williamhathaway.com

I’ve been doing a lot of research on training as I’m preparing for my next race, the Harrisburg Half-Marathon, which is just under two weeks away. Here are couple of resources and quotes that I thought might be interesting for other people:

Gordo Byrn

I’ve learned a lot about athletic performance (and interesting takes on a wide variety of other topics, like general time management) from exploring Gordo Byrn’s website. He went from a couch potato to a world-class triathlete.

Two tips that I like from him are:

Q — Where does running performance come from?
A — An enjoyment of consistent, long term, appropriate mileage.

note the key word of “enjoyment”. If you don’t enjoy it, you’ll burn out. The other tip is (slightly paraphrased):

“Keep your time goals to yourself. Telling other people your time goals will add just additional pressure to you come race day. ”

I’ve definitely been guilty of this as well. I should shut up and stop making myself more nervous than I need to be.

Pete Pfitzinger

Pete Pfitzinger has written two books that I really like and has a lot of articles available online. Check out the lab reports section of his website. I’m reading his Advanced Marathoning book now. One piece of advice he offers in a section titled “The Real World” is a rule of thumb that if you can do 90% of the planned training schedule, your training is going well. Hopefully this will help calm some people down when you can’t fit a workout in for various reasons. (Now of course if the 10% you miss are all your long runs as you train for a marathon, that is another story.)

Jack Daniels

Daniel’s Running Formula is a fantastic book with lots of background on how different types of training affect the body. Several different levels of training plans are covered, including detailed tables that can be used to calculate appropriate training paces based off race performances (great for people like me who love to crunch numbers about running).

I downloaded the latest Solaris Express bits (build 70) and gave it a run on my VMWare instance at home. This is the first build that is using the new installer technologies (see the Dwarf Caiman project for more details). It is definitely a much nicer experience than the circa 1990 installer that Solaris currently comes with. I created a Flickr photo set that shows the installation screen sequence for those that don’t feel like downloading a 2.5gb ISO.

The Solaris installation team has put together a roadmap that goes through December of next year. It is nice to see the progress that is planned. While I love Solaris from a sysadmin perspective, the current installer/packaging/patching frameworks leaves a lot to be desired. I’m really happy that Sun is putting substantial resources into fixing the deficiencies in those areas and that there is an open dialog with the community.

For those of you using the official Solaris distribution, the “Whats new in Solaris 10 07/07” documentation has been published.  Download bits should be hitting servers in the next few weeks.

I’m on a number of (mostly-technical) mailing lists and forums and I frequently see people post questions asking for help.  Well in general thats what the mailing lists/forums are for, far too often people posting messages fall into one or more of the following categories:

* not having done any research (where a quick googling of the error string brings up an obvious solution)

* poorly labeled subject lines

* not providing sufficient background information (product versions, what has been tried already, etc)

which make it less likely the person will receive help, and also wastes additional time for the members of the mailing-list/forum that might be willing to try and help.

I found an article “How to Ask Questions The Smart Way” by Eric Raymond which is a good read covering the above problems and many more in detail. Even if you think your questions are well articulated, take a few mins and skim through the article.  I definitely picked up a few pointers.

Having been putting in some miles running around Philadelphia, it occurred to me how much it would suck to be hit by a car.  It also occurred how much uglier it would be if I didn’t have identification on me and nobody was able to inform my wife or parents that I was in the hospital (or worse).  While I was carrying my driver’s license with me a few times, I realized that the DL itself doesn’t really help provide a quick path for people being able to notify someone that you would like notified if you are in trouble and can’t speak for youself.  I had bought a Road ID bracelet a while back, but can’t find it so I just ordered another one.  Regardless if you are running/biking/swimming in the city or out in the country, I think it is a good idea to carry some minimal identification and some way of letting any rescuers know who they should contact in case you have an emergency.

I found a coupon code that saved me $2.00, not sure how long it lasts, but it worked for me today: ARR7988

I went to the public viewing tonight at the Astronomical Society of Harrisburg tonight.  I was hoping to get a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower, but there too much cloud cover (apparently there was some good visibility of it last night).  The ASH had a bunch of telescopes in operation (some up to 17″), and the members were helping to orient them for the public.  I was able to get some nice sightings of Jupiter, including being able to clearly see some stripes.  I’m hoping to go back some other Sunday night when the sky is clearer.

On Tues and Wed I ran in Philly along the Schulkill and it was miserable. Even when getting up before 6:00 trying to beat the heat it was still really hot and humid. I ran about 8.5 miles each day and then took Thurs and Fri off. I was planning on taking it relatively easy this (Saturday) morning and then getting in a nice long run in on Sunday. When I checked the weather this morning I was somewhat shocked to see it was 59 degrees in Elizabethtown, so I thought I’d take advantage of the cool weather and do my long run today on the Conewago trail.

It was really refreshing to get out of my car at the trail head and have the air feel nice and crisp. The first mile of the run was a bit of a struggle, but soon after hitting the first mile marker my legs and heart seemed to settle down and I got into a good flow. In the past, when doing a long run at the Conewago I’ve always ran to the 5 mile mark and then headed back to the trail head, then going back out for a mile or so depending on the overall length of the run I wanted to do. Today as I was nearing the 5 mile mark, I saw a runner coming from further up the trail and decided to keep going. The trail isn’t quite as nice (a little bit overgrown, but still very level and covered with cinders) as the first 5 miles, but I did find a small playground next to the trail which had a porta-potty very close to the 7 mile mark, which is good to know if you are going to be out running for two hours or so.

I felt really strong as the run progressed and started to pick up the pace more on the way back. My last 7 miles averaged just under a 7:30/mile pace, which I was thrilled with. I felt like I was pushing it, but definitely still had some more effort in reserve. Having nice weather makes a huge difference and today was a real confidence booster after struggling with the heat earlier in the week.

Motionbased Link

Podcasts: Skeptics Guide To The Universe

Equipment: Nathan Sports’ Speed 4 Fuel Belt , Garmin ForeRunner 305

I finally hit my first 50 mile week running! I had been stuck typically between 25 and 35 MPW for the last 10 weeks or so. One time I managed to hit 40 MPW, but it was sandwiched between two 25 mile weeks. It seems like I’m fine aerobically, but my leg muscles tend to have a hard time recovering from a few days in a row. This past week I was in Philadelphia Monday through Friday. I ran 3 miles on the treadmill on Monday and then had some gym trouble and decided to venture outside to run (for the first time since I started traveling to Philly at the end of April). I ended up running to the Schuylkill River path behind the Art Museum, which is a pretty nice area. I ran 8.3,8.3, 10.4, 8.2 for Tues through Friday, took Saturday off, and then did a 13.4 mile run this morning on the Conewago trail near Elizabethtown for a grand total of 51 miles for the week.

I know I’m supposed to be increasing mileage no more than 10% per week, but my legs feel pretty good (besides a blister, I’ll take that over a sore hamstring any day). I’m definitely going to take it easier this week. I was also really happy with my long run, I finally did one longer than a half-marathon. I was bummed that I missed the HARRC speed workout on Tuesday, but since my next goal race is the Harrisburg Half-Marathon, I think mileage is more important than speed for the time being.

You can use the ipmitool command to reset an IPMI compliant server and force it to do a network (PXE) boot. In my case I am using it on a bunch of Sun x4200 M2 servers. This capability is very handy if you are trying to jumpstart or kickstat a server or group of servers. I wish I knew this method was available last month when I jumpstarted 50+ x4200s.

# echo $your_ilom_password > /tmp/pass

# chmod 400 /tmp/pass

# ipmitool -I lanplus -H $ilom_ip -U root -f /tmp/pass chassis bootdev pxe
Set Boot Device to pxe

# ipmitool -I lanplus -H $ilom_ip -U root -f /tmp/pass chassis power reset
Chassis Power Control: Reset