I’d built this race up in my head quite a bit, convincing myself that this one would redeem last year’s injury hampered race. Despite those thoughts, I wasn’t able to train adequately. It likely wouldn’t have mattered anyway, temperatures dropped suddenly and my body never had a chance to adjust to running below-freezing yet. My left knee threw a cold-related tantrum near mile 8, tightening up and never letting go. The last few miles were something of a death march. These things happen sometimes, even with perfect training.

So why did I build this one up? After a fantastic running year in 2010, I went into 2011′s Manhattan Half with a mild foot ache and finished with a stress fracture. Probably two fractures, but the X-ray only showed one at the time. The spot where my foot gave out in 2011 has been haunting me ever since. Just past Cedar Hill behind the Met. 2012′s race was supposed to be when I confronted that demon and put it to rest.

The weather would have none of it. Saturday was the first snowstorm of the winter. Not a big storm, but cold, windy and with enough snow to mess things up a bit. Like the subway, but more on that later. NYRR switched the race to an unscored, non-competitive run; participants would get 9+1 credit whether we ran it or not. After the first lap one of the NYRR organizers was telling people to bag it at 7 miles. I didn’t. Again at 12 miles, an organizer said the last mile was too slippery and to stop early. I’d been fighting my stupid knee for too long to quit there, so again, I kept going. After two hours in a blizzard with a crap leg, this level of psychological torture was sort of existentially comical.

The race started out well, it was snowing, windy and 23° but everyone who braved the elements was in a great mood. This was my first snow run of the year, so my footwear situation was untested. This seemed like too long a run, and likely too wet, to try huaraches and socks in the snow for the first time. I ended up wearing a pair of wool Injinji socks and Soft Star DASH moccasins. The combination seemed fine, I had a similar cold knee issue a few weeks ago in huaraches, so I don’t blame the shoes.

Running in snow is hard work. At the finish I heard someone say it was like running on sand. I didn’t think it was that bad, but my heart rate was significantly elevated the whole time. Trouble sleeping the night before also didn’t help. Still, I didn’t “bonk” or run out of energy, and had my knee cooperated, I don’t think I would have.

Even after finishing with my worst Half Marathon time ever, the day just wouldn’t let up. Thanks to subway and bus troubles, I ended up finishing the morning with a 1.5 mile slog across 14th St. By the time I got home my feet were soaked, I was very cold and very tired.

But in the end, none of that mattered. It was an insane, amazing morning, and while not the triumph I was hoping for, it was a triumph nonetheless.

I’m looking forward to doing it again–and better–in 2013.

Postscript: Two days later I found myself running along the East River, no shirt, no shoes, and smiling in the sun. This has been a crazy winter.

Hanukkah (חֲנֻכָּה) started at sundown on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011. This year’s data was collected the following morning.

1. Hanukkah: 20,800,000 hits.
2. Chanukah: 6,820,000 hits.
3. Hannukah: 1,860,000 hits.
4. Hanukah: 1,560,000 hits.
5. Chanukkah: 568,000 hits.
6. Chanuka: 388,000 hits.
7. Hanukka: 375,000 hits.
8. Channukah: 306,000 hits.
9. Hanuka: 215,000 hits.
10. Hannuka: 104,000 hits.
11. Hannukkah: 97,400 hits.
12. Chanukka: 72,300 hits.
13. Channuka: 57,200 hits.
14. Hannukka: 38,300 hits.
15. Xanuka: 31,900 hits.
16. Chanuqa: 27,700 hits.
17. Channukka: 19,700 hits.
18. Janukah: 14,200 hits.
19. Janukkah: 12,700 hits.
20. Channukkah: 8,530 hits.

Instead the spaghetti graph from previous years, I’ve switched to a stacked area chart. This shows total hits and gives a quick visual sense of how each spelling is distributed. Prettier AND more meaningful!

Bing was used to generate the numbers this year, collecting the data with the Bing API was fast and easy. Google is a mess, their search result counts are basically arbitrary, change constantly and are difficult to collect.

This year I’ve opened up the spreadsheet data through Google Docs. I’m not a spreadsheet guy or a statistician, if this could be done better let me know. Here’s the link: How to Spell Hanukkah Spreadsheet.

And finally for my mother, who insists on Chanukah, I’ve included a new “gelt” chart which breaks down the spellings by H vs. Ch:

Based on my original Sixteen Ways to Spell Hanukkah post from 2005. Updated in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Besides regular comb outs and wearing their hair up or in braids, we’ve been applying aromatic oils to our daughters’ heads before school. The mix of oils was recommended by a friend:

• Tea tree, lemongrass & lavender in apricot kernel oil (25% dilution)
• Put a couple of drops on your hands, rub palms together & then pat it on the hair.
• Avoid contact with skin
• Definitely avoid contact with eyes!

I mentioned the oils to some other parents and emailed it to the class. This morning the classroom smelled like tea tree oil.

But one parent mentioned some concern about estrogenic qualities of lavender and tea tree oils. This was troubling me so I did some research.

From what I found, the concern about tea tree and lavender originated with this 2007 observational study published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM):

Prepubertal Gynecomastia Linked to Lavender and Tea Tree Oils

NEJM received several critical letters about the study which should be read too.

This was foremost an observational study, and the author’s conclusions seem loosely drawn from the results of three cases. (Gynecomastia is enlarged breasts in males) From their abstract:

We investigated possible causes of gynecomastia in three prepubertal boys who were otherwise healthy and had normal serum concentrations of endogenous steroids. In all three boys, gynecomastia coincided with the topical application of products that contained lavender and tea tree oils. Gynecomastia resolved in each patient shortly after the use of products containing these oils was discontinued.

First issue with the study is that not all three cases were exposed to tea tree and lavender, here’s what they mention in the text:

One quibble with their timeline: The human foot has remained essentially unchanged since the pre-human Australopithecines, nearly 4 million years ago. Judging from evolution, the design must work pretty well.

Created by X Ray Technician Schools, via Tuck, via The Discovery Channel, via America’s Podiatrist.

All iPhone compatible HRM sensors work by attaching a dongle to the iPhone.

Runalyzer Key
$69 on Amazon

Wahoo Key
$80 on Amazon

I’m only looking at Runalyzer and Wahoo because they both work with a wide range of apps. (Runalyzer compatible apps, Wahoo compatible apps) The other HRM options I found, Garmin’s and Digifit’s, only work with their own proprietary apps.

Wahoo uses the ANT+ wireless protocol (2.4 GHz) and requires an ANT+ compatible HRM strap. Runalyzer claims to work with all existing analog HRM straps (5.3 kHz). Runalyzer’s hardware dongle is slightly shorter and wider than Wahoo’s.

Unfortunately, RunKeeper, my preferred running app, doesn’t support anything except the Wahoo Key. But I tried iSmoothRun again and was very impressed with how it’s progressed since I last tried it–enough to switch.

So, I’ve decided to try the Runalyzer dongle with iSmoothRun since I can keep using my existing Omron HRM strap. It’ll be here in a few days.

I'm sad for his his wife and children. But mostly I'm sad for the rest of us. 56.

I was lucky enough to see Steve speak in person at WWDC several times. The first time I saw him come onstage in 2003, it was as if the air was suddenly electrified.

This post was drafted on my iPhone. Steve's iPhone, running Steve's new OS, built on the foundation of Steve's old OS, connected to a machine Steve led the creation of, all of them sold by a company Steve founded 35 years ago.

It's traditional to wish for the departed to rest in peace, but Steve's vision won't be resting, there is so much more to do.

Here's to the crazy ones.

Thank you Steve, for everything.

I ran three loops, or as Chris H. said (a line I’m gleefully stealing) “I had three wonderful conversations.” I’m still nursing some old ankle injuries (shoe-related) and some of the laps were a lot faster than I’ve been comfortably running lately, otherwise I would have kept going. But I couldn’t have asked for better company.

My main takeaway of the weekend was how much the idea of barefooting has grown in the past two years. Sure we’re still out on the fringe, but it’s a rapidly exploding fringe which is transforming lives around the world.

I really enjoyed meeting and catching up with old and new friends, putting faces on names and being surrounded by hundreds of like-minded people whose radical diversity was unified by our hyper-capable genome. And toes.

Thank you to Maggie and John Durant and all the organizers and volunteers who put this together. I’m already looking forward to next year.

8:46. 9:03. 9:59 and 10:28. This year they also stood for Flight 93 at 10:03 and may also have commemorated the Pentagon at 9:39, but I didn’t know to check. This is the right thing to do, it wasn’t just New York City.

Across the street, the younger firefighters might have been kids in 2001. Ten years is a long time. Our oldest daughter was born six months after the towers fell. Children who were her age on that day are now soldiers, police and firemen. I’ve seen how tragedies and catastrophes on the other side of the world have affected my own kids. I can’t began to imagine how difficult it was for children to deal with an atrocity down the street.

I did not know what I was going to feel today. But as I stood there, my thoughts kept coming back to the selflessness on display. The stories of heroism and sacrifice on September 11th must have inspired the direction of their lives.

So, perhaps strangely, this year instead of a pervasive feeling of loss and sadness, I find myself filled with a sense of hope and pride in humanity. We remember the act of hatred, destruction and mass murder, but what we commemorate and honor is the spirit of what makes mankind so spectacular.

Ten years: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.