Below are a few other fragments of life that I've been meaning to write about.

A New Running Injury

Two weekends ago I was at Lincoln Park with Phil. He wanted to chase me around the jungle gym area, so off I went, swooping and spinning, dodging and darting -- a sort of "Muhammad Ali meets the Flight of the Bumblebee" routine. We were having so much fun that another boy whom we didn't even know joined in the chase. After 10 or 15 minutes of this, I paused next to a play structure, whirled around to start my next maneuver, and -- WHAM! -- smacked my head right into a metal pole. I dropped to the sandy ground. Phil and Christian ran over and jumped on top of me, celebrating their sudden victory while I moaned softly and felt my forehead start to swell. Nobody had actually seen me bonk my head, but I was embarrassed anyway, as though my I'm-still-a-kid act had abruptly been exposed as a lie.

The F Word

"Is it bad to use the word 'fetish' in a grant application?" I asked a colleague yesterday while editing a proposal that I was about to submit.

"Um, yes," was the response. "It makes me think of foot fetishes."

She was probably right, and yet I was so tired of this proposal that I felt a need to make it interesting to myself again. So "fetish" made the cut, for better or worse:

We believe strongly in the importance of the central goal of this proposal, i.e., linking antibacterial compounds to Burkholderia proteins in a manner that will facilitate validation of new drug targets. This interest in compound-target links is not simply a fetish of the investigators involved in this project; within some pharmaceutical firms, knowing the target of a compound with activity against cells is considered absolutely vital for progressing compounds to leads.

This desire to insert slightly bizarre language into mundane contexts could itself be considered a fetish, I suppose. But I like to think that it gives my writing a certain freewheeling charm.

The Awesomeness of Whiteboards

When I was in college, one of my heroes was math professor Frank Morgan, for the simple reason that he had a whiteboard in his dining room. I considered that the zenith of geeky coolness and vowed that I too would have a whiteboard in my dining room someday.

It hasn't happened yet, but I was reminded of that long-dormant dream by a recent blog entry (Creative Process #1: Why Whiteboard?) by Greg Meyer, an old college dorm-mate of mine. This, in turn, reminded me of something I read in the book Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. Garr says that most people -- most scientists, for example -- begin work on a presentation simply by opening PowerPoint and trying to create the first slide, and then the second one, and so on. In contrast, design professionals -- people who create compelling visuals (e.g., advertisements) for a living -- begin with a low-tech medium such as a notepad or a whiteboard because it's more conducive to spontaneity and creativity.

My parents have promised us some money to buy shades for the windows in our kitchen. I wonder if they'd be upset if we bought a whiteboard instead.

The Clear Thinker

When I visited my aunt and uncle in Houston last month, I noticed a framed certificate on the wall from my uncle's employer, General Electric, which congratulated him for being a "Clear Thinker." This award initially struck me as amusing, and my sense is that my uncle has endured considerable teasing because of it. (His son was the one who mounted it on the wall, apparently to ensure that its hilarity would not be forgotten anytime soon.)

The more I thought about this award, though, the less comfortable I felt in mocking it. Isn't clear thinking a trait worthy of praise? In fact, why am I successful as a scientist (to the extent that I am)? I'm not great at using or fixing equipment, I'm not tremendously creative, I don't have a fantastic memory for details, I don't have an insatiable curiosity, and I'm not fanatically devoted to my work.

I do think clearly, however. And if someone gave me an award for that, I think I'd be entitled to be happy about it.

Although one might expect Phil to create a free-flowing transportation utopia, the fact is that a world of bumper-to-bumper traffic is the only one he knows.

* July 14: 10:22/10:41.

* July 17: 10:14/10:23. (In my running log, I called this performance "slightly less catastrophic" than the previous one.)

* August 7: 10:18 [quit workout after first interval went poorly].

* August 18: 10:15/10:19.

* September 2: 10:10/10:10.

Since I had run as fast as 9:58/9:57 the previous summer, I was none too thrilled that it took me until my taper to get down to 10:10/10:10. Nonetheless, my World Cup 100K race went well. For me, then, 10:10/10:10 may be a benchmark suggesting acceptable fitness for racing 100K.

With all of that in mind, I headed to the Franklin High School track last Saturday to test the extent to which my legs have recovered from the Rocky Raccoon 100. I guess they're recovering pretty well because I ran 10:13/10:13. I was so satisfied with this workout that I immediately registered for the Mad City 100K on April 10th. Hey, why not -- I still have a few weeks to train for it!

Mad City will, in some ways, be the least wacky of the three spring events to which I have committed so far. On March 21st, I'll be doing the Big Climb, a 69-floor ascent of the Columbia Tower in downtown Seattle, with the PATH to Victory team. And on May 30th I will be at Ski to Sea, handling the running leg (8 miles, straight down the side of Mount Baker) for the Bagelry team.

The weekend before the Rocky Raccoon 100, I did a solo 5,000-meter time trial at the Franklin High School track. My time of 15:59 was unremarkable except that it brought to mind another 15:59, one that I had run 18 years earlier. The first 15:59 of my life, literally half a lifetime ago.

I was a freshman at Williams College, still getting taller and heavier and quite uncertain of my capacity for further improvement as a runner. After an acceptable fall season of cross-country, I plunged into indoor track. I loved it. The laps went by quickly on the small tracks, the tight turns made me feel like a speed demon, and even sparse crowds of coaches, teammates, and opponents were enough to create some atmosphere and excitement in cramped facilities such as Williams' Towne Field House. There was only one problem: the races were too short. As someone without a single fast-twitch muscle fiber to his name, I was too slow to place highly in races lasting less than 20 minutes.

Then something very odd happened. As March 7th, 1992 approached -- the date of the East Coast Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championships at Bates College, the last meet of the indoor season other than nationals -- I was granted a spot in the ECAC 5,000-meter race. The qualifying standard for a guaranteed entry was 15:30 or so, but, for whatever reason, only seven other runners in the whole conference signed up for that event. And so I was let in, even though my best 5K time up to that point was 16:40. I was seeded last.

At this meet and many like it, the top six people in each event score points for their teams: 10 for 1st, 8 for 2nd, and so on down to 1 point for 6th place. In a race with only eight people, I couldn't help but wonder whether I might be able to earn a point for a change. I went out fast -- 2:29 at 800m, 5:04 at 1600m -- but remained in last place until 2400m or so, when I passed two guys. I reached 3200m in 10:16, still way ahead of my usual splits. I passed a third guy with a bit less than 800m to go, kicked the final 400m in 70 seconds, and crossed the finish line in 15:59. 5th place! No, wait, 4th place -- a guy ahead of me was disqualified! In addition to improving my personal record by 41 seconds, I had contributed 4 points toward the team's total of 89. I had helped us win the meet!

Should sequences of digits on a watch really inspire such sentimentality? If you have to ask, you're probably not a runner.

The story of my race could also be told in part by the split times of my 20-mile laps: 2:38, 2:42, 2:50, 3:04 ... and 3:45. Most of the last lap was in the dark, but at the rate I was moving then, darkness was hardly an impediment.

I spent much of the first lap running and chatting with Paul Hopwood, who had finished the grueling HURT 100 only three weeks earlier. He was in good spirits and seemed light on his feet until I happened to ask him about the number of 100-milers he had completed. At that instant his toes caught a root and he went down, rolling forward and springing back up again. "Well, this is going to be my last one," he said. "Thanks for asking, Greg."

I had known from the beginning that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to approach Eric Clifton's race record of 13:06:02 (set on a different and perhaps easier course). However, my 20-mile split of 2:38 was right on record pace, and I decided to see whether I could maintain that pace for a while longer. After lap 2, which I ran alone, I knew that the record was indeed out of reach, and I refocused on my original and primary time goal of breaking 14 hours. Lap 3 was a bit slower than I had hoped for but still consistent with a possible sub-14-hour finish. My first pacer, John Reynolds, was waiting for me at mile 60, and I figured that the help from him and Paul Terranova (who would run miles 80 to 100 with me) would minimize further slowdowns.

John and Paul -- good names at a race named after a Beatles song -- did an excellent job, yet my pace projections for these final laps proved wildly optimistic. There was nothing remarkable about my fatigue -- no sudden failures of particular muscle groups -- but it deepened gradually and relentlessly.

At my request, John did his best to maintain a one-sided conversation so as to distract me from my deteriorating condition. He told me about his preparation for the upcoming Nueces 50, which I misheard, perhaps tellingly, as the "Oasis 50." He also handled what I called the "public relations" of the lap: greeting other runners, warning them of our approach from behind, etc. The 50-mile runners did a 16.67-mile loop that was very similar to the 100-milers' 20-mile loop, and there were multiple segments with two-way traffic, so encounters with other runners were quite frequent. Many of them offered friendly encouragement, and John responded in kind so that I could save my breath without feeling like a jerk.

I arrived at mile 80 knowing that a sub-14-hour time was out of the question but still assuming that something better than 14:30 was likely. Paul took over for John, and off we went.

Having come this far, I dearly wanted to win the race, but I had trouble getting accurate information on the size of my lead. At 83.1 miles, someone told me that I was ahead by only 14 minutes. This seemed unlikely but made me nervous anyway. My strength continued to wane, and I doubted that I could rebuff a challenge from anyone running fast enough to catch up to me. At the JFK 50, I had stolen a victory from Michael Arnstein in the last ten minutes of a nearly six-hour race; was I about to fall victim to a similar act of cruelty? I asked Paul to watch for runners approaching from behind.

Paul continued John's public relations work while providing me with gentle encouragement and tales of life in Texas. Despite his exceptional companionship, though, my mood worsened with each passing mile. When a volunteer at the Dam Road aid station (mile 92.2) offered me some delicious-looking macaroni and cheese, of which she seemed quite proud, I hesitated. I had grown sick of Gatorade and Shot Bloks hours ago, and it would have been great to sit down and eat some real food for a minute.... But Paul politely declined on my behalf, bringing me back to the reality of the miles ahead. As we trudged onward, he said, "Did you know that some Texas restaurants are so proud of their barbecue meat that they serve it without sauce?"

In that moment I realized just how hard Paul was trying to keep me engaged. I coughed up an involuntary laugh -- one of my only vocalizations between miles 86 and 97 that was not a groan or a sigh.

At the Park Road aid station at mile 95.6, I was finally able to confirm that my lead was safe, and my mood lightened slightly. Then we reached a junction that I had determined earlier to be about 2.9 miles from the start/finish area, and I checked my time: 14:32. With a strong kick, I could still slip under 15 hours. I ordered Paul to accelerate and followed him over the wooden footbridges alongside Lake Raven and then up the path away from the lake. I suddenly felt strong and alert again. My flashlight abruptly died, so Paul gave me his and I moved in front of him.

Before long we were sailing along the final straightaway, a couple hundred meters long. "Number 169 is finishing!" I yelled to the race officials. As Paul and I finished in 14:58, I raised his hand in triumph, for the victory belonged to him too -- as it did to John and to my uncle Chris, who crewed for me thoughout the day, and to Paul's wife Meredith, who assisted Chris after placing 2nd in the 50-mile race.

Race director Joe Prusaitis emerged from the darkness. "You ran a great race!" he enthused. "No, YOU ran a great race!" I said, poking him in the chest with my index finger. "That was REALLY well organized!"

I hobbled to the recovery tent, changed into dry clothes, and talked with Paul, Meredith, and Chris. Then Chris and I went to find some macaroni and cheese.

Photos by Chris Eckert

Me at mile 40 (I think).

Pacer Paul Terranova (holding the box of smoked salmon that I gave him as a thank-you gift) and me (holding the belt buckle awarded to sub-24-hour finishers) in the recovery tent after the race.

My 1st-place trophy. It's a cowboy made out of rusted metal.

Here are a few pertinent links:
* iRunFar.com previews the race
* Karl Meltzer handicaps the field (he picks me and Jamie to win)
* EnduranceBuzz.com offers details on Karl’s picks
* Live results from edsresults.com!

Habitually barefoot endurance runners often land on the fore-foot (fore-foot strike) before bringing down the heel.... In contrast, habitually shod runners mostly rear-foot strike, facilitated by the elevated and cushioned heel of the modern running shoe.... Even on hard surfaces, barefoot runners who fore-foot strike generate smaller collision forces than shod rear-foot strikers.... Fore-foot- and mid-foot-strike gaits were probably more common when humans ran barefoot or in minimal shoes, and may protect the feet and lower limbs from some of the impact-related injuries now experienced by a high percentage of runners.

Lieberman's name is familiar to many runners these days, as his research was discussed at some length in the bestselling book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. McDougall latched onto Lieberman's work because it suggests that those crazy barefoot bipedalists may be onto something after all, and I find myself inclined to believe some of their ideas -- that heavily padded shoes don't necessarily protect you from injury, for example, and that being able to feel the ground through thin soles may help the body adjust more effectively to the terrain it's covering. My complaint is that, in an effort to make a good story even better, McDougall and his ilk take some liberties that irk the scientist in me.

A typical example concerns injury rates among runners. With all of the high-tech shoes available to us these days, McDougall asks, why are injury rates among runners so high? It's a very good question ... but what is that alarmingly high injury rate, anyway? A recent review article by R.N. Van Gent et al. says that, according to different studies, anywhere from 19% to 79% of runners get injured in a given year. Now let's look at how McDougall reports this in his book:

Up to eight of ten runners are hurt every year..... Next time you line up for a Turkey Trot, look at the runners on your right and left: statistically, only one of you will be back for the Jingle Bell Jog.

In other words, he takes a reasonable observation -- runners do get injured a lot -- and stretches it beyond belief by implying that two thirds of runners are injured every month (the approximate time between Thanksgiving and Christmas). That's on page 9 of my copy of the book. On page 71, he uses somewhat similar language:

Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 percent of all runners suffer an injury. That's nearly every runner, every single year.

Has McDougall calmed down since the publication of his book last year? I'm not sure. In a January 3rd article for Parade magazine, McDougall gives the injury stat as "as many as six out of 10." However, his zest for hyperbole resurfaces later in the article, where he says,

In a 2009 review article for the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers searched 30 years of studies and were unable to find one demonstrating that running shoes make people less prone to injury.

That statement -- presumably referring to Is your prescription of distance running shoes evidence-based? by Craig E. Richards et al. -- is not incorrect. What it omits, though, is the fact that Richards et al. could not even find a single study that quantified the impact (if any) of shoe use on injury rates. In other words, while they didn't find any evidence that shoes helped, they didn't find any evidence that shoes were harmful or inconsequential, either. See the difference?

Again, I suspect that the barefoot running movement has legs, and McDougall deserves credit for inspiring interest in it. I just wish that, as someone who presents himself as an investigative journalist, he wouldn't get so carried away.

If one is collecting several of these letters, one must consider the possibility that one's collaborators may not add to or alter the template as much as desired, leading to the potential embarrassment of having several letters signed by different people but clearly originating from the same source. To avoid such situations, one must then provide each collaborator with a rather different template. Although this can be difficult, a PI who is attuned to geographically based differences in language usage may be able to create a distinct voice for each collaborator.

For example, if one needs a letter of support from a British scientist, one might send him the following template:

Right, then -- Plasmodium is a bloody dreadful pathogen, seeing as how it feasts on human haemoglobin and the like, and any twit can see that new remedies are needed. The UG Parasitology Centre, of which I am director, houses high-throughput screening and sequencing facilities ideally suited to Specific Aims 1 and 2 of your proposal. Our expertise in analysing these large datasets is also widely recognised. The Centre would be honoured to host any researchers from your group who wish to have a go.

If I may be of further assistance, just ring me up and we'll have a chat.

God Save the Queen,

Nigel R Shillingsworth, PhD, FRS
Reader in Biochemistry
University of Gloucestershire
Tuppence-on-Ravenbrook
England

In contrast, for a colleague in rural Vermont, the following might suffice:

Them parasites seem wicked bad down in the tropics nowadays, but your plan's a good one. Anything I can do to help, just give me a holler.
Ned Morgan
Tunbridge

As in previous years, I thought the anonymous panelists did a pretty good job with the rankings. I agree wholeheartedly with the choices of Geoff Roes and Kami Semick as ultrarunners of the year; likewise, it's hard to quarrel with the selections of Roes' Wasatch 100 (where he broke Kyle Skaggs' course record by over an hour) and Semick's World Cup 100K (where she bested a very deep international field) as performances of the year.

Of course, I didn't simply digest the voting results as a fan of the sport -- I wanted to know what the panelists thought of ME.

My JFK race was rated #8 in the "Performance of the Year" category. Should it have been higher than that? Probably not. I could argue that, for example, me running the second-fastest time in the history of JFK was more impressive than Karl Meltzer running the second-fastest time in the history of Hardrock, which hasn't hosted as many great runners over the years. On the other hand, Josh Cox set an American record in the 50K -- not just a COURSE record, but a NATIONAL record -- and his achievement garnered fewer points than mine! So I guess I can't complain.

In the "Runner of the Year" category, I was surprised that I didn't get even a single 10th-place vote, since my win at JFK came after solid finishes in tough fields at the Chuckanut 50K (2nd), North Face 50 (3rd), and White River 50 (3rd). Doesn't beating fifth-ranked Hal Koerner three times in three attempts count for something? On the other hand, Sal Bautista destroyed me at the Bellingham North Face 50 and also won the Wisconsin North Face 50, and he didn't get any points either.

In the end, it's hard to escape the conclusion that doing well at these races is its own reward. Sure, we can have some fun arguing about whose season was better, but, years from now, Hal will look back on his Western States victory with justifiable pride, and I'll do the same for JFK, and our most vivid memories will be of the races themselves, not our point totals in UltraRunning magazine.

In its December 2009 newsletter (a PDF file), the ORI summarizes several recent misconduct cases, beginning on page 8. In general, these cases involved researchers who altered data to make them look better and/or invented data that they did not have.

Presumably the message that ORI wants us to absorb from these case summaries is that such inventive approaches to data collection are unacceptable and will be punished harshly. Then why, at the bottom of page 8, does the newsletter include a "pull quote" box containing the famous Albert Einstein observation that "Imagination is more important than knowledge"? In this context, how can that quote NOT be interpreted as a defense of the offending researchers?

If ORI has a similar bit of space to fill amidst the misconduct cases in its next newsletter, I have another Einstein quote to suggest: "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research."

Cellphones and cancer: Interphone can't end the debate by Michael Repacholi for New Scientist (December 2, 2009).

It is therefore likely that Interphone will give cellphones a clean bill of health except for the small possibility of a risk of glioma or acoustic neuroma from intensive and long-term use, which requires further study before reaching any such conclusion. Unfortunately, it is also likely that the media will report this possible risk without any caveats, such as it probably being due to the limitations of the study, of which there are many.

...Can you recall how much you used your cellphone five or 10 years ago? Of course not, and that is Interphone's biggest flaw. Scientific studies on RF health risks are only as good as their ability to assess RF exposure. For Interphone, this is plagued by "recall bias" that can affect the accuracy and reliability of the results.

Tiger Woods drives sales of physics book sky-high by Richard Lea for The Guardian (December 4, 2009).

"It's not a book you sit down and read from cover to cover," said Gribbin, "you can dip in and out of it. Tiger Woods is absolutely my target audience. He's busy, hasn't got a lot of time, but wants to catch up on what's happening in physics."

...[Gribbin's] latest book is In Search of the Multiverse, which charts ideas about alternative realities from Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to recent developments in M-theory pointing to a landscape of alternative universes in string theory.

"Perhaps Woods will see if he can find a universe in which none of this ever happened," suggested Gribbin.

Cancer From the Kitchen? by Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times (December 6, 2009).

I asked these doctors what they do in their own homes to reduce risks. They said that they avoid microwaving food in plastic or putting plastics in the dishwasher, because heat may cause chemicals to leach out.

Mammogram Math by John Allen Paulos for The New York Times (December 10, 2009).

Much of our discomfort with the panel’s findings stems from a basic intuition: since earlier and more frequent screening increases the likelihood of detecting a possibly fatal cancer, it is always desirable. But is this really so? Consider the technique mathematicians call a reductio ad absurdum, taking a statement to an extreme in order to refute it. Applying it to the contention that more screening is always better leads us to note that if screening catches the breast cancers of some asymptomatic women in their 40s, then it would also catch those of some asymptomatic women in their 30s. But why stop there? Why not monthly mammograms beginning at age 15?

The answer, of course, is that they would cause more harm than good. Alas, it’s not easy to weigh the dangers of breast cancer against the cumulative effects of radiation from dozens of mammograms, the invasiveness of biopsies (some of them minor operations) and the aggressive and debilitating treatment of slow-growing tumors that would never prove fatal.

* * * * * *

Phil received a lot of great gifts for his last birthday, but his favorite one was the fire rescue pop-up adventure set he got from his friends Ismael and Khalil. It consists of a burning building located adjacent to a fire station, with a ladder bridging the two for convenient access back and forth.

Phil especially liked the fire station's gun-like fire hose that shoots plastic water pellets at the neighbor's rooftop fire. It wasn't long, though, before he discovered that the water could be fired at targets other than fires. People, for example.

Concerned that this game might deteriorate into firing-squad sadism, I tried to salvage a teachable moment. Surely these blasts from the hose could be used to impart some life lessons, if an appropriate context were provided....

"A long time ago, some people with white skin were mean to people with dark skin," I began. "But a lot of other people thought that everyone should be nice to everyone else, and they went on long walks together to try to get the rules changed." I grabbed a handful of wooden and plastic figurines on Phil's floor and hastily assembled a protest march.

"They walked to government buildings and, uh, made speeches and stuff," I continued unsteadily, not sure how to convey the essence of nonviolent protest to a three-year-old. A Fisher-Price barn was now doubling as a generic State Capitol Building. "And, well, these long walks helped teach everybody how to live together. But sometimes the walkers were stopped by bad guys who shot water at them." I loaded the hose, and -- Bang! -- down went a peacefully crusading Dora the Explorer.

Of course, Phil wanted to operate the hose himself, and before long he had toppled several other marchers. I had to concede that, the way I had set things up, it was more fun to be a hose-wielding fireman than an idealistic, unarmed protester. Apparently it will take more than an assemblage of few equality-minded toys to drive home the desired lesson.

* * * * * *

Dear David,

You say the following on your website:

I’m nobody special. Let’s be perfectly clear… I don’t like to run. I don’t like to swim. I don’t like to bike. I do this to raise money for the children of soldiers killed in combat.... Like I said, I don't like running. I don't like biking. I don’t like swimming. I do it to raise money. But, now that I'm in this sport I want to see how far I can push myself. What makes me tick is that pain you feel when you do these ultramarathons. I can take a lot of pain.

I'll try to be perfectly clear too. You're a really tough guy, and you're raising money for an unimpeachable cause. Good for you. As far as I know, you're telling the truth when you say that you don't like to run but are doing it for the cause. Again, good for you. I just want to point out that you're a hero not only to the families of these fallen soldiers but also to the many millions of people who are battling obesity. You used to carry 290 pounds on your 6'2" body; now you're a muscular 190.

So where am I going with this? Well, you know as well as I that regular exercise is an important part of conquering obesity. Since we want people to exercise more, is there some way you can continue the fundraising without making physical activity sound so miserable?

People occasionally tell me that they "know" they should run more but just don't enjoy it. I always reply that they should find a sport that they like -- something that doesn't feel like a chore -- and do that instead. Perhaps you could offer a similar message -- one noting that healthy activities can also be fun?

I know, I know: you've got your script and I've got mine, and the fact that I like mine better doesn't mean that it's right for you. It was just an idea. I hope you're not upset, because you look like you could kill me with your bare hands without even breaking a sweat. Hey, no hard feelings, right?

Sincerely,
Greg Crowther

So here we are, entering 2010 with hopes held high and hair cropped short.