My Track Record

The signal: Phil puts his hand in his mouth.

What we think this means: "Look, I know you guys are new parents who have a lot to learn, and, sure, my communication skills could still use some refinement. So I'm gonna make this really simple and obvious, OK? When I'm gnawing on my own flesh -- when I resort to self-cannibalism -- that means that you're not feeding me enough. 2%, 1%, fat-free, I don't care -- whatever you have on tap will be just fine. But can you hurry it up, please?"

Posted by crowther at 9:32 PM | Permalink

program Cycle;

var
   age_in_hours : longint;
   diaper_is_nasty : boolean;

(* Code for subroutines has been omitted. *)

begin

   age_in_hours := 0;

   repeat 
      CheckDiaper (diaper_is_nasty);
      if diaper_is_nasty then
         ChangeDiaper;
      FeedBaby;
      LetBabySleep;
      age_in_hours := age_in_hours + 3
   until age_in_hours > 720;

   writeln ('Congratulations, you've made it 
   through the first month.');

end.

Posted by crowther at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Fall is the season when people like me apply for tenure-track college faculty jobs that start the following fall. Most job ads request a curriculum vitae, a statement of teaching philosophy and research interests, three letters of reference, and perhaps undergraduate and graduate transcripts. Certain schools make you work a bit harder, though.

One university, for example, asks applicants to read and reflect on its mission statement, which includes the following: "The Jesuit educational tradition promotes independent critical thinkers informed by the humanities, open to finding and serving God in all things, and challenged by the Jesuit priority of 'the service of faith and the promotion of justice' to address issues of poverty, injustice, discrimination, violence, and the environment in knowledgeable, committed, and effective ways."

Because of my nonreligious worldview, I struggled with this assignment when applying for a position at this university last year. I wound up saying, in part, "I respect students' religious beliefs and cultural traditions, and I encourage them to learn from and respect each other by assigning group projects in which cooperation breeds success." Truthful and yet tasteful, right? Well, it wasn't enough to land me an interview.

Now that application season has returned, I'm once again trying to fit myself into oddly shaped holes at various schools. The most interesting challenge thus far has been writing a statement of my potential contribution to the diversity of one of these colleges. I suppose I could have played up my multiethnic ancestry -- if you go back far enough, I'm part English, part German, and part French -- but instead I said this:

Although I wouldn’t add much socioeconomic, political, or ethnic diversity to the college community, I believe that I could help sustain its behavioral diversity (for lack of a better term). While the pursuit of scientific knowledge is central to my identity, I like to think that I defy the usual stereotypes of what scientists are like, thereby broadening my students’ and acquaintances’ perceptions of what it means to be a scientist. Moreover, my experiences as an “outlier” allow me to sympathize with and support others who are atypical in one way or another.

Three examples of stereotype-challenging behavior come to mind. The first concerns my research, which has entailed studying enzymes and metabolic pathways in plant tissues (as an undergraduate), human muscles (as a graduate student), and bacteria (as a postdoc). Am I a physiologist, a biochemist, a microbiologist, or all or none of the above? The labels don’t greatly interest me; I want people to recognize that my work is interdisciplinary, requiring techniques and insights from several fields. The lesson for students is that you don’t need to define yourself according to your major; you can focus on the intellectual questions that interest you most and draw upon whatever disciplines are most relevant to those questions.

A second example is my interest in science songs (i.e., songs whose lyrics are about some aspect of science). I have written, recorded, and performed science songs for academic and nonacademic audiences, sometimes for explicitly educational purposes and sometimes not. My colleagues think I’m crazy for doing this, but bridging the gap between science and the arts can help communicate scientific humor, drama, and jargon to people who might otherwise find the material bewildering and/or boring. Given that different people learn in different ways, it makes sense to present information using multiple modalities in order to connect with as many people as possible.

A final example is the fact that I train for and compete in ultramarathons (i.e., races longer than 26.2 miles). This too causes raised eyebrows among my colleagues, some of whom were previously unaware that humans can run 60 miles or more without stopping. But ultramarathoning is a challenge that I’m good at and enjoy, so why not do it? Similarly, many of my students also have serious nonscientific interests, and, while holding them to high academic standards, I try to be flexible in accommodating their other pursuits.

Maybe the search committee will be impressed, and maybe they won't be. Either way, that's what I have to offer.

Posted by crowther at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

1. I switched the middle and last names of my newborn son in a mass email to family members announcing his birth.

2. I've referred to my son at least twice as "she."

3. I drank a can of regular soda, thinking that it was the diet version.

5. I used someone else's grocery cart during a shopping trip even though it contained lots of groceries (e.g., pineapples) that clearly weren't mine.

Posted by crowther at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is Philip shortly after his birth on October 20th, as captured in a photo by our friend Pete.

There is much, much more that could be said about the past few days. My wife has forbidden me from publishing a play-by-play account of her cervical dilation stats and those sorts of details, so I'll just offer a few brief observations....

1. My wife did a fantastic job during labor, following the nurses' and doctor's instructions very closely throughout the ordeal despite her obvious fatigue and pain. I think her athletic background was very helpful in this context. Beforehand, I had been skeptical as to whether labor is any easier for athletes, as some women had told me. However, as things got underway and periods of intense activity alternated with calmer recovery periods, it became clear that my wife's years of experience in pacing herself through long, difficult interval workouts were somewhat relevant.

2. The moment of delivery was quite a surreal one for me. As Phil emerged, my first impression was that he looked extremely purple and very flexible, to the point of having no bones at all. It was as if the doctor had just pulled out a rubber doll. Once Phil got cleaned up and I could actually touch him, he seemed a lot more alive and a lot more attractive.

3. Both mom and baby are recovering quite well. Phil appears to have inherited his mother's tendency to sleep a lot and say little (except when we change his diaper, which he hates). His aptitude for and interest in breast-feeding appear more than adequate. As for my wife, she's hobbling around as one might do after a particularly rough marathon -- the main difference being that they don't give you a baby when you finish a marathon. Which is a good thing, since if they did we'd collectively have 16 kids rather than just one.

Posted by crowther at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

My wife's due date is October 29th. Time to start preparing for fatherhood, maybe?

Actually, I haven't been completely irresponsible thus far.... I joined my wife at a one-day childbirth preparation class offered by our hospital, which was quite helpful. We then did the optional homework assignment of making a birth plan, which I had never heard of before. Basically, you write out your expectations for how the birthing process should go: whether to let labor begin spontaneously if possible, whether the mother wants to have an epidural, whether the father intends to pass out in the delivery room.... One of the other often-specified items is whether the father wants to cut the umbilical cord, which strikes me as a bizarre option. Is this something favored by corporate dads who enjoy cutting ribbons at grand openings of stores? I suppose the birth is an "opening" of sorts, but I see it as a medical event best handled by trained professionals, not a photo op for some scissors-wielding interloper.

I've also been doing a lot of thinking as to how to keep fatherhood from interfering with my training my training from interfering with fatherhood. My plan is to start commuting on foot more frequently, as opposed to my current practice of commuting by bicycle. On my easy days, I can run one way (6.5 miles) and bike the other way; on my harder days, I can run both ways. If this works out, I can stay in decent shape and avoid the baby jogger without spending too much extra time away from home.

Posted by crowther at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

1. I'm looking in the mirror and notice that my close-cropped hair appears even shorter than usual. Actually, at the top of my forehead, it's missing altogether. I'm going bald! I wake up relieved to find no evidence of clear-cutting in my follicular forest but still irritated at the reminder that I'm getting older. You see, I'm still sort of in denial of the whole mortality thing.

2. I'm at an unidentifiable high school in a small crowd of people gathered around Bruce Springsteen. This isn't a concert, though; Bruce is the principal of the school. Apparently he has retired from rock stardom and now has a master's degree in educational leadership or something, even though he's physically indistinguishable from the youthful hunk who was dancing in the dark and working on the highway and so forth in 1984. Some of the students are here as well, and one of them starts mouthing off to Bruce, and he sends him to the principal's office -- his office. At this point, I launch into my carefully prepared question. "Boss," I say, "your music does not generally extol the value of a formal education. In fact, you've penned lyrics such as, 'Well we busted out of class / Had to get away from those fools / We learned more from a three-minute record, baby / Than we ever learned in school.' How do you reconcile those words with your present-day work?" I wake up before he responds....

All of which leads me to the following conundrum. Why is it that, in my dreams, I'm getting older and balder, but Bruce Springsteen is not?

Posted by crowther at 12:33 AM | Permalink

My preparation for and performance at Twin Cities were both quite similar to what I did in the spring leading up to and at the Vancouver Marathon. I had hoped that an equivalent training regimen would somehow lead to a better result this time around ... but it's been said that doing what you've always done before and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.

In both cases, I did the marathon about 10 to 12 weeks after a period of training for something else; thus my buildups were rather brief. Because of my limited time to train and apparent need for lots of recovery in between hard workouts, my weekly mileage was quite low (55-60) relative to that of most others trying to run under 2:22. In general, I followed a hard-easy-easy schedule; hard days usually consisted of long intervals with short recoveries or tempo work at or under marathon goal pace (5:20 per mile), often on pavement, and most easy days were 5 miles at a comfortable pace (around 7:00-7:10 per mile).

During the races themselves, I had two main problems. First, although I was able to run 5:20-5:25 pace early on (splits at halfway: 1:11:13 at Vancouver, 1:10:45 at Twin Cities), this pace did not feel as easy as it needed to. Second, I started to feel the microtears in my quads (an unsurprising but unpleasant consequence of pounding the pavement) at mile 15 or 16, about five or six miles earlier than I had hoped for. Therefore, in future marathon attempts, I think I need to adjust my training to make race pace feel easier and make my muscles more damage-resistant.

So how would I do that? I'd probably benefit from a longer buildup -- a good 16 to 18 weeks of marathon-specific training, to give my body more time to adapt to the specific challenges of this race. And I might have to crank up the overall intensity and mileage, too. It seems likely that, the more miles per week you can log at or near race pace, the better your legs will become at resisting both fatigue and structural damage. There once was a brief blurb in Runner's World about why the Kenyans are so fast; its title was, "Their secret: train like hell." Perhaps it's a secret I need to experience firsthand.

Before leaving the topic of Twin Cities behind, I should note that I was treated extremely well by the race staff, who provided me with some very nice "elite runner" perks (free hotel room, guided course tour, special staging area near the start, etc.). I also enjoyed the camaraderie of the other runners who were there, including my Seattle Running Company teammate Mary Hanna, who was 2nd in her 45-49 age group with a time of 3:00:51; her remarkably extroverted sister Catherine, who makes her marathon debut today at St. George; my World Cup 100K teammate Patrick Russell and his wife Katie, who treated me to a nice pre-race dinner; and the euphoniously named Brian Lyons, a fellow sub-2:22 hopeful who came up just short. Next time, Brian, you'll do it for sure.

Posted by crowther at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

My official gun time was 2:24:00, I believe, while the chip time was 2:23:59. It hardly matters when the goal was 2:22:00. I placed 13th; masters runner Mbarek Hussein successfully defended his overall championship title, running 2:13:52 this year, while Ryan "Ready for a Course Record" Shay placed 3rd in 2:14:58. Marla Runyan clocked 2:32:17 to lead the women.

I may add a long-winded introspective analysis later but wanted to post the bad news now in case anyone was curious.

Posted by crowther at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)