http://www.strava.com/activities/216046074
Night run through Tabor last night. It’s been exhilarating following a cocoon of light from my headlamp on the dark trails. Last night was warm and the cloud layer far above the city lights. From benches at the top there were wow views of the city skyline before I ducked back into the woods and weaved my way down the trail to the reservoirs.
Massive halo around a nearly full moon last night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22%C2%B0_halo
Trails in Forest Park are getting muddy and slippery and I’m on a string of zippy runs since last week. I feel like I could start to do some double days with a night run in the evening if I want to bump up to 40 miles/week.
31 miles last week was a good load. Everything was dialed. My cycling commute is reduced to nearly half of what is was and I haven’t been riding the Mundo – it leaves me with more capacity for runs and still gives me some cycling recovery during the week. Bueno.
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I’m on the lookout for a fall trail shoe.
8oz or less with some medial posting and small lugs for the trails (and smooth enough for my passage through the city to Forest Park). Maybe it’s a unicorn shoe.
Jotting this down because I think it’s an idea worth exploring and I was considering adding it to my talk for Thursday but it doesn’t really fit.
I was going to mention that a great resource for re-learning how to communicate is Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg and I started to ponder Elon Musk’s recent comments on being wary of AI.
So the idea is this: how do we think we’re going to design benevolent AI when the language of our culture is war. Meaning… we’ve been at war for all of my adult life, about 20 years. We use adversarial language to communicate. If AI is going to be programmed by us, and this is the way we communicate, why do we think it’s not going to be like us?
The other thought is that maybe we should think about AI more like nuclear weapons. We haven’t had a nuclear war because we know that the destructive scale would be immense, and there is the aspect of mutually assured destruction that prevents anyone from turning to nuclear weapons. The issue with this is that the destruction from a nuclear weapon is tangible – physical things go away. In AI, the changes would be behavioral and slower moving and we could pass a point where understand the outcomes of our decisions.
Some links:
http://www.livescience.com/48481-elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-threat.html
Slate articles have gotten so terrible it’s not even funny.
The comments in this one are better than the actual article.
“I don’t need your civil war.”
Crushed my run today… not “super-crushed” race pace, but felt really, really good. Consistent power through the entire run, mind and body aligned. Focused. I missed the rain by about 30 minutes – it started to pour after I got back. I found a Mountain Hardware Ghost Whisperer anorak on the clearance rack at Next Adventure and picked it up. It weighs less than 2 oz !! and is wind and waterproof. I think it’ll be my go to shell for fall/winter runs. I started with it today but it’s still kind of warm outside (noticeably cooler in Forest Park) and ended up tying it around my waist. Zip zip.
I wasn’t able to make the last Portland Trail Series race b/c of a conflict. I ended up 18th overall (M) http://www.webscorer.com/seriesresult?seriesid=28592&gender=M
Had a breakthrough realization on a long running thing I’ve been working through for … almost 2 year. So that’s probably the most awesome thing of the week. Yeah. That’s good for one DLR balloon kick. or 10.
Shoved off around 8pm for a quick 5 miler up to Tabor. The problem with headlamps in the rain is that they illuminate all the moisture in your field of vision… and in cool temps, same with your breath; like looking through a fogged window on every breath. The solution is probably a handheld spot beam + headlamp with a diffuse beam.
Super fun to puddle jump through the woods in the dark and run down the middle of the road (the gates are closed so no cars can enter the park). Not too cold and not raining hard enough to be bothersome. I startled some teenagers up to no good in the woods – actually I probably scared the shit out of them… I flipped my light to high spot beam which is about 140 lumens (it’s really bright) just before I came upon them on the trail. Didn’t see anyone else in the woods or on the roads.
One of the things I absolutely love about running in the dark is that you really can’t see the grade – trail or road, so when it goes up or down, it’s just like a ride. There is nothing to be anxious about (oh no a big hill), you just roll with it. Fun fun.
Planning next season. Squamish could be a lot of fun. Very challenging.
Unremarkable runs this weekend. I feel as if I’ve reached a plateau. If I’m not averaging below 8min/m with elevation, then it was a mediocre run. I may have reached a place where unless I start periodizing, doing more speedwork, hill repeats, lifting… actually training… I won’t progress.
Time to knuckle down and think about next season (after a little rest over the holidays… but only a little).
The Land Grab Out West – http://nyti.ms/1tupq9M
It was around the time that I was reading a lot of Wallace Stegner and he wrote about the beautiful brown of the American West. It was then that I decided I wouldn’t be going East again. I’ve had long conversations on the topic of North-easterner (I’m from the NE) land ethic vs. Western land ethic with friends. There is the Sierra Club mentality and then there are the old New Mexican families who control the water rights on huge swaths of land. Who graze their cattle near (on) National Forest Lands. I’ve been startled in the backcountry by a heard of cattle in the Pecos (NM).
When I was in Yosemite last month I was thinking about the National Park system and the idea of Wilderness (Roderick Nash’s Wilderness in the American Mind is the quintessential book on the topic). I hiked through the Ansel Adams Wilderness near Tuolumne. It had me thinking about doing things at scale. Doing anything once is relatively straightforward, doing something at scale is really really difficult. National Parks, transportation systems, urban planning, education systems. All very difficult to plan, manage and operate.
I have strong feelings about public lands. And about private interests trying to profit from resource extraction.
Some places are sacred.
The Ingenuous Choice – Mountain Running with Anton Krupicka from Outdoor Live on Vimeo.
Chris Rivard / Product Designer 