Here we are, the end of June, almost July. We’ve made it to the midpoint of the year, and I’m halfway through my project 365. I want to use this opportunity to take a moment to think critically about where I want to go with the rest of the project. It seems like there’s a choice to be made to either finish out the year going along as I have, posting shots of convenience when they present themselves. Or, I could try to proactively seek out and apply new techniques and themes. I was reading David Hobby the other day and this turn of phrase stuck in my mind.
I can tell you from experience that there is nothing like a long-term project to expose your “camera expertise” as nothing more than a bag of tricks — and a shallow bag of tricks at that.
How shallow is my bag? Shallow. Would it be more interesting to make it deeper? Definintely. How do I do that? I have some specific thoughts on implementation but would rather share them on their successful execution. But I’m also open to suggestions from le galleria de legumes. I know that I want what comes next to further diverge from my standard POTD stream and the world’s cutest husky that lies therein. Also, I know that I want this effort to be more considered than it has been in the past.
Twelve miles tonight. Such is the curious state of my mind and body that that distance seems, and is, short. Tonight I ran with the new mixes, which are tagged, bagged* and ready to ship. It’s invigorating to switch to new playlists even if new isn’t entirely new in that I knew a lot of the songs. The highlight of the run came at 10 1/2 when I hit mid-turn up the hill by the Cliff House to a gorgeous expansive pastel sky and had Z’s mix click over to this song.
I hit my quota this week, despite starting a day late. Next week the goal bounces back to 43, then it’s all downhill from there. Almost home.
Michael’s dead. I’ve been looking through his work on youtube this afternoon, pretty much like I imagine everyone else without real work to do has been. I was trying to decide which of his songs were, if not best, at least were evoking the strongest emotional response in me. I think I’ve pretty much settled on Smooth Criminal. (Slightly less embarrassing than the other contender, Do You Remember The Time.)
One thing that was unique about MJ is just how much of his life is available to us. From AS earlier today, some mini-MJ. Continue reading King down
My friends have all crept back to whatever holes it was they first crawled out of. They left me dirty, dead broke and slightly cirrosisified. I’m thinking it’s high time to get back to alltheprojects I’ve been ignoring, like cleaning, sleeping, and the friggin million meter erg challenge. Checking our top secret stats page, apparently only JC & NP have been actively rackin’ em up, pulling us up to 119K meters. That sounds great, 74 miles! But really it’s less than 12% of the original goal with about 25% of the original 20 week goal gone. Someone’s gonna have to step it up. Somebody somebody somebody. Anybody…
I’m five miles short this week – I skipped the schedule today due to some physiological & cognitive issues stemming from yesterday’s long run and the subsequent bad influence of my friends. It’s both Father’s Day and the summer solstice but I neither saw my father nor most all of the sun as well. Fan-tastic.
The marathon itself is five short weeks from today. After yesterday’s twenty, I’ve got one more of that length in two weeks, then the downward taper starts. I don’t think I could have finished another six miles yesterday. Basically, I’m going to be swimming to the finish in a sea of lactic acid.
MILEAGE UPDATE: week 13 (of 18)
Actual
Goal
Weekly
38.1
43
Three week rolling average
37.8
41
BTW, the photoblog has reached post #2000! What we lack in quality we make up for in quantity.
Today is miss maija’s (tenth) birthday! She’s gotten so old on me all of a sudden – I don’t remember this being part of the deal I signed up for when we first started hanging out together. Granted, that was back in the last millenium. Ten years gives her more seniority than dang near most everyone else I know. We’ve come a hecka long way (literally, figuratively) from the backwaters of Athens, Georgia, where I taught her how to swim and hunt us up a mess of squirbles for breakfast. It’s a sad sign of the times that for her big birthday present this year, I’ve decided to not drag her along on this weekend’s long run, despite the many, many gopher holes I know are along the route.
Also, an entirely gratuitous bonus birthday slideshow from my maija flickr set. Or if you’d rather, you can check it here in full screen. And a promise, after today, no more dog stuffs for a while.
This is interesting. BML (who helped me shoot this wedding back when) apparently has now up and gotten herself done married, and is starting a photography studio to boot. I’ll leave it to you to infer my feelings on the relative merits of those two ideas. Regardless, her new site is nice and shiny and worth checking out.
Hey Friends! I’m officially launching Bethany Carnes Photography!! Family portraits, senior photos, headshots, or just to capture today’s fleeting moments. Environmental portrait sessions are held in locations that are important to you; backyard, favorite park, in the city!
For the month of July I am offering $100 off reservation credits. So you pay $150 for a session and then apply that toward any a la carte artwork and products including gallery wraps, prints, framing, albums, coffee table books, invitations etc.
Check out my website at www.bethanycarnes.com for a sample of my work. Email or call to set up a portrait consultation!
YJP subtly reminds me that I neglected to send out the mixcorps 2009 compilations before I left for Denver like I said I would. She is correct – I didn’t get it done in time. I was a furious vortex of fixing IDE tags and forgotten socks right up until the time that I had to haul for the airport. Another contributing factor maybe have been that part of my brain was still holding out hope for the three final & highly important discs from the diaspora (from Chicago, Waltham and Little Rock) that I had been told were en route. I finally got my grubby hands on the first of those today, so now we’re (royally) down to two. Patience is virtuous.
All that said, I’m really pleased with what I’ve listened to so far. For the most part, they’re pretty good. So, soon, soon.
As this posts I should be roughly 37,000 feet above midway between where I am and where my puppy is patiently waiting for me.
I was walking around Denver yesterday when I randomly came across the late registration area for the Rocky Mountain Half Marathon. Since my flight wasn’t until this afternoon and I had 13 on the schedule anyway, I went ahead and signed up to run it. The half is really my preferred racing distance – long enough to make you feel like you’ve done something significant, short enough to no leave you a total mess.
The course does some loops around downtown Denver, then runs along and over the river, then up and around Mile High Stadium. The turning point (and peak altitude at ~5400 ft) is a large loop around Sloans Lake (roughly miles 8-10) where you’ve got this broad panoramic view of the (snow-capped!) mountains above the water, then round the far west side a beautiful skyline of the city reflecting on the surface. From there it’s almost anti-climatic, downhill most of the rest of the way home. I’m very pleased the timing on this worked out – the training for San Francisco has been so solitary for the most part that being around a community of runners at a race like this was very energizing. My time wasn’t particularly fast, just under two hours, but I’m really more than OK with that. I’m just pleased to be both injury and high altitude cerebral edema free right now.
The conference I’m at screwed with my schedule a little bit so I’m finishing the week a few miles short. Hopefully since 26 of the miles this week were at altitude that’ll make up for it. If you’re interested in supporting my fundraiser for the San Francisco Marathon (just 6 short weeks from now!) you can hit that up here.
MILEAGE UPDATE: week 12 (of 18)
Actual
Goal
Weekly
31.1
36
Three week rolling average
39.0
40.3
Oh, BTW. The main sponsor of the race today was MapMyRun, which I take has a similar product to Trail Guru (which I thought was fantastic back when we did our Jingle Blast). I’ll investigate a bit more if & when I have an iPhone handy.
—-June 19th?? We could go together and get them in SF!! Let’s do it!!!!
Initially I was dismissive of the idea, but it’s been slowly growing on me all day. Is there any reason to not just get a new iPhone? Am I planning to wait for a phantom 4th generation? Or re-up for another two years with some POS flip phone? My current phone is utter crap, and no matter how poor people say the service at AT&T is they can hardly be worse than the the suck that is Sprint.
Eighteen miles is a long way to run without any euphoria.
Normally I can expect an episode or two of runner’s high during a given long run. For me, it comes in waves of joy, starting in my torso and radiating down through my limbs. It’s energizing, accelerating, anesthetizing, awesome, one of the few perks of long distance training. Unfortunately, as far as highs go it’s is pretty darn short, for me lasting just a minute or so, but even after the initial rush is gone the minor effects are still hanging around, a sort of physical memory. I absolutely love it.
Today though, nothing. My body is having a difficult week, a lot of the physical pleasure of the training process has been replaced by rote artless drudgery. It’s possible that the immediate problem is my frontolimbic system has somehow gotten fried, leaving me with a lifelong risk of … (let’s see) borderline personality disorder. Well that’s just swell.
On the bright side, at 44 miles, the just finished week 11 was the peak week of the training cycle (ergo, mountaineering). None of the subsequent weeks have mileage that high (though there are two 20 mile runs to look forward to). Technically though, it’s all downhill from here.
MILEAGE UPDATE: week 11 (of 18)
Actual
Goal
Weekly
44.3
44
Three week rolling average
38.6
38.7
Here’s the link to my Youth Run4Fun fundraiser thing. I’ll put a match on this week – any donation will be doubled, up to our total goal. So you give $10, that transmongrifies into a mindblowing TWENTY buckaroos. Like magic.
ps. I have new shoes coming – they actually should have been here before today’s run. I just checked the UPS tracker to find this curiosity. A postcard has been sent? What century is this? I look forward to your missive, UPS.
A CORRECT COMPANY OR RECEIVER NAME IS NEEDED FOR DELIVERY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION / A POSTCARD HAS BEEN SENT TO THE RECIPIENT REQUESTING THAT THEY CONTACT UPS.
I spent some time hanging out with the Urban Sprouts folks today. There was some nominal effort towards fixing up a couple vegetable gardens, some weed pulling, blue bachelor button & pumpkin planting, bee stalking and water hauling. The thing that strikes me most about working in their vegetable gardens is how good everything smells – it’s remarkable. The sad and lonely grocery store vegetables I usually interact with don’t have much of a smell (unless maybe they’re in the process of becoming a tart) but all these plots all have these highly fragrant herbs, lovely.
I overshare on google reader, I know. But it makes me happy, so what are you going to do? I’m in no way offended if you block me, particularly if you check back here for friday recaps.
Yesterday was National Running Day so the dogbrake and I did a midweek 8 to celebrate. It was surprisingly warm out, finally fog free, some welcoming summer sun. The run was unremarkable until near the end, where we found the wind coming off Ocean Beach to be in full-on sandblast mode.
Along the sea wall there are a series of stairwells down to the beach, some of which fill up with sand forming a ski jump-like spout for the rest of their gritty neighbors to ride up and out of, into the face of everyone passing by. So despite gorgeous, magic hour lighting at sunset, turning to look towards the water was not really an eyesight preserving option.
Eventually, DPW will send a truck out and someone will languorously shovel the sand that builds up on the sidewalk back to the beach through these smaller spouts that must be designed just for this. They don’t worry about job security – the wind is always going to blow in from the ocean, making its incremental effort to inch San Francisco eastward. Will this work? Look at the geographic change in the last 15,000 years. It almost seems inevitable that, given enough time, all of this will eventually just blow away.
But for now, we keep our heads down and earn back our elevation up along the cliffs, turn east along Point Lobos, the wind now at our backs and gravity taking us the rest of the way home.
I’m growing increasingly excited about the 2009 mixcorps project. We’re way way overdue on the timeline, of course, my semi-arbitrary deadlines and goals long since passed but entries keep trickling their way in to me. My own mix is getting more melancholic as I tinker, to the point where I’m wondering whether I should re-purpose the stuff I’m cutting out into an up-tempo B-side. I’m expecting to finalize everyone’s entries and ship these out before I skip town next week – if you’re out there hanging on and still want to submit a mix, I think I’m gonna officially call it over and done with this Sunday. So fair warning.
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