GJS
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
1 Feb 2009 - Promotion
I don't recall when I last wrote about my impending promotion, but I know that last year I wrote about being selected for promotion. That was in April, I believe, not long after the selection board results were announced. At the time, I mentioned that my promotion "number" was 1620 - that is, there were 1619 other Marines who would have to be promoted before me. Well, my number has finally come up, literally: I will be promoted to the rank of Captain of Marines, effective 1 Feb 2009. You can see the official announcement message here. It's party time!
Briefly Noted RE: Today's Run
After successfully completing my long run last week on Saturday, a run that went over 15.5 miles, having this week's track run on Monday was simply too soon. I suspected that it might be, but went ahead with the plan anyhow to verify the hypothesis. As a result of incomplete recovery (I was still noticeably sore from Saturday this morning as I began to warm up for the run), I was unable to achieve the desired pace on about half of the intervals today. I still completed the run, and by the end I felt pretty good, but I think from now on I will switch to Mondays an easy recovery ride on the indoor bike and put the interval (track) run on Tuesday AMs. I haven't had time to post the results of today's run just yet (this is being penned during my lunch break at school), but hopefully tonight's homework load will allow me to enter the details later on.
GJS
Monday, January 26, 2009
"Again"
You knew it wouldn't be long before John was fully mobile with the cast, right? Here's a short video from 14 Jan of him motoring along just fine (it's about 1 min 10 sec long). His cast is scheduled to come off 2 Feb, as mentioned before.
GJS
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Speaking of things being on schedule…
…I am also on schedule to finish my latest audiobook, Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. It has been a very interesting book and I recommend it. Next I think I will tackle Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success, currently sitting atop the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list, making it a choice squarely from the "popular" books category. Like Zakaria's book, it is not that long (just over 7 hours of audio), and lately I have been averaging about an hour a day of listening (M-F only), so I will be able to crank through it in a week and a half or so.
GJS
John’s Leg - Update
Today John went to see a local doctor to check on his broken leg. I guess it has already been 3 weeks that he has been in the cast. He is so used to getting around in it now – walking easily with no outside assistance – that sometimes I think he completely forgets it is on his leg! I hope to capture some footage soon of him walking without assistance. When I do, I will post it here for general consumption. But back to the doc's office – what did they say? Everything is healing up splendidly, and there was no need to put a new cast on; the current one seems to be holding up just fine. They took some x-rays, no issues or problems found. Keep drinking that milk, John! You'll be healed up in no time!
The cast is scheduled to come off on 2 Feb.
GJS
Exam Results…
…are in! I passed the two portions tested today (we still have the speaking exam tomorrow), but I am NOT going to post my scores here. Let's just say that my grades are in line with my expectations at this point. Hopefully that will continue tomorrow.
GJS
A Picture Share!
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Monday, January 12, 2009
Another Long Ride
Greetings all! (大家好!)
In evaluating the (small) size of the visual aids once they posted last time I talked about riding my bike, I determined that some changes needed to be made in how that material was presented. See below - hopefully we are moving in the right direction. Let's talk about yesterday's ride! Here's the map:
...and a summary of the stats (see further below for the "pretty picture" that this all adds up to)...
I hope that works better for anyone interested in seeing the data.
Let's try a similar method for displaying the graph of HR, speed, and elevation versus time (the aforementioned "pretty picture").
Feeding Garblog with documents via Scribd in this way takes up more space on the page, but more importantly, it also provides a bigger view for anyone interested. If you have a preference, please let me know (post a comment on the blog or send me an e-mail - if you know me, you know what my e-mail address is).
Anyhow, the weather was great here all weekend long, I only wish I didn't have multiple exams to study for this weekend, otherwise I could have gone out to ride again today for sure! I decided not just to stick to the roads in and around Fort Ord this time, but instead to branch out a bit and see how far I could make it in about 2 hours. I rode down into Monterey, near the Naval Postgraduate School, near my school (DLI), past the famous Cannery Row oceanfront area, and around the Pacific Grove seashore to what is known as 17-Mile Drive. If I had more time, I could have rode down through Carmel-by-the-Sea and on to Pebble Beach, surely quite a scenic place to ride, but due to time constraints, I had to forgo that plan (maybe some other time) and head home. I found a pretty fair series of hills to climb on the way back, along with the corresponding downhill sections where I got going pretty good (no doubt the origin of the 36 mph speed recorded as the ride's maximum speed). By the time I climbed the "Three Sisters" hills leading back to where I live on Fort Ord, my legs were on the verge of cramping up, a sure sign of a good ride!
Tomorrow I begin my 16-week training program for the Big Sur International Marathon on Sunday, April 26, 2009. Due to the running volume required by the program (I blogged on the program earlier; check the archives for more info), I don't figure I am going to be getting much riding in. But when I have time and the energy to do so, it is clear to me that this is a good area for road cycling! Also regarding the run training, I plan to track my workouts using the online running log available at RunnersWorld.com. One feature of that program is a feed that can be used to post workout updates and stats to a blog, such as Garblog. Look for those types of updates to start soon, as that I begin the program tomorrow morning with an interval workout at the track. Standby for further details!
GJS
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
John Walking Video - General Cuteness Ensues
This just in - new video of John! For those who recently saw him "scooting" around the floor on his butt (due to the broken stem, of course - incurred on our first full day visiting back home from an unfortunate fall from a high place that he should probably not have been), you will be pleased to see him walking here (although with a bit of help from his Mom). Then the aforementioned cuteness ensues...hope you enjoy it! (It's about 1 min 30 sec long.)
GJS
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
First Day Back / A Really “Poopy” Post
Hey, I survived it! The first day back at school wasn't as bad as I had feared. Made it home in one piece, anyhow. We'll see how tomorrow goes. Every day should be a little bit better, and before long, I should be back "in the groove" (that is, assuming that I had ever found it up until now, the jury is still out on that).
Barb and John had a good day. As some of you know, John is potty training. Before we took our trip home for the holidays, we had him going #1 and #2 in the toilet pretty much 100% of the time (save for the random accident now and then). During the trip, he started losing his skills with #2, pooping his pants with some regularity. Barb had heard that this was typical for newly potty-trained youths, that during a trip or immediately after, they often exhibit this behavior of regression. After we got back to Cali a few days back, he continued to exhibit the once-defeated pants-pooping behavior and became very upset about the notion of pooping at all, since he could see that Mom and Dad were not happy with him for going in his pants. You know, kids have an incredible ability to hold poop in! He would ameliorate his need to poop by bouncing up and down, asking to be held, asking to have his bottom and / or his tummy rubbed, drinking water, asking for a pillow or blanket, etc. Well, we were just about at our wit's end with this behavior and just wanted him to get back on track with pooping in the toilet, and last night, amid much wailing, he did it! The whole house was overjoyed! To follow up his success last night, he made another "raccoon tail" (this is his term for it – don't look at me!) in the toilet today around mid-day. We encourage his successes with toilet training by having a "poop party" for him when his behavior is desirable, as it was last night and today. His poop party for last night's victory was to have three of his friends come over this morning to play together with his Thomas and Friends toy trains. For today's success, he chose to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a place he often wants to go as a celebration of his latest "raccoon tail" creation (in fact, his very first poop party was held at that same location, over Thanksgiving weekend 2008 – thanks to Patrick and Maxine, our guests at the time, for playing along!). Daddy was not able to go along, though – had to hit the books. 中文书, that is. Oh yeah, we are back in action at DLI!
GJS
Monday, January 05, 2009
2008 Postscript
I've been wanting to write this post for several days now, ever since we got back from our holiday trip home to Nebraska, but there was never time, and now time is up (I have to go back to school tomorrow), and it still waits to be written. No longer. It shall be done.
The trip to Nebraska was busy; it always feels like there is too much to do and not enough time. Stressful. Glad to be back home in Huskerland (BTW, congrats to the Nebraska Corn-Johnnies on their victory over Clemson in the Gator Bowl! A bowl victory for Coach Pelini to cap off a fine first year as head coach is sweet!), very happy to be able to see all the family and friends, but also glad to get back here, and I'm sure once I am comfortably back in the saddle of school again I will adjust back to it. But now, it is just not…good.
Enough about current times and the immediate future! Let's talk about the past for a few minutes! 2008, the year just now gone (I know, I'm a few days behind, cut me a bit of slack, OK?), it was a fine year. Picked for the Olmsted program, moved to Cali, 5th wedding anniversary…what else? I ran my 3rd Half-Ironman race, John turned 2, I started learning Chinese. These are all good things…busy times out here in CA. Caught up in the maelstrom and lost were my fitness training credentials from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). You may not have know this (and maybe you did), but I was dual-certified through the NSCA as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS; you may have seen the credential around before, at least the abbreviation) and a Certified Personal Trainer (NSCA-CPT). I was also certified through the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) as a Heath / Fitness Instructor (HFI) (May still be? Not sure when it expires.), but if that has not yet passed, then it certainly must soon. I simply had no time to work on earning the continuing education credits (CEUs) to maintain my certifications (OK, there is always enough time, but I fell victim to the big bad Procrastination Monster, and by the time I realized for certain the predicament I was in – only a couple months until the end of 2008, when the certifications were due to expire, having earned hardly any CEUs at all, and mired deep in the intellectual quagmire that is the Chinese Mandarin Basic Course – there was no way I could make it.). It makes me sad to see the credentials go – after all, these certifications represented to me essentially what I had spent 4 – 5 years of college majoring in exercise science working for, now gone. I always thought it would be easier to maintain the credentials even if I was not using them (and as a Marine officer, I had really not formally used them in the past 4 years of service) so as to be able to use them perhaps once me and the Marine Corps part ways the next time, be that in 11 years or whenever, rather than have them lapse and have to strive to pass the certification tests all over again, this time without the required knowledge, skills and abilities so close at hand from recent undergraduate study, having atrophied from many years of non-use, covered in cobwebs… I guess I will have to find out, should the time come, whether I can pass the tests again.
And to close this one out, I thought it would be interesting (perhaps only to me, but as the sole author of this page, I can do as I like!) to list out the books I read in 2008. This is not a complete list; I only started keeping track when we moved to CA in June. Some (OK, most) are audiobooks (noted when that is the case), and they are so prevalent simply because they are more convenient for me. I typically listen to an audiobook each day at school over lunch. When coupled with also listening during my morning and evening commutes (only when driving my car, not when riding my bike), I have found this is a powerful way to capture about an hour or more a day of "reading" time that would have otherwise been lost. This is especially important in light of the fact that when classes are in session I rarely have much time at all for reading that is not of Chinese characters, a circumstance that I greatly dislike. Enough, on to the list!
- The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us by Robyn Meredith (audiobook)
- Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh (audiobook)
- The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester (audiobook)
- Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (audiobook)
- Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir by John McCain (audiobook)
- The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang (audiobook)
- Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (audiobook)
- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow
- In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War by Tobias Wolff
- The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (audiobook)
- The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford
Currently I am working my way through reading Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy, a book very highly recommended to me by a person whom I greatly respect. I had hoped to complete it prior to resuming classes tomorrow, but it was not to be. I am also listening to The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria.
You can see that many selections were related to my current Chinese studies, some were in the context of the U.S. presidential elections, some were about war (current and past), and some were simply popular books that I found interesting. Bottom line: books rock!
Here’s to more good reading in 2009! 干杯！
GJS
A Nice Ride
I managed to get out for a pretty decent bike ride Saturday afternoon. Temperatures were in the low 50's, a tad chilly with the wind whistling by on the downhills, but all in all, it was a great ride! (I know, everyone who lives where there is a "real" winter is laughing about the bit saying low 50's is cold!) It was my first ride on some of the largely deserted roads of the former Fort Ord, literally in our backyard, but the first time since we moved out here last June that I have gotten out to ride them. I am going to try a new trick today, that is posting my route as shown in Google Earth and the workout statistics recorded on my handy Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS unit, so you can see the workout in all its glory! Here goes, first the map:
On this ride, I discovered all manner of things out on the lands of the "Fort Ord Public Lands" that I didn't know was there before, such as BIG hills (see below; I think it says I was up around 800 – 900 feet of elevation, which is about twice as high as anything else I have encountered around here to this point). Aside from being pretty smoked by some of the uphill grades I laboriously pedaled up (you can probably tell where those spots were based on the graph, look for when my ticker was pretty much pegged out, ~175 bpm or so), it's quite scenic riding out there, with lots of sky, smallish mountains off in the distance, and of course, the Monterey Bay to frame it all up. And now for the workout statistics:
Sadly, this may be the only ride of this type (i.e. a road ride, "slick" – with no gear or equipment as I carry when I ride to school) I am able to do in the foreseeable future. Why? Because tomorrow I resume DLI classes (Boo!), and a week from tomorrow I resume a structured 16-week running program in preparation for the Big Sur Marathon in late April. I have examined briefly the training program I will be undertaking, and quite frankly, it is a bit scary! For example, the long run for the first week of the program is a 13 miler! Right now, a little less than 2 weeks away from performing that workout, I am wondering how on earth I will be able to! And that's not all, it gets better – by the 4th week of the program, I will run my first 20-mile (!) training run, to be followed 2 weeks later by another one of the same distance at a faster pace, and repeat that 3 more times!!! If this sounds interesting to you and you'd like to see more details, you can see the full program here (PDF):
http://www.furman.edu/first/Marathon%20Training%20Program.pdf
I have never been very good at getting very long training runs done, so hopefully this time I will do better, be more consistent in logging the miles, and with any luck at all, stay injury-free! (Injuries are another problem that has plagued me when increasing weekly running mileage too high, such as what is essentially required to successfully complete a marathon. Big Sur will be my 5th marathon.)
GJS
Monday, November 24, 2008
This Week in Bicycle Riding (TWIB[R], 什么的)
Well, it worked out just as planned – I rode my bike to work all three days I intended to, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, accumulating nearly 70 miles in the process, which may be my "biggest" week of biking this calendar year (the only other week that probably even comes close would be the week in June when I ran the Ironman Hawaii 70.3 race, in which I rode 56 miles in one fell swoop). It's hard to express how much better I feel even just after this week's relatively modest accomplishment of logged miles, but I do feel a lot better! I sleep better at night, feel less stressed, all that. Exercise is important! Looking at the weather forecast for this week, though, makes me think that it will be hard to get even one ride to work in, especially given that it is a short week because of the Thanksgiving holiday (感恩节). We'll be off Thursday and Friday for that. Patrick and Maxine are coming to spend the holiday with us, something we are greatly looking forward to… 欢迎!
Big Chinese test tomorrow (因为明天我们有个大中文的检查), the end of our 1st semester of studies (第一个学期结束), so not a lot of time to write today (所以今天我没有时间为泻). Hopefully I will have more time to post later this week over the long weekend!
GJS
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Back on the Bike (aka 自行车)
I am finally back on the bike! Yesterday we took out the family bikes, which had been sequestered all alone in our storage area for months, and went for a short ride near our house. All three of us went. That little taste, less than 20 minutes of tooling around the neighborhood, put the desire to bike right back in the front of my mind. So, today, for the first time in over 4 months of daily language classes, I rode my bike to and from class. I can almost hear the scoffs from here – big deal, so you rode your bike to class! Yes, but it's over 10 miles each way, and, like all stories about going to school (although most of the ones I have hear involve walking, not riding a bike), it really is uphill both ways (partly, anyhow). We live on a bit of a hill, and where I go to school is certainly on a hill (anyone familiar with the location of the Defense Language Institute can back me up on this). In fact, according to my handy-dandy GPS that I use to track all of my outdoor aerobic athletic endeavours, part of that hill going up to the school is something like a 30% grade!!! Luckily, that part is comparatively short, only about a block long. Unfortunately, it comes at a point after about 6 blocks of steep (but not 30% grade) hill to wear the 'ol legs out, pre-exhaust, let's say. It is a challenging climb, and I feel that even though I have not recently been on the bike much (at all, really, at least not in the past ~3 months as I have been buried under the crushing load of learning Chinese as a full-time job and preparing for the now-completed 2008 Big Sur Half Marathon), I *MAY* have been able to make it up the really, really steep part, IF I did not have a 30-lb rucksack on my back full of uniforms, books, etc. I think that extra weight did me in today. I'll admit it, I had to get off the bike and walk. Yes, it was a tad bit humiliating, in that I consider myself to be in pretty decent shape, particularly in terms of aerobic capacity. But the good part was that it took place at about 0545 this morning, well before sun-up 'round these parts, and there is not much for traffic on the streets of Monterey at that time of day. But now YOU know about it. Oh, the shame, the calamity of it all!!! Not really, I'll be OK. When I go up the hill next time, I'll be (more) ready.
Biking to school worked out well today and as long as the weather cooperates (hard to say how long that will be around here; I think we are officially in the "rainy season", but it has been unseasonably warm and quite dry the past week or so) I think I will try to do it a few days a week. And take a different route up the hill next time, one with a bit more gradual of an incline, at least until I get a few hundred miles under my belt, and then maybe try it again, see what kind of progress I have made.
I figure that riding to work 2 – 3 days a week will give me something like 40 – 60 miles a week on the bike, and then if I can get a good 2 – 3 hour ride in during the weekend, I will be near or over 100 miles a week, a nice round number that I like. Couple that biking with running a couple of days a week, and I will be doing well! I hope to maintain a physical conditioning program something like this for the next couple of months, until I begin training for the Big Sur Marathon in January 2009. I will have to take a hard look at my schedule at that time to see how much time, if any, I have left after the required running workouts to continue with at least a bit of biking during my marathon preparation, not the least of which because I like biking! Also because it will help set me up for a mid-2009 Half-Ironman Triathlon (Boise, anyone?), if that is in the cards (need to fit in some swimming next year to make that happen; we'll see).
GJS
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The Return， 还有写 *(Updated 11 Nov)
Hiya! Admit it, you thought this was an abandoned blog, didn't you? Pretty close. No, here in California, the 沙普瑞 family is 不错，还可以，and all that jazz. Over 4 months of 中文上课 have elapsed, and I find myself 越来越多 using the 'ol 中文。It just kinda pops in there, you know? And "you have to admit it" (© Mark Schafer, ca. 1991), the 中文子 are 很有意思，对不对？
I never thought that learning Chinese would be easy, but I am still surprised, even now, over 4 months down the road, how much effort it takes every day. I have class 6 – 7 hours M-F. Then there is at least 2-3 hours of homework each night. This is the minimum. If you have any additional time for extra study, it is highly encouraged. My class, a 50-week "accelerated" version of the Basic Mandarin Chinese course (normally 64 weeks in length), is about to start the 18th week upon conclusion of this weekend. We are starting our 28th lesson (of 30 in the first semester, of 3 total semesters). As a comparison, another class of the "normal" 64-week version in another department of the Chinese Language school will also be on their 18th week as well, and starting their…20th lesson. That's right folks, almost 33% faster than your standard Basic Mandarin course! It shows…we students are crushed under the load weekly. I guess I am "sort of" used to it by now, but it is not much fun to do it this way week in and week out.
There was another return, of sorts, yesterday: my first race since Hawaii. Today's event was the Big Sur Half Marathon on Monterey Bay. Best I can recall, this was my 5th half marathon. (I ran the Lincoln Half twice, the Omaha Half once, a Half in Hawaii in fall 2006, and now this one.) Finishing time – not my best, but not bad: 1:39:36, a 7:36 / mile pace over the 13.1 miles. I was shooting for 7:30 / mile, so I was a bit off of that, but, I told myself I would be happy with anything under 1:40, which I accomplished. You can see the results here. My bib number was 328, or you can just search by name. *Updated: here are a few pictures from race day!
(Author waving at lower right of this last picture, bib #328)
Lastly, Happy 233rd Birthday, United States Marines! Raise up a glass and celebrate!
GJS
Sunday, November 09, 2008
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