Training Log Archive: barb

Backpack is still heavy. Brought a change of shirt this time. Enjoyed the plenary talk this morning: Daphne Koller - love her work. Inferring gene networks and things. Last night my old professor Tommy Poggio spoke. From a distance he looks the same as he did 20 years ago. Not as interesting a talk as Daphne's.

stockholm. lots of people spoke to me. only got unnerved near the end, and forgot to check control code, cost me. fun.
Update: Dude! I totally did not come in last! splits
13th out of 30 people on the D45/H75 (! 30 year gender diff), and I was 3rd in the finish chute. :-) Finish chute: some fast guy was right behind me so I ran.
The terrain is pretty complex. Lots of extra little tiny trails in the woods. Favorite part was running on a trail through the marsh, which was mostly dryish and lovely to run on.
Relied a lot on bearing + pace count. This felt like a really good fall-back given the general discombobulation of dealing with being in, well, Sweden, and suddenly starting to orienteer with all these other people crashing around and some even talking to me. At the first control a lady wanted to look at my map so I let her. I said "I don't speak Swedish" a lot, but that didn't help too much because they'd just switch to English.

C • Sweden 5

To conf center from apartment. Carried backpack with heavy laptop etc. Wished I'd brought a shirt to change into as my shirt was soaking by the time I arrived.

As a story, it's an inspirational tale of improbable successes against heavy odds:

• A young man abandons his fencing career. He seems to lack the talent to make it to the top. But a few years later, through steely determination and a revolutionary approach to the sport, he becomes a World Champion and Olympic gold medalist.


• An American college fencing team has languished for years in fencing obscurity. Applying this new approach, it reaches the heights of American fencing success.


• A boy is imprisoned in a World War II Japanese internment camp in the Philippines. He never sets eyes on fencing until his US Army stint in Korea. This is the coach who develops the system which brings these fencers to their improbable success.


• The new system overturns centuries of classical fencing theory and brings fencing back toward its roots as a combat art.


• In short, this book tells how epee fencing was transformed from its classical basis to a new paradigm.

The New Paradigm in action - Johan Harmenberg, facing us, has closed the distance and is about to score despite Riboud's attempt to block Harmenberg's arm with his guard.


Sweden, population 8,000,000 produced 3 Gold Medallists in the 1980 Olympics. From Left, Pär Arvidsson - Men's 100 meter Butterfly. Bengt Baron - Men's 100 meter Backstroke, JH.


JH vs. Popa: the last single hit in JH's last win in the 1980 Olympics. JH has maneuvered Popa so most of his body weight is on his front foot as he tries to bind JH's non-existent blade with Popa's Area of Excellence in second. Popa is now trying to retreat but it is a bit difficult for him. JH extends his arm with an advance and hits. Relative speed is 3+, so Popa cannot parry or retreat. JH's high guard is intended to block any high stop thrusts (not needed here).


JH with his Gold Medal, 1980 Olympic Games

The last bout of the 1980 Olympics was between Ernö Kolczonay and Rolf Edling. If Edling won, there would be a barrage between him and me. If he lost but scored more than one hit, he would take silver. If he lost 5 - 1 or 5 - 0, he would come fourth. I had difficulty watching the bout: I didn't want a barrage! I found a loudspeaker in the dressing room that was connected to the referee's microphone and when I heard him say "gauche" (left) five times, I knew that I was the Olympic champion. The feeling was fantastic. I ran back to the stadium as fast as I could to meet the cheering crowd. The ceremony was performed immediately afterwards and I remember, when I heard my name called, my whole body suddenly felt extremely light and I flew up on the podium. I felt an enormous release of the pressure that had built up before the Olympics, my own expectations and those of others. It was like a giant had pushed down on my shoulders for the two long years of my personal Olympic campaign. The target was winning the Olympics even if I had a bad day. I had a bad day, but I won anyway. All that pressure was suddenly released and I flew to the podium. The feeling of happiness was replaced with mere relief.

But while on the podium, I felt nothing, no happiness, nothing. A question made its uninvited appearance: "What do I do now?" Some people seem so happy when they win that they try to capture the moment for as long as possible. I just wanted to go home. I slept more or less continuously for a month before I started to resemble something like a human being again. Suddenly, I felt tired and old.

I returned to medical school, but everything was grey. It felt as if life did not have a purpose anymore. Compared with my Olympic campaign, going to medical school was no challenge. There were no winners and no losers. There was no challenge. I realized that concentrating on the Olympics the way I had was the ultimate ego trip. For two years I had only thought about myself. Me, me, me. Compared with this, most other things in life were naturally colorless. I had devoted myself to it 100%. I trained, ate, slept and rested, but everything was focused on winning the Olympics. It had been my only purpose in life. I was obsessed.

Excerpts are from Epee 2.0 by Johan Harmenberg, with contributions from my friend Geoff Pingree who fenced with Johan at MIT. It is an excellent story, and I recommend it highly. (You can rest easy; he eventually feels better when he falls in love with the woman who became his wife.)

C • coach 2

Had dinner at the Nobel museum with the program committee. Nice. Talked to Webb Miller about the farm he and his wife own (his wife grows day lilies and they rent the rest to a farmer who grows corn, wheat, soy). Also about diversity within species; he told me that humans are far less diverse than are species with fewer individuals left, like chimps, and golden hamsters (which all descend from a single pregnant hamster found in the early 1900s). Talked to Suzy who does 3-day 60-mile walks to raise money for breast cancer ($2300 each, minimum). Brief interaction with that admittedly attractive and endearingly self-absorbed clark kent lookalike character, Gene Meyers, whose career I've been following for years from the background, who seemed to make a point of talking about his girlfriend to the next guy. Then there was Trey Ideker who I'm considering pushing on the question of orienteering. Suzy is also a candidate O sucker. Though she wants to go with me on a course. Ha. And the fine Larry Hunter, such a good guy. Also Burkhard Rost who introduced me to Igor from Toronto; Igor had some good ideas for doing lectures for children in Boston next summer, and also something else, what was it... Anyway, Igor predicts protein-protein interactions and maybe he could predict some for us as part of his next grant. Anna Tramontano was there, and Rick Lathrop who seems to have joined the ISCB board again, inbred as that group is it's not surprising, they even asked me to run for Prez again, and Michal Linial, and of course Steven Leard and BJ Morrison McKay. Had a couple glasses of wine and as I walked home from the subway alone along the promenade I felt a sudden strong longing but settled into my AP logging and soon to bed...

Favorite word is, still, snitslat.

Hope to orienteer tomorrow evening.

Am watching the light fade from the sky; still some orange from the sunset, 11 pm.

Ah, have just arranged meeting with JH for Wednesday lunch.

OK, so JH sent me a note saying that in preparation for meeting him I can watch this and this. Oh, and did you notice that car falling off a cliff sign that I also captured a couple days ago? Talk about foreshadowing!!!!

From apartment to conference center. Was a little hesitant about the route because it goes through what is clearly marked as an industrial area of the city, but it was actually perfectly pleasant. Not at all like the bike ride to Logan. Also took a path through a cemetery.

I shopped for food and filled my backpack. They don't feed us breakfast or lunch, so I'll bring some grain/veggie thing to "work" in a tupperware.

Later I went to the opening reception at city hall. We ate in the same room that the Nobel banquet is held, and then went upstairs to ogle at the golden room, where the Nobel dance is held. Then I took the subway home.

Route.

This pace will work for going 100 km in 20 hours.

Old Town, Stockholm





The winners and second-place finishers had times separated by only 6 seconds. Both these teams were from Estonia.






The sun set at 10:10 pm, just as we finished control retrieval.

Made it to Amsterdam, en route to Stockholm, where, in a coals-to-Newcastle move, I'll be directing an orienteering meet.

The whole Tucson meet directing thing has paid off handsomely, as I will be met at the Stockholm airport by Leif Lundquist who is my Tucson course-setter. I get to spend a day with him and Margot at their home (fish is promised for dinner!) and tomorrow he and I will hang controls for the course in Old Town he designed for my conference attendees.

In Stockholm I'll be attending the annual conference where I always get into a depressive funk of feeling inadequate and a bit lonely. I will be moderating a couple of sessions and going to meetings. I've signed on to the organizing committee of next year's conference, which will be in Boston. I'm looking forward to hearing about people's research and seeing some friends. I rented a small apartment for the week - on a 6th floor so I'll get some exercise at last.

I'm looking forward to the long days, so I can get home after the evening meetings in the light.

Favorite word of the day: snitslat. ("flagged")

6/30-7/2
Subway #17 toward Skarpnack. It's in Bjorkhagen.
Markuskyrkan, 12149 Stockholm, Sweden
Walk 400 m snitslat.
Registration starts at 17.00. Starts 17.30-19.30.

Staying with the Lundquists in their lovely home near Stockholm. Dinner was haddock, new potatoes, young peas. And Swedish flatbread. I took this photo for Peg Davis who apparently hates the stuff.



Went for a walk after dinner with Leif around the island, which he's mapped.





Leif and his brother and friends built the house over 5 summers. It's spacious and beautiful and surrounded by tall pine trees. It overlooks a Baltic bay. Wild strawberries grow on the hillside and this morning a doe and her fawn wandered by.

C • Skarpö 12

Tired.
Falling further and further behind.
Heading to Stockholm on Thursday.
Kids leave for the summer on Friday.
Trying to find a renter for the apartment - we've shown it to half a dozen people and have another half dozen lined up. Sadly, I'm leaving town for a critical week... Still hoping K & G will come and live there...

C • The trend goes international! 2

Catching up on some photos.

Just prior to David's 45-minute review panel presentation:


After the ceremony:


At Lonesome Lake (AMC hut):


Heading out to the harbor islands:


Biodiversity invertebrate survey:






And a little orienteering:

I am considering running a 100k in July. I mean, walking. A requirement to enter the race is that you've volunteered 8 hours at a race or the equivalent. Here is the documentation I got for it, which, looking back on it, sounds like I had a lot of fun with a bunch of kids.

My name is Linda Fobes. I am a classroom teacher at the Graham and Parks School in Cambridge, MA.

Barb Bryant has volunteered in my first and second grade classroom this year for a minimum of 20 hours. She began in the fall of 2008 when she came into my classroom and taught the students orienteering. She provided all materials for instruction and designed a cummulative all day activity of orienteering, in conjunction with the orienteering work she was doing with the 7th and 8th graders. She facilitated this all day activity with almost 80 students and 20 adults.

Barb returned to my classroom this spring to again do a lesson on orienteering and then designing orienteering activities on a harbor island. She set up the controls on the island, went over the maps (which she made) with the students and chaperones and met with the groups as they returned to homebase.

Barb also provided the students with maps from the school to the public transportation. She then provided us with the public transportation maps so that the students could find the stops where we were to transfer or get off. Then we had maps to the harbor island ferry. Once on the boat, Barb provided us with charts so that the students could follow the buoys to the island. It was awesome!

Barb has been an amazing volunteer in my classroom, as well as in our school. Her work with students has been invaluable. My students have used their orienteering skills in other content areas. It is wonderful to hear them use the terminology Barb has taught them, e.g. legend, compass, orient map, north, south, east, west, etc...

Early morning outing before people were up.

Then with everyone, back down the mountain. Some running.

At least 10 minutes fast, then more leisurely. Up the hill to Lonesome Lake hut with Dave and 10 kids, celebrating Izzy's upcoming July birthday. (She'll be in Erie on her birthday so this was to celebrate with her Cambridge friends.)

At dinner the hut kroo brought out a birthday cake, with lit candles (not normally allowed in the huts) and two people with fire extinguishers at the ready. They're a laugh riot, those AMC hut kroos.

To school for orienteering field trip.

O field trip with 6th grade class. Some fine navigators. Harriet in particular stood out in my group; Arun and Joey were pretty good too. David (who graduated from 8th grade on Tuesday) came along as a chaperone; he said Zedal picked it up well. Isabel made sure everyone in her group got a chance to navigate.

Setting controls; work and back a couple times; picked up CSA share.

Yesterday we picked up our first fish share, a big fish. We filleted it, messily, and Dave made a fine fish stir fry with black bean sauce. We boiled the carcass and poured the water on the tomato plants. We are wondering whether we should somehow prepare the fertilizer without cooking the fish, and how.

100-mile training schedule
43-mile race, 8th August
Ramsay's Round

USA ( Washington - WA ) | 100 miles | Mountain | 32 Hour Time Limit | Single Stage | end of August | Approx Runners: 110
Official Cascade Crest 100 Mile Endurance Run Website
Closed, but worth thinking about for next year.

USA ( New York - NY ) | 100 km / 50 km | Trail | 14.5 Hour Time Limit | Single Stage | Sun 30 August | Approx Runners: 150
Official Green Lakes Endurance Runs Website ***

Mt Hood Pacific Crest Trail Ultramarathon ( PCT Scott McQueeney Memorial Run )
USA ( Oregon - OR ) | 50 miles | Trail | Single Stage | Sat 25 July | Approx. Runners: 120
Official Mt Hood Pacific Crest Trail Ultramarathon ( PCT Scott McQueeney Memorial Run ) Website Trail looks real nice. Registration is closed; can contact them.

Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Race
USA ( Vermont - VT ) | 100 miles | Mountain | 30 Hour Time Limit | Single Stage | July | Approx Runners: 270 | Qualification & Volunteer Service
Official Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Race Website

Couple of sprints

Scientific advisory board meeting at work - lots of big-name scientists critiquing.

Weirdest science article I've seen this week: Lee at al, "Fabricating genetically engineered high-power lithium-ion batteries using multiple virus genes"

Best science review article I've read this week: Stratton, Campbell & Futreal, "The cancer genome," Nature 458:719, 2009.

Fave mammalian observational study of the week

Death to potatoes!

C • Why? 3

To school for interviews, with the kids, of teachers who are retiring. Also dentist appointments for the kids. Then back to work.

John Lee will be visiting us for the next week, and I think we're going to talk about whether/how to get serious in training for WRC 2010.

I'm arranging a couple of orienteering field trips at school for the next couple of weeks. 1st, 2nd, 6th grades.

Things Dad remembers about being in China in spring 1989:

Being a part of an exciting and world-altering movement, alternately being hopeful and despairing about its success.
Students sharing their confidences with us.
Going with crowd of students and colleagues out the back way of the University when the front gates were locked to join the demonstrators on the streets of Beipei, the adjacent town.
Watching the campus being taken over by students sympathetic with those in Beijing.
Watching on TV in our apartment Zhou Ziyang's tearful sympathetic appearance among the students on the Square knowing he'd probably be arrested (he's just spoken from beyond the grave in a book smuggled out of China he managed to get on tape secretly while under house arrest); watching Wuer Kaishi and his colleagues confront and rebuke Li Peng and his minions (Wuer Kaishi's just been refused entry into his homeland from Taiwan).
Welcoming you from Beijing and getting your eye-witness take on events.
Reluctantly leaving China in its hour of greatest need.

Isabel plays right wing. She's great at bringing the ball up the field and crossing it into the center in front of the goal. She works really well with Katie, who plays center forward.

Blue Hills score-O. Had no watch (David took it). So, late. Very bad orienteering at first. Pulled it together. But then got tired. Some running.

David did score-O. Izzy did yellow - and found it easy. We brought Cici, who is staying with us.

I did not get it together to invite anyone else.

Radio-O was also happening - saw the CSU folks there. Would have loved to have done that, maybe another year.

The kids are fighting a lot.

Takeout run

OMG I actually went running.

This morning one of my marigolds had been cut right through the stem and was lying, so sad, on its side. I looked closer and saw a big fat caterpillar like worm (a cutworm?) with its mouth right near the cut. I looked closer and saw it was stretched out dead, in rigor mortis. Perhaps what they say about marigolds protecting tomato plants is true! Then I fed the dead grub to Raspberry. Then I worried that she'd get sick from it. Then I figured it was unlikely since chickens can supposedly eat all sorts of things. ...[google]... Oh, humans can eat marigolds. Chickens can too.

This afternoon a couple women came over and filmed the chickens and the kids and the actress playing the lead role in a made-for-cable movie that they're making. She loses her job, walks past a yard with some chickens, asks the kids questions about their chickens, and decides she's going to raise chickens for eggs.

Jamie & Nate came over too. Jamie brought this cool device for figuring out how much sun a given location gets at different times of the year.



(Click the photo below for bigger picture)



You level it with a bubble level in the center. There is a compass to line it up to magnetic north. It works in a narrow range of latitudes. You can see in the reflective curved plastic top the reflection of what is around you, and in particular where the device can see open sky. There are markings for different times of the day at different parts of the year. From just this photo, you can figure out the whole sun situation for the whole year. Jamie is hopefully going to install solar hot water for us, on our roof.

A few garden shots:

Rooftop container


Second rooftop container, planted more recently


How we get up to the roof garden


Main garden


Kale


Lettuces in the foreground, peas in the background

C • be careful! 2

We watched "Good Night and Good Luck" last night. (Why is it in black and white? the kids asked.) We cheered when Senator Symington was mentioned. (He's the great-grandfather of Harriet whose room I stayed in a few days ago.)

To school to meet with Linnaea about orienteering next year with her class.

A second trip to school to interview some kids for a little end of year teacher retirement project.

school, work...

Through Harvard Square with swarms of graduates. Brought a lump to my throat. And Chu is speaking - science is "in" again...

It's the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I was at Tiananmen Square about a week before the massacre happened. I was visiting Tsinghua University with a professor friend; I think we both gave talks. Students took us on bikes through the streets of Beijing to the Square, and vouched for us so we could go into the Square controlled by students. It was enormous and brimming with people, like this:


(source)

I remember crowds and the city buses and groups with flags, maybe some medical units, making their way through all the people.

It was exciting to read about developments in the days before we left the US to come to China - so much hope for change, and people finding their voices.

We left Beijing and traveled to Kunming where Mom and Dad were teaching English. We were on a trip with them to Dali June 3rd, returning June 4th on a bus. As we drove, there was a lot of chatter between the bus driver and the people in the villages we passed. Everyone seemed grouped around TVs. We slowly figured out that something bad had happened.

Back at the school, classes quickly came to a halt. We learned more about what was going on from Voice of America radio. There was some anti-foreigner sentiment. Soldiers marched in the streets. TV showed, nonstop, images of burned buses and charred bodies and talked of insurgents having to be put down (that would be the students but they were not spoken of as students). After a week or so of waiting in limbo, the foreign teachers arranged passage out of China, and so Mom and Dad left with us. Dad in particular felt bad about cutting and running this way - but classes were not being held and the others wanted to leave. No one knew what was going to happen next. Another cultural revolution of sorts? Nothing? Were we in danger? Everything seemed poised, waiting. I passed some of the time helping graduate student Hans measure the plants he was growing on a rooftop for some plant biology experiment.

Mom and Dad said goodbye to their favorite students and the Chinese faculty friends they'd made, and we escaped via Hong Kong and Hawaii.

I had sent postcards to a few friends from Beijing: "Hi! Just went to Tiananmen Square, and it was AMAZING! Wish you were here!" They all got the postcards just after the massacre, and were a little worried...

C • Thanks... 2

School, work, home, work, home

So while I was off in DC, the rest of the family went to Nobscot for the local O meet. David went out on orange but could not find the first control, and spent about an hour on it. It's his 3rd orange course; he finished the first no problem, and got about half of the controls on the 2nd. So he's going rapidly downhill. I guess the trails were confusing near the start.

The lady from whom we purchased our organic veggies in Phoenix, conviently located near the airport:


On a hike in AZ


Sunrise in Acadia


Isabel climbing in Acadia


David


Some of the people Nancy & J-J could have hung out with in Acadia if only we'd known they were a few dozen meters away...


And more...

C • And here's one of several t... 1

Today's photo essay: "Portrait of Harriet('s room)"
(Where I stayed last night. Harriet is in 6th grade.)

Her art









Her room is dominated by the big wrestling mat on the floor



Wrestling medals



Portrait of Harriet the wrestler



A bunch of photos in which her face has been photoshopped onto other bodies, gag gift from some bat mitzvah



Boy pix over the bed



Family photos



Family tree



Photo of her dad (the little boy), her grandfather and her great-grandfather, I think at a baseball game.



Herself, with brother

Home from airport on a fine Monday evening.

When I set out at 7pm, the sun was four fingers above the horizon, enough to get me home. I had a slight navigational hiccup, turning left too early into some rental car return areas instead of into the later one. In East Boston I rode past "My Pueblito", a cute little restaurant that is open during road construction. In Chelsea there was a roadside fruit and vegetable stand set up amidst all the produce warehouses and trucks. I slowed but did not stop. Next to the junkyard, and across from the power plant, a bunch of boys were playing soccer. Near the river I saw several families of geese - lots of young ones.