Milestones

It was a bad idea even if it did turn out well, and I won't be doing anything like it in 2009. At the beginning of 2008 I decided it would make for a good goal to bicycle 5,200 miles for the year -- 100 miles per week, which, at the time, constituted a fairly full week of riding. And miles on my around-town bike wouldn't count -- couldn't count -- because it doesn't -- mustn't -- have an odometer. Only miles on the then-red bike would count.

The goal lasted all of a few minutes in its original form. I checked the odometer's initial mileage to determine the target number and discovered that it amounted to a few hundred miles shy of 10,000 miles, so I changed the goal to do those extra few and break 10,000. In case you're wondering, the odometer is the bike's second; the first broke a few years ago with far fewer miles on it.

The reason why I say a year-long mileage goal is a bad idea is because a lot can and will happen in a year. Here are some of the highlights.

• In mid-spring I came down with valley fever. It's said that everyone who stays in Phoenix long enough eventually gets valley fever, but usually it makes the person sick for only a few days or weeks. I was sick and often in substantial pain for most of May and June and was kept off the bike most of that time.


• In July the red bike became the green bike. I had it powder coated and overhauled, and the process took three weeks. I continued to do mileage, but it was on my around-towner and wasn't counting towards my goal. By the end of July I had all but given up on the goal because I was so far behind after not riding much for three months.


• In August I went metric. This had no effect on the goal except to change it from breaking 10,000 miles to breaking 16,094 kilometers, which sounds less cool.


• Also, at various times through the year, I sustained various injuries that could have kept me off the bike. I pulled a hamstring and twisted an ankle in two separate occasions while playing ultimate frisbee. I broke a bone in my foot playing soccer. I clumsily fell through a set of bleachers at a dodgeball tournament and badly bruised my knee. A bruise may not sound too bad, but my knee was grotesquely swollen to the size of a softball. But I rode through each of these injuries. One thing I learned is that it takes quite a lot to keep a willing cyclist off his bicycle.
  

The valley fever proved helpful in the end. I recovered from it and was more motivated than ever to embrace cycling and work hard at doing it well. Also, I felt really strong when my blood oxygen level returned to normal after two months of being chronically low. At the beginning of the year I considered 150 km to be about par. By late summer par was about 250 km. By late fall it was 300 km. Some weeks I did 500 km. And with this rapid increase in distance it soon became apparent that my year's mileage goal was easily attainable. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, on my commute to work, during the year's first winter rain, my odometer silently clicked past 16,094 km. Success.

* * *

The term milestone comes from the physical markers the Romans constructed alongside their roads to denote distance from the capital city. A mile -- a thousand paces -- was two thousand years ago a more significant distance than it is now with our cars and our trains and our airplanes, and so passing a major milestone then marked something of an important event on a journey.

Beyond the cycling, beyond my acquiring immunity to the coccidioidomycosis fungus, here are some other milestones I passed during the year.

• Just Enough Craig. At some point it became weird not to have an Web presence, and for once I'm going with the trend. I see blogging as serving two purposes. The first is as providing an outlet for improving my writing. The second is as an opportunity for documenting my life -- the quirks, the insights, the blah blah blahs of it all.
  
  When I write source code I usually begin by writing all code and no comments and wait until I have a good idea how the code really is going to work before laying out the commentary. I see blogging as fitting a similar pattern. I think I would have enjoyed blogging years ago, but I doubt any readers would have. It would have made for a depressing site. Lately I've acquired a good idea how my life is and should be, and like a typical software engineer I'm scrambling to catch up with the documentation.
  


• Carlessness. I've blogged about this previously, yet it's a major theme here at Just Enough Craig and is worth repeating.
  
  For many years I owned a car and used it little but feared giving it up because of those last few miles -- those miles in bad weather, those miles through sickness and injury, those miles in which I must haul something too big or too heavy for a bike. It's not strange that I've discovered those fears to be unfounded. What's strange is how much my life has improved after going carless. One thing I never would have expected is how other people have taken an interest in my carlessness -- even if it is a sideshow, rubbernecking kind. And by having people take an interest in something that I'm doing, I'm discovering a reciprocity in which I'm taking more of an interest in what they're doing.



• Book Club / soccer. Is it a book club that plays soccer or is it a soccer team whose teammates all read one same book every month? Jill started Book Club almost two years ago, yet this year it became something more than a get-together once a month to discuss a good book. This year we got together to discuss bad books. And we -- well, most of us -- play together on an indoor soccer team once a week. I haven't played organized soccer since I was about five years old. Some league players may claim I still don't play organized soccer. Soccer is for me one of many sports that I enjoy because it presents an opportunity to run about wildly while exhibiting few of the specific skills expected of the players. I always look forward to Wednesday nights -- even the ones when our game is the late, late game and Thursday morning arrives too soon.



• Baptism in the Methow. Rachel and Jason were married in the Methow at Jason's parents' place in what was, I assure everyone, the most beautiful wedding of all time. Less significant is that I was baptized a few miles down the river the day before, although some readers who were present may point out that I looked like a surprised and drowning rat scrambling to climb back aboard the raft. But, dammit, this silly little incident was the symbolic turning point of the year for me. What I remember from the months prior was the valley fever, the indecisiveness, and the restless idleness that signified a general lack of fulfillment going on; what I will remember in the subsequent months are the productivity, the utility, the health and vigor and the happiness. It really is as if I was washed clean and made anew.

* * *

These are my milestones. What are yours? I'm asking you -- yes you, dear reader! -- to post a comment and share one or a few or your accomplishments for the year. It will take only a few minutes of your time.

Reading log

Books have been been a hugely important part of my life during my twenties. If obligated to do so then I would rank them higher even than bicycles and flaxseed meal. That's how big. And yet I've written about bicycles a lot and flaxseed meal some and reading not at all, so Just Enough Craig has had its priorities inverted. Starting today I am remedying this with my first of a monthly series of entries in which I will inform the world, or about two dozen of its constituents, of what I've read that month. Enjoy.

* * *

The noted Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti has taken this idea one step further and pointed out that through history, well before the car, humans have sought to keep their commute at about one hour. This "cave instinct," as he calls it, reflects a balance between our desires for mobility (the more territory, the more resources one can acquire, the more mates one can meet, etc.) and domesticity (we tend to feel safer and more comfortable at home than on the road).

Tom Vanderbilt
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)

One may wonder why I would read a book about automotive transport. I say I'm getting to know my enemy better. Really I'm simply interested in driving even if I don't care much for doing it myself. There's something about its perceived anonymity and its resulting effect on people's behavior that makes driving like a window into the soul of an individual. I'm also fascinated by traffic engineering and novelties to us Americans such as roundabouts and shared space. This book covers both areas well, and I enjoyed it a lot. And furthermore I'm now equipped with statistics that correlate the use of traffic-speed cameras with a reduction in fatal automobile accidents.

* * *

He liked Bernard; he was grateful to him for being the only man of his acquaintance with whom he could talk about the subjects he felt to be important. Nevertheless, there were things in Bernard which he hated. This boasting, for example. And the outbursts of an abject self-pity with which it alternated. And his deplorable habit of being bold after the event, and full, in absence, of the most extraordinary presence of mind. He hated these things--just because he liked Bernard. The seconds passed. Helmholtz continued to stare at the floor. And suddenly Bernard blushed and turned away.

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World

I regret reading as little as I did growing up, but there is a benefit in having missed out on so many of the classics: I'm allowed to read them for the first time as an adult.

I have a soft spot for books about utopia, dystopia, and end-of-days scenarios, so of course I liked Brave New World -- as if by default. But I really, really liked it. It's now an old book, and its story has been retold with variation countless times, but I found it fresh and every bit relevant. I also really liked the writing style and am once again reminded that my favorites generally come from the first half of the 20th century. This one gets a big thumbs up.

* * *

Twenty minutes later I walked out the doors of Los Angeles County Women's Prison, otherwise known as Sybil Brand Correctional Facility, into the bright sunlight. I wondered who exactly Sybil Brand was and who she had pissed off in order to have an entire women's prison named after her. I made a mental note to google her later.

Chelsea Handler
Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

I don't believe speed-reading exists. I think the comprehension analysis tests miss the point and that reading is a very active cognitive process, not a passive information dump from page to brain. Yet Are You There Vodka? challenges this opinion of mine. It certainly challenges my assumption that getting through a book as fast as possible shouldn't ever be the goal.

Are You There Vodka? was this month's Book Club selection. The good thing we got out of this month's selection was a unified desire to avoid ever again making a similar mistake. Sometimes you must hit rock bottom before making improvements.

The highlight of the book for me was the above quote and spotting its little factual error. The quote was written about an event that supposedly happened in 1996, which was when the word google was merely a misspelling for a very large number. Google the company wouldn't be started until two years later.

* * *

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. ... You take that book Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know. He just isn't the kind of a guy I'd want to call up, that's all.

J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye

I'm for blasphemy and all, but for Chrissake what a phony.

I felt obligated to read The Catcher in the Rye before fellow Book Club members caught on that I hadn't read it and gave me the boot. Jamie shows up to Wednesday soccer wearing his crumby Catcher in the Rye T-shirt -- he's a real prince, I tell ya -- which served as a weekly reminder of my precarious position. But no more. It's checked off the list.

What I didn't expect from reading this one was further confirmation that my stratospheric opinion of W. Somerset Maugham is not shared by the rest of the world. But I don't have any desire to call up J.D., so we'll call it even. And all.

* * *

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

René Descartes
A Discourse on Method

I remember disliking Descartes's writing when I read him in college. Excessively dry and hopelessly obsolete, I thought. Yet I own a copy of some of his writing. This is significant considering that I own no more than six books in all, and one I keep forgetting to donate to the library and another I'm keeping for use as a doorstop. So when Laura sent me a list of books she recommended I read and one of them was A Discourse on Method, I decided it was finally time to read it. Now I have two books to donate to the library.

Descartes is much more enjoyable outside the classroom. I read A Discourse on Method in a sardonic tone as if its author were a closet atheist who was poking fun at the church. This works. Go back and reread the above quote, which happens to be the opening of the first part. Tell me Descartes wasn't ribbing.

Why do college philosophy classes take these works so seriously? How much real philosophy is the writing of some punk who was trying to get a rise out of people but who became to be revered? Philosophy in the classroom is a necessity for getting one's existential bearings but is otherwise a hopeless pursuit. I wouldn't say I enjoyed A Discourse on Method, but at least I got something out of it.

With vicissitudes like these, who needs sloppy weather?

I signed up for this five months ago, and I never expected it to entail a one-mile jaunt down Central Ave on a dandy horse.

I've thought quite a lot about expanding my fleet. The reason I don't acquire another two bicycles is that I don't have the space in my apartment to store the both of them comfortably. And the reason I don't compromise and acquire just a one is that I can't decide on what kind: touring, high-end road, cyclo-cross, or even one of those highly practical bikes like a Xtracycle. Never once did I think about going with the dandy horse option.

Let's start over.

You can love the bike, but the bike won't always love you in return. The very day after posting about my around-towner, while riding it home from work, I was thrown from the bike. It bucked wildly and never gave me a chance to regain control before slamming me onto sidewalk and turf before itself landing on top of me. This all happened in a sequence of events I still don't fully understand. But I do understand that fixed-gear bikes have a tendency to do this sort of thing when, even for only a moment, you forget to pedal. I wish I had a video of it to share. Alas, the laughs were reserved for the passers-by who happened to be watching. I'm still sporting some ugly scabs on my knee and shin.

Yesterday morning my front tube's valve stem broke as I disconnected the pump. This event follows from a physical law of the universe, the conservation of bicycle inner tubes. I gained a tube the previous weekend by digging through some trash -- yes, post comments below -- and taking the tube home and applying a patch. Then the valve stem thing happened on an existing tube. Gain a tube, lose a tube. Broken valve stems are like brain death for a tube. Nearly any flat can be patched to some degree of success, but a broken valve stem is the sad and final end, the one that signals that it's time to stop all further resuscitation attempts.

I'm past taking flats personally. Of all the junk, all the annoyances and inconveniences that one faces, getting over flat tires is the biggest step one can make in becoming an everyday cyclist. Flats are like income taxes to Republicans. They happen to everyone yet it seems that given the right trick or hack that they are somehow escapable. But they aren't. They're part of life. I recommend three general guidelines for dealing with flats, which is three more than I have for dealing with Republicans.

1. Always ride on good tires. Don't squeeze those last few miles out of an old one.
2. Become reliable at patching and replacing tubes. Being fast at it is a bonus.
3. Accept that flats happen. Forgive the tube; forgive the bike; even, if you can, forgive the negligent homeowners who have puncture vine growing in their yards.
   

So the flat wasn't it. I think what it was was that I was still harboring resentment for the body slam the other week. Because what happened yesterday on my way home from work, what happened following my smooth and skillful track stand at a red light before it changed to green, what happened in a display of sheer herculean lower body strength, what happened was that I snapped my chainring into two pieces. Yes, take that, bike.

Admittedly it wasn't a high-quality chainring. It was a rather thin strip of aluminum, and it had been making some disturbing creaking sounds for a few weeks. But snap it I did. Some cyclists say you should carry all the tools with you on a ride: a spare tire, spare spokes and a spoke wrench, a chain tool. I can understand this advice for when touring and you're more than a hundred miles away from civilization, by which I mean any town with a bike shop, but I figure the mentality to be the result of reading too many bike-parts-pushing magazines and from a general manly obsession with tool ownership. Regardless, a broken chainring ends any ride.

So I unclipped and slid off the saddle and prepared to walk the remaining one and a half miles to the bike shop, which ironically was my planned destination. My original intention was to exchange a rear light I purchased a few days prior. I began walking and acted like this sort of thing happened all the time as another cyclist still at the intersection pointed out that I had left behind some broken pieces of bicycle at the crosswalk line.

Cycling shoes are terrible for walking. Really terrible. They're like those gimmicky shoes with the platforms underneath the balls of the feet that are suppose to work the calf muscle. I don't understand cyclists who walk their bikes up hills rather than pedal up them. You know who you are. Half a mile later my calves were indeed burning with fatigue and I decided a different plan was needed. So I ditched the walking and rode it in with no chainring, like it was the 1820s and the pedal had yet to be invented. I sat atop the saddle and kicked the ground with my feet to propel me and the bike forward. At first I tried the both-legs-at-a-time method and soon after found the alternating-leg method to work much better. I even got going kind of fast, too, and this undoubtedly made me look all the sillier. Once again I hope the passers-by were watching and getting some entertainment.

I arrived safely at the bike shop and had installed a new chainring but not after determining that they didn't have one to match my right crank and that I needed a new crank, too. And a bike like mine has so many kind-of, not-really problems that I had to spend some extra time weighing the mechanics' advice and deciding what was needing replacement and what was serving as a valuable theft-deterrence feature. I finally left in time to be late for Book Club, which was a pot luck get together. In the last two months I've been, in order, too sick, too busy, and too freakishly strong to be on time enough to a bring-your-own-food event to bring my own food. At this point it's quite an impressive streak of mooching.

My new chainring is a 46-tooth, not a 42, so I've moved up a few gears, from 42-16 to 46-16. I'm still unsure about this. The new ratio makes the bike much faster. Whereas the old ratio was geared for a slight incline, it's now geared for the flats and my fast-spin cadence has me doing low to mid 20s, which is really pushing it on an around-towner. And stopping is harder in a high gear. But most of all that someday fixed-gear trip up South Mountain is nixed. Unless I again muster that herculean strength.

Gray

This is what I signed up for five months ago. I sit in my apartment and see the wet and feel the cold and ponder my hindered mobility. Then I blow my nose to clear my sinus and gargle salt water to lessen the scratchy pain in my throat and am glad I have nowhere to go. I wonder whether the pain in my right ear signifies an infection, or maybe I simply aggravated my jaw during my nap.

To those of you with whom I spent time this previous weekend: my apologies. I hope your immune system is made of sterner stuff than mine.

\<[a-zA-Z]

Deserted, he finds a lamp crammed under xenoliths -- rubs.

"Your wish, kiddo?"

"Just one?"

"Be easy."

"Verily! Quick, send me to New Zealand."

Poof.

Got it?

Net Worthless

Imagine two baseball players who are both batting .300 for the season. Further imagine that I assert that both hitters are equally good because they have the same batting average. You would think me quite the simpleton for thinking this; batting average alone does not determine a hitter's value. Maybe one of the two guys has more RBIs and a higher slugging percentage. Maybe one guy bats comparatively higher with runners in scoring position. Maybe one guy has 500 at-bats and the other has 10. Clearly batting average alone can be an incomplete and misleading metric.

There's a research paper in the financial world called the Trinity Study. The paper seeks to answer the question how much one may annually withdraw from one's retirement portfolio, as a percentage of net worth, and probabilistically avoid the misfortune of outliving one's savings.^[1] The withdrawal-rate question quantifies how much one must save to afford one's expected standard of living through retirement. Clearly this is an important question for anyone contemplating their financial goals.

I'm unconvinced that the safe-withdrawal question is framed correctly, though, because I'm unconvinced that the net worth metric is an accurate or particularly useful indicator for evaluating a portfolio's retirement potential. Net worth has mostly a qualitative usefulness: holding all other factors to be equal, a greater net worth is better than a lesser net worth. But of course all other factors are rarely if ever held to be equal. The market fluctuates. $1 million invested before a market crash does not seem to be worth the same as $1 million invested after that crash. Market volatility is exactly why papers like the Trinity Study seek a mere probabilistic determination of retirement safety. The safe-withdrawal question may never graduate from the probabilistic to the deterministic because of the inherent vicissitudes of financial planning and execution, yet perhaps these types of studies seeking such heuristics are misguided.

What I wonder is: why does the financial world so stubbornly cling to the idea that net worth is the one true metric of financial worth?

Figure 1: S&P 500 Index historical P/E values.^[2] Click to enlarge.

If one had $1 million invested in the stocks composing the S&P 500 Index at the turn of this century, when the S&P 500 had a three-year trailing price-to-earnings ratio of about 30, then that $1 million was invested in a collection of stock assets that represented about $33k in annual corporate earnings. Whereas if one has $1 million invested similarly today, now that the three-year trailing P/E ratio is about 20, then the collection of stock assets earns about $50k annually. In both cases $1 million is invested. In both cases net worth is the same. However, in the first case the assets are earning substantially less than in the second case, and therefore the first case's $1 million net worth statistic is arguably inflated compared to the second case's $1 million. Net worth alone is a misleading metric.

P/E ratios are not new, and neither are the slew of various metrics used in value investing. These metrics are used for making investment decisions like picking stocks and choosing a portfolio diversification strategy. The problem is that these metrics are used for making investment decisions but no such diverse wealth of metrics exists for assessing the fundamental value of that portfolio. Yet such an assessment must be made to determine the retirement potential of that portfolio. Portfolio value assessment remains married to the idea of net worth.

The primary problem with assigning so much importance to one's net worth is that net worth is forever doomed to follow volatile fluctuations based on the fragile psychology of the market. Instead consider a net earnings metric, as used in the previous example of investing in the S&P 500 Index. Whereas net worth measures the price other people are willing to pay for all of one's assets (the $1 million), net earnings measures the summation of those assets' underlying earnings ($33k and $50k per year in the two cases) and is based on corporate accountants' spreadsheets rather than investor's judgments. This better anchors assets' valuation to their fundamentals.

Net earnings shouldn't be a replacement for net worth, just how on-base percentage isn't a replacement for batting average. The metrics should supplement each other to balance their weaknesses. Any net earnings number has the Enron consideration: earnings too have the potential to depend on false data driven by market psychology and to fluctuate wildly. One problem with this scenario is that in such a case it is likely that the net worth metric is also overinflated. A third metric is needed, or perhaps it is wise to consider longer, multiple-year trailing earnings numbers, as is shown in the graph above with the three-, and five-year trailing P/E ratios. Predictably, the one-year data line in the chart denotes significant volatility while the three- and five-year lines are smoother.^[3]

I think 401k and other retirement account statements should display net earnings next to the portfolio's balance. The balance states what the portfolio is worth to others, and the net earnings states what the portfolio is generating by way of new underlying wealth. One immediate benefit to showing the net earnings is that it would cast portfolios in a more favorable way. This year has been a terrible year for stocks, yet even while corporate earnings statements have been down from the previous year, the multi-year trailing P/E ratios continue to trend downwards, thus signifying that portfolios are continuing to gain value at least by one metric.^[4].

^[1 The Charybdis to old-age destitution's Scylla is working too hard for too long and saving more money than can be spent in the remainder of one's lifetime. This is a problem because it signifies that one has wasted the most precious resource of all: time. The Trinity Study and similar papers seek to find the maximal safe-withdrawal rate to avoid spending more time than is necessary to accrue wealth to afford one's desired standard of living.

^[2] Source: standardandpoors.com. The data is available as a spreadsheet readable in Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc, and the site has a substantial number of other interesting data sets. You too can create your own nifty charts.

^[3] Here's a side note. The average P/E ratio for the S&P 500 Index for the period 1936-2008 is 15.9, which is in line with conventional wisdom. The last time the one-year trailing P/E ratio was below 15.9 was in 1995. The last time the three- or five-year trailing P/E ratios were below 15.9 was in 1991. It appears we have been in an extended period of historically inflated asset values. In fact, the above P/E chart reminds me of this chart, which presents a particular qualitative take on market bubbles.

^[4] This year has been terrible for nearly all types of investments and not just stocks. Real estate has also done poorly, especially in metropolitan areas such as Phoenix. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to apply the net earnings metric to real estate holdings.

Meet the fleet, pt. 2

My other bike is a Schwinn Tempo road bike. We're nearly the same age.

The Schwinn is my around-town bike. I use it for running errands, on bike dates with Pat, and for those days in which the point is not to go fast but to relax and rediscover the childhood joy of being on a bike.

One of the keys to any around-town bike is not washing it. This turns off the thieves. It's all about getting the best ride with the worst looks. The headlight on the handlebar and battery pack mounted to the frame easily double the value of this bike.

You may notice that the bike is a single-speed. Actually the bike is a fixed-gear / free-spin flip-flop^[*]. I had the bike converted to the flip-flop this summer from its original 12-speed, down-tube-shifters condition. If I redid the conversion I would go with a basic fixed gear and forgo the free-spin. At the time I wasn't so sure about not being able to coast. I enjoy not being able to coast. Track stand!

I love the simplicity of this bike. There's only one cable, which is for the brake on the front wheel. No rear brake, no gears, no shifters. And the front brake is for emergencies only. I mash to a stop.

Here's the flip-flop hub up closely. I've used the free-spin side only twice; it's geared way too low. The fixed gear is 42-16; the free-spin is 42-18. I don't see the point of 42-18 for an around-Phoenix bike. I once found myself skirting around the Mummy Mountain hills on the PV Loop while in the fixed-gear side and with the clip pedals and in my hiking shoes. No problem. I don't see myself ever climbing a mountain on this bike, although the thought of taking it up and down South Mountain has crossed my mind. I'll be sure to leave a farewell note if I do.

I've fitted the bike with a leather saddle because I'm not always in my bike shorts when riding it. Leather saddles are super comfortable once broken in, although they are a bit heavy -- no concern for a bike such as this. This saddle's leather is broken in and has conformed to the shape of my rear. Don't look too closely, though; it's kind of lopsided. The saddle, that is. Okay, and the rear.



Notice how the left handlebar plug is missing but not the right one. And there's no handlebar tape. This bike is not worth stealing, thieves!

I love both of my bicycles each in their own special way. I bought the Schwinn a few months before leaving Houston for $100 from a Craigslist ad. I wanted a bike with which to run basic errands like grocery shopping and going to the library, and I had no idea that such a small sum of money would buy me car freedom.





Special thanks to Coworker Lee for the photography.

Link: Meet the fleet, pt. 1

^[*] A fixed-gear bike is a special type of single speed in which the pedals are locked in gear with the rear wheel. So if (and only if) the rear wheel turns then the pedals turn. There is no coasting on a fixed-gear bike.

A flip-flop hub has a cog on each side, so you can flip the wheel around to change gears. In this case, one side is a fixed gear, and the other is a regular free-spin. The free-spin is intended for hilly terrain where the downhill gradients are too steep and can cause spin-out in a fixed gear.

The Dark Side

I became a runner a few months after turning fifteen if you exclude those dreaded mile runs in junior high gym class. And I remember the exact occasion it happened. It happened one summer night while playing hide-and-seek with my friend Josh and his younger brother and their dad. The game was neither planned nor ever repeated. That one night we found ourselves behind their house happily stomping all over the #16 fairway, hiding in the darkness behind stout pecan trees and wildly chasing each other over smooth bermuda and the occasional strip of cart path.

The Wilsons were not stellar athletes, yet they were decidedly faster than me. And I wasn't much good for stamina either. Rather, I possessed a basic all-around slowness that had no benefit in the game. And I wasn't particularly stealthy; the game ended after I blindly ran into a low-hanging branch and ate a mouthful of bark. Yet something clicked that night. I felt a noted dissatisfaction in myself, and I decided to make a change. I decided to become a runner.

I knew nothing about being a runner. I had never run more than a mile in one go -- at least, not intentionally -- and at first I found it impossible to go much farther than one. I was good for a trip or two around the block, and then I was done. My lungs were shallow, my legs weak, and my mind-body connection nonexistent. My feet slapped against the concrete with a definite lack of ease, and my breathing was forced and lacked rhythm. But soon things began to synchronize, my body began to adapt, and distance became not such a big deal.

I ran throughout high school -- always on my own around the neighborhood, never as part of anything official -- until my senior year when I began my nine year journey through back problems. After the first surgery I returned to running but somewhat sporadically and never as enthusiastically. By the second surgery I was calling myself a cyclist and didn't care so much anymore for running. My happiest years running were those few years as a teenager; it never came back.

***

In just under seven weeks I'll be running a half marathon. This is pretty big for me, not so much as an achievement but that I have it as a life goal not to run a full marathon and this is about as long a distance as I'll run. I signed up for the half because these days I've been hanging around some bad influences who sign up for these sorts of things. Peer pressure at work.

I signed up not knowing whether I'd train. Of course I'd cross-train on the bike; I have no choice. I didn't know whether I'd do any actual running other than the one or two obligatory jogs to break in the shoes and to lessen the shock on the big day. I know I can endure through a half marathon relying solely on core cycling fitness. What I don't know is how well I can do it.

Now I've made up my mind; I'm training for this thing. My first day was today; after arriving home from work I took from out of the box the shoes I bought the week before. They're the first pair of shoes purely for running that I've owned since moving to Phoenix. And then I ran a few miles around my neighborhood.