Bearly Alive

The hills have eyes and trust me, they didn't want to witness what they just saw! This weekend was the the race I love to hate. Sorry, Mother Nature. It is what it is and what's done is done, might as well tell the story.

Did you every get a sign that you shouldn't be doing something? Maybe a gut feeling, writing on the wall perhaps, basically something in nature, possibly the supernatural, going out of it's way to give guidance? Sometimes the signs are subtle and are over looked, sometimes they are obvious, but this isn't about judgement of how they were missed, ignored, or given the finger.

Three weeks ago, attempting to squeeze in last minute training for this weekend, rolled my ankle on quite possibly the clearest, most open, part of the trail. It swelled up like a tennis ball. The following week, again in the woods training, a yellow jacket stings me in the exact same ankle. Signs? While the sting itself wasn't bad and the itching was annoying, but the worst was the swelling it caused. It takes a bit for me to get concerned, but I'll admit it, I was nervous. It took three days, before it finally stopped looking like my foot was going to explode. Can't wait to see what this weekend will bring!

Roooooar! Goes the gun. Whoops, before we can get to this part. Have you ever heard a bear snore? No? Well, either have I. I can only imagine what it sounds like and what makes me bring this up is CT and I have dragged a friend with us to run this race, we'll call her Hill. The race has been postponed, currently we are all in the car, but Hill has gone back to sleep and is snoring, like a bear, in the backseat.

Two hours later, snoooooore goes the gun! For some reason I got put in wave two again. The first year that happened, I was so angry, it was as if I beast were released. Today, it was nice because there were almost no expectations, a bit like Hill's deep slumber, yawn. Believe this is year seven of doing this race, I know the course, won't bore you with minor details.

Mile eight is the race. Either turn it on here and push to the end, or put it in conservation mode and attempt to not die. Even with suspect training, my battles with Mother Nature, how I held a little back up until this point, when it got to this point, I knew there was nothing left and there wasn't even a glimmer of hope that somehow some race day magic would show up. The rest of the race was ugly, possibly more ugly than the picture for this blog.

Last year wasn't a great time for me, but I figured I'd be able to match it, nope. The hills have eyes and ugh, worst time on this course since my very first time running it. Not very proud of that and as if to mock me, when I put down a time that shouldn't deserve an age group award, what do I get? First!

Day two, how do you make a fog horn sound? Anyway, that's the starting gun for today. Only one wave today, so back to a little more crowded start. Bearly (yeah, I know, bear with me) a mile in, the pace was respectable considering we weren't even to the first big hill. Two guys were ahead of me and at least two were directly behind me. Out of nowhere, this old guy decides it's now his moment and attempts to pass all five of us at once! As Hill would say, "He ate shit!" This guy went almost full scorpion pose, face first, branches crashing, snapping, and gets up with black dirt as opposed to all the sand all over his face to signal just how much shit he ate. Not sure if it was his crazy nature to attempt something like this, or he was fueled with adrenaline or quite possibly the embarrassment, either way he bolted up ahead of us a few lengths. Passed him on the hill, of course. Everybody has to run their own race, never want to judge, but this move has me scratching my head. It is foggy, maybe it impaired his sight, judgement.  

For as little mojo as I had yesterday, there's even less today. The fog does feel like something out of Jurassic Park at any moment a T-Rex or probably more likely a bear could snatch you right off the trail. Didn't even make it to mile six before I decided to shut it down. Live today, to run another day. Couple minutes slower than yesterday, which did hurt me in the age group awards, only second today.

Love this race, will be back just to undo this barely surviving.     

  

    

Anti-Google

The Title is currently where I'm at. Won't even argue the stupidity of starting this rant on and posting it to a Google platform, but here we go, doing it anyway!

Without going back, know there's a blog post about it, could easily do some fact checking, but why bother in this day and age, but roughly ten years ago purchased my first iPhone. At the time, I really put some thought into the decision because I wasn't a fan of Apple. One of the biggest negatives was Apple's control over which apps they allowed into their store and ultimately on their phone. Google's model of being the "Do no evil", open company, while making all these useful and frankly better apps seemed like a much better choice based on what I believe in. Open is always better than a closed system!

Ten years later, fuck that! This all falls under me being naive. Sure, use free services, with the assumption of getting ads, paying for the service, I get it. It's worth it! On the surface, seems like a fair trade. But, it's the whole other story that is not getting told. This wraps into the whole Facebook issue as well, which the bottom line is the user is the product. It's not about generating ad revenue to pay for the ability to offer the services, the people are the product. Both Google and Facebook make millions of millions of dollars, selling every bit of information you willingly give (and tons of information you don't even know you are giving) them to use their product. This could spin into a whole other post/thought, but why aren't users getting paid to use these services yet? Universal Basic Income, anybody?  

Recently in the news, it's starting to come out how Google tracks locations even when the location tracking is disabled. That news makes me go mental. Reading more on the subject, I realized the story is more about how Google hides some of the settings or at least makes them less obvious to disable some of them. While I already had the non-obvious ones disabled, it got me thinking. With as many of Google's services that I use, even if I go out of my way to prevent Google getting too much information on me, it doesn't matter! Those settings are completely meaningless. Even if those settings even do what they are suppose to, there is no escape!

Take email for example. Almost everybody has a Gmail account. Have a phone? Check that email with your phone? That phone typically checks that email account every fifteen minutes. Every fifteen minutes, Google knows you check that account and from what IP address it's being check from. That info alone would tell them, are you home, are you at work, are you on the road, are you sitting in your favorite coffee shop. There is NO turning that off, that's happening, because you are using their service. That's a location service turned on, all the time! Now, think about the emails you receive on this account. They know your bank, who you have for phone service, what you bought on Amazon, simply by having access to what messages come to this address, what's sitting on this account. That's a wealth of info, for free. While I've ripped on Facebook for things they track and do, for as shady as they are, they don't have info on this level.

Google Photos? Used to be a huge fan. What a great, simple way to backup photos. It even bailed me out a couple times. But, now I question the cost. While it wouldn't be a live version of tracking, the historical data from every photo I've taken, they'd know time and place of very photo, which will give a detailed history of locations. They'd know every Friday night I like to visit my favorite restaurant and happen I like to take pictures of my food. There is all kinds of marketing possibilities, but also certainly chances to abuse the data gained either through access by a third party, government agency, rogue employee, who knows.

Google G+? Six people use it, but it's Facebook.

Google Hangouts? Every conversation, stored, searchable. Every contact. Location information for every message sent for sure.

Google Maps? Of course it has to know your location to point you in the right direction. This is the only product that has any real reason to be looking at things, when using it. Have to be honest, I dumped this as well.

Google Search? Since forever, I've always used search logged in to my Gmail account. It was convenient to pull up past searches. But after thinking about it, why they hell should I be giving Google more info? The days of being logged in and searching are done. Might even begin using other search engines for the reason to get away.
 
Without a doubt, people will say who cares. I'll even be the first to admit, I'm not a very exciting person to track, nobody should care, but they do. The whole give up privacy on the concept of doing nothing wrong, is a strange argument. Why not have privacy, when doing nothing wrong? That probably blurs the lines of surveillance too much, but this is the core of the problem. All this information isn't being used as a whole, it's without a doubt to get to know us as an individual, more than we even know ourselves. Which is creepy!

The Google purge is hard let me tell you. They are so intertwined with so many things I've grown accustom to using. The notion of do no wrong and an open company, couldn't be further from the truth. I'm so glad I didn't go down the path of an Android phone. There would be no escape from Google anything with it. Nobody is going to read this and change their behavior or habits. I'm sure people have said it better, put much more thought and time, but hopefully anybody that reads this at least thinks about it.

Slower, but the Same

Different feel rolling up to the start of the hometown 5K this year. Less pressure? Certainly, doesn't feel like I have to prove anything this year. There isn't a goal time. Running for fun? Wouldn't necessarily say that. While it feels more like a run just to run, in the back of my mind don't want to do horrible either. Second year in a row where CT and I strolled up the morning of and signed up. While fairly certain we'd do it, neither of us trained for this. Although, CT of course set a goal time for herself.

Slightly different look to the start this year as well. My guess, about half the participants were the cross country teams from the middle and high school. It's good to see young blood, hope those kids stick with it. I'd still like to push that "go back" button and get that glimpse of what if, had I actually participated in cross country back then.

What's that? Brian Adams, Summer of 89 goes the gun. While it's great to see youth participating, it's a bit of a pain because they always have to start as close to the line as they can. This year was a trot around the first two turns to avoid stepping on anybody. Since there weren't any goals, I didn't care. Let them go out fast and see who dies out. Speaking of which, while there may not be any definitive goals, there are still some expectations of people that I can't let beat me. Once on the first straightaway, I can clearly see them up ahead. The pace seems fast, while I'm still holding a bit in reserve, hope this isn't a sign of the current shape they are in.

Before the next turn, passed one of them. At this point, the second one wasn't pulling away and I felt fairly confident that if anything, he'd be slowing down. Just after the mile mark, made my move (by staying at the same pace) and passed him and other guy. Everybody has their own style of running. The other guy, seriously sounded like he was going to die. Can't say I've ever ran (pun) across anybody like this before, but his breathing sounded as if he were having his last breath, "Errrrrreeeeuuuuugh". I thought about commenting on it, but then found myself wondering if he even realized he sounded like that and just left it alone. Not even sure what I'd say either, "Sounding strong", "Doing great, hang in there", or "Don't look behind you, death is just behind me".

For me, the rest of the race was uneventful. Caught a kid and the overall girl in the final mile, but didn't push any harder than I had too. Finished with my slowest 5K in a while. That bugs me a bit, but I also know based on the amount of running I've been doing lately, it wasn't that bad. In the end, still good enough to get me first place in my age group, so I'll take it.

CT's story from this year, she's always so damn competitive, she threw an elbow to a young girl trying to pass her. Let that sink in for a moment. Okay, it wasn't intentional, but we had a good laugh about it after. Even took the girl in question for a mile cool down jog after to show there wasn't any bad blood. CT probably won't admit this, but she does better when she has somebody right with her to push her a bit and it this case it helped her trying to push this girl, so it made for a successful day, even if neither of us were really ready for this 5K. In the end though, the fast couple, I mean the great looking fast couple, each got our respected firsts.