Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Runner's Heights: Ode to Mama Lade

Cumulative mileage: 124 miles...right on!

The shin splints are back and with a vengeance...After a 5 mile, both the legs are throbbing like two V-8 engines on high-octane gasoline. But this race car is not meant to stop, baby. I am going to cool it with some ice and then keep going every alternate day. It helps to have a rest day in between runs -- gives the shins some time to chill and heal. But, as I writing this, I realize that it might be the cooler weather. So, tomorrow, I am going to try running in track pants and see if it makes a difference.

I love marmalade, not just because I love sweets and oranges, but because marmalade is a metaphor for life -- bitter and sweet, messy and clear, grainy with the rinds and smooth due to the pulp. Marmalade is the anima/animus and ying/yang and I seem to have a predilection for British marmalades. I tried marmalade made out of kiwi fruit (why even call it marmalade?) but it was not the same. A kiwi fruit may be a chock-full of Vitamin C, but it still does not have the sensory variety of an orange -- bitter, sweet, sour, and pungent. To marmalade, to life.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Runner's Heights: It's a Bird, a Plane, Just an E-mail!

Cumulative mileage: 114 miles...

Ah, those shin splints are back again with a vengeance. You feel it during the run, especially if you wish to accelerate and you feel it the next day. I guess some Rest, Ice, Compression, Extension (RICE) would help, but today, being lazy, I skipped the ICE part which might not have been cool. But, if it continues to hurt tomorrow, I might reach for that ice-pack in the freezer or that bag of frozen okras that's begging to be removed to warmer climes.

American Airlines and Jet Blue are beginning to offer e-mail in their flights for a fee. So, now, you have one less excuse to get away from it all. Soon, you'll pine for YouTube, your Google search, and Yahoo news. The world wide web will be now swarming around you at 34,000 feet and you'll be under its spell--they don't call it the web for nothing. Your boss away at Bora Bora...oh, no! Wait! he just sent you an e-mail to make sure that he has the report ready when he lands on the tarmac in two hours. It's the perfect time and place distortion courtesy of the friendly skies.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Runner's Heights: Fewer Guns in the Stocking Stuffers

Cumulative mileage: 111 miles...

As I increase my mileage, I am realizing that finding sources of water or liquids along the way is becoming more and more necessary. If you are running in a dry weather in Los Angeles, the need is all the more evident. So, I'll be looking for water bottles that you can strap to your body or some spots where there is a public water faucets. There will be reports on this later.

The Supreme Court is to decide on the fate of the gun laws in the District of Columbia soon. The second amendment and our founding fathers sought to empower the militia letting them use guns to protect and to serve. I guess the term, "militia", has different connotations today and maybe, the founding fathers intended the privilege enshrined in the U.S. Constitution for the police. The work of the police today would be probably less dangerous if fewer criminals trained guns on the police themselves. Editing gun laws is tantamount to sacrilege and blasphemy in many circles of the U.S. and the Supreme Court and it is unlikely that we will see a sea change in gun control anytime soon. But at least, the media will get to rattle the cages of Judge Scalia and the NRA for a few days.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Runner's Heights: Teddy the Prophet

Cumulative mileage: 101 miles...it's over a century and more to come.

People have different reasons to keep a tally of their mileage -- perhaps, my only reason to keep a tally is to find out how many I have put on these New Balance 766 shoes. Well, that's not entirely true, because, on weekends, I run in a different pair of shoes since I am running on a different surface -- concrete. During the week, I mostly run on asphalt, which, I gather, is much softer than concrete. So, for concrete surfaces, I use a shoe that has more cushioning, such as the New Balance 804, and for asphalt, I use a shoe with more stability and pronation control, such as, the 766. As, I have mentioned before, New Balance is my preferred running shoe because they have extra wide versions of most of their running shoes and they have endeavoured to keep some of the manufacturing facilities inshore.

Now for religious fundamentalism 101 -- for all those who romanticize about utopian life in a religion-oriented environment, the events in Sudan might serve as a reminder about the unfettered intrusiveness of religious zealotry and fundamentalism in our society. Religion is fine and, perhaps, essential, in the realm of an individual, but when you band it together with a collective group of like-minded people, you usually end up with arbitrary tribalism, irrationalism, and unmitigated bigotry. A visiting teacher called a vote on what to name a teddy bear and the students voted to call it "Muhammad." So, now the teacher has been labelled an infidel for defiling Muhammad's name and the mullahs of Sudan have come out of their lonely lives and thrust themselves into the nation's limelight. The rabble rousers are having a field day with the hoi polloi while the rest of the world is wondering how and when "Muhammad" became a word with such vicious connotations, inciting the prospect of violence, hatred, and strife at its very utterance. Now, the stage is all set for a duel between the teddy-bear-hugging protesters outside the Sudanese embassy in London versus the knife-wielding, blood-thirsting fundamentalists protesters, in Khartoum. Are we all rooting for the triumph of the teddy over tyrannical fundamentalism?