Knowing and Doing

This set of entries records my experiences at SIGCSE 2008, in Portland, Oregon, March 12-16. I'll update it as I post new pieces about the conference. One of those entries will explain why my posts on SIGCSE may come more slowly than they might.

Primary entries:

• SIGCSE Day 1
  • Randy Pausch and Alice
    ... on Pausch's contributions to CS education
  • The Mystery Problem
    ... on correlations and students' mental models
  • Nifty Assignments
    ... a few cool things to ask students to do
  • Innovating Our Image
    ... how two NSF Distinguished Educational Fellows are trying
  • This and That
    ... miscellaneous observations from the day
• SIGCSE Day 2 -- coming
  • Plenary Address by Marissa Mayer
    ... on Google's approach to creativity and simplicity
• SIGCSE Day 3
  • Expectation and Outcome
    ... a tale of two sessions
  • CS Past, Present, and Future
    ... on computing's contributions and coming challenges

Ancillary entries:

• Not an Example of Problem-Based Learning
  -- no matter what people say
• On the Roads Back in Portland
  -- running in an old new place

With the exception of my annual visit to Carefree for ChiliPLoP, I don't often get a chance to return to a city for another conference. This year brings a pleasant return to Portland for SIGCSE 2008. OOPSLA'06 was in Portland, and I wrote up a little bit about running in Portland as part of my first visit to town. Because I was on the conference planning committee that year, I made three trips to the city, stayed in the same hotel three times, and ran several of the same routes three times. The convention center is right in town, which makes it hard to get to any nice parks to run, but Portland has a 3-mile loop alongside the Willamette River that provides a decent run.

This time, I am on my own dime and trying to save a little money by staying at a budget motel about 3.5 miles from the convention center. That meant figuring out bus routes and bus stops for the ride between the two -- no small feat for a guy who has never lived in a place where public transportation is common! It also meant planning some new runs, including a route back to the waterfront.

I arrived in town early enough yesterday to figure out the buses (I think) and still have time for an exploratory run. I ran toward the river, and then toward the convention center, until I knew the lay of the land well enough. The result was 4.5 miles of urban running in neighborhoods I'd never seen. This morning, used what I learned to get to the river, where I ran my first lap through the Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park and the Eastbank Esplanade since October 2006. I ended up with about 8 miles under my belt, and a strong desire to return Saturday evening for three laps and what will be a 14-miler -- what would be my longest run since the Marine Corps Marathon. Let's see how I feel in a couple of days...

The rest of this week I am at SIGCSE, and I'm looking forward to seeing old friends and colleagues and to talking CS for a few days. Then on Sunday, four of us fly to Phoenix for ChiliPLoP and some intense work. This is a long time to be away from home and to miss my family, but the ideas should keep me busy.

While catching up on some work at the office yesterday -- a rare Saturday indeed -- I listened to Peter Turchi's OOPSLA 2007 keynote address, available from the conference podcast page. Turchi is a writer with whom conference chair Richard Gabriel studied while pursuing his MFA at Warren Wilson College. I would not put this talk in the same class as Robert Hass's OOPSLA 2005 keynote, but perhaps that has more to do with my listening to an audio recording of it and not being there in the moment. Still, I found it to be worth listening as Turchi encouraged us to "get lost" when we want to create. We usually think of getting lost as something that happens to us when we are trying to get somewhere else. That makes getting lost something we wish wouldn't happen at all. But when we get lost in a new land inside our minds, we discover something new that we could not have seen before, at least not in the same way.

As I listened, I heard three ideas that captured much of the essence of Turchi's keynote. First was that we should strive to avoid preconception. This can be tough to do, because ultimately it means that we must work without knowing what is good or bad! The notions of good and bad are themselves preconceptions. They are valuable to scientists and engineers as they polish up a solution, but they often are impediments to discovering or creating a solution in the first place.

Second was the warning that a failure to get lost is a failure of imagination. Often, when we work deeply in an area for a while, we sometimes feel as if we can't see anything new and creative because we know and understand the landscape so well. We have become "experts", which isn't always as dandy a status as it may seem. It limits what we see. In such times, we need to step off the easy path and exercise our imaginations in a new way. What must I do in order to see something new?

This leads to the third theme I pulled from Turchi's talk: getting lost takes work and preparation. When we get stuck, we have to work to imagine our way out of the rut. For the creative person, though, it's about more about getting out of a rut. The creative person needs to get lost in a new place all the time, in order to see something new. For many of us, getting lost may seem like as something that just happens, but the person who wants to be lost has to prepare to start.

Turchi mentioned Robert Louis Stevenson as someone with a particular appreciation for "the happy accident that planning can produce". But artists are not the only folks who benefit from these happy accidents or who should work to produce the conditions in which they can occur. Scientific research operates on a similar plane. I am reminded again of Robert Root-Bernstein's ideas for actively engaging the unexpected. Writers can't leave getting lost to chance, and neither can scientists.

Turchi comes from the world of writing, not the world of science. Do his ideas apply to the computer scientist's form of writing, programming? I think so. A couple of years ago, I described a structured form of getting lost called air-drop programming, which adventurous programmers use to learn a legacy code base. One can use the same idea to learn a new framework or API, or even to learn a new programming language. Cut all ties to the familiar, jump right in, and see what you learn!

What about teaching? Yes. A colleague stopped by my office late last week to describe a great day of class in which he had covered almost none of what he had planned. A student had asked a question whose answer led to another, and then another, and pretty soon the class was deep in a discussion that was as valuable, or more, than the planned activities. My colleague couldn't have planned this unexpectedly good discussion, but his and the class's work put them in a position where it could happen. Of course, unexpected exploration takes time... When will they cover all the material of the course? I suspect the students will be just fine as they make adjustments downstream this semester.

What about running? Well, of course. The topic of air-drop programming came up during a conversation about a general tourist pattern for learning a new town. Running in a new town is a great way to learn the lay of the land. Sometimes I have to work not to remember landmarks along the way, so that I can see new things on my way back to the hotel. As I wrote after a glorious morning run at ChiliPLoP three years ago, sometimes you run to get from Point A to Point B; sometimes, you should just run. That applies to your hometown, too. I once read about an elite women's runner who recommended being dropped off far from your usual running routes and working your way back home through unfamiliar streets and terrain. I've done something like this myself, though not often enough, and it is a great way to revitalize my running whenever the trails start look like the same old same old.

It seems that getting lost is a universal pattern, which made it a perfect topic for an OOPSLA keynote talk.

How is this for a headline?

2004 Olympian DAN BROWNE Sets His Sights on Eugene

I'm making a dash for the finish line... Can I hold him off?

This has been my first week since the middle of last year not running, due to a little flu or cold bug I've picked up. It's been an icy enough week that I miss the run less than I might, but I am itching to hit the road. I hold some hope for tomorrow morning.

The day of my cold run ended with a viewing of the new film Spirit of the Marathon. Jon Dunham's film follows six people as they prepare for the 2005 Chicago Marathon. Two, Kenya's Daniel Njenga and the US's Deena Kastor, are among the best marathoners in the world. One was a guy is a 30-something with a PR of 3:11 hoping to qualify for Boston. Two are 20-something women training for their first marathons. The last is a 60-something guy with several 12:00/mile-pace marathons under his belt. Interspersed throughout coverage of the six runners are interviews with some of the sports greats, including Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers, who comment on the history of the marathon as event and on the human desire to challenge oneself and persevere.

I enjoyed the film very much. Every few minutes, someone in the film said or did something that put a smile on the face, or a tear in the eye, of every marathoner in the room. We knew just what the person was doing, thinking, feeling; we had done the same. The chill of a dark morning just before a 20-miler. The deep disappointment of an injury that means the end of a goal. The vacillation between doubt and confidence as goals are met and new challenges arise.

Some of the lines were memorable. A lot of folks chuckled out loud when the 60-something guy said, "The only runner's high I've ever felt is when I stop running." People talk about a runner's high, but it's not all that common. Each mile is work, and most days we merely manage to reach the end. I've certainly had great runs, and written about some of them here, but those days are rare and less euphoria than steady. Unfortunately, new runners expect that they should feel a runner's high at some point, and when they don't they think something is wrong with them. There's nothing wrong with you. Just keep running.

My personal favorite line was spoken, I think, by Deena Kastor, 2004 Olympic marathon bronze medalist. She said that one of the great allures of running a marathon is the unknown. You work hard, you prepare, you are ready for the race of your life. Yet despite all of the preparation, all the hard work, you never know how your body or mind will react on The Day. That is the moment of challenge.

Indeed, this is the ultimate challenge of a marathon. The distance leaves your body with no margin of error, so the marathoner is always teetering at the end of his or her physical capabilities -- and mental energy. We middle- and back-of-the-packers may think that the champion runners are different from us, but they aren't. When Daniel Njenga made the final turn of the Chicago Marathon and faced the last grueling meters of the race, desperately hoping to find a kick that would carry him across the finish line -- he came up empty. Spent, sore, tired. His dream was beyond his reach. But he kept running, pushing his mind and legs to take the last steps.

I've made that last turn in Chicago and felt that same disappointment. I've struggled to push my legs through those last grueling meters of the course. My dream wasn't Njenga's, but it meant the same to me as his did to him.

In other sports, we can share the dreams of the world's best, but we compete in different arenas. In the marathon, we run the same courses, on the same crisp mornings, only minutes (and hours...) apart.

I don't know if non-runners will enjoy Spirit of the Marathon as much as the runners in the audience Thursday night did. If you think running is boring or hard, this film may not change your mind. If you think marathoners are crazy to attempt the distance even as they know it will push them beyond their limits, then you may see this film as supporting evidence, not inspiration. As a runner, I know the exhilaration of the challenge, and watching six runners challenge themselves and show us what they felt along the way was pretty inspiring.

Oh, and the marathon doesn't push me beyond my limits. It helps me to find my limits, and push them outward.

I enjoyed a brisk 5-mile run outdoors yesterday morning. That isn't much to write about, except that yesterday morning the temperature dipped to an all-time record low for January 24 here, bottoming out at -29° Fahrenheit. (All together now: Here's your sign.) At least the wind didn't make it feel much colder than that.

The thing is, I did enjoy the run. I stayed plenty warm, thanks to my clothing and the physical act of running. First, I threw on a layer or two more than usual. Second, my wife gave me a couple of pieces of new gear for Christmas: a pair of fleece running mittens with a second, wind-resistant outer layer, and an ultra-warm headband that I wore under my usual thermal hat. My fingers and toes have always been my weak spot in the cold, and for the first time ever in very cold weather, my fingers didn't get cold at all. My attire did the job, and the new gear worked just as I had hoped.

In running, as in programming, good tools make all the difference. I really liked Jason Marshall's take on this in a recent Something to Say:

There's an old saying, "A good craftsman never blames his tools." Many people take this to mean "Don't make excuses," or even, "Real men don't whine when their tools break." But I take it to mean, "A good craftsperson does not abide inferior tools."

I'm teaching a course on Unix shell scripting the first five weeks of this semester, and tool-building is central to the Unix philosophy. I hope that students see that they never have to abide inferior tools, or even okay tools that do not meet their needs. With primitive Unix commands, pipelines, I/O redirection, a little sed and awk, and the more general programming language of bash, they can do so much to customize their environment so that it meets their needs. If the shell isn't enough, they can use a general-purpose programming language. Progress depends on the creation of better tools.

I like to build software tools for myself. I'm not equipped to make my own running gear, though, and being, um, careful with my money means that I am sometimes slow to buy the more expensive item. But after running 7500 miles over the last four years, I've slowly realized that I'm enough of a runner to use better gear. A few experiences like yesterday morning's make it easier to purchase the right equipment for the job. Learning shell scripting, or a better programming language, can have the same effect on a programmer.

1492.

I was planning to run this morning, even though Monday is often a day of rest for me. There were two reasons. The first was purely sentimental. Today is the last day of 2007, and it is always kinda cool to mark big days with a run. The second reason was more compelling. It will be cold here tomorrow, certainly in the single digits Fahrenheit and perhaps as low as 0 degrees, with gusty winds. I figured that I would enjoy my run more at a balmy 15 degrees than a frigid 5. This would be my usual Tuesday run, an easy five-miler that falls between a Sunday long run and a faster Wednesday 8-miler, usually run on the track. I would run it on Monday instead and take Tuesday, January 1, as a day of rest, kicking off a new year's running bright and early on Wednesday morning.

But then I sat down last night to update my running long for the previous week, and saw that number.

1492.

As of December 30, I had run 1,492.0 miles. It was a surprise to me, as I had not expected to have put so many miles in the books this month. But the last three weeks have been good running, with 35, 37, and 39 miles, respectively. I'm getting back to a good groove after my latest marathon, though on most of my easy days I still feel a little slow.

In any case, upon seeing 1492.0 in my end-of-week column, no longer could I plan to run the same old five miles on New Year's Eve! With a mere three miles more, I could reach the nice, round total of 1500 miles for 2007.

So December 31 became an 8-mile run.

1500 shouldn't excite me so much. In 2006, I ran 1932.9 miles, in 2005, I ran my all-time high of 2137.7 miles, and in 2004, I made a huge jump in mileage upswing with 1907.0 miles. We have to go back to the year of my first marathon, 2003, to find so few miles on the books, 1281.8 miles.

But 2007 was different. January was tough, beginning with a lingering illness that knocked me off the road entirely for the last week of January and the first of February. I slowly built my mileage back up -- partly to be safe and partly because I didn't feel strong enough to build faster. Then I lost whole weeks to the same lingering "under the weather" in April and May, and a week to bad hamstrings in the middle of July.

From then on, I was as healthy as I'd been in a long while. My marathon training went pretty well, though I never quite found the speed I had lost from 2006. I could run fast a couple of days a week, but the other days were "just miles". Post-marathon has been pretty good, too, with only a few days missed. The last three weeks have seemed positively normal.

So 2007 was simply a tougher year all-around, and the small accomplishment of 1500 miles felt like a good way to ring out the old year and look toward a new one. And indeed it was.

Looking back at my log, 2003 looks a lot like 2007 in many ways. I was under the weather and off the road for January and February. In March, I began to recover with some long walks in the Arizona desert of ChiliPLoP'03; my colleague and good friend Robert Duvall may recall these walks as well. I then ran once each of the last two weeks, for a total of 6 miles on March 31. I began to train for my first half marathon on April 1 and put in 284.7 miles over the next three months. Then came training for the Chicago marathon, with an until then unheard-of 545.7 miles over three months. My post-marathon mileage was a nearly a carbon copy of 2007. Interesting.

My mileage was down this year, but what about performance in races? Though I never reached my strongest levels of 2005 or 2006, race times were not too bad. I ran my 3rd-best 5K ever in September, my 3rd-best half-marathon in June, and my 2nd-best marathon ever at the end of October. With a little more intestinal luck in Washington, I might have PRed the marathon, despite running a more physically demanding course. So, as I usually find at the end of each year, I can't complain much. This year raised new challenges, but isn't that what most years do for us?

As I type this now, I feel a distinct urge to start 2008 "right" -- on the road. An easy, easy three miles sounds good... I can handle half an hour of -5 degrees Fahrenheit, even with the stiff winds forecast for the night and morning. I'll bundle up, lace up the Asics, and savor the crispest of winter air as it fills my lungs with the hope of a year of new challenges. Perhaps that is what I'll do.

There are plenty of ways to warm up after I return to the house to celebrate the New Year with my family.

Sustainable pace is part of the fabric of agile methods. The principles behind the Agile Manifesto include:

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

When I hear people talk about sustainable pace, they are usually discussing time -- how many hours per week a healthy developer and a healthy team can produce value in their software. The human mind and body can work so hard for only so long, and trying to work hard for longer leads to problems, as well as decline in productivity.

The first edition of XP had a practice called 40-hour work week that embodied this notion. The practice was later renamed sustainable pace to reflect that 40 hours is an arbitrary and often unrealistic limit. (Most university faculty certainly don't stop at 40 hours. By self-report at my school, the average work week is in the low-50s.) But the principle is the same.

Does this mean that we cannot become more productive?

Recall that pace -- rate -- is a function of two variables:

rate = distance / time

Productivity is like distance. One way to cover more distance is to put in more time. Another is to increase the amount of work you can do in a given period of time.

This is an idea close to the heart of runners. While I have written against running all out, all the time, I know that the motivation found in that mantra is to get faster. Interval training, fartleks, hill work, and sustained fast pace on long runs are all intended to help a runner get stronger and faster.

How can software developers "get faster"? I think that one answer lies in the tools they use.

When I use a testing framework and automate my tests, I am able to work faster, because I am not spending time running tests by hand. When I use a build tool, I am able to work faster, because I am not spending time recompiling files and managing build dependencies. When I use a powerful -- and programmable -- editing tool, whether it is Eclipse or Emacs, I am able to work faster, because I am not spending time putzing around for the sake of the tool.

And, yes, when I use a more powerful programming language, I am able to work faster, because I am not spending time expressing thoughts in the low-level terms of a language that limits my code.

So, programmers can increase their sustainable pace by learning tools that make them more productive. They can learn more about the tools they already use. They can extend their tools to do more. And they can write new tools when existing tools aren't good enough.

Perhaps it is not surprising that I had this thought while running a pace that I can't sustain for more than a few miles right now. But I hope in a few months that a half marathon at this pace will be comfortable!

On Friday morning, I had my best speed workout in at least fourteen months. I ran 1600m and 800m intervals at target 5K pace, followed by a ladder of 800m-400m-200m at an equivalent 1 mile pace. The 800m at 1-mile pace was almost certainly the fastest half-mile I have ever run in my life. Afterwards I felt great. Life is good.

Things look perfect for a chance to PR a 5K on Saturday, December 8. This is a great chance to put all my marathon training to good use in a speedier (and shorter!) race.

On Saturday, we had a huge ice storm. Snow and cold are one sort of challenge, but I'll take my chances running fast in them. A half-inch of ice is an entirely different matter.

I guess this will be a "fun run" after all, if the race is even able to go.

You are leaving a meeting and spontaneously break into a a jog.

The weather was beautiful, if a bit nippy. I was in a hurry to get back to my office and prepare for class. And my legs did the rest, without a thought. When I realized what was happening, I was a bit surprised, and happy.

I also ran an easy three miles this morning. Thursday after a Sunday marathon is a common day for me to go for my first post- marathon run. Actually, I felt like running yesterday, which would not have been unheard of, but I slept in a bit. In retrospect, though, I'm glad I waited. By this morning, all the residual stiffness from Sunday was gone. I enjoyed today's run more than I would have enjoyed one yesterday, and my body feels better for waiting.

We all have reason to celebrate a "new year" many times in any twelve-month cycle: a calendar new year, an academic new year, a religious new year. Now that I've run a marathon each of the last five Octobers, I celebrate a new "new year" each fall, the first run after that race, as I ease into a winter of runs that are, for the most part, not tied to any particular training plan, running just for fun, for the sake of running. It is a cause for some celebration, no matter how much I enjoy getting ready for a big run.

Happy New Year!

First, I'll cut to the chase: 3:47:01.

I feel good about my result. The most meaningful measure of success for me is that I ran the race I planned: a careful first 20 miles, paying special attention to the uphill and downhill stretches, followed by a faster last 6 miles, with some strength. The only deviation from plan was that most of my miles were a bit slower than planned. I never really found my groove and saw mile splits that were all over the board. The hills early in the course had a lot to do with that, too.

But Miles 20-24 went very well, which allowed me to feel something I had not felt in at least three years: strong down the stretch. The last hill came at about 25.5, as we climbed from a highway down near the river up to the Marine Corps War Memorial. That made a fast finish impossible for me, but I ran hard and felt proud.

As a result, though, I did run my tank empty, and so the hour after the race was a little uneasy. But some rest on the metro, a shower, and several pieces of dandy pizza have refreshed me! My legs are still complaining, but that I can take.

This race had fewer novelty runners and humorous shirts and signs than my previous mega-race, in Chicago. My two favorite inspiration along the way were:

• In a wide open stretch between the halfway point and the 14-mile marker, a van was playing music and and advertising its wares. The side of the van read "3:16 — Your Race Number for Life!" I thought that was a creative twist on the usual "John 3:16" one sees at most sporting events.

• Somewhere around Mile 19, a spectator was holding a sign that featured a young woman eating an ice cream cone, um, suggestively. The sign read, "You Can Lick This Marathon". This made me smile as I entered my stretch run.

Of course, the inspiration in this race comes from the men and women of our armed forces. Many ran this race in honor of fallen comrades. Spouses ran in honor of active personnel in Iraq. Veterans ran, including some who had lost legs and so competed in the wheelchair division. Some ran with backpacks that made my load seem cheap. Many Marines did not run and instead served us, from the bag check before the race, through water stops along the course, to the recently-minted second lieutenants draping medals over our necks and honoring our effort. All I could say to them was "thank you" and think how much greater their efforts are every day, whether here or serving in harm's way. Oo-rah.

This was my second best time ever, just 77 seconds slower than Des Moines. But that was three years ago, and I have had much better preparation the last two years. I think this is another positive I can take from this year -- a good run in what was not the best health and training year I have had.

But I won't be running tomorrow.

5:00 AM on a chilly autumn morning. A crystal clear sky filled with more stars than the eye can take in. A lone runner moves through the empty streets of a sleeping city, with only a hooded sweatshirt as protection against the intermittent gusts of wind.

As I completed my final training run this morning, my overly romantic subconscious felt like Rocky -- I half-expected to hear Bill Conti's theme rise over the trees of South Riverside Trail. Of course, Rocky ran against the backdrop of a blue-collar metropolis waking for another work day, among a people who placed great hope in one of their own to rise from the streets in victory. When I finished running, I headed off to my office for a day of mail, meetings, and a comfortable chair.

Rocky faced the challenge of Apollo Creed, who put on a cloak of transparent patriotism as America's hero. My challenge, the Marine Corps Marathon, offers a background of patriotism and pride, but an authentic pride borne of sacrifice my men and women who endure challenges that dwarf my 26.2 miles.

Rocky looked into the unknown as he prepared for a world championship fight, but this is my fourth marathon. I know the challenge. I have had some successes, and I've come up short of expectations. Each race is an unknown, but we understand some unknowns better than others.

I cannot in good conscience compare my cliché-riddled state of mind to Rocky's quiet desperation that his life could be more -- that he could be more. But on those mornings filled with long and solitary miles, we share something of a bond, along with countless others who challenge themselves to approach their limits. I, for one, enjoy it all -- the planning, the training miles, the race strategy, and lining up to see how far I can go.

My taper into the Marine Corps Marathon has begun. Last week ended with a 25.5-mile long run, my longest training run in preparation for the race, for a total of 60 miles in the week, my longest week.

Time was of no concern to me on this long run. My mileage build-up has taken longer this year than the past few, coming out of a winter and spring that curtailed both my mileage and my speed. On Sunday, the weather was my friend as much as it could be, with the sun spending much of the morning moving in and out of the clouds. That kept temperatures in the upper 70s F., unlike what my brethren racing in Chicago and the Twin Cities faced.

I knew early in this run, by mile 6 or so, that I didn't "have it" this day, and that finishing would be a matter of perseverance, not triumph. I was not surprised. The gods of progress were penurious this year, so I've never quite reached the level of comfort going either long or fast that I have reached in recent years. That may well turn out to be a good thing. In past years, I ran a lot of miles going into my race and probably had worn my body out. I also probably peaked too soon, on one of the long training runs weeks before. This year, I will be undertrained rather than overtrained, and relatively rested rather than relatively spent. Veteran marathoners tell me this is good. The body can be ready.

I suppose that my taper began on Monday, but I had no reason to notice until Wednesday, when I did my first track workout of the week. Instead of ten miles, I ran eight. It was a legitimate workout -- 6x800m followed by 2.5 miles at my ambitious marathon goal pace -- but it ended two miles sooner. It's amazing what two fewer miles can do (or not do) to the body.

The primary purpose of the taper is to let the body recover from the hard work it has done in recent weeks and to consolidate the gains it has made during training. One of the training goals of the taper is focus on the quality of every run, rather than on the cross-product of quantity x quality. By running only eight miles on the track, I can concentrate on speed, whether a target speed for the intervals or the steady goal pace of my other miles. My 800m repeats are still not where they were last fall (3:11-3:13), but I did run six solid repeats at 3:16 or so, with the last two being the fastest. (Negative splits!) My Tuesday and Thursday runs this week have still been slow, but I expect that by next week my body will be ready to take every run seriously.

Earlier, I mentioned my "ambitious marathon goal pace". By this I do not mean that I have set an ambitious goal pace for myself. Rather, I mean that I have two goal paces, an ambitious one and a less ambitious one. Indeed, my ambitious goal is exactly the same goal pace I've had the last two years, 8:00 per mile. I know that I have this in me somewhere, as I have maintained that pace well for long training runs the past two years and through 19 and 21 miles of my last two marathons, respectively. Whenever I have run "marathon pace" miles in training this year, I have run 8-minute miles. And I have run as many marathon pace miles as possible, especially on the track after doing my scheduled repeats. I want to prepare my body for what it feels to run this pace while tired and maybe even sore.

My less ambitious pace is 8:30 per mile. If I were to finish my race averaging this pace, I would have every reason to feel good about my day. So I have been preparing my mind to think about both paces. One thing I will do these next couple of weeks is to decide on a race strategy. At various times this summer, I have considered planning to run the first X miles of the race at 8:30/mile, where X ranges from 5 to 16, and then deciding whether I feel strong enough to try to finish at 8:00/mile. My ultimate plan will depend some on race conditions that day, but the real question is where my confidence lies, both in my mind and in my body.

One good thing about running lots of miles at an 8:00 pace: Running an 8:30 pace feels great!

... with apologies to The Commodores.

It is not often anytime, let alone during marathon training, that my Sunday long run is not focal point of my running week. This week was different.

First, it was a recovery week that called for only a 12-mile long run. That always shifts more of my attention to my in-week track sessions, which this week consisted of two 10-milers: Wednesday, consisting of 8x200m repeats followed by 5 miles at marathon goal pace, and Wednesday, consisting of 7 miles at marathon goal pace with relatively fast cool-down laps.

Second, I decided to run a 5K race on Saturday. On tired legs from the two track workouts, I had low expectations. But I figured the race vibe would be good for me, and besides I could find out how much speed I had after a week of running.

My result was unexpectedly good. I finished in 21:26, which was my 3rd fastest 5K ever and fastest since 2005, when I ran a 20:50 in June and a 20:44 in December. I even "medaled", finishing second in my age group. And I even felt good at the end -- could've run more! A good day.

Sunday's 9 miles was anticlimactic, a nice breather as I head into my stiffest week of the year: 60 miles that ends with a 25-miler next Sunday. That will be a regular Sunday.

I woke up this morning to find that Haile Gebrselassie had shaved 29 seconds off of the marathon world record on a flat course at the Berlin Marathon. 2:04:26 requires a phenomenal pace for 26.2 miles, about 4:45/mile, which is almost incomprehensible to me. I'll keep working on an 8:30/mile pace and shoot for 8-minute miles on a great day.

... for the first time since last September.

In the two weeks since my last training update, I have run 99 miles, in weeks of 43 and 56. The 56 is not an extraordinary number during marathon training, though for me it's a signal that I am reaching the peak of my plan. But after the last eleven months, 56 miles seems amazing. And it feels great.

The 99 miles culminated in a long run of 23 miles on Sunday morning. Rather than run a 23-mile route, I pieced together two passes around an 8-mile loop followed by a 7-mile loop. This allowed me to stop by my house twice during the run, grab a power gel, and take any other breaks (ahem) that I might need.

I didn't run fast -- just a bit under 9:00 minutes per mile -- but that's a good pace for a long run when my marathon goal pace is 8:00 or even 8:30. (I ran last Sunday's 12-miler in a sub-8:30/mile pace.) This run challenged me not only with its distance but also its hills. The 8-mile loop has several long rises and falls, and running down the hills left me with sore quadriceps. But its a soreness I am happy to carry into this week.

And before you tell me that Iowa is flat and has no hills, let me remind you that hills are relative. When I run mostly flat routes, a few miles of hills in a row affects the legs. When compounded with distance, the hills matter more. I invite anyone who runs mostly flat ground to join me for a week. Then we'll see who thinks eastern Iowa is flat!

I think I am back in the groove, or close. My last five weeks have been 44, 46, 48, 43, and 56 miles. The next two will tell; they call for 44 and 60 miles, respectively, ending with a 25-mile long run. Then comes my taper, when I progressively cut mileage, convert stamina into speed, and let my body recover a bit before the race.

I don't have any grand analogies between running and agile software development right now. Sustainable pace and continuous feedback have been instrumental in building my mileage back up. But when push comes to shove, it's mostly about running -- just as software development ultimately comes down to programming. At the end of the day, all you have to show are the code you wrote, or the miles you ran.

I have just completed the fifth week of my 12-week training plan for the Marine Corps Marathon. Not quite halfway, but when I throw in the "bonus week" in Indiana and California that interrupted the start of the plan, I am through six of thirteen weeks -- and halfway to that last week before the race, when we let our bodies rest and our minds prepare for the big day.

Today I ran twenty-one miles, one of my standard fourteen-mile routes followed by a standard seven-miler. After five miles, then seven, then nine, my legs were balking. My mind was thinking, "Maybe you should just do fourteen today. That's a good run. You deserve a break. You can do twenty-one next week."

My mind was right. At the start of the program, this week called for a twelve-miler, recovering from a build-up to twenty-one miles last week. But early in August I had a bad 15-miler, which I attributed in part to my lack of mileage this summer. I listened to my body and made an adjustment in program, to build up to 21 more gradually. But one outcome of this change is that I haven't had a "drop-back week" since July. That's a week where I reduce my long-run mileage so that my body can adjust to the increased miles from the previous week or two. Usually I "drop back" every third week during training; my training plan drops back every other week.

So I would have been justified to hold on fourteen and live to run another week. But I just didn't want to, sore legs or not. Running a marathon is about pushing your body -- and your mind -- to run when it wants to stop, when the wise move is to stop. This morning held a moment of challenge for me. The weather is perfect. My body is well-fueled. My mind wants to stop. But I want to run more.

I ran.

At twelve miles, I took a mocha mocha Clif Shot -- 100 calories, 70mg of electrolytes, and 50mg of caffeine. Have you ever baked chocolate chip cookies, taken one right from the oven, and indulged in that decadent sensation? This gel tasted just like that. I felt as if I should stop at the nearest Catholic church and make confession. For the rest of the run, my mind felt good as it commanded my legs to do what they must do: just keep moving.

Some days hold moments of challenge that are at the same time moments of promise. I sense that this morning's challenge held such a promise. I've been struggling more mentally since my last marathon than at any time in the preceding three years. Today's run asked me, "Do you mean business?" My legs are sore, but my answer was "Yes".

Running on the university track late last week, I saw this slogan on the back of a student's T-shirt:

All out. All the time.

Such slogans are de rigeur for high school sports teams these days. They serve as mantras for the team, used to motivate the individual athlete but even more so to build team identity and spirit. I don't remember when I saw the first of these, but these days every team has one.

The folks at Despair.com have profited from pointing out how shallow and lame such slogans and motivational tools are. But I cut most of these T-shirts some slack, because they are aimed at kids, who are not perhaps at a deep level when it comes to motivation. I do hope that the involved coaches help their student-athletes move on to a deeper understanding of teams and motivation, both individual and group, than the slogans give.

But more importantly, I hope that these young athletes know that -- taken literally -- these slogans are usually wrong.

"All out. All the time." Any runner knows that this can't be true. If you run all out for any length of time, your body will let you know that won't be doing it all the time. Sprint 200 meters all out, and you'll need to recover. (Most coaches recommend at least 100m of recovery, or the same amount of time it took you to run the 200.) If you try to sprint 400 meters at the same pace that you can sprint 200 meters, then you'll usually fade fast at the end. Move all the way up to a marathon, and you have to make serious changes in your expected pace. That's just the our bodies work.

The same is true in any sport, along some dimension of exertion.

The same is also true in creative work. And in software development.

One of the great elements of Extreme Programming is the practice originally dubbed 40-hour work week and later renamed sustainable pace. Kent and Ward recognized that developers can't produce good code if they work beyond the pace that their minds and bodies allow. Ignoring those natural bounds is no different than trying to run your 200m pace for 400 or 800 or 1600 meters -- or for a marathon. If you try to go too fast for too long, you'll fade. That's not good for your client, and it's not good for developers.

There is a time for sprinting, surely, but software development and good relationships with customers are more of a long-term affair. Sprint in short bursts where that adds value for the customer and doesn't hurt the developers. But back off the throttle as a long-range plan.

The runners wearing slogans such as "All Out. All the Time." must know that they can't actually go all out all of the time. If they could, then I would never be able to pass them on the track with my tired old body, which most surely cannot go all out all of the time. But like them, I do like to go all out some of the time -- it feels good! And sometimes I myself will use even shallow, emotional sentiments to push myself when I am at the boundaries of what I think I can accomplish.

But then I take a recovery break.

(The sixth stop in the Running on the Road series. The first five were Allerton Park, Illinois, Muncie, Indiana, Vancouver, British Columbia, St. Louis, Missouri, Houston, Texas, and Carefree, Arizona.)

I tend to write these reports about running in a big city that others might visit, or a hot tourist spot, or at least a conference location, that some readers of my blog may care about. But this is more like my report on visits to my alma mater in Muncie, Indiana. It is about running in my high school hometown of Greenfield, Indiana. I didn't live in Greenfield for very long -- for four years of high school, and then summers during my college years -- but in many ways it still feels like home. I'm finishing up a few days back in Greenfield for a high school reunion, and I did something I never did when I lived here all those years ago: I ran.

I did not run at all, really, until I was in graduate school. Sure, there were occasional attempts at a few miles here and there, and a bit of time on the track in physical education classes, but I never got over the hump. Every run seemed less enjoyable than it should have been, and I never got past the feeling that I wasn't cut out to run.

So running this weekend gave me a different perspective on my hometown than I had ever had before, on the pavement at dawn, seeing buildings and scenery and signs pass by me from eye level. When I add this effect to the sense of change I felt after having been gone from town almost completely for eleven years and and nearly so for twenty, I experienced an mixture of déja vu and jamais vu unlike any before. For hours. While maxing out my legs at the beginning of marathon training. Not ordinary runs at all. The unusual sensation of time fits very well with attending a 25-year high school reunion and with recently reading Alan Lightman's book.

I used my time own the road to survey the changes that have happened in Greenfield in the last decade. I recall it as a town of 15,000 or so folks, most with rural and small-town roots. Its official population back in 1980 must have been much less, as the 1990 census shows only about 12,000 people, but the outlying rural areas were then beginning to attract people from bigger cities in search of inexpensive land. Unofficially, the population these days must be closer to 30,000, and one can see that in the explosive growth of the town to the north and east. One big change I notice as I visit local stores and restaurants and as I run through town is much greater diversity. When I lived here, Greenfield and its entire county were almost 100% white, but now I see Asian immigrants, African Americans, and especially Latinos everywhere. The result is more plentiful choices of food for the palate and a richer set of accents for the ear.

Sightseeing in one's own hometown is a great way to run. I encourage it to those of you who ever have the chance.

Other than running around town on city and country roads, I can report one neat development: the beginnings of a recreation route called the Pennsy Trail. This trail parallels Old National Road (U.S. 40) along the former Pennsylvania Railroad line just south of Greenfield's main street. It crosses Brandywine Creek, which is the presumed site of poet and Greenfield native James Whitcomb Riley's ol' swimmin' hole. Right now, the trail isn't much, running only 3 miles or so to the east of downtown Greenfield, but eventually the Pennsy Trail will connect westward to a network of trails in central Indiana, and perhaps be a link in the National Road Heritage Trail, which will follow U.S.40 across Indiana's breadth. As a runner, I greatly appreciate clean, marked, metered trails that offer peace, natural scenery, and even occasional services such as water fountains and toilet facilities. They are also a great resource for the citizens of the community, a sign that the community is thinking about the quality of life it offers citizens and visitors alike.

Now I am off for a couple of days running in Plainfield, a city also on the Old National Road but on the west side of Indianapolis. Plainfield also has a nice trail system connecting its parks from north to south, which I will surely patronize. After that I'll do one run in Santa Ana, California, and a couple in San Diego. I probably will not write Running on the Road reports for Plainfield or Santa Ana, but I do have some raw material for a report on San Diego, from my three trips for OOPSLA 2005. San Diego is a beautiful place to run, and I look forward to being there just for fun.

I haven't written about running in a while, but there hasn't been much to say. I've been building my mileage back up to a respectable weekly average (in the mid 30s), with an eye toward being ready for marathon training. My last few weeks have been interrupted by only one mishap, a double-hamstring injury brought on not by running but by an intense day of landscaping. Last week, I managed 38 miles with two rest days, which puts me in good shape to begin training.

At the end of October, I'll be running the Marine Corps Marathon, my first "destination" marathon. It's also the latest in the year I will have run a marathon, with my previous four all coming in the first half of October. As a result, this is the latest I have ever started my official training plan for a marathon. This affects training in two ways: more of my mileage will come after the hottest part of the summer, and more of my mileage will come during the academic year. For a university prof or student, this means spending more hours on the road, away from work, and being more tired when doing CS. I think I will have to get to bed earlier most nights and so change some of my routine.

I am again using a 12-week plan for "advanced" runners that I read about in Runners' World, designed by running coach Bob Williams. Via Google, I found a 16-week plan by Williams, but it's much more complicated than the plan I am using; I prefer workouts that don't require a lot of switching gears. The plan I am using puts me on the track twice most weeks, once doing long repeats (≥ 800m) to build long speed and once doing shorter repeats (< 800m) to increase leg turnover, improve form and efficiency, and build strength for longer speed.

Last year, I customized this plan quite a bit, spreading it over 14 weeks and adding a lot of miles. This year, I am sticking to the plan even closer than last year, not just the speed workouts but also the off-day workouts, the order and length of the long runs, and the weekly mileage recommendations. I suppose that having run several hundred miles fewer this year than last has me feeling a bit less cocky, and I also think it's time to let the expert guide me. My only customization this year is to stick in an extra week next week, between Weeks 1 and 2, while I am on the road to Indiana and southern California for a reunion and a little R&R before the school year -- and heavy training -- commence. Next week, I'll just work on my aerobic base with some mixed-speed road running.

Wish me luck.

I haven't written about running lately. There hasn't been much to say as I worked my mileage slowly starting over, again. My first milestone came yesterday morning, at the Sturgis Falls half marathon.

The short description. I did not run a personal best, yet my race was a surprising success. Today, I am sore, and happily so.

The long description: The race went much better than planned. I went into the day with relatively light training, consecutive weeks of 28, 30, 30, and 32 miles. My longest runs were 11 miles two weeks ago and 10 last week. I had done a couple of runs that pass for fast, but only 4-5 miles each. So, my plan for the race was conservative: try to run 8-10 miles at a 8:30/mile pace and then see how I felt. If I felt weak, I'd just try to maintain that pace; if I felt strong, I would see whether I could speed up a bit.

I ran miles 1-5 right at an 8:30/mile average. Unintentionally, I ran the sixth mile in 8:20 or, and it felt okay so I held that pace through the ninth mile. I was fully prepared for the chance that this would burn me out. But it didn't. Miles 10-12 took us along a trail into downtown and back, with a small loop on the end. This meant that there were a lot of runners all along the course in both directions. The energy of competition kicked in... I ran my Mile 10 in 8:07, and then Mile 11 in 8:03. The race was on. I took the twelfth mile in 7:41, finally passing a young, strong-looking runner whom I'd been tracking for several miles. I ran the last full mile 7:30 and sprinted home to finish in 1:47. The young guy finished even stronger and beat me by 7 seconds. No matter. Though this was my second worst time ever in a half marathon, it was among the most satisfying, given my expectations. Context matters.

I'm still tired from the race and a bit stiff, but that's to be expected. I have not run this far or this fast for this long in a long time. My body has a right to register its reaction.

With yesterday's race, my last five weeks have been in the 28-30 mile range. That's a far cry from the regular 38-41 mile weeks I ran throughout 2005-2006 but also my best stretch since December. I still tire more easily than in the past, and I do not have much speed yet. But I can now embark on training for Marine Corps Marathon with some confidence. I'm wondering how aggressive I should be in training. I'm even thinking ahead to the race itself -- maybe I should set a goal of 8:30/mile for the first 15 miles or so and then see if I can finish strong? There is a lot said for balancing high ambition with a dose of realism that increases the probability of success -- and fun.

Good News: I ran 3 miles this morning.

Bad News: That this is good news.

Good News: I was smart enough not to overdo it.

Bad News: That I had to hold myself back.

Good News: I think I can do it again tomorrow.

I've just gone through a third bout this year of some ailment that held me under the weather for a prolonged period. The first was the worst, with two weeks of two runs each, a week with a single run, and then two weeks off entirely. Just as I was getting back to normal and working my way back onto the track, I lost a week to the same fuzzy head and persistent fatigue. The third hit me soon after I returned from the workshop at Duke -- air travel often seems to hit me these days -- and kept me off the road for nearly two weeks. It was hard, because the weather has turned to spring and the mornings have been wonderful. But it was also easy, because I was simply too tired.

This morning I was careful not to try to run more. Patience is a virtue when getting started. It is better to have another three miles tomorrow than to be foolhardy today.

Bad News : My total mileage this year before this morning's run, May 15 == 347.6. That may sound like a lot, but last year I reached 350 miles during my long run on March 5. It's also bad news because it means I must have been sick, else I wouldn't not run.

Good News: My body is probably fresher at this point in the year than it has been in at least three years. Running lots of miles gets me into shape, but it also wears on the body. I hope that my fresher legs -- and mind -- will be useful as I train this summer. In the short term, my lack of miles and fitness will almost certainly result in a slower half-marathon time at the end of June. In the long term, it may help me be fresher at marathon time, at the end of October.

Oh, and I'm in... So I have a target to shoot for.

But right now, I just want to run.

Negative splits are usually a good thing. A negative PR is usually not.

In the last fours days, I have recorded a dubious achievement. I have run my slowest time ever on three different routes, ranging from 3 miles to 9 miles. And these times weren't close to what I expect. The only thing that saved me from the more dubious four-for-four was the 1.5 miles yesterday in the middle of a 5.5-mile route on which I picked up my pace to something speakable.

My rationalization is that this downturn in speed is the result of running a few more miles again plus my first interval workout in seven months -- a 5x800m, 6.5-mile workout last Friday.

Patience, patience.

UPDATE: I almost made it four for five this morning, but I came in a minute or two under my slowest time for the route in question. Of course, that slowest time had been run in 8" of slushy snow, a year ago December! Rationalizing this one would have been even easier to make, as I ran an extra four miles with a student last night and my legs should be a bit more tired than usual. Besides, both the run last night and the one this morning were also done in 4-5" of slushy snow as well. I don't usually plan on snow runs for mid-April, but at least it was nice to break a fresh pack of snow one last time before spring arrives for good.

... is the traditional start of my training for the Sturgis Falls Half Marathon, which is the last Sunday in June. The tradition is only four years old, and it also marks the longer-term start of my marathon training for fall.

Last year, I was in such good shape coming out of winter that training for the June half didn't seem all that big a deal. This year, I'm coming off a January and February of little or no mileage, and a March in which I've slowly been building my mileage back up. So preparing for the half matters.

I had worked my way up to a 30-mile week before last week, but with a Sunday long run of only 7 or 7.5 miles. Last week, I continued a regular week of mileage and then took a big step forward: a 20K (12.4-mile) long run. A student is training for the St. Louis Marathon, but had done most of his work on city streets. I offered to take him out on our trail system for a more scenic long run and decided to go the full run with him. The result was good for me. I needed a nap on Sunday afternoon, but my legs were nothing but a little stiff this morning. I ran an easy three miles to loosen them up, and all is well. I think I am ready to train now, though I expect to be slower than last year for at least a few more weeks. With the coming of spring, I am ready for miles outdoors, however slow they may be.

Looking farther ahead, I think that this year I will run the Marine Corps Marathon. This will be my latest marathon (October 28, 2007) and will follow on the heels of OOPSLA in Montreal. That will be a challenge to my taper...

This "slow and steady" thing is starting to pay off. Last week, I ran a week of four-milers, six of them. That doesn't seem like much after four years of marathon training, but...

While recording mileage in my running log, I noticed that this was the first time I had run four days in a row since January 2-5, and the first time I had run five in a row since November 27-December 1. These weren't fast miles, for the most part, as I let the "run come to me" every day. But then on Friday, I had a pleasant surprise. I found myself falling into a steady, comfortable run -- at sub-marathon goal pace. It felt great! Even better, I didn't feel too sore or tired over the weekend, and so was able to finish off my week outdoors on the ice.

This week, my goal is a week of five-milers, six of them. I ran right at MP on the track this morning, with the rest of my runs for the week planned outdoors. Tomorrow, I head to SIGCSE 2007, in Covington, Kentucky ("the other Cincinnati"). My more technical readers can look forward to some CS-specific writing in the next few days.

I've been frustrated in the last week by my inability to run.

After finally recovering from my downtime, I worked in a week of 3-milers, and then flew to Arizona for ChiliPLoP. In Carefree, I was able to run twice, extending my time on the road in an effort to rebuild stamina. While I wasn't quite ready to circle Black's Mountain yet, I was able to enjoy the beautiful terrain of the February desert. The hills made it a bit difficult for me to estimate distance from my times, but I did manage to run for 43 and 41 minutes, respectively.

Then came the frustration. After the second of my Carefree runs, I lost a few days to the last day of the conference and the travel home. I'm willing to run under crazy circumstances, but driving home until 3 AM makes it tough to run at 5 AM... Then I caught up on work and sleep for a couple of days. Just as I was ready to run, we were hit by some inclement weather. I've gone on record for running in the cold, but there is one kind of weather that causes me pause: ice. Cold can be addressed with layers -- more and better layers of clothing. But a two-inch layer of ice, glassy and transparent, is a whole different matter. Even the most dedicated runners have to adjust.

But I am ready to run again, so it will happen. This morning, I circumvented the ice by running indoors. Sticking with my plan for a slow and steady return, I ran only four miles and did my best to avoid the speed-up that come almost naturally when I am running short laps in the presence of others.

Establishing new habits, even ones that used to be old habits, takes time. Running offers a physical reminder of this, via sore muscles and fatigue. But with time, the habit returns to match the desire to run.

This just in from my favorite new TV character in recent years, Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother:

Here's how you run a marathon:

Step 1: Start running.

<pause>

Oh, yeah -- there's no Step 2!

After five weeks of almost no running, I started running this week. Unlike Barney, though, I stopped after just three miles Monday morning. But then I did it again and again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then, after a day on the road playing University Lobbyist, I started again on Friday, this time for 3.5 miles. It feels good to be well enough to run any day I can. Indeed, it feels good just to run. My legs feel fine even after the layoff, probably because I've remained patient on distance and speed.

Unlike my friend Barney, who ran and finished the New York Marathon without training, only to find several hours later that he no longer had control of his legs. This is one of the few experiences that I share with Barney. Even on television, the truth can catch up with you.

Suit up! Start running.

I had a new experience running this morning. I ran! That seemed novel, given my inability to run the last few weeks. Due to a persistent something that kept me at 50-90% strength since January 5, I hadn't run in 2 weeks and a weekend; I had managed to run once in the week before that, and twice in each of the two weeks before that, for a total of five runs in five weeks. An expected result of this off-time was a loss of fitness. An unexpected result was a certain loss of memory. Dressing and preparing for the run felt odd. I'm a creature of habit, and two weeks is a good start on new habits.

Nothing could have made my first run in so long more enjoyable than one of the great pleasures of an early-morning runner. Last evening, we received a little under an inch of wet snow, so this morning my first steps broke fresh snow. The crunch under my feet made the run seem new in more than one way.

True to my supposition from a couple of weeks ago, I plan to take my restart slow and steady. So today I ran a slow and easy three miles. My three-mile routes have not been put to much use in the last year or so, so the route itself seemed new, too. I didn't worry about speed. Instead I merely focused on the feeling in my lungs as they worked for the first time in a couple of weeks, on the feeling in my legs as they pushed me forward, in my hips as they adjusted to the slightly uncertain steps on wet snow. It was good.

February 2007 is already here, and I still haven't written up my "running year in review" post, as I did for both 2005 and 2004. This lack or urgency derives in part from a lack of excitement about what I accomplished in 2006, but mostly reflects busyness at work and a persistent low-grade illness of some sort that has kept me off the road for most of 2007 thus far and so has me thinking less about running than I might otherwise.

After a couple of years of big increases, last year I saw a decrease in mileage for the year, though not that much of a decline:

• 2006: 1932.9 miles
• 2005: 2137.7 miles
• 2004: 1907.0 miles
• 2003: 1281.8 miles

Even though I had my second biggest year ever in terms of miles on the road, in most other ways it was a less satisfying year than in the past. I started the year well enough but then hit a tough stretch in March and April when my hamstrings and feet caused me grief. I had never dealt with running injuries, whether momentary or chronic, before. This pain was chronic, and only rest can do much for them.

This is almost my first year ever when I never PRed a single distance -- not 5K, half marathon, or marathon. I didn't race a single 5K this year, which is a shame, because my summer speed training probably had me in the right shape to do well. My spring of soreness affected my training for the Sturgis Falls half marathon in June. While I missed a PR by a good 4 minutes, I still managed to run my second best time ever at that distance. I felt pretty good going into my marathon training plan, and it went well. But there is no need to recount my experience at the Twin Cities Marathon, which resulted in my worst time ever. I was lucky, perhaps foolhardy, to have finished the race at all.

The year ended in a bit of a down note, as I never quite seemed to recover from the marathon, as much mentally as physically. My post-marathon mileage was okay, though -- just no "zip".

As I mentioned earlier, 2007 has started slowly. I've been under the weather since January 5(!), and the last two weeks have been the worst of all. The silver lining in not running much these last many weeks may well be that my body and mind have had a chance to rest that I never would have given them otherwise. I think I'll take this opportunity to start again from scratch. Maybe I'll get my "zip" back, both in speed and mindset.

(Another silver lining may be the natural excuse it gives me for not running during our recent cold snap. Last night, we reached -15 degrees F., and tonight we'll get down to -17. The highs aren't making it to 0 degrees, either. Truth be told, though, I like being able to say that I've run in such conditions!)

I haven't written about running in a while because I have not been able to run much for a while. On January 5, I came down with something that has kept me under the weather for three weeks. Fatigue has been the most onerous symptom. In that time until last Friday, I managed only four runs of 7 or 8 miles each. Every run seemed to provoke a small relapse or extension of the symptoms. I have taken the last week off in an effort to get back to 100%. That was my first full week off from running in at least three years. Even after my Sunday marathons, I have jogged by the next Thursday. It's hard to realize how much a habit is ingrained until I go cold turkey.

Finally this week I seem to be improving, and so this morning I ventured over to the track for a few miles. I should probably have taken it easy and jogged an easy 3 miles or so. But I planned to do at least 5, maybe 6, and in the end I ran 7. I did take it easy, though, at least for five of the miles, and ran a pace suitable for LSD (long slow distance). I'm a little sore, but it's the good kind of pain. So far, I'm just a bit tired and am hopeful that I'm still on the road to full health.

This break comes at an interesting time. Like Tiger Woods has done with his golf swing, I've been thinking about taking a small step backwards on the prospect of taking my training a leap forward. Throughout the winter, I've played with the idea of starting over with a new weekly plan. Rather than do my usual five or six days, with two mid-distance runs (one a speed workout) and a Sunday long run each week, I would pick some relatively small distance -- say 4 or 5 miles -- and run it every day for a couple of weeks. My idea is that I could develop a daily training schedule that doesn't tire me out but that does maintain a steady condition. One side effect is that I would lose my long-distance stamina. Then I could build the week back up slowly, starting with a couple of 7 or 8 milers. Add some speed here, some distance there, and I would be back up to the sort of mileage I'd like to run each week, 40-45 miles, but with rebuilt stamina and speed. The goal would be let my body relearn the distance and speed skills.

To do this right, I should probably consider a longer interim, say a couple of months, in which I do know running but instead cross train on a bike, in a pool, or on a tennis court. But I don't have Tiger-like patience just yet!

As it is, by recent standards I have now run very little since Christmas time, so maybe I'm rested enough to try something new to good effect. Trying to get over this cold-like virus is motivation to keep the mileage low for a while, and my eagerness to get back on the road is motivation to run every day.

The other complication right now is one that many folks can understand: snow. We received 10" of snow in a week a couple of weeks ago. This is, of course, hardly worth mentioning after what our friends in Denver, Oklahoma, Portland, and the like have faced recently. But the effect is the same. Running trails are covered. Roads are artificially narrow, and slippery in places. Sidewalks are only occasionally passable. The challenge is to find routes that I can run reliably and safely. It seems that each winter creates its own set of best running routes. Then there are the temperatures. But you know what I've said before, you know you're a runner if.... I will find a way.

Good running to you all. I look forward to getting back into a rhythm and seeing what running teaches me about programming, software development, and teaching this year.

... on a last December morning in Montreal, where I am on the job.

I awoke for an early morning run to snow, the wet fluffy snow of temperatures near 0° C. In the downtown area, all that remained were wet streets, but as I jogged toward Mont Royal the snow was still falling and the 6-8% grade up Rue Peel was covered in an inch or so. I love to run in falling snow, and my first snow run of the year is often special. I enjoyed this one as much as usual.

Just past half way on my out-and-back route, I missed a turn that seemed obvious yesterday. Perhaps it was the snow-covered street signs, or my snow-covered glasses. The result was 17 minutes or so of backtracking and retracing my steps, and a planned 8-miler turned into a 10-miler that lasted into Monday morning rush hour traffic. The 6-8% grade down a snowy Rue Peel was, oh, let's say more challenging than the run up. I survived with no spills but a few minutes of my heart pounding a bit more than usual.

I hope that the OOPSLA 2007 wiki, which we hope to have up and running any day, will be a place for OOPSLA-bound runners to share advice on routes and warnings of things to watch for. We usually launch the conference wiki at or just a few weeks before the conference, but I think having it running all year long will offer a chance for potential conference attendees and other altruistic souls to build community around issues related both to the conference and to our personal pursuits in Montreal. This is a part our vision for the communications component of our conference organization.

As I checked out later in the morning, I received a more expensive surprise. It turns out that the complimentary shuttle from the Hyatt to the Montreal central bus station, which I thought ran on a regular and frequent schedule, requires a one-hour advance registration. There was no information about this in the packet I received from our logistics company, nor at the L'Aerobus station, nor in the hotel itself. This inconvenience followed the general sense of disorientation and complexity I felt on the night I arrived and strengthened my desire to incorporate a useful Local Travel on the conference web site. Anything we can do to ensure that all of the ancillary things associated with conference travel go well, the more likely we can create an awesome OOPSLA 2007 experience for attendees. Yet more conference communications! Yet another element to my position on the conference committee.

Before I began to dig into this position during OOPSLA 2006, I assumed that most of my activities would focus on the conference content: calls for submissions, the advance program, the program on the web site, the final program, and the much-missed Program-at-a-Glance that makes the days of the conference easy to follow and plan. But I have come to understand that communications is much more than simply organizing the program for presentation in paper and bits. In fact, I'd say that that task is merely one example of a larger purpose. It is really about eliminating the friction that naturally comes at all stages of participating in OOPSLA. It is about serving the informational needs of submitters and attendees.

I have come to admire the underlying sense of duty that runs throughout our conference committee. General chair Dick Gabriel has his pulse on both ends of the spectrum of tasks that faces the committee: those little details that seem to matter only when something goes wrong, such as web-site navigation and hotel reservations, and the big picture of moving the conference forward for which he is so well-known among the OOPSLA committee, such as Onward! and the Essays track. He certainly recognizes the financial implications of falling down on the little services, which affects both the current year's attendance and the possibly future years' attendance, but I don't think that this is what motivates him. In any case, just now I am short on the kind of big ideas that can move the conference in a new direction, I am hoping that my attention to the details of our communicating well to OOPSLA participants can help the rest of the committee put on a winning conference.

And I am not saying all these nice things just because Dick graciously picked up part of a dinner tab that the conference budget could not last night at Montreal's Globe restaurant, attended by the committee members who had stayed an extra night in order to do more committee business and scout the area. The Globe offered a fine menu extravagant in seafood and a mix of French and North American cuisine, at prices that left this small-town Midwestern boy in a state of awe. The waitstaff was remarkably attractive and, um, shall we say, enticingly well-dressed. While I probably won't dine at this establishment on my future trips to Montreal, I can cherish the memory of this visit's delights.

Finally, during dinner conversation, I learned of the next big thing that will rock the software world, which will explode out of OOPSLA 2007 as so many revolutionary ideas have sprung from past OOPSLAs: ribosome-oriented computing. Keep your eyes glued to Google; this has the potential to make an international superstar out of postmodern software prophet Robert Biddle.

Bienvenue de Montréal! My previous post was written on the plane to Quebec for the December OOPSLA'07 planning meeting. This year, I am communications chair for the conference, which means that I have a diverse set of responsibilities defined around "getting the word out". (Don't worry; I won't turn this blog into a conference shill.) This includes the design of the advance and final programs, as well as helping to shape the content and organization of the web site. I'm part of a team consisting of a graphic artist and a person focused on advertising, which is good, given my lack of skills in the former and lack of feel for the latter.

My big challenge this year is to find a way to communicate the rich diversity of our program -- and it is richer and more diverse than any computing conference I know of -- to the people who should be at OOPSLA next year. We have all been talking about this for a couple of years, but now it's my job. How do I help attendees, especially newcomers, navigate their way through the conference? Someone this morning likened OOPSLA to Paris, a wild circus of ideas and events that can educate and enthuse and enlighten and entertain most anyone who cares about programs and the art of programming. It's a provoking analogy that I'll have to explore. For example, how do we help potential attendees find us as a "vacation spot" and plan their trip?

As when I attended SugarLoafPLoP, I find the change in local language to be surprisingly disorienting -- even in a place where almost everyone speaks English as well as I. This exposes my parochial upbringing and my rather limited travel experiences as a professional. It probably also says a lot about a self-insularity that I need to break out of. EuroPLoP and ECOOP are calling me!

Given that I'll spend a total of a couple of weeks over the next year among the Quebecois, I think that I should try to learn a little French beyond "oui", "merci", and "non parlez-vous Francais". When I went to Brazil, I set the too-ambitious goal of learning some conversational Portugese. This time, I will set the less imposing and more achievable goal of learning some vocabulary and a few key phrases. (My colleague Steve Metsker says that he sets the goal of learning 50 words in the local tongue whenever he travels to a new land.) At least I can learn enough to show Montreal residents that I respect their bilingual culture.

I am not running ready to write a new installment of "Running on the Road" yet, but I am looking forward to starting my research. After a long few weeks at the office, three hard days in a row on the track, and a long day of travel, this morning found me resting peacefully. The great news about our location in downtown Montreal is proximity to the running trails along the Fleuve Saint-Laurent and in the wonderful Parc du Mont-Royal. I plan to run tomorrow's 12-miler on the trails of Mont Royal -- not climbing the mountain, but on a trail that circles near the base. Then Monday I'll try the trail along the St. Lawrence. My May visit will give me more opportunities to explore the possibilities.

I overhead a conversation in the locker room yesterday that saddened me. Two university students were chatting about their lives and work-outs. In the course of discussing their rather spotty exercise routines, one of them said that he was planning to start using creatine as a way to develop a leaner "look". Creatine is a naturally-occurring compound that some folks use as a nutritional supplement.

Maybe I'm a fuddy-duddy, but I'm a little leery about using supplements to enhance my physical appearance and performance. It also may just be a matter of where to draw the line; I am willing to take multivitamins and zinc supplements for my immune system. The casual use of creatine by regular guys, though, seems like something different: an attempted shortcut.

There aren't all that many shortcuts to getting better in this world. Regular exercise and a good diet will help you develop a leaner body and the ability to perform better athletically. The guys I overhead knew that they could achieve the results they needed by exercising and cutting back on their beer consumption, but they wanted to reach their goal without having to make the changes needed to get there in the usual way.

The exercise-and-diet route also has other positive effects on one's body and mind, such as increased stamina and better sleep. Taking a supplement may let you target a specific goal, but the healthier approach improves your whole person.

Then there's the question of whether taking a supplement actually achieves the promised effect...

These thoughts about no shortcuts reminded me of something I read on Bob Martin's blog a few weeks ago, called WadingThroughCode. There Bob cautioned against the natural inclination not to work hard enough to slog through other people's programs. We all figure sometimes that we can learn more just by writing our own code, but Bob tells us that reading other people's code is an essential part of a complete learning regimen. "Get your wading boots on."

I've become sensitized to this notion over the last few years as I've noticed an increasing tendency among some of even my best students to not want to put in the effort to read their textbooks. "I've tried, and I just don't get it. So I just study your lecture notes." As good as my lecture notes might be, they are no substitute for the text. And the student would grow by making the extra effort it takes to read a technical book.

There are no shortcuts.

... that was without a doubt
the hardest physical thing
I have ever done.

-- Lance Armstrong

"That" was the New York City Marathon, which Armstrong ran last Sunday. He is, of course, world-renown as a seven-time winner of the Tour de France, which is among the most grueling and physically-challenging feat of athletic endurance. I have long admired Armstrong's accomplishments on the Tour, overcoming the vicissitudes of competition, the annual challenges from new and younger riders, and the wear and tear of such a demanding event -- and winning, not once, not just seven times, but seven consecutive times. And all this after overcoming a metastasized case of testicular cancer.

But the marathon offered him a new sort of challenge. If you have read much of my writing on running, then you have seen me say more than once that you have to "respect the distance". Running a marathon goes beyond what the human body is typically configured to do. It stresses the body in ways that other physical feats don't often. I've never cycled for the distances or remarkable inclines that the Tour de France requires, but I've cycled enough to know that it does not stress the joints like running does. Armstrong found this out:

"I think I bit off more than I could chew. I thought the marathon would be easier," he said. "(My shins) started to hurt in the second half, especially the right one. I could barely walk up here, because the calves are completely knotted up."

So, all of you fellow runners out there, take heart that even the greatest athletes find running at the edges of their endurance and speed daunting. I take heart, too, that they fight through the same pain as I, because I know then that I can do the same.

To be fair to Armstrong, the quote I opened with above starts with an ellipsis. The portion of the quote omitted by me -- and most newspapers that highlighted this statement -- is "For the level of condition that I have now". So he may be able to run a faster and more comfortable marathon in the future, if he reaches a different level of fitness. I've seen reports that Armstrong had never previously run more than 16 miles at once, and that he dod no particular speed training before attempting NYC.

This explains some of Armstrong's struggle, but it raises another question. Why didn't he train (better) for the marathon? I guess he didn't realize just how much respect we all have to show the distance. Perhaps he could learn something from our old friend Santiago Botero, who once learned something from Lance:

His smile said to me, 'I was training while you were sleeping, Santiago'. It also said, 'I won this tour four months ago, while you were deciding what bike frame to use in the Tour. I trained harder than you did, Santiago. I don't know if I am better than you, but I have outworked you and right now, you cannot do anything about it. Enjoy your ride, Santiago. See you in Paris.'

When Armstrong first publicly discussed the possibility of running a marathon a few years ago, there were two schools of thought. Some folks thought that he would be think he would be a good but not great marathoner -- running something like the 3:00 race he ran in New York. Others thought that, given his great aerobic base and mental toughness, with only a little training he could run a 2:20 marathon better. I was in the second camp -- and still am. This race only highlighted the importance of that little bit of training.

And of course, Armstrong's time was still faster than my best time by 45 minutes. I have a lot of work yet to do!

On Sunday I had a beautiful morning for my first run since returning from OOPSLA. That run marked four weeks since my marathon in the Twin Cities, and it was my longest since then, an enjoyable twelve miles over my favorite route. I threw in an 8-minute mile near the end, but mostly I took it easy. My body reminded me that I hadn't run that far in a while.

Running in Portland was as good as the conference itself. The cool morning temperatures were perfect, and we had clear skies and no wind all week. I even started feeling a little bit of speed coming back, but my legs felt the increase in mileage.

Dare I consider a spring marathon in, say, Green Bay or Madison or Cincinnati? Winter training in Iowa would help me to keep my mileage -- and my expectations -- down. I could run for fun. My virtual training partner from Arkansas would appreciate an opportunity to train in the South's most comfortable season!

I know, I know. "Normal" and "thinking of doing another marathon" probably don't go hand in hand for most people. But I have a strange desire at this point to run one for the sake of running it, not for a time. I haven't given up on getting better; I just realize that that isn't the only thing that matters.

... I'd rather be in Philadelphia. -- W. C. Fields

My race today effectively ended today at the 21-mile mark, when my legs cramped badly enough that I could no longer run. My training partner, who was running ahead of me by a few minutes, suffered the same fate. I will spare you the details, but suffice to say, I relived much of this experience and ended with a time slower than Chicago 2003.

At least I was wise enough to back off when the truth made itself know, which I had hoped to be yesterday. As a result, I enjoyed the back half of the Twin Cities course more this year. I saw many beautiful churches as we moved down St. Paul's Summit Avenue. I made a little guy who was watching the runners with his daddy smile by making a little face for him. And, when we came upon a couple of elderly ladies dressed nicely and giving their time this morning to cheer us on, I connected with one of the ladies, and the smile that lighted up her face lifted my spirits.

When you end up walking as much as I did today, you have a lot of time to reflect on what the world has served up. What did I do wrong? Peak to soon in training? Taper poorly? Eat poorly in the last week, last days? Hydrate insufficiently on the course -- or too much? (I drank steadily throughout, and more than ever before.) Was the day out of my control, with soaring temperatures that caught even the meteorologists off guard? Am I just not equipped physically to run 8:00 miles for a full 26.2? Is it only Minneapolis?

I have no answers yet. But I do have more doubts about myself after this race than last year's. I may need to walk a lot more more miles to work through the questions and doubts.

I am in Minneapolis and preparing for the marathon that begins in less than twelve hours. Today has reminded me that one should never expect carefully-made plans for the day before a race to go as so carefully planned. The world moves forward in its own way. Sometimes we can control little other than how we react to what the trip presents us.

I've enjoyed meeting with my good friend today, after months of training together "virtually". I have also enjoyed seeing his family again and meeting several interesting people in their entourage. But my plans for visiting the expo, driving the course, eating, and resting have been thrown out of kilter.

I am in my room and ready to rest. The training and preparing are over. Now all that remains is the test. I'll try to balance running to meet my goal with running to enjoy the scenic course. I think I am willing to give up part of my goal time if I need to in order to enjoy the run. Let's see if I feel the same way when the race challenges my resolve tomorrow.