Election Day’s coming

It may be Halloween, but we’re all thinking ahead. Found here:

Mountain Marathon off the hills

With only slight exaggeration, I must say that this more closely approximates the weather I was expecting on the Challenge last May than the gorgeous weather we had.

I listened to Bob and Rose’s OMM gear-check podcast yesterday, and was was aware of the forecast. I know everyone is accounted for, but I hope Bob and Rose and any of you who were involved had more of a “memorable experience” than a miserable siege.

Best to all from here.

I second that emotion

I’ve been sending around a slightly truncated version of this David Sedaris bit about the “undecided voters” the pollsters and reporters seem to keep finding:

I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

Too bad

It’s been a great run, but now it’s my duty to root for the Rays against the National League’s Philadelphia Phillies.

More Sox

Jeff Jacobs comes to the appropriate conclusion.

Calling voters

I’ve run for office a number of times, and I’ve learned a lot from doing so. A decade or so ago, I ran a serious campaign for First Selectman. As a Democrat in a heavily Republican town, I was an automatic underdog, but we put together a terrific campaign—energetic, committed, imaginative, and (I, at least, think) smart. As the campaign played out, I realized how personal it was. These people were laying it on the line for me. You hear politicians talking all the time about how humbled they are to be blah blah blah. Let me tell you, for me that was absolutely true. I still feel a special and profound debt to everyone who helped put that almost-successful campaign together. (It’s probably good I didn’t win. I wouldn’t have been able to deny any of them anything.)

During that campaign (and others), I of course knocked on doors (hundreds of doors), and made phone calls (hundreds of phone calls). I did it. I had to do it. But I hated doing it—it’s just not my personality. That’s why I was so interested in this little piece about how the Obama campaign tries to get supporters to spread the word, even if it’s not their personality. Very clever—fun, in a way—and I bet very effective, too.

The McCain campaign uses the phone differently. It’s robo-calling filth.

Running shoes

I just broke out a new pair of training flats. Big news, huh?

I used to use up a pair of these every six or seven weeks, when they wore down and out after about 400 miles. Now I just wear them and wear them and wear them, since mileage is hardly an issue. I left a pair in Minnesota, though, so I could use them when I go back in a few weeks, and I had to break out some new ones.

For a long time, I’ve been running in Asics GTs. (The numbers change—I think they’re up to GT-2130s now—but the shoe, thankfully, remains essentially the same. Slightly clunky, but not too heavy, not overly “controlled,” not overly “stable,” not overly cushioned.) I buy them by the half-dozen pairs (old models when the new models are introduced) in the certain knowledge that they will be, as I heard it put lately, “obsoleted” some day when I’m not looking. I ritualistically pull out the cheap supplied innersoles, slip in a set of simple green Spencos and my own inserts, and there we are.

I began running cross-country in Puma racing flats (size 8-1/2), which would now be seen as closer to running barefoot than to any modern shoe, before switching to the original red-and-white, ripple-soled New Balances (size 7-1/2). I raced on the track in the blue Adidas Tokyos (size 9-1/2) that were probably the most popular spikes of that late-cinder-track era. And I trained mostly in green-striped white Adidas Italias (size 9). (Or were they Romas? How odd I can’t be sure.) [Much later: Italias.] These shoes, all of them among the best available in the mid-to-late ’60s, were necessary evils for me, and I spent a lot of time not running. Our trainer labored heroically on arch cookies and all sorts of tape jobs, but in vain. I was eventually diagnosed with anterior compartment syndrome.

(Time out: This reminds me of something amusing. I had to shave my legs below the knees to be taped, and the trainer would spray on Cramer Tuf-Skin to make the tape really adhere. Tuf-Skin over time would turn your leg green unless you scrubbed it off with rubbing alcohol (surgical meths), which I naturally considered a waste of time. So I spent my late teens and early twenties with stubbly green legs. I looked like a diseased tomato vine.)

For a few years I puttered around in very light Tigers (now Asics), which were cheap and not bad. In the mid-’70s, I discovered orthotics and Lydiard-style long-distance training. I also discovered that shoes were vastly improved. And vastly more expensive. Why, some cost more than $30!

Starting with some blue New Balance 320s, I moved to yellow waffle-soled Nike LDVs for training, and Nike Elites for road racing (all size 9—amazing standardization!). Nike design and my needs diverged somewhere back in the ’80s, and I’ve been in Asics ever since (though I still sometimes call them Tigers). My racing shoes these days? Surely you jest.

Last year, I was given several sets of Lock Laces, which you might be able to make out in the photo. I never would have bought these for myself, because they seemed like gimmicks. But I love them. Essentially, they are small-diameter shock cord and special two-hole cord locks. They let you lever yourself quickly into the shoe, which I really like, but best, their stretchy nature keeps pressure off my very high instep while keeping the shoe on snugly. Nifty.