 46km (28.6mi) actual distance on trails at 12 min/mile + 25% of 42.2 km crow-flies distance orienteering at 15 min/km = 257 + 158 = 415 min = 7 hours. I'll have 9 hours, so the remaining 2 hours allow me to orienteer slower and do some walking. Still would rather start at 5...

C • 5 AM start 3

bridge ckt

On the topic of spelling:

I always spelled it "praying mantis." Then we found our mantis and in surfing the web I saw it referred to a couple places as "preying mantis" and I thought I even read something about how that was really its correct name. And this was at a stage where we were marveling about how EVIL and SCARY and predatory and unmerciful this bug is. So "Preying" really seemed to fit, and religious behavior seemed to have nothing to do with it.

But today I did a little more surfing, and it does appear that praying is correct and preying just isn't. I did learn a cool word, from Wikipedia: eggcorn.

C • I think there have been man... 2

C • eggcorn 2

Busy day, no training.
Took the kids to Quincy for an all-day (first of three!) workshop on what it means to be human, or, living powerfully, or, self-expression, or something like that. Taking them there and picking them up used 4 hours of my day. Then the evening was packed with homework from the workshop (list complaints you have, and how having those complaints benefits and costs you), and school (grasshopper report - did you know that grasshoppers mate for 20-24 hours??). Some excitement with the preying mantis as well: Dave brought her some big crickets and she caught one and then immediately another, so she was chowing down on two at once, prolonging the agony for both of them.



Click on this one for closeup to see mouth parts in action:






Recommended Site of the Day: http://whatsthatbug.com

C • Dragonfly Ripple 2

to work, to Long Wharf, to home. Biking in Boston: yikes! (in the rain!)

Biked in the dark rush hour rain to Hammond Pond, but got there 18 min late and I guess everyone was out in the woods already, which is good - no weather to be hanging around waiting in. Hope Brendan had a great birthday.

Kind of prickly on the way back, quick to get annoyed at drivers. Cried a little; feeling bad about my parenting. It's hard work.

The preying mantis Waldo laid a bunch of eggs! In an egg case up high in the cage, hanging from the screen on top. She looks thinner and is suddenly more active. Her ovipositor still has remnants of white egg froth. I guess she can't really reach it to clean it off.

I'm on a ROLL! I ran TWICE in TWO DAYS! Watch OUT! Here I COME!

After running in the morning, home from Radcliffe, where I'd left the bike yesterday. To work, home from work.

Evening. 4 min to corner stores for cookie ingredients; 16 min to work and back. Today was a lego club meeting; we started at school and the kids toured the building to learn about its energy consumption. Came home and did homework, and reviewed our tournament performance.

bridge loop. lower back twinge-y. Stopped to stretch a few times.

stretching

home to work, work to school

Pretty low key, but something. Took David to Reid's house and then walked with Isabel to work, with some subway in the middle.

I'm having trouble working in this exercising I'm supposed to be doing now. The homework support and other such things are feeling all-consuming...

early morning ride to the Fells - ice rink parking lot.

Walked around Boojum with Liz McNerney and Kelty.

Event: Venice Street O
 

Got email from my friend Rich who's in Venice; he saw the orienteers doing the Venice race today - sigh - I *really* want to do that some year!!! (Preferably a Biennale year.)

OK, no exercise today... I was at the lego robotics tournament most of the day and just vegged out watching Blue Planet and a kid movie afterward.

Here's a link to a video of one of the rounds in the tournament.

The kids did a great job, and over the course of the day honed in on a set of missions they could accomplish fairly readily, plus one tricky one that is not shown in this video.

The ref going over the final scoring for one of the rounds, with Harriet and Amisi:


Fixing the robot's program:


The other teams had matching outfits and other accoutrements; we were just our scruffy Cambridge selves...


The place was packed with 100s of people. This picture doesn't really do justice to the chaos and noise of the day:


And on an unrelated topic, here's our preying mantis, "Waldo", enjoying some freshly killed cricket:

C • Okay 2

Electric Shadows (1)
I *sobbed*.

To work :-)

Tucson. Let's all go to Tucson for the week leading up to the A meet. We can play in the environs.

C • That 3

school, work, home

to school, work, home.

We're going to a tournament on Saturday in Leominster.

Today I asked Dave to drive the car to near school so that when I go to pick up David this afternoon I *have* to run, to get there. (He just sent me the URL to find where he parked it.) And I've arranged to go swimming with Isabel and Amisi after that; I even have prescription goggles and a new swimsuit. So hopefully I'll be so hemmed in by these commitments that I can't help but exercise.

I've been spending a lot of time lately helping (and fighting) David about his homework, and figuring out how he works well and how he doesn't and conspiring with other people about how to get him to some new level of competency and comfort and above all happiness about schoolwork. One strategy is to introduce him to upcoming subjects ahead of time, so that he already has some familiarity with them when they show up in school. This morning we talked about autotrophs and heterotrophs and abiota. And then I read him an introduction to the Patriot Act, which they'll be talking about in school today. He's definitely learning stuff I didn't already know...

David is writing a report on grasshoppers for science. I surfed a bit about grasshoppers at Amazon and ended up buying what promises to be a very nice little read: "Grasshopper Dreaming: Reflections on Killing and Loving" by Jeffrey Lockwood. I read the first few pages to the kids over supper last night; the author describes his first summer observing and videotaping grasshoppers when he was studying at Laramie. He found that most of the time, the grasshoppers were doing - nothing! And in the book this is a profound observation, not a trivial one.

I've noticed that after reading about Peter's recent speedy 5k, I've become curious about how quickly I could run a 5k, and whether I could improve whatever that time is in the next year. Have begun daydreaming about going to the MIT track and checking this out. (Hey, daydreaming is progress!) I assume 3 miles is close enough to 5k; not sure how they mark it on the .25-mile track. My guess is that I am currently able to do 3 miles in 30 minutes. Oh, 5k is 3 miles plus 188 yards.

My neighbor (and one-time rogaine partner!) Brad just ran the NYC marathon. I think it was his first marathon. He says he felt pretty bad by the end, and that maybe if he had run his first miles more slowly he would have felt better in the last few miles. My theory is that I could do a marathon in 5:12:00, and maybe that's another thing to check out at some point.

C • Marathon Time 18

Yay! I went swimming! And joined the Y for a month. I tried out my new prescription goggles and it is SO COOL to see under water! There's a lot of suction on my eyes - maybe I need to loosen the straps. When I took off the goggles a bunch of muscles around my eyes twitched for a few minutes. Which was funny, and hopefully not a bad thing. I suck at the breathing part of swimming - and everything else, but it seems the breathing is something I should figure out first.

Early morning tennis with David.

Work. Kendall Square for lunch at the Black Sheep with Public Library of Science people. Work. Home.

Stretching, jogging

I am lucky and honored to have the opportunity to take a trip to Estonia in September 2008 for the WRC with my most excellent partner.
I want to make sure I'm ready for it. Yesterday was the official start of my training, with a long bike ride. My plan is to start by just getting some exercise every day, and gradually work in the other things, like core strength and food/drink and all that.
Today I went for a long run, that was longer than expected because I realized part way into it that the time had changed and so the store I was heading for would not be open until more than an hour later. So I went all the way to the Science museum bridge.

On the run I thought about the two parts of training: physical and mental. Mental training for me is encapsulated by "Rogaine Mind", which I think of as effectiveness through detachment.

C • Who 6

To Melrose.
This was surprisingly hard. I suppose I'm out of shape. I think I've been able to go fairly comfortably in gear 3-4 in the past, on this route. But it felt hard today.

And some jogging, with Gretchen. She sings and plays banjo for my favorite band and told me that one of the people at that party last week was the girl who got arrested for wearing LED art at Logan airport recently. Gretchen is planning a month-long trip to Spain with her kids next summer.

Home from Gretchen's

Arlington

school, work.

Practice with Isabel's team