Monday, September 27, 2010

How to Jump 1.5 million spots on Amazon

Sell one book.

Writing: Corporate Governance and Competition Policy

Fall is the season when I try to wrap up a decent draft of my summer project. This year is Corporate Governance and Competition Policy. As Larry Solum would say (but never so far in connection with my pieces), "Download it while its hot!"

Like running and triathlons, there is a training cycle for scholarship. For me it begins in the early part of the calendar as I focus on topics and ideas for the summer. Over the spring semester, I have my research assistant gather the prior literature for me (I will save for a future post my inability to use r.a.s for anything other than hunting/gathering). Over the summer, I read and begin my writing often spilling into the fall. As the manuscript takes shape, I share with internal and external readers and incorporate their comments. I generally post the draft on SSRN whenever I send to outsiders.

When I plan ahead, I like to workshop the piece (hint, hint) a few places. While there are always a few specialists in my area at whatever school I visit, I am looking to be able to explain and sell my ideas and approach to an audience of smart non-generalists (not unlike the law review editors who will be shortly reviewing my submission).

I do my final polish over winter break and wait for any last minute comments. I then sit back and wait for the "spring" submission cycle to begin which now seems to start to early-mid February. Then I fret and annoy my friends and wife until I hear something. Then rinse and repeat for the next cycle.

Mixing it up -- a response

If I understand Ted's dilemma, it's that after a few months of running long Saturdays, tempo on Mondays and intervals on Thursdays; riding long Sundays and fartlek on Wednesdays and swimming Tuesday and Friday -- every week -- it's tough to see continued progress. I agree. Ever wonder why the postman, who walks 5 miles a day delivering mail, somehow has a gut?

I differ from the repetitive approach in a few ways. One is precisely Ted's recent solution. Build in blocks devoted to one event or another. This summer, partly for vacation and partly for training purposes, I drove out west, riding 2-4 hours every day in the unique conditions each state offered (and bricking most rides with a 30' run). The climax of the trip was the RAMROD ride in Mt. Rainier National Park in July, with my brother.

After a trip like that you need a real recovery week. Swimming is great recovery from the joint stress you get riding and running, so I spent several days in the pool. Like Ted, the 50-meter pool. If you're going to be racing in open water, there's no better approximation. (No flip turns -- they mess up your breathing.) And if you spend several days in the pool, you need to mix it up to preserve your sanity. No reason you can't do speed work in the water, like you can on land -- try a short warm-up, 3-4 sets of 5 50-meter sprints, and a short warm-down. You'll have 1500 or more quality meters in without realizing it happened. (And speed work is surprisingly important preparation for the swim leg of a triathlon, which seems like a steady-state effort, but in reality is fartlek -- think of escaping the guy climbing up your back during the starting jumble, or getting back up to speed after sighting somewhere mid-race.)

And then comes the best week -- the run block.

I think my program has a few such blocks built in, usually during the build-up phase. As I approach the race, the need for specificity of training makes rotating through the events every week more important.

The other important way to mix things up is to go through periods of sprint work, tempo work, mileage-building work and back to interval work in the few weeks before the race.

Or so I hear. I've been pretty faithful to a program with these elements since January, and I am generally (although not completely) pleased with the results. I'm also getting tired, and I am really looking forward to hanging up the bike and goggles after one last race this Saturday, and wearing the rubber off the soles of my shoes this fall.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

A Fall Run

Wednesday was 88 and humid and I foolishly ran 5-6 miles on a day when I had to teach until 9 PM. Needless to say, I paid the price as the day wore on and the details of teaching Class Actions and FRCP 23 became more jumbled. Somehow I rallied to teach what felt like one of my better night classes of the semester.

Today (Saturday) was a different story. I woke to temperatures in the low 50s and the seasonal dilemma and what to wear. I ended up in regular shorts a long sleeve shirt and tied a pair of lite weight sweats around my waist because of the gusty winds on the lakefront and my promise to meet Laura at the organic farmers market in Lincoln Park by the zoo. Ran to Northwestern Law School and then back to the farmer's market seeing just about every permutation of shorts, pants, and tops possible. Even saw my first gloves of the season. While others may bemoan the dropping temperatures I rejoice (at least until about January).

5 miles with a bit of speed work ended with a delicious egg and bacon sandwich at the stand run the woman who also runs the Sunday Night Supper Club. Shopped the market and then walked home the 1 1/2 miles with Laura grateful for the long pants.

Friday, September 24, 2010

The 50 Meter Pool

Okay, one of the side effects of training for Triathlon is that an injury doesn't actually reduce your training time.  I haven't run in over a week, but I've biked a bit, and I've been swimming a lot.  This week, I've done swim workouts 6 days out of 7.  This has allowed me to work more variety into my swimming than usual.  My typical swim workout involves slogging through somewhere between 1000 and 2000 meters, freestyle, at a moderate pace.  That, after all, is what tri requires.  This week, I've mixed it up.  I've been working on back stroke, breast stroke, and even, in moments of insanity, butterfly.  Best of all, on Tuesday morning, I got to swim in a 50 meter pool.  I may be fooling myself, but it feels like my mechanics have improved more in the last week than in close to a year of steady work.  This raises a question about cross-training.  I've gotten quite happy with a constant routine of rotating workouts.  The problem is that I've hit a plateau.  Should I be rotating week by week, focussing on one thing, then the other, etc.  Max, what is your experience??

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Running: Injury

Runners get injured.  Marathoners, more so.  The constant pounding of the long runs magnifies the effect of our improper form and structural issues.  The marathon itself rarely fails to leave me without an issue that takes 3-6 weeks to heal.  Phil and Spencer both know this from hard experience.  Spencer started the Dublin Marathon injured.  Phil finished it that way.  None of us are as young as we used to be.  It's hard to know when to push through, and when wisdom is the better part of valor.  I've made both decisions in different years.  I skipped the 2001 NYC Marathon because of a last minute spasm in my ITB (or at least I think that's what it was).  I missed the 2005 NYC Marathon due to a bruised kneecap (don't train for a marathon and play squash).  On the other hand, I ran the 2002 NYC Marathon, even though my left calf went into spasm on the Verrazano Bridge, and ran both NYC (2007) and Dublin (2009) notwithstanding injuries during the taper (what's that about anyway)?

Anyway, I've hit an injury decision point again this year, and I think that the injury has won.  I don't know exactly what it is.  After the NYC Tri, I noticed what felt like a bruise at the top of my heel, near the Achilles insertion.  It didn't seem like much, and it seemed to come and go.  I decided to rest it for a week, limiting my training to hiking and biking.  It got tighter.  Now, it seems to have blossomed into a full blown case of (choose one: (1) a bone bruise; (2) achilles tendonitis; (3) a stress fracture in my heel).  I don't really know which one it is, but I've managed it since then with cross-training and ice.  It always feels better after a bike swim workout.  It always feels worse after a long run.  

I thought I was training for the Philadelphia Marathon on November 21.  That's eight weeks away.  I've managed to do a few 15-16 milers, but if I'm serious, it's time to start running long, and racing half marathons.  That just doesn't look like it's going to happen, so there you have it.

Okay, so what to do next?  All of a sudden I don't know what my next goal is.  This is very disconcerting. My current thought is just to have fun with the swimming and biking while I wait for the darn thing to heel, but that seems too amorphous for a goal directed person like me.  Hmmm.  . 

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

City Races

I eschewed city races for many years. I refused seriously to consider the Marine Corps Marathon -- who wants to run with 30,000 of your closest friends over concrete, breathing smog? My marathons have included one out-and-back along a canal towpath northwest of Baltimore; another (my personal best) starting and finishing in Carlsbad, California, north of San Diego, with the first half winding past Legoland and the return following the Pacific Coast Highway; another out-and-back along a remote bike trail from Athens, Ohio. I'm a big fan of trail runs. Triathlons tend to be remote, because they shut down whatever 10-mile-square area in which they are run. I even spent many years refusing to race.

2010 for me has been the year of the city races. (It actually starts in 2009, when I joined Spencer, Ted, Philip and others for the Dublin marathon. I still chuckle over the cheers of "Go, Laddie, Go!")

In March I ran the St. Patrick's Day 8K in downtown DC, the unofficial kick-off to the spring race season.

Then came the National Marathon, which starts by RFK Stadium, passes the Capitol, runs down Constitution, up 18th, Connecticut and Calvert Streets through Adams Morgan, out past Howard University, down North Capitol, east on H Street circling back to RFK, where you lose the 1/2-ers, circling back past the Capital and down Constitution to 9th, where you follow the commuter tunnel out to what is I think Maine Avenue, then double back along the South-West Waterfront, passing the magnificent new baseball stadium and crossing the Anacostia at mile 20. You then head North/East along the Anacostia River, take a jog on Pennsylvania Avenue South East, and hit a series of nasty hills starting at mile 22. At mile 25 you head back across the Anacostia and find an uphill finish at RFK Stadium. The city turns out to cheer in good number. I have lived in DC for 11 years now, and the National Marathon was a tour of places I've never been (and some I wouldn't go without a few thousand others!). What a way to get to know my town.

The Cherry Blossom 10-mile is run in early April, a perfect time of year for racing. We had 65 degrees, sunny, no wind, and a flat course back and forth along the Potomac, including a trip across Memorial Bridge toward Arlington Cemetery. The hardest part of that run is out to the end of Haines Point and back, between miles 7 and 9. I've done the Haines Point run myriad times, but it's a long lonely slog at that point in a mid-distance race.

Still to come this year: the Army 10 mile (Oct. 24) and the Marine Corps Marathon (Oct. 31).

The best, though, were the DC Triathlon and Nation's Triathlon, in June and September, respectively. They shut down Independence, Constitution, 17th Street, Whitehurst Freeway, Canal Road, Clara Barton Parkway, and Rock Creek Parkway up to the Calvert Street exit, and give you license to hammer yourself senseless over the busiest and prettiest roads in DC.

I've been working on a refinement to my theory of why I race. One reason is that it makes me feel like King for a day. A good city race does that better than any other.

Dividing by 2

One of my favorite bloggers suggests (half tongue-in-cheek, I think, and quoting another) the best athlete in the world is approximately twice as good as the average Joe or Jane.

http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/09/the_divide_by_2.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InfectiousGreed+%28Paul+Kedrosky%27s+Infectious+Greed%29

He acknowledges it fails, and in fact, his examples show it fails as much or more than it holds. Think of golf: if Tiger can shoot 72 on a given course, I'm pretty sure I can shoot 144.

I think the comparison works quite well in running. For the marathon, 2:04 maps to 4:08, probably a good "average Joe" number. For the 10K, 27:01 (on road) maps to 54:02; same. 5k, 12:37 maps to 25:14.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

To Ted

Once you realize we are all creatures of our environment, it's clear why I usually run with music, Max does so occasionally, and you are adverse to the whole idea. I spend 80% of my time on running paths along the lakefront where there are no cars, and even separate paths for runners and bikers. When I run streets I am running facing the traffic on side streets where there are barely any cars. I see all cars whether or not they see me and I have last the clear chance to avoid unfortunate occurrences. If I was on the narrow crowded ribbons along the water in Manhattan or Brooklyn I might well feel differently. Why anyone would run streets in NYC is beyond me with or without music.

Safety aside, how can you travel that Spirit Road (Neil Young) without the real thing? How do you know whether you are Born to Run? How can you Live to Win? Will you stay Young Forever? Do you have the Eye of the Tiger? Has the Final Countdown Begun?

Rock on.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Reading: My Book Club

Six years ago I joined a book club that had already been meeting for a year. Six guys, all lawyers. Three partners from two different big firms, a general counsel of a bank, a partner at a small international law boutique and me. The international specialist was a close friend of mine from college with most of the rest his housemates from law school who were barely acquaintances before the club. Laura is convinced that the only theme of the club is who can pick the most obscure or difficult books. A few themes have actually emerged over the six years I have participated. The current selection is Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti whom I am told is a Nobel Prize winner in literature for other work. I was the one who picked the graphic novels!

Here's what we have read so far:

Chekov, Uncle Vanya, the Cherry Orchard and other plays
India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age by Gurcharan Das-David
De Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Twain, Roughing It

Jefferson -- notes from Va. And autobio

Musil-- man without qualities

Mann -- magic mountain

Vetruvius, Twelve Books of Architecture and Palladio, Four Books of Architecture

William James-- pragmaitism

Bulgakov -- the White Guard

Our Final Home, Rees

Persepolis, Satrapi
Watchmen, moore

The Lunar Men, Uglow

Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

The Leopard, di Lampedusa

The Federalist Papers

Solzenytsin-- First Circle

Pamuk, Museum of Innocence

Appel, Jazz Modernism

Bellow, Augie March

Rorty, achieving our country; essays by Emerson

Whittman, selections from Leaves of Grass

Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

McBeth; also, Witches and Jesuits,
Study of mcb by Gary Wills

Faith and Treason, Fraser

Readings in Aesthetics, Kandinsky, Bergson, Bell (Art), Weschler (Boggs) and others

Dorris Kearns, Team of Rivals

In A Dark Wood Wandering, Haasse

The Kite Runner, Hosseini

Thorough, Walden Pond and Civil Dis.

The metaphysical Club, Menand

Proust, Swan's Way

Proust, Within a Budding Grove

Good Soldier Shvejk, Hasek

Wittegenstein's Poker, Edmonds and Eidenow

Kind of Blue (re miles Davis), Kahn

Einstein, Isaacson

Mokyr, Gifts of Athena

From Soul to Mind, Read

Human, Gazzaniga

The Singularity--kurzweil

Watson, the Double Helix

Monday, September 13, 2010

Music?

Safety is an issue, to be sure. But I have gone back to music while running recently. In high school I created a tape with "Man in Motion" (from St. Elmos Fire) playing on continuous repeat, which lasted just long enough to run from my mother's house, in far south Anchorage, down the railroad right-of-way to the Potter way-station (now a tourist stop-over complete with gift store and museum) and back. That run follows Turnagain Arm as it extends south from Anchorage and toward the Kenai Peninsula, with (on the out-leg) Potter's Marsh on the left. The marsh is a famed bird sanctuary, with an enormous population of Canadian Geese breeding in the summer months. Arctic Terns also nest nearby, and it was not uncommon, in the wrong months (though I can't recall as I sit here what those months were) to be dive-bombed by protective parent terns. Winds blow nearly continuously from the south along the Arm, so a runner pushes into the wind on the way out and gets carried by it on the way back. I also recall the t-shirt that I favored when doing this run. It was branded by the alpine ski manufacturer K2, and read "Feel the Need for Speed. Satisfaction Guaranteed." I never clocked the distance, but this was a 60' or so run that I must have repeated 50 times during my high school years. I did use to worry that Man in Motion would obscure the sounds of an approaching train, but I emerged unscathed.

I eschewed headphones for many years after. Carrying a walkman was a pain (in the pre-iPod days), the ear-phones kept falling out of my ears as I sweated, and I told myself serious runners concentrated on their running. Recently I have had a coach who teaches the last rationale: one should use runs either for building speed, which requires concentration, or working on form, proper foot-strike, what-have-you. I followed that approach until about 6 months ago.

I'm back on the headphones. It started when I read that Craig Alexander, for the past two years the world champion in ironman triathlon, enjoys running with his iPod. I then realized that my training challenge was not working on foot-strikes, it was getting myself out the door for a run after a long day (due to fatigue), or even a lazy day (due to lethargy). The iPod is more pleasant to carry than the old, yellow, Sony Sports Walkman used to be. I've become facile with routing the head-phone cord through my hat first, helping to keep them in place. I normally run through Rock Creek Park in DC, where cars are much less of a concern than on the streets of New York or Chicago, and which I can reach with an approximately 8-minute jog from my front door. The right music helps me surmount the psychological hurdle to getting started. A little ACDC on a hill workout keeps the speed up. And I still have Man in Motion on the playlist!

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Best Half in 4 Years

Had a lovely time and a great result in the Chicago Half Marathon today. Apart from getting up at 4:45 AM because they moved the race up to avoid a noon Bears game, everything was perfect. Weather around 60, light breeze, felt pretty good the whole way. I paced a friend who was running her first half for the first 12 miles and sprinted (such as I can) the rest of the way. Finished strong passing directly under the outstretched arms of a golden statue of the Greek goddess of victory that was built for the 1893 Columbian exposition. Came in at 2:05 and some change which is my best half in 4 years. My PR is a 1:51:45 and is probably a thing of the past but today was a good day after more than a year and a half of nothing but agony from plantar fasciatis. My associate dean Mike Kaufman completed his first half as well.

Anybody up for an October 24th half in Myrtle Beach?

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Music While Running -- Safety First!!!

Okay, I like music when I run in the gym, but when I'm outside, I'm definitely a no headphones kind of guy.  Indeed, I'm pretty much an anti-headphones kind of guy.

It's too dangerous out there, and I'm to spacey to deprive myself of one of my senses. . .   I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard an oncoming car before I've seen it.  On bike paths, the approach of a bike is often almost silent until it's too late.  Running up Flatbush Aveue at 6:00 am in the dark, I cannot count the number of times I have reached out my arm to stop a running buddy from stepping off the curb, or been stopped.  I also hate it when I'm on my bike, and I'm overtaking a runner on a bike path who is lost in his/her own private Idaho.  When runners don't hear a biker, they are much more likely to jump unpredictably often in the direction of the cyclist.  I really hate it when that happens.

Luckily, I am blessed with a bunch of running buddies who are excellent conversationalists.  I also have a rich internal life, so I can manage to keep myself occupied, even on long runs.  So, in my opinion, i-pods are for gym rats . . .

Friday, September 10, 2010

Do You Run with Music?

A number of races used to nominally ban running with music but few if any bothered to enforce this in any meaningful way. How could they? Picture the Chicago Marathon with 45,000. The elite runner don't use them and the hackers (myself included) are far too numerous to do anything about it. As a result, most of the races have backed away from unenforceable bans and adopted a sensible " Run with Care and Be Aware of Your Surroundings" policy.

First, the legal realist in me applauds the eventual merging of the law on the books with the law in action.

Second, I am interested in what my fellow bloggers do on training runs and in races. I do run with an iPod almost always when I am running by myself. Not today though, because its my final 5K before the Chicago half and I want to focus on a gorgeous fall like day and my mechanics. But normally if I don't have the pleasure of good company, I prefer to drift away to various tunes and podcasts as the miles go by.

Next time, what I listen to. You'd be surprised.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Teaching Economics

I held my yearly "Antitrust Economics from 30,000 Feet" class last week. That topic is always a bruiser. I have never found a happy way to communicate the dynamics of supply and demand in markets characterized by differing levels of concentration. I frankly wonder if the idea of setting that topic apart in a separate class meeting is a futile endeavor. I would love to appeal to students' intuitions, but for all my efforts talk of gas stations, wheat farmers, auto makers and Microsoft, I am rewarded mostly with blank stares.

To show this is not off-topic: I deliberately schedule that class for after the close of the add-drop period, for fear of students running for the door!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Going Private

I read two articles/editorials yesterday questioning the long-term sustainability of the business model of public education. One was in the Financial Times, discussing how the UCLA Business School is separating from the University of California system and going private. (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d5745294-b9d9-11df-8804-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss) One would think the law schools at UCLA and Cal., at least, might be salivating to do the same thing. Both schools would compete quite well for private giving and surely could maintain their stature if private. Other public schools, mine included, likely would cease to exist if not supported by the state.

The other was an essay in the NY Times Review of Books (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/books/review/Shea-t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=homepage&src=me&adxnnlx=1283788874-EI3F/iQn5Pc+iZfNkzu3rQ) reviewing two recent books by academics -- Hacker & Dreifus, Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting our Money and Failing our Kids, and Taylor, Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities -- suggesting that emphases on scholarly output over teaching, and the resulting creation of a rock star professoriate, is not sustainable in the long term. One of the arguments in the books is that the tenure system should not continue. Both books appear to discuss undergraduate education rather than professional education.

I find both stories rather discouraging. This is a fun career, and well worth the rather extraordinary opportunity costs, when students, administrators and (for public school professors) legislators appreciate our dual roles of educating and contributing to the scholarly conversation. This career will not be worth the rather extraordinary opportunity cost if that circumstance changes. Others on this blog, who have seen trends in this industry over more years than I, including through prior periods of economic malaise, may have more optimistic views.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Tapering

A little tapering is always in order, even before a half-marathon. So yesterday, I ran a leisurely 4.5 miles down the beach, took a nap, and then spent the afternoon in Grant Park for the Chicago Jazz Festival. It is a well attended but incredibly mellow crowd with first rate national and local acts spread across three main stages and a number of smaller tents and performance areas. I wandered from the Heritage Stage with the 5 after 7 Project to the Jackson Street stage for Brian Blade and the Fellowship Project. Then just sat in the park for a while reading Orson Scott Card's Ender in Exile before heading over for the Brad Mehldau Trio at the Petrillo Band Shell.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Why I Run

I did not start running regularly until the spring of 2001, the year after I moved back to Chicago from New York. I had never run regularly before that except for a brief stretch in my twenties in Washington, DC, which started because of a girl friend I was trying to impress and ended with a ill-placed pot hole and several weeks on crutches. Of our little merry band of bloggers, I am among the oldest and definitely the slowest.

So I was turning 44 and looking for a good mid-life crisis. I rejected anything to do with my thinning hair, don’t care about sports car, and am not a Tiger Woods kind of guy. I also wanted something a little extreme without serious danger. I had sky dived in college and bungee jumped out of a hot air balloon in my thirties. So I had already checked those boxes, plus they aren’t really hobbies to do on a regular basis (at least next to the lake in Chicago).

So completing a marathon seemed like a good idea. Except that as a runner I was past a prime that I never really had. I started small and slowly (and mostly stayed slow). A few miles here and there in the park and gradually expanded the radius of what I ran both north and south of my apartment.

My first race was the Thanksgiving 2001 Turkey Trot, an 8K where I finished behind several thousand people and a guy in a full turkey costume. Since then, I have finished behind people in many varieties of super hero costumes, some seriously old people, 11 year old boys, runners with those J-type prosthetic legs, and an incredibly irritating guy who runs endless 8 minute miles while juggling. I train between 800 and 1200 miles a year and run almost year round except when its bitter cold or icy in January and February. I have now run virtually every block of Chicago within 10 miles of my apartment, in most major cities in the US, on four continents, and in 15 or so countries. I have lumbered my way through 5 marathons, never faster than 4:19.

So why bother? Why didn’t I close up shop after I finished my first Chicago marathon in 2003?
The best I can figure out is that running help me turn back the hands of time literally and metaphorically. Like having kids and publishing stuff, it’s a little slice of immortality. We have embedded ourselves in the training runs, conversations with training partners, races, results, web sites, and medals that mark our accomplishments, but that is the least of it. Every pr, every hill, every sprint, every step along the way, is a defiance of the effects of time both physically and mentally.

And no matter whether I am merely running, training for some particular purpose, in the starting corral, or in the middle of the next race, I find my mind goes blank. Not the single mindedness of purpose that Max talks about, perhaps more like the down time of the ind that Ted mentioned in the recent article he saw in the Chronicle. Sometimes it’s a time of inspiration, sometimes it’s a time of memory. Most of the time it’s just a blank. Then for a moment that can last a stride or the hours of a marathon, time has stopped and I am somewhere else.

Isn’t that what Proust was talking about when he titled his masterwork “In Search of Lost Time?”

Friday, September 3, 2010

The Reading Part

Reading is, after all, the first on the list in the blog title. I'm thinking of a list of great running books. Here are a few. Others?

Once a Runner, by John L. Parker Jr. Spencer lent me this, and I proceeded to buy two copies -- one for home and one for the office. It's a fabulous book that follows the exploits of the mythical Quentin Cassidy as he trains and runs a remarkable mile.

The Perfect Mile, by Neal Bascomb. A detailed account of the years 1952-54, when Roger Bannister, John Landy and Wes Santee fought to be the first to run sub-4:00, and then, after both had achieved the mark, Bannister raced Landy in the Empire Games in Vancouver. Remarkable, and if you read it, tell me if the Empire Games mile doesn't parallel Cassidy's race with John Walton at the end of Once a Runner.

Duel in the Sun, by John Brant. This follows Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley in the 1982 Boston Marathon, and for the decades following as each dealt with his own demons. A great book, but I could have used more racing, less, well, not racing. Does anybody know if that race is available on video?

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Jogging the mind

There's an article in the September 3 "Chronicle of Higher Education" titled "Running Jogs the Academic Mind." It's a poorly titled piece. The first three examples are: an administrator in California who had a Eureka moment while running, having to do with her un-academic administrative duties; (2) the Archimedes legend, and his (literal) Eureka moment in the bathtub; and (3) an MIT Nobel Laureate physicist who says he runs too fast to have any real brainstorms while doing it.

And it fails to cite this blog.