tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83523322024-03-07T22:18:33.019-05:00The Martian Time-SlipThoughts about life on Earth, as viewed from a Very Great DistanceBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.comBlogger529125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-77775867558825529592012-10-01T00:03:00.001-04:002012-10-01T00:03:48.143-04:00Boston Marathon Race Report, Part 2!
Wow, I really left "everyone" hanging on my Boston Marathon race! Sorry...
I've just finished a great cool, sunny, fall run with (well, near) some friends and this blog came up on the mental checklist. I'll try to put up a few posts about some notable events, naturally including the conclusion of my Boston Marathon report.
OK, so I slightly mistimed my pre-race procedures and ended up missing Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-88947579603587780982011-05-06T09:48:00.199-04:002012-10-01T00:06:13.653-04:00Boston Marathon Race Report, Part 1
I'll have my race photos from the 2011 Boston Marathon soon, so maybe this is a good time to dip back into Blogger, which seems to have changed a lot, and summarize my trip.
Jan and I drove down to Boston on Saturday May 16th, arriving around dinner time. I had booked an inexpensive hotel on the outskirts of Boston so on Sunday we still had to drive into the city to pick up our race kits.
We Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-72418328623734804762011-04-15T13:52:00.000-04:002011-04-15T13:52:11.747-04:00Boston Marathon next week!Tomorrow morning Jan and I head down to Boston to run in the 115th Boston Marathon. Training has been going well, but unfortunately I stubbed a toe on my left foot a few days ago. This might be a challenge...
Listening to: We Used to Wait by Arcade Fire from The Suburbs.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-78717040658587428262010-11-04T13:06:00.000-04:002010-11-04T13:06:10.475-04:00Comet Hartley 2Perhaps like a comet I'll make a brief appearance here every few years? No, I'll find time for this blog again... This morning I spotted a post on Bad Astronomy about NASA's EPOXI spacecraft taking pictures of the nucleus of comet Hartley 2 from just 700 km away. Amazing.
EPOXI travelled 24 million km to visit Hartley 2.
Oh yeah, I had my 50th birthday on the weekend. Quiet family Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-22756576522675759382010-05-05T16:47:00.001-04:002010-05-05T16:50:29.307-04:0010K PB!Last weekend I ran the Sporting Life 10K race for the first time. This is the "biggest" race in Toronto with 12,000 runners, but I've never got around to running it. It's also downhill most of the way, so it can't be compared to any other races...I managed to snag a complimentary entry a few weeks ago, so I hadn't trained much for it. In fact I ran an exhausting 35K training run the weekend Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-69469630426297900632010-04-01T11:05:00.002-04:002010-04-01T11:07:14.055-04:00Ouch
Around The Bay race start in 1896!
On Sunday I ran in the Around the Bay Road Race down in Hamilton. 5,700 runners over 30K of roads, the last ten K quite rolling... I've done this race three times before but was feeling better prepared this year and hoped to get down from the low 2:20's to perhaps as fast as 2:15.
Didn't happen. Although the weather was decent (overcast, cool and dry) I Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-21098043348531363432010-03-15T15:53:00.001-04:002010-03-15T15:58:08.323-04:00Alive? Yes!OK, this blog has been neglected. Poor little withered thing!
I've been busy arguing with climate change denialists, and boy does that drain a fellow...
Here's a martian image to appease, this is an overhead view (naturally) of a landslide caught in mid-flow by the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Amazing.
I found it on Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog. Click on it to see Phil's Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-44796387392118945832010-01-28T17:29:00.009-05:002010-01-30T15:23:32.792-05:00iPad ManiaSo yesterday Apple introduced the iPad, their no-so-secret tablet computer. Kind of like an iPod touch with a 10" touchscreen. Nice! Want... Great screen and battery life, really nice interface and apps (plus it runs almost all existing iPhone apps), interesting digital bookstore. Fascinating speedy new Apple chip, the A4. But not gonna jump in. Money's tight. Wouldn't be prudent. Sorry, Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-11344852306135887252010-01-10T14:34:00.002-05:002010-01-10T14:35:09.557-05:00The Forty-Year PunchlineI never realised until last night that the title of the comic strip Andy Capp was a pun on the word "handicap"! I just took it as a simple reference to the main character's omnipresent headgear... I present this as a public service to others in similar need of enlightenment. This long-delayed revelation is the funniest part of that comic for me.Not much to else to report. I'm ending a de facto Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-88992252236928118782009-12-31T12:18:00.006-05:002009-12-31T14:46:11.843-05:00Another Year Rolls By2009 comes to a close with a bit of a whimper this year. I've been under the weather for the last few weeks, with a bad head cold and then a pinched nerve in my neck. Miserable! Needless to say very little exercise has occurred, but there has been much consumption of sweet and fattening food. I dread getting on a scale.Tonight that changes though, whether I like it or not. I'll be doing my live Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-43606869512840959442009-12-08T12:57:00.002-05:002009-12-08T13:27:17.783-05:00The Emptiness of Space?I just saw this image on the Bad Astronomy blog and it stunned me. It was recently recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope using it's newly replaced Wide Field Camera to view a relatively "empty" region of space for 48 hours.Conclusion? Not. Empty. Those are galaxies. Up to 13 billion light years away. We live in a big place.Listening to: I Believe in Father Christmas by U2 from All You Need is Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-36709428010190208952009-12-07T21:11:00.004-05:002009-12-07T23:10:00.656-05:00Boston-unbound...Argh. After qualifying for the Boston Marathon in October I was nursing tender Achilles tendons. I took a wait-and-see approach to registering for Boston. You snooze, you lose; the Boston Marathon sold out earlier than ever this year! So it looks like my trip, and Chariots of Fire re-enactment, will be postponed to April of 2011...Other events in the life of this mildly-mannered blogger: I was Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-9447763720702319282009-10-22T15:22:00.002-04:002009-12-07T21:27:21.415-05:00Boston-bound!Last weekend I raced in the Goodlife Fitness Toronto Marathon, doing well enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I'm still hobbling around the house... Racing was a bit of a last-minute decision as I only actually signed up six days ahead, but teaching a marathon clinic and my Ironman training gave me some confidence.This year I got a ride to the starting line from a friend, so I was able to Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-11136530323530392962009-10-15T18:31:00.009-04:002009-11-06T16:15:38.649-05:00Mars!OK, it's been "forever" since I posted. I've been wasting my energy again arguing with climate change denialists. This weekend I'll be running on the Toronto Marathon, so that means that I'll owe myself THREE race reports. Ugh.
But today I saw a photo of Mars on the Bad Astronomy website captured by the HiRISE orbiter... Wow. The black tracks are the product of dust devils. It's a wonderful Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-2243227450933340382009-09-19T22:53:00.021-04:002009-09-20T00:28:21.961-04:00TIFF '09 Day TenSo the Toronto International Film Festival is winding down... I worked six nights at Roy Thomson Hall and saw just three films, all at other venues and the last two of them today. The Invention of Lying, Max Manus, and The Young Victoria. "Lying" was Ricky Gervais' entertaining new comedy that will be in theatres any day now. Max Manus was a conventional WWII drama with great performances and a Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-62032517250160688352009-09-11T12:00:00.000-04:002009-09-11T12:00:03.892-04:00TIFF '09 Day OneI was volunteering at the Toronto International Film Festival last night, working as Volunteer Captain at Roy Thomson Hall. The Opening Gala was Creation, a biopic about Charles Darwin starring real-life husband and wife Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly ("English naturalist Charles Darwin struggles to find a balance between his revolutionary theories on evolution and the [his] relationship withBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-70542560659795856902009-09-05T17:46:00.001-04:002009-09-05T17:49:27.654-04:00Countdown to the Film FestivalThe Toronto International Film Festival starts on Thursday night... I've been involved in some of the training and orientation sessions over the pasts few months and during TIFF (Sept. 10 - 19) I'll be volunteering at Roy Thomson Hall most evenings. This grainy snap is from inside the auditorium at RTH, a few minutes before the theatre volunteers arrived for their orientation.Today I drove up to Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-63907293769750879052009-08-20T23:56:00.003-04:002009-08-21T01:01:04.146-04:0024 hours of LoveOn the weekend I managed to let my iPhone 3G slip out of my pocket while riding my bike. Not an approved activity... The screen shattered into a crazy spiderweb pattern. When the new iPhone 3GS came out I had idly looked into an early upgrade, but the $450 cost put that idea out of my head pretty fast. Was I going to have to "turn and cough" after all?Looking down at my fatally(?) wounded little Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-48091461316857780722009-08-09T16:39:00.008-04:002009-08-09T22:44:07.628-04:00Ironman USA PreparationSo "Lake Placid", aka Ironman USA, has come and gone. I had a great time, but didn't get the result I wanted. I've been thinking about that, and I guess it's time to "put pen to paper." Here's the lead up.
On the Tuesday evening before the race I drove to my parent's place in Cobourg for a short visit and the obligatory computer consultation. On Wednesday I continued on to Lake Placid. My bike Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-38225855333195909632009-07-20T11:29:00.001-04:002009-07-20T11:31:32.800-04:00The Usual SuspectsSo I'm less than a week out from my next Ironman race, down in Lake Placid... If anyone cares to follow me online, here's the link. My race number is 1555.Training has gone well although I didn't always meet my training volume goals. On Saturday I was up at Wilcox Lake for a 2K swim, two hour ride and 5K run. The weather was great and it seemed like everyone I knew was there. All my Pro friends Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-71829184869526680462009-07-05T23:58:00.003-04:002009-07-06T00:25:47.222-04:00Looking Down from the MountaintopWhew! I've just finished my biggest week of training. The next few weeks will be much easier, and then comes race day on the 26th down in Lake Placid. The City worker's strike hasn't affected my training too much as I've switched to open water swimming anyway. Seems like all my runs have passed by stinky garbage holding areas though.
Saturday was composed of a 2K swim, 5 hour 160K bikeBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-15066883063825290662009-06-27T23:05:00.004-04:002009-08-09T22:51:44.531-04:00Make Hay While the Sun ShinesToday was an epic training day. Up at 6:00 and on the go until 2:00 PM! Fabulous weather, sunny and hitting 30C, and I got in a great workout for all three sports: 2.1K, 33 minute open water swim. The City strike has closed all the pools that I usually swim in, so it seemed like a good day to get up early and add a swim as you can't lock the doors on a lake. 127K, 4:12 long ride (all the way up Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-88530332976314024222009-06-13T12:15:00.000-04:002009-06-13T12:15:17.476-04:00TracingI'm "tracing" up in Huntsville tomorrow. That's a "training race". The Muskoka Long Course race is an oddity; long swim (2K), short ride (54K), long run (15K). It was a world championship race back in the 90's and still draws a small pro field for the Chase (women pros get a head-start, there is a single prize pool). I earned an Ironman Canada slot in this race last year. I didn't know until a Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-51254404773127706892009-06-01T23:50:00.003-04:002009-06-05T00:43:51.465-04:00Just under the wire...What wire, you ask? The surely-not-a-month-between-posts wire... Between working flat-out at the law office and teenage disputes with my son I've had hardly any energy for blogging. A bit of facebook and flickr juice, but not much there either... But there's been plenty to talk about. Maybe it's best to work backwards.PlaceTime Cat.Swim (750m)Cat Ovr Time /100mT1Bike (30K)Cat Ovr TimeBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8352332.post-51311112115084277452009-05-02T19:56:00.001-04:002009-05-02T19:56:38.432-04:00Nose to the grindstoneIn my last post I mentioned a new job. For the last six weeks I've been working in a friend's law office helping with their municipal tax appeal business. It's been a pretty hectic time as I came on-board just a few days before the deadline for requesting an appeal of the 2009 property valuations. The phones were ringing off the hook and I was learning the business on the fly! I did quite well Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695953587621558464noreply@blogger.com0