Just Running

Spencer has the big race for the year in front of him. Mine is behind me. I got out for a run for the first time this month last Friday, and again on Sunday. My goal was to enjoy myself. Actually, I'm just slightly more ambitious than that. On Friday I wanted to see how it would be to run moderately aggressively for an hour on my forefeet. Answer: imagine running uphill for an hour. It took two days before my calves would permit me to walk down stairs straight. On Sunday I wanted to practice landing midfoot and leveling my hips (which tend to tip forward -- I run sway-back). Today I think I'll run because it's nice out and I want to. I hope to run tomorrow morning because I have a long drive and it would feel good. And so on.

This is a luxury. I've had a good racing year, defined as being better than last year, and all I have left (that I care much about) is a marathon in October, which I will run but I may or may not try to run fast. That means starting in September I need to get in some track work, some long runs, some tempo runs -- but not now. Now I just run, or not, depending how I feel. God do I ever love this sport.

Improvising the Vacation Run

Seattle. High 50s. Delightful alternative to the hot humid soup of Chicago. Problem is juggling runs around family obligations and starting tomorrow the cruise schedule. Making things worse, forgetting our passports so no excursion or run on Victoria Island. Fortunately no passport needed to go from Seattle to Alaska. Got in 5 plus mile around part of Lake Union today. Doing 12 miler tomorrow on shore of Elliott Bay before getting on boat. After that we will see. But have to do my 18 miler within a day of when I get home.

My vacation reading? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; Madame Bovary; and Kenneth Davidson's Reality Ignored.

Some good reads

I'm cramming to get my pleasure reading (defined to include true bedside-table reading and reading that has a professional advancement benefit but is hard to fit in during the semester) done before the start of the semester. Three recent books to recommend:

Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship. This one is old news; I think it came out in 2008 or so. The premise is that the president, who doesn't really want to be president but was the right man at the right time and consented, has had two utterly unimpeachable Court nominees "Borked", one on the amusing basis of a junior-high-school-newspaper review of To Kill A Mockingbird, in which he said the story dragged on at times (thus was seen as having racist tendencies, or whatever). President Vanderdamp thus picks Pepper Cartwright, a smart, sassy, likable, and apparently highly attractive television judge, to fill the vacancy. The first part of the book is devoted to her confirmation hearings, during which she demonstrates disinterest in the job, no inclination to seek to appease the opposing forces in the Senate, and extraordinary quickness of wit. The exchange with the hostile committee members, which occupies Chapter 11 and 12 of the book, represents the heights of political satire. In one early exchange, the committee chairman, Senator Mitchell, refers to Cartwright's judicial record. She responds, "'I brought with me my whole judicial record.' She placed boxed sets of [her television show] Courtroom Six DVDs on the [table]." Antitrust law get a nod; Cartwright corrects one senator "on the actual wording of Leegin . . . ." And Cartwright silences the normally non-plussed Committee Chair Dexter Mitchell, who had asked the president for the nomination himself, by saying: "'It would take somebody with bigger cojones than I have to ask for this. It's not the sort of job anyone would solicit outright. Is it?'"

The book continues with the first of Cartwright's terms on the bench. It remains fresh and funny to the end. It's an easy read for a rainy Saturday, and I highly recommend it.

Tim Wu, The Master Switch. Spencer has reviewed this book and appropriately given it two thumbs up, so I won't say much -- but to say that it's an extraordinary lesson in the history of hi-tech industrial policy in the US. I'm learning backstories to cases I teach in class. I'm learning more about state of information regulation than I believed could be reduced to a single volume. And I'm enjoying every chapter. I might complain that Wu is advancing an agenda (with which I happen largely to agree), but he is being careful to offer arguments supporting contrary views. An amazing book.

Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. Schulz is a journalist who has studied the history and psychology of reaching wrong conclusions. Her thesis seems to be that we are destined to be wrong, even most of the time; we should not be embarrassed to be wrong, but recognize it as a natural state of affairs; and only by being wrong can we actually advance as a civilization. The book is a back-door entry into innovation theory, although Schulz doesn't so pitch it. She notes that cultures that don't allow experimentation, which usually produces false starts and dead ends but occasionally produces amazing break-throughs, ultimately stagnate and whither away. So "wrongness" is a synonym for "diversity" and "competition." Again, highly recommended.

Later, a report on some Kindle reading -- Freidman's Capitalism and Freedom is the current selection.

An Inspired Tour

I talked my buddy D__ into playing hooky with me yesterday and sneaking out on the bikes for a low-traffic day on roads in northwest Virginia and northeast West Virginia. We followed cues for a ride sponsored by the DC Randonneurs, leaving Middletown, Virginia, at about 6:30 a.m. and reaching the West Virginia border sometime around 10. We rode through apple orchards, where I noticed a few trees' fruit ripe and being picked but most still green; remote burgs where cell service was nonexistent; state parks and National Forests. The routing was inspired -- consistently high-quality road surfaces, non-stop excellent views, and a meal stop at a lovely cafe in the town of Lost River. (Having spent countless weekends in West Virginia when I first moved to DC, I never have seen Lost River, and it is a gem.) We crossed two ridges in the George Washington National Forest through Miller's Gap and Wolf Gap to re-enter Virginia, and took a tour northward through the Shenandoah Valley returning to Middletown.

D__ road exceedingly well and strongly. I'm either just not that strong or still feeling the race the other weekend, but that didn't keep me from appreciating what we had. The day was a winner.

Instead of Running

I went to Lollapalooza this weekend. Plus it was too hot and humid to run with the tempting forecast of high 60s for Monday morning for my 16 miler past where Lolla was held. So instead on Day One, I walked my daughter and her friend into the park and then off we went our mostly separate ways. First stop, Kids These Days, a jazz infused hip-hop band with the son of one of my faculty colleagues as the trumpet player (plus a music scholarship to college next year). Great energy, really liked their medley of Its a Man's World (James Brown) and Summertime (Porgy and Bess). Stop two The Kills on the South Main Stage. Then after dinner, back for an incredibly dull half with Coldplay but a surprisingly interesting set with Rat-a-Tat, two guys each with synthesizers and guitars and no vocals. Then off to the pre-arranged meeting point to meet Jordan and her friend.

Day Two, came after dinner mostly for the pickup. Listened for maybe 10 minutes to Eminen and then thoroughly enjoyed the last 30 minutes of My Morning Jacket.

Day Three stayed home to write and pack for Alaska trip.

Next year? If I go at all, going VIP for covered seating, lounge to wait in, free drinks, and the use of an air conditioned toilets. Should have realized this was the efficient thing to do once I learned that was how Jim Langenfeld, our law and economics adjunct, was attending.

Vineman

Last Saturday was a wildest dreams kind of day. On a superlative day in wine country, California, I dropped an hour twenty two off of my personal best for the iron distance with a final time of 10:26. I would say it's the first time I've actually "competed" in an iron-distance triathlon. Picture is me coming into the finish.

Red Eye Relay

This post is from my colleague, Peter:


As Max noted earlier this week, our law school running club entered a seven-person team in the 100-mile Red Eye Relay held on the hilly roads north of Bloomington, Indiana last weekend. Each team member ran three legs (21 total) and total mileage per runner ranged from 11-19.5 miles. We had two faculty members and five students—one 2L, three 3Ls, and one part-time student starting his fourth year. With four women and three men, we were an “Open Mixed” team. Our adventure began at 6 PM on Saturday under sunny skies with temperatures in the low 90s. Fourteen hours and twelve minutes later, the sun was up again, the temperature was around 80 degrees, and we finished. That time was good enough for first place in the twelve-team Open Mixed category and 18th out of 62 teams overall.

For me, the race was an unqualified success on every level. Most importantly, everyone had fun together. One thing I found strange about law school when I attended, and still do now, is its solitary nature. Grading curves, published class rankings, and grades determined entirely on individual performance with no group component can’t help but interfere with the kind of camaraderie that ties students to each other and to their law school. This race gave the students a chance to see their classmates, some of whom they didn’t know very well, as teammates who needed their support while struggling to climb a 6% grade hill at 2 AM and who provided support in return when it was their turn to suffer. My school could use more of that.

Extending that team dynamic to faculty members is also valuable, at least in my opinion. In my classes, I try—with limited success—to encourage students to talk with me outside class about the course material and the practice of law in general. Most students resist, but often if I can get them to do it once they become more comfortable and return with more questions. Creating those initial out-of-class contacts between faculty and students is one of the reasons why I created our running club and why I’ve work so hard to recruit other faculty members to participate in events like the Red Eye Relay. (Thanks Max!) While I can see how some faculty might grow uneasy at the prospect of spending ~18 hours straight with a group of students, it really wasn’t a problem. Were there a few long silences as we traversed the countryside overnight? Sure, but we survived them. We spent most of our time talking about family, life, running, food, law school, working as a lawyer, etc. I particularly enjoyed getting to know one student who I’d never met before, but who will take federal income tax from me this fall. I’m curious whether she will be one of the students who talks with me about the course outside of class. If my hopes for the running club are valid, she should.

Finally, it goes without saying that winning our category was nice. But I usually place within my age group and it is not unheard of for me to win, so that alone wasn’t enough to make the event special. Winning with a team of people who don’t often place or win, and who were genuinely excited about their success, did.