Four miles in 35 minutes on the treadmill.

Three miles in 25 minutes on the treadmill, I started off slow instead of stretching. Various body parts felt good. Followed up with lots of stretching and iced knees.

My left knee was pretty messed up after the five mile run back on August 12th. I saw the sports medicine doctor again a few days after that and she advised taking a few weeks off to let my knees recover. Tonight was the 12th day, things have been feeling pretty good for several days now.

The other thing she pointed out was that my experimenting with off the shelf arch-support insoles (my feet have hurt for a long time) was probably a big part of my knee pain. Legs seem to be very precisely balanced, the hips, knees, ankles and feet all affect one another more than it seems they would. I now have a prescription for orthotics and some medieval looking thing called a night splint. That’s only supposed to be worn for 4-6 weeks, but it would be nice to wake up in the morning and not have the first 15 minutes on my feet be excruciating.

Finally, my friend Heins Kim has his artwork online, and it looks great. All of his work is crafted with exceptional detail, zoom in by rolling over the large image.

It’s hard to appreciate some of the works online, many of the paintings and drawings are completely different from various distances and angles. Also be sure to check out the photos accompanying his Bio.

Until I get the Nike+iPod thing, I’m going to post my runs here and just keep bumping it to the top.

Sunday July 29:

4 miles on the treadmill

Tuesday July 31:

4 miles on the west side with Harris and Kai. We went before lunch at around 1pm, it was hot.

August 2:

5.5 Miles in 46 minutes. Personal best by 10 minutes and 1 mile.

August 5:

5 miles in 40 minutes. I was angry about something when I started so I ran the first three miles pretty fast.

August 8:

2.5 miles, sort of fast. Ran after an exhausting day.

August 12:

5 miles up First Ave to 64th and then down Second. Hills kicked my butt, left knee was a bit tight. Route

August 16

3 miles on the treadmill at the Y. My left knee is sore.

August 20

2 miles on the treadmill, after a lot of stretching and 3 miles on a stationary bike. Felt fine and could have kept going, but my knees are still hurting more than they should be.

this post should really be a category with multiple short posts. Adding to to do list…

A little over a month ago I finally gave in and started playing around with Twitter.

I like how thin and open Twitter is. There is no proscribed way of how it works. Some people post what they’re doing, some post thoughts, others simply reply to other’s posts. Posts, usually called “tweets”, are limited to 140 characters, a hard limit that enforces brevity.

Starting out feels awkward. At first, it can feel like looking in at the super-clique — except that you’ve been gagged and no one can see you. Most of the people I’m following I’ve met briefly or know online. Most of them aren’t following me. I don’t dwell on it. At least initially, I’ve decided to follow anyone who follows me, except spammers. So far I haven’t culled my list.

After a few days, it starts to get interesting. At times it seems like nothing more than a rolling IM status message. After a week it starts to feel like it should have always been there.

I’ve found Twitter to be a surprising motivator. That probably has something to do with my inherent belief that I’m never doing enough. I want to seem busy, so I have to get busy. Or busier. There is a water-cooler quality to Twitter which is nice when your office is largely virtual.

There’s another interesting thing, probably a result of how transitory messages are; people often post quick little links to their newest blog posts or whatever. I tried that and was astonished at how many clickthroughs I got.

Having previously referred to Twitter as “a spam-free pub-sub channel for direct communication,” Dave Winer also posted this very effective description:

[Twitter] is a network of users, with one kind of relationship: following. I can follow you, and you can follow me. Or I can follow you and you don’t follow me. Or you can follow me, and I don’t follow you. Or neither of us follow each other. Pretty simple. Just arrows at either or both ends of the line, or no line at all. There are no labels on the arcs.

That really sums it up. Feel free to follow me, I’ll happily return the favor.

If you’re on a Mac, I highly recommend getting the free Twitterific from IconFactory.

This flash US obesity infographic was mentioned to me as part of an ongoing discussion about information graphics. The original source data likely came from the PPT presentation linked on the CDC’s Overweight and Obesity page. The CDC maps present annual data from 1985-2005, CNN only chose to show six incongruous years to remove edge-case fluctuation. I threw together a quick animation showing the complete dataset:

Michelle observed that the bar for information graphics was set “very, very low.” People are accustomed to lousy graphics, default-styled PowerPoint charts, plain Excel tables and raw scatter plots. Even the slightest attention to design becomes automatically exceptional.

I think that map chart would work better as a line plot, but then I’m most curious about whether or not there was a tipping point after which the population started gaining weight. Personally, I believe things turned for the worse between 1985 and 1988.

Mid-80s transition

In 1985, amidst the New Coke fiasco, Coca-Cola and other soft drinks switched from cane and beet sugar to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Two main factors figured into that decision: Significantly increased potency and effectiveness of HFCS vs conventional sugars, and cost savings due US government corn subsidies and manipulation of domestic sugar prices. Bottom line was that soda got much cheaper to produce, thereby making “free refills” and oversized portions an economically sound loss-leader.

Three years later in 1988, Taco Bell introduced unlimited free drink refills and 7-Eleven started selling the 64-ounce Double Gulp, “biggest soft drink on the market.” I couldn’t find a source, but that was doubtlessly a response to escalating portions and unlimited refills among competitors. This was also about the time the soda manufacturers started experimenting with 16 ounce cans, 20 ounce bottles and other larger portions.

The following chart illustrates domestic per capita consumption of soft drinks from 1970-1995. Note the spike between 1987-1988:

Soda got cheaper, so people drank more soda. Snack foods also got cheaper as they also switched from sugar to HFCS, so people ate more snacks. More soda + more snacks = more obesity. This isn’t rocket science.

Two or three months ago I started running. It was something I’d been thinking about for a while but never got around to. Harris deserves a lot of thanks for motivation and nagging. The Cool Running website has also been a terrific resource, especially their Couch-to-5K plan.

Last week I ran somewhere between 16 and 20 miles, spread across four or five runs. Having never done any sort of deliberate distance/endurance exercise before, I find that number personally astonishing. Currently I’m running four miles in about 33 minutes, my next goal is five miles in 40-45 minutes.

I decided to buy one of those Nike+iPod thingies, mostly because I enjoy statistics. Also, I’ve wanted one ever since Cabel Sasser’s Multiplayer Game Of The Year post. However, the iPod is imminently due for a refresh — assuming the rumors are right. According to the MacRumors buying guide, the iPod and iPod nano are coming up on a year since their last refresh. I can wait another week or two.

While I’ve been going to the gym regularly for almost a year now (14th St Y Babysitting FTW), no amount of exercise can produce the levels of sweat running does and before I used to exercise at home with some home gym advice. I’m absolutely, revoltingly drenched after 30 minutes.

Surprisingly, I’m not completely spent afterwards. After a 30 minute cool down and shower I generally feel great. When I sleep, I sleep better. I’m drinking less coffee. My contribution to the laundry heap has increased. When swimming I can hold my breath much longer than I used to be able to. Overall, I’m really loving it.