I'm on shaky ground saying that the final stage of pre-marathon preparation started last night with Pasta Bash 2007 (thanks to massena, happiestlemur, sandomi, Natalie, Seth, Zoe, and Jane for variously showing up and helping with the food). The final stage might have been tonight's two-miler. Or the week before last where tending to tolchocky during a nasty cold had me tapering down ( Read more... )

I fail at sleep. So let's see where I'm at. The end of a sentence without a preposition, clearly ( Read more... )

Like Neal, I am now somewhat of a professional runner. An envelope arrived today containing my winnings from the 10k in Medford just over a week ago. The $25 (in cash) is just sufficient to cover the overdraft fee I incurred to enter the race.

The Good:

Ran a race on Sunday and it didn't suck. (Run From The Sun 10k. Got second place.)

I got to teach the people I work with about R. For two and one half hours.

The last weekend. Making it to my first BSO concert (Brahms One and Bartok's whack one-act opera Bluebeard's Castle). Seeing, from the comfort of a Boston bar, Williams crushing ( Read more... )

The marathon went down on Sunday morning. Fortunate timing considering the rain of the day before. There was still the wind to deal with, though. When the course hugged the coast, the top layer of the dunes blew off and it felt like I was being sandblasted. But the temperature stayed in the low fifties and the sky was mostly clear. In sum, the ( Read more... )

I look nervous when I present, I've been told by those I work with. And present to. I spoke on Thurday to about a dozen of the folks who do analytic and pharmaceutical chemistry. The subject was a new Design of Experiment scheme that cuts--inserting in its place computation and modeling--the more traditional stage of actually thinking about which ( Read more... )

Another weekend, another 5k. I think jbdowse's post is probably the place to go for an account of the race, but he leaves out one important detail. Joan Benoit Samuelson, I imagine as a condition of Nike vassalage, was at the awards ceremony and remarked that my race was "not bad for a Williams guy." For I was wearing a Williams shirt and I had run a race ( Read more... )

Part of working, I guess, is being hit up for donations to the United Way. The 1-for-1 donation matching would actually be very nice but it is presently a moot point, for I am still a contract worker. But I am getting cool stuff done, so there should be every reason for them to take me on permanently when the contract lapses ( Read more... )

I ran about 18 miles today. It looks like I'm trying to get ready for for the Cape Cod Marathon that I'm running three weeks from now. I don't think I've posted much about this, which is consumate with how much I've trained for it. But with another long run down and with 17:58 and 18:12 finishes on my last two 5k road races, I think it may work ( Read more... )

Okay, I'm giving myself seventeen minutes to blog. If things go my way, which they really haven't throughout this job search process, my background and drug test will have cleared and I will be getting a call from HR telling me so. If not, I'm going running ( Read more... )