Where’s the peanut butter?!

I’m going to start posting some of my favorite music and talking more about music on my blog. High school was a mixed bag for me, like it is for any decent person, but one terrific part was my investment in music and its contribution to my life. Lately, that’s dropped way off and I feel a little disappointed about that but then if my priorities were the same today as when I was 16 I’m sure I’d have even more disappointment. But I’d like to bring some of that beat back.

Today’s selection is Send Me Some Lovin by Little Richard. I first heard this song as a selection from what I consider one of the most moving episodes of This American Life,
the 1998 Valentine’s Day episode. Listen to the whole show and if you show me someone who isn’t moved to tears by the end of Donald Hall’s selections talking about the death of his wife, I’ll show you a functioning wooden heart.

The show exits with a selection from Little Richard’s song and it is on fire. Check it out:

Send Me Some Lovin - Little Richard

Send me some lovin’, oh send it I pray,
How can I love you, when you’re far away?

Send me your picture, send it my dear,
So I can hold it, pretend you are here.

Can you send me your kisses? I still feel their touch,
I need you so badly, I miss you so much.

My days are so lonely, my nights are so blue,
I’m here and I’m lonely, I’m waitin’ for you.

Adam and Eva organized another incredible spring hiking/snowboarding trip to Camp Muir on Mount Rainier yesterday. We did this same trip last year (and I remembered my camera then) but this year I forgot my camera, so instead I wanted to leave a few notes on the hike.

The hike starts from the Paradise parking lot at about 5,400 feet and ends at Camp Muir just above 10,000 feet. It’s definitely difficult - last year I thought it was the hardest physical activity I’d ever done but I hadn’t prepared for it with a single hike or really any cardiovascular exercise. This year I’ve been running a lot more and low key hike or two and it felt way better. At this time of year, there is snow all the way from the Paradise parking lot to Camp Muir, but depending on snow conditions it might not be possible to ride all the way to the base. Last year it worked, but this year the snow was a lot stickier requiring some hiking or sledding on our boards - warm weather wax might help.

On the trip I used my new Garmin Forerunner GPS to track my progress. One funny thing about the Forerunner I didn’t figure out until I was about 1000′ above the parking lot is that it has settings for your pace for sprinting, running, jogging, speed walking, and walking. The trick is if you are going slower than your “walking” speed then it considers you at rest and it will give you GPS data like your elevation and speed, but it won’t create a trail for your route. I changed the “walking” pace when I figured this out, but since I was going slower than that pace up to that point, I didn’t have a trail to help guide me back to the parking lot for the bottom chunk of the mountain. This isn’t a huge deal but if you aren’t careful (I wasn’t) you’ll wind up going back to the visitor center which is about a half mile from the Paradise parking lot.

I drank almost exactly 1.5L of water on the way up - one full Camelback snowbowl of water. I had a full Nalgene in my pack, too, and since I didn’t need much water at the top or on the way down this turned out to be a lot of extra water, but that’s probably a good thing in case of emergency. Last year I didn’t snack much on the way up and felt like I regretted it. This year I had a handful of trail mix every 500-1000′ of elevation gain and felt much better.

On the hike itself, last year I used the Eric Kolvy “rest step” technique to make the last 500′ of elevation gain before Camp Muir. To do this, you take a short step forward with your left leg, step with your right leg up to a standing position, rest, then take a short step forward with your right leg, and repeat. This is very slow going, but if you’re in a hard slog of endurance, it makes it possible to reach your goal. This year we left the parking lot at about 9:30 at about 12:15PM I was at 8000′ feet and set a goal to reach the top by 2PM. This meant changing my pace for elevation gain from 16.8 feet/minute to 21 feet/minute (a calculation I’m now very glad I didn’t do on the mountain because I probably would have given up before I started), so I skipped the rest step, worked hard, kept an eye on my pace with my GPS and made it to the camp just before 2PM. And was exhausted

The parking lot is cold, but you get hot very fast on the hike. Last year I started out with my snowpants and jacket on and wasted a bunch of time trying to strip out of these after about 500′ above the parking lot. This year I started in a first layer top and pants and that carried me most of the way up. It was overcast and I put on my jacket near Panorama Point but didn’t need anything before that. By contrast, last year was a clear day but it was MUCH windier and colder and I needed to put on both my jacket and pants before getting to the top, though I also moved a little more slowly.

Otherwise I wore my snowboarding boots all the way up, which worked out fine, though since my snow pants don’t fit over my boots, it means needing to take off the boots somewhere to put on the pants, which is a small hassle. I didn’t quite master the sunscreen strategy but I *think* I’ve got it now. Last year I put sunscreen on my forehead, which I paid for badly shortly after starting the hike. You sweat a lot on the hike and I had a ton of sunscreen getting in my eyes, almost completely blinding me for about half an hour. This year I skipped sunscreen on my forehead, but somehow didn’t realize this might lead to a sunburned forehead. Well, it does. So next time I’ll wear a hat, like almost everyone else in our group had. Otherwise I was careful to be sure to get sunscreen on my ears and underside of my nose, which are easy to forget and easy to get sunburned with the reflection coming off the snow.

Lastly about visibility, the route down, and conditions…last year it was super clear out and very easy to tell whether we were near the trail, approaching a cliff, or so forth. This year, there were many instances on the route down where we couldn’t see more than about 30 feet ahead of us. For this, I was very, very glad to have a GPS leading us back along the trail. You really don’t want to ride exactly on the trail people have been hiking up, since the snow is really inconsistent and you know that if you can just stay 20 feet off the trail, you’ll have tons of relatively great untracked snow. But in poor visibility conditions that can be super dangerous. We took a few questionable turns, but largely had good snow and weren’t riding over footprints the whole way down, but without the GPS I would not have felt comfortable trying to find that trail. I had the sense that everybody who was following me felt some of that hesitation, too, since I already tend to ride a little more…let’s say “confidently” than your average snowboarder. But we all got out in one piece! With the forerunner 201 going for about $75 on craigslist, I think it’s a great investment for a trip like this.

I think that covers most of my observations about the whole experience. I would definitely encourage anyone to do this hike and ride. It’s very hard but it’s a really great experience and feeling. Normal caveats about “weather can change dramatically on the mountain and if you aren’t careful, go up when you shouldn’t, or don’t turn back when you should, you might die” certainly apply. But if you’re smart about the trip and go with some people who are responsible, it’s amazingly satisfying. Big ups again to Adam and Eva for putting it together!

I’m quitting but I’ve already pledged a bunch of money to various charities. Since charities rely on money like this for their income I wanted to make sure to make good on my pledges and make sure I get the Microsoft match in before quitting. If you’re looking for some charities to donate to, here are my most recent picks. I try to donate to a bunch of organizations that I think do good things in the world and local community. I spent my last hour making one time contributions and getting the matches in.

• PAWS no kill animal shelter - where we got Io
• KUOW - the good local NPR station
• Sightline (formerly Northwest Environment Watch) who do incredible environmental lobbying and are chiefly responsible for all the recent legislative attention to PDBE’s
• Real Change homeless newspaper
• Planned Parenthood of Western Washington
• The EFF
• The Federation of American Scientists who do non-proliferation work and have a hugely informative website
• KEXP - the good local rock station

I just registered a bunch more domains and got domain pointing set up. Now my site can accessed by not just the familiar psoul.com and patrickniemeyer.com but also MasivP.com (also MassiveP.com) and fringeuser.com. I hope to eventually have fringeuser.com contain a bunch of guides about modding various types of consumer software or hardware in ways that may make it more useful or at least in ways that will generate me some adsense revenue. Cheers!

Since I’ll need to make mileage for a bunch of the runs training for a marathon this fall I started combing the local Craigslist and found a good deal on a Garmin Forerunner 201. There were three sellers, I contacted all of them and last night picked one up for $75. I tried it out today and am pretty happy with it. It lets you set a tolerance for when you’re going too fast (or too slow), tells you exactly how far you’ve gone, and has a virtual training buddy. The virtual training buddy is kind of neat. I set it for a 4 mile 8 minute route this morning and got moving. At first I got stuck at a red light and started falling behind quickly, but I had the “auto-pause” feature turned on so the buddy only fell back about 200′. I started again and so did my buddy and we paced each other pretty well through the run.

The one thing I didn’t like was being told when I was going too fast (I had it set for a 7:30 mile pace). This is probably good feedback and great for a long run, but it definitely felt like it was holding me back. I’m hoping to go talk to some trainers at one of the local shops this weekend and get advice on that - I suspect for the shorter training runs there’s never “too fast,” however the Hal Higdon guide recommends taking the longer runs at a minute per mile slower than your marathon pace. I need more advice!

I’ve gotten a reputation amongst some friends as having healthy eating habits. I think this comes from the vegetarian thing and generally avoiding fast food. Anyway, to set the record straight, while Tanya’s out of town I needed to do some grocery shopping - here’s the complete listing from my receipt:

• 5 Tony’s Pizzas (5 for $11!)
• 2 24 oz tubs of cottage cheese
• 1 2L bottle of Coke
• 1 bag Lays chips (wavy, for the cottage cheese)
• 2 boxes cinnamon Pop-Tarts (unfrosted, of course)
• 2 cans concentrated juice

Not exactly the Lance Armstrong diet but on the plus side - no Spaghettios!

Howard asked why I want to run a marathon which is a good question. Why would anyone want to do this? Your body can supposedly only hold about enough energy to carry you 20 miles or so before you hit “the wall” (”bonking” in cycling) and start burning fat to generate energy - it really doesn’t seem like something humans were designed for…

But there are a couple things I’ll get out of it. First, I love running. Maybe it comes from my grandfather on my mom’s side of the family but since I started running in high school recreationally it has definitely been what I consider the most satisfying form of exercise. Anyone can do it, all you really need are shoes, and it’s a fantastic way to get to know an area. There will always be music I listen to that takes me to runs in the frigid Minnesota winter near my high school, around the extended campus at UMass for the year I was there, around London the month I spent with my sister in college, around Cleveland and University Heights, and around Microsoft and Capitol Hill in Seattle.

I also love tests of endurance. After not rollerblading for a couple years, I finally got a pair again in Seattle a while ago and went out on the Burke-Gillman trail. I wasn’t in particularly good shape at the time and (foolishly) thought “oh, I’ll go around the lake.” This turned out to be a much further trip than I expected and after going a couple hours I decided to turn around and completely exhausted myself. I wasn’t properly hydrated, fed, or (still) in shape for the trip but the exhaustion afterward felt terrific. Similarly, a year ago some friends organized a hike on Mount Rainier up to Camp Muir, the base camp that most climbers summit Rainier from. I wasn’t really in shape for that, either, and it set the bar for most physically demanding exercise I’d ever done - and it was great! I’m doing that trip again this Saturday and really looking forward to it.

Finally, it’s an accomplishment I want to make in my life. A couple weeks ago I decided to stop not getting around to things I want to do in life and to try to just do more things and not worry about failure. “What if I don’t make my target time in the marathon?” “What if I can’t finish?” “How will I find the time to train properly?” “Fuck it,” I decided, “it’s time to stop talking about it and do it.” This was also what helped encourage me to quit my job even though I don’t have another one lined up immediately, to sink a couple thousand dollars into a scooter, and will probably get me to Singapore to visit a one of my best friends who I don’t get to see often enough and who wants to know why I’m running a marathon.

So there are a couple reasons, and I’m really glad about all of them.

UPDATE 2007.05.22 “The lake”

I should have clarified that when I mentioned rollerblading around
“the lake” I meant Lake Washington, not Green Lake (a difference of
about 35 miles).

I’ve decided I’m going to run a marathon this year - here’s how I’m doing my planning. I hope this is useful to others who might be thinking of running a marathon and a bunch of it is (I think) generalizable to other kinds of life organization using a couple handy websites.

• Training - Hal Higdon has a website that breaks down a training schedule to help you figure a plan to prepare and build endurance for the race. I contacted a few friends about this and got advice from my friend Katie, who I consider an eminently reputable source and she mentioned she’d used Hal’s program for her first marathon, so that sounds like a good place to start to me!
• Race selection - I initially just thought “I’ll do the Seattle marathon” but have been advised by my sister and a coworker that this might not be the best choice, so now I’m reconsidering and probably aiming for Victoria or Portland. But I’m keeping track of various runs and marathons in del.icio.us, which is a great online bookmarking system and makes it very easy for me to find, remember, and catalog links about different runs
• Scheduling - is made a little easier with Google Calendar. I created a custom calendar called “Organized runs” and have put the various upcoming Seattle area runs that I know of in there. It’s really easy for me to toggle the display of these runs on or off from my main calendar and also remember what’s coming up. This is pretty easy to share with someone else who might be willing to run with me, too.
• Training routes - lastly, I need a bunch of runs in various mile increments to hit the training goals set up by Hal’s program. There are running groups that leave from Green Lake near my house every weekend and I probably ought to get hooked up with them because they’ll have maps that get me to my exact target mileage. I’m pretty sure this would get me the motivation I need, too, and I’ll probably start going there. Meanwhile, I’m using the Google maps pedometer to find routes from my house and bookmarking these routes in delicious with the tags “run” and “route”. This way I (will eventually) have a convenient set of different runs at different distances to try and to keep hitting my goals.

So that’s how I roll. If you live in Seattle and would like to go for a run, I’ll be starting the Hal program this week (5/21) and don’t really have a set schedule yet (mornings vs. evenings) - just the mileage. But if you want to go, you should contact me!

I suspect this is related to some corporate syncing policy gone awry but I have an annoying behavior every now and then on my phone. The backlight timeout (time before the light goes dim and you need to click something for it to turn on again) is customizable from 10 seconds to something really long. But sometimes I find it setting itself to 10 seconds and if I change it back to what I want (1 minute), the setting won’t stick and it’s back to 10 seconds the next time I turn it on. The solution seems to be to change the following registry key “HKCU\ControlPanel\BackLight\LockLevel\LockLevel” from 1 to 0. Then if you change the backlight timeout, it won’t reset on you.

One of the goals I’m aiming for now that I’ve quit my job is to run a marathon. Today I did my first competitive run in a while - the Beat the Bridge 8k and am pleased with how it went. I was reminded about this by a friend at work last week and registered late and ran by myself. I put myself in the 7-8 minute mile group which is faster than I’ve been running but apparently not faster than I can run when I have people to compete with and a little D4 rockin. I was upset when I crossed the finish line, though. I looked at the clock and it read something like 43 minutes. How did that happen?? I’d timed myself with my watch and been keeping track throughout the run. I knew it took me 30 seconds before my spot in the swarm of runners even crossed the start line after they blew the horn, but that couldn’t account for a pace like that…Then I realized that they must have started the clock for the first wave of runners and they took off 5 minutes before my group. So yay!

In related news, I’m starting a Google Calendar list of Seattle area runs. I’ve got the furry 5k, Fremont 5k, a fall city 10k, and a Seward to Madison park run. I’m looking for running buddies, especially for the long runs in the Hal Higdon training program since I’m pretty sure I’ll need some encouragement!