I searched for a replacement, preferring to buy online since it’s easy to find the same shoe online for 30-40% less than in a brick and mortar store.  From suggestions on Internet forums, I bought a similar shoe from an online retailer made by the same manufacturer.  However, the new shoe felt like running in sandals compared to the discontinued model.  It gave me no stability and very little cushioning in the forefoot.

Why do shoe companies insist on changing their shoe lineup every year?  There isn’t a shoe model that either doesn’t get changed or discontinued on a yearly basis.  The shoe that treated me well for so long was suddenly gone.  I probably bought 15 or 20 pairs of that model, and what does the manufacturer do to reward me for my loyalty?  They hang me out to dry.

There’s no functional reason to update, discontinue, or introduce new running shoes with such magnitude and frequency.  Some research indicates people are better off without running shoes.  However, shoes are generally made to accommodate a small handful of biomechanical differences in runners.  With these differences identified, each manufacturer should make a shoe that successfully addresses these problems for most of the population and let things be.  With the current cycle of drastic shoe changes, either running shoe technology is so terrible that the manufacturers are constantly scrambling to find shoes that work or human evolution is taking place at unprecedented levels.

Instead of producing something consistent and functional, shoe companies care more about generating marketing hype surrounding their products.  They want consumers to crave the latest running shoe with its biodegradable materials, patented cushioning materials, and futuristic looks.  I don’t care how many proprietary materials the shoe is made out of or what the shoe looks like, I only want it to keep me from getting injured.   Every shoe I’ve ever bought goes from mostly white to a dirty, muddy mess in a matter of days, but as long as it keeps me in one piece, that’s all that really matters.

The constant shoe updates also force me to buy from a regular retail store since I have to try on several pairs to find a new one that works.  Sizing changes from model to model, so I’m wary of buying a new pair without first trying it on.  Retail stores mark up prices as much as 100% of what they paid the manufacturer, so it’s easy to find an online retailer who charges far less than the suggested retail price.  Going to the store today, I’ve found that what was the $80 shoe five years ago is now the $100 shoe.  Some shoes are nearly $200.  All of them wear out in 300-400 miles, so what exactly is it that warrants the extra cost?

Running shoes shouldn’t be any different than a household appliance.  Shoes should be something that do their job faithfully and can be replaced at the end of their lifespan with a model that performs exactly the same way.

Today marks the first time since my knee surgery, nearly a year and a half ago, that I’ve run for seven consecutive days.  The last time I ran six days in a row was at the beginning of September, and I felt awful by the end of that streak.  From mid-August to the beginning of September, I ran about five or six days in a row and then took the other days on the bike to try to alleviate the completely trashed feeling from running.  By the end of September, I had been running about six miles on the days I ran and started to feel more smooth doing it, but I was still pretty beat up.

Part of the beat up feeling was more than likely due to me favoring my non-surgery leg when running.  I had been fighting an adductor strain on my right leg that gradually got worse until I was unable to walk without limping.  While my left knee felt fine, my right leg hurt just about everywhere.  At first, I thought it was just the humidity, but as the summer ended, the problems persisted, and I was forced to stop running at the beginning of October. From then until the beginning of December I spent most of the time on the bike, with a few botched attempts at running once my thigh problems calmed down.  However, within the last few weeks I’ve been able to restart running while keeping everything under control.  With the introduction of cold weather, it’s a lot easier to run than bike, despite buying warmer clothes to ride in the cold and rain.

At this point, I’m certain that I’ll never feel as good running as I did when I was on my college team.  On the team, even on the worst days after a race or hard workout, I still felt light on my feet and able to cruise through a 10-15 mile run without thinking.  Today, each step I take is a considerable effort, like I have to drag myself through five or six miles.  Comparing how I felt when running on the team with how it feels now reminds me of a passage in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. A character in the book compares the power of a bandsaw to other saws and a Vickers machine gun to other firearms:

[T]he most noteworthy thing about the bandsaw was that you could cut anything with it and not only did it do the job quickly and coolly but it didn’t seem to notice that it was doing anything. It wasn’t even aware that a human being was sliding a great big chunk of stuff through it. It never slowed down. Never heated up.

Guns could fire bullets all right, but they kicked back and heated up, got dirty, and jammed eventually. They could fire bullets in other words, but it was a big deal for them, it placed a certain amount of stress on them, and they could not take that stress forever. But the Vickers in the back of this truck was to other guns as the bandsaw was to other saws. The Vickers was water-cooled. It actually had a fucking radiator on it. It had infrastructure, just like the bandsaw, and a whole crew of technicians to fuss over it. But once the damn thing was up and running, it could fire continuously for days as long as people kept scurrying up to it with more belts of ammunition.

Before my surgery and when I was on the team, it was as if I could just go forever and chew through any workout or race, “firing continuously for days.”  I never slowed down and rarely heated up.  There were limits, of course, but reaching them required hundred mile weeks, punishing pace runs, and draining interval workouts.  Like the Vickers, there was also quite the support infrastructure of coaches, trainers, and teammates.  But now only running a few miles is “a big deal” for me.  It places quite a bit of stress on me, though it is easier than in the late summer.  I’m quite sure I’ll have to spend a lot more time on the bike, but maybe I’ll get to the point where I’ll want to run a race.

With respect to school, I’ll be travelling to Stockholm in April to present a paper at RTAS.  I’ve been working on several projects related to event detection with accuracy guarantees, which will probably form the basis for my thesis.  I also went to RTSS in Washington, DC two weeks ago, but only a few tracks were on wireless sensor networks, but most were about job scheduling and cache replacement policies with the latest multi-core architectures.  I’ll also be starting a project with mobile phones with a few other students in our department, which should be interesting.  The traditional concept of wireless sensor networks entails small devices with cheap sensors and the processing power of a scientific calculator.  However, mobile phones have considerably more power as well as onboard sensors and have more potential for practical applications that people would actually use.

It’s interesting that I spend much of my time writing, creating presentations, and sketching out designs and high-level solutions.  About half of my time is actually spent programming.  It’s probably a good thing since it gives me a balance between different tasks.  Writing papers and creating presentations can be tedious since it can be difficult to cram in months of work into a short paper or presentation.  It’s also difficult to create a good balance of high-level descriptions and details to keep people interested but not get confused.  When working with a small group of people on a project for a long time, it’s easy to get stuck in a box and not consider things that outsiders would see as obvious.  Working with a few other students on my next project should help with this.

It’s when I run into my old teammates that I realize that despite being in the same town and same school that things are really different.  One of my teammates got married a few weeks ago and at the wedding, it really hit home that I’m living in a new era.  We’re no longer kids.  School has taken on a whole new meaning.  My relationship with my longtime girlfriend has also taken on a new meaning.  Many of the people and the places are the same, but life is different.

Years ago, the biggest road race in the area was the Shamrock marathon and 8k with a modest entry fee.  The turnout was smaller, but the fastest finishing times were still comparable to today.  Recently, the local running club handed over control of the Shamrock to a for-profit company.  Volunteers were replaced by paid staff.  Prize money for elite finishers was increased.  What was a well organized regional race was turned into a full blown production with all the frills.  Consequently, entry fees skyrocketed.  The hype induced a similar increase in turnout.  However, the fastest finishing times also only showed marginal improvement.

What does the average runner stand to gain by paying $90 for a race?  As bad as $90 sounds, it was only the registration fee several months in advance of the race; the fee increased to $110 three months before.  So, does that $90 get you better competition?  At a smaller (and probably cheaper) race, there may be fewer runners, but the average half marathon runner will still find plenty of people to try and chase down.  Is the $90 worth the dry-fit t-shirt or extra junk that comes in the race packet?  Maybe the finishing medal is better.  Or, maybe the experience is somehow intrinsically better just because the race was expensive.  Clearly, the average runner stands little to gain by running in a large scale production-style road race orchestrated by a for-profit company rather than running in a local road race staffed by volunteers.  Somehow, people still pay anyway and all the backhanded marketing hype draws them in record numbers like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.

The increased registration fees only really benefit two groups: the elite runners, and of course, the organizers.  With increased entry fees at large races, elite runners are often provided with free travel and hotel rooms.  Naturally, they don’t have to pay an entry fee while the increased costs to all other participants provide a larger pile of prize money to the elites.  That $90 provided by 20,000 participants also does well in providing the organizers with a nice chunk of change.  Those who were once volunteers and provided a great service to the community are now ransacking their fellow runners’ wallets for every last dollar.

It’s bad enough that the registration fee is so high for many of these races.  It’s even worse that these high profile races don’t even allow registration transfers in case of injury, lack of training, or sudden employer-mandated travel plans.  As a result, some strange things happen as people struggle to cope with a significant monetary loss.  Some will trade numbers under the table, throwing off the results when a supposed 55 year old blows away the masters division with a near record time.  Others who didn’t prepare or who suffered an injury may force themselves out on the course and punish themselves because they want to get their money’s worth.  Others still may decide not to run altogether, leaving several thousand non-starts that could have been filled with ready participants.

I could never justify the cost of such a race, even after I had recently exhausted my college eligibility and was looking for races to run.  I had considered slapping down a few massive entrance fees to run a few half marathons or marathons.  Before I got that far, my knee gave out.  It just isn’t worth it to fork over the $90+ for a race several months in advance that I might not be able to run because of injury.  To me, it’s not the hype or the junk that comes in the race packet.  It really isn’t even about the competition anymore.  If my knee were to withstand a race, I would do it only for enjoyment and I don’t think I need to pay $90 to get that.  Even if I had to pay for all of my college races, I don’t know if I could justify the cost if I had to pay extortionist entry fees at each one.  I can get much more than $90 worth of enjoyment just by running on my own.

When I ran competitively, I only paid for a handful of races, most of them when I was unattached in college.  I think I paid $15 for a cross country invitational at UVA, another $15 to run a 3k at George Mason, and about $50 to run the 5k at Penn Relays.  That $50 at Penn Relays got me in a race with plenty of competition, including Alan Webb, who ran 13:30.  I ran about a minute slower, just barely getting lapped by him at the end, but it was him and the other runners that helped me drag myself around the track towards the end.   In that case, the extra costs of the entrance fee and travel may have been worthwhile, but such cases are outliers.  Today, I’m no different than the average recreational runner and I don’t have to pay $50 – $75 more and travel hundreds of miles to race when similar competition could be found right where I live.  That is, if it’s competition I want.

I consider myself very fortunate to have crossed paths with people who found that satisfaction didn’t always come from making money.  I had high school and college coaches that gave most of their time to me despite earning little or no money.  I ran plenty of local road races staffed by volunteers who came just because they loved to be there.  It was this passion that came from people like these that helped me go a long way with my running career.  Ironically, it was from the same people that I realized I could never run professionally.  Like someone who forks over $90 for a race, there would be too much external pressure from a sponsor to run through injuries, train harder than I felt comfortable, and to turn a daily release into a daily grind.  Money and love don’t always mix.

It appears as though things that were once steeped in intrinsic value are falling to the marketers.  Road racing is only one example.  Even coaching for these expensive races is now being offered at an equivalently steep price.  Those who once freely gave their time and effort are now turning their passions into profit, raking fellow enthusiasts over the coals.  Those who may have run for pure enjoyment are now forking over cash to attend pre-race expos, get race packets stuffed with “free samples”, and get hyped with bands blasting music along the race course.  It’s one less thing that’s done because it’s fun.  It’s one more thing done only for the money.

Last week I was at home for the first time in awhile and while I was out running, I saw a guy who I always used to see in the early summer mornings before I headed to work. He asked where I had been and I told him what had happened. I said I was lucky just to be out there.

I don’t feel like I used to. Five miles is hard and it beats me up good. The loop I’ve been doing at home is probably more like 5.5 since I used the GPS once and I used to be able to do it in 31 – 32 minutes with little problem. Now I struggle to keep it under 40 minutes. While many others have returned to where they were following similar procedures, I’m guessing I won’t get back to high mileage weeks and workouts and long runs. The risk of undoing everything is too great and I’ve heard of people who pushed a few track intervals too hard and were in pain again the next day. For now, I plan on supplementing the running with biking when I get too beat up. I’ll probably gradually increase the amount of running I’m doing until it feels more comfortable.

Maybe in ten years some of those experimental stem cell injections will be common practice and I could get something like that if what’s left of my cartilage wears away.

Yesterday, in the middle of my run I tripped on a branch that came down with all the rain and storms. I twisted my left ankle so bad it hurt the rest of the day and irritated the plantar fascia. It was the same twisting that I think contributed to the whole knee mess in the first place, so that little move has me worried. After a day on the bike, I’ll see how it goes. I don’t know if I’ll ever run on any trails again after all of this just to keep myself from tripping or twisting my left ankle. But, even in the street I still manage to hit something.

Everything has improved significantly in the past year and hopefully it will hold up into the future.

I remember thinking last summer that my recovery would be a success if I could run a few miles a day every other day.  I’m now doing that: yesterday I ran 25 minutes at an agonizingly slow 7:00-7:30 pace.  Given my history, that isn’t much at all but I’m glad to be doing it with little or no discomfort.  Supplementing with biking, I feel pretty happy with the way things are going.  A year ago at this point, I felt as if I were doomed.

Occasionally when running, I will feel something down in the joint area on the left (bad) side, but I think it’s mostly IT band.  The IT band on my right side has been tight and nagging at me ever since my left knee blew up a year and a half ago.  The IT band has been the most persistent soft tissue problem I’ve encountered, but I’ve managed to keep it at bay since April 2008 through endless stretching and icing.  It’s probably because I’m still compensating on that side because of the left knee.

The size difference between my left and right leg isn’t noticeable to me anymore.  Following the surgery and being stuck in a brace for 10 weeks, my left leg shrunk down to nothing.  The size difference was incredible, which was what probably contributed to my limp that lasted for several months.  Biking has really helped with regaining strength in my left leg, but it still doesn’t feel quite equal with the right.

Running still feels extremely awkward, but with running more, I’ll adjust and be able to go farther and faster.  The question remains as to how much I can do safely.  The doctor and PT didn’t place too many restrictions on that and even tried to get me back to running faster than I wanted.  Both said that because of the location of the cartilage tear, I would have no difficulty returning to running.  The PT said I shouldn’t do any really hard workouts or compete in races — it seems that those whose microfractures fail occur during really hard efforts.  Of course, my teammate had the same surgery and was able to get through three years without anything going wrong, but I don’t know if that’s a chance I should take.  For now, I’ll gradually add time every week and maybe try longer streaks towards the end of the summer.  Sitting down with my college coach last week, he said I could be in shape to show up to practice and “hammer the freshmen” by the time the fall semester starts.  I don’t know about that.

Interestingly, on my trip back from Rome, I read a novel about a CIA operative that also had to stop running and undergo surgery thanks to missing cartilage.  Like me, he ran until the pain became unbearable.  The author didn’t elaborate as to whether or not the character had microfracture, but it was mentioned that loose pieces were removed.  The surgery was provided as a way for a hit man to try and take out the operative as he recovered at home.  Of course, the character was nearly 40 years old, so at least he had another 15 years of hardcore running under his belt that I won’t ever get.  Not to mention that the whole thing was fictional.

I recall a discussion in the locker room after cross country practice about a teammate I had never met.  I don’t recall his name, but this guy had graduated before I even got to college.  John, one of the well respected fifth year seniors said this guy wanted to go to NCAAs as part of the seven-man travel squad, but only “wanted to travel to the course, warm up with the team, and get a t-shirt.”  He did not want to actually run the race.  This guy never made the travel squad to NCAAs.  To him, and many others, it’s all about instant gratification without any of the work.  Running competitively isn’t like a movie where all the hard work is abstracted away and all that’s shown is the glorious win over the evil opponents.  To date, our team has qualified for every national meet since 1997, one of only five schools.   To do that takes considerable effort and years of training for hours every day.  You can’t just fast forward to the good parts.

The zeitgeist of today is marked by a lack of intrinsic motivation to undertake any long term efforts.  In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell cites James Flynn’s work on how Asian students work harder and longer on problems than their American counterparts.  Given a tough math problem, most American students will work on it for only a short while before giving up.  This ethos carries over into other areas.  An article in the New York Times states that 95 percent of blogs are abandoned, many of which only have one post.  The torrents of traffic and commenters envisioned by these blog posters just doesn’t happen overnight.  They think blogging fame will come immediately, but it doesn’t.  It takes time to build a reader base.  More to the point, the blog also has to have content that people are willing to read.  I’ll be surprised if many people read this post or others like it concerning my opinions and everyday life, but most of my traffic comes from my software troubleshooting/debugging and knee microfracture posts.  Even in my little corner of the Internet, I have made gradual traffic gains over the months.  People just don’t swarm in overnight:

Apparently, the same is true for Twitter: most users either abandon their account after signing up or just make one post.  Again, the problem boils down to effort: few are willing to make the effort and post meaningful content at frequent intervals.  Followers just don’t appear because you signed up.  Like blogs, it isn’t just the frequency of posts, but the value of the content: I really don’t care what you ate for lunch today.  I especially don’t care that you got a front row seat at the Apple Developer’s Conference after waiting in line since 4 AM.  Most Twitter posts aren’t much better than spam.  To attract followers, the posts have to carry some value to those beyond a small circle of friends.

Everyone just wants the massive blog readership or the Twitter following, but couldn’t care less about the content required to generate such traffic.   Sometimes, when the desired outcome can’t be achieved with lackluster efforts, many try to lower the bar.  Currently, there’s an effort in Virginia Beach to relax the public school grading scale from 7 point to 10 point.  Parents think this will even the playing field with other school systems that have switched to a 10 point scale, but it’s really just lowering the standards.  Parents want their kid to get in to his or her college of choice and to do it by studying less.  Also along these lines, a state representive recently proposed that more in state students should be accepted to Virginia public universities because a constituent complained that the acceptance standards were too tough and he didn’t get in.  I’m guessing that this “constituent” was probably the representative’s kid.  What is the real secret to getting in to your college of choice?  It isn’t done by getting easier As or by pushing out extremely well qualified out of state students.  Work harder, and anything can happen.

It’s pretty bad that so many people give up when they realize some effort is involved.  It’s worse when people lower their standards of success when their current efforts are clearly lacking.  Believe it or not, there are even worse characters out there that will do anything to get instant gratification: cheaters.  Instead of working hard for ten months researching state-of-the-art, tweaking out a system design, implementing the design, testing the design against existing works, and finally writing and submitting a research paper, some people are willing to cheat.  A recent study reports that an astounding  2% of researchers fake their results.  In a similar instance, some colleges are willing to fudge the statistics to improve their rankings.  They play with class sizes and give peer institutions poor reviews to improve their standing.  Instead of improving the school in an honest way, taking the time to hire more and better qualified faculty, increasing employee pay, and attracting better students, Clemson faked its way up 16 places in U.S. News reviews.

What is the real solution to this lack of motivation?  How can more people motivate themselves to post regularly on their blog?  How can people stick with something and work hard enough to achieve just rewards?  Some slick researchers tried paying students for earning good grades.  This approach improved state test scores by nearly 40 percentage points.  Did money provide the motivation for these students to work harder and longer on their math problems and not give up?  Apparently.  Proponents of this system argue that the “real world” functions much in this way: perform better and get paid more.  But money can’t be added as an outcome in every scenario.  How many blogs or Twitter accounts are raking in the dough?  Almost zero, I would guess.  Instead, people need intrinsic motivation to produce results over the long term.  I don’t write this post because I envision piles of Internet surfers reading and commenting on this.  I do it because there’s satisfaction in organizing my thoughts and ideas and writing them down.  I don’t care that nobody else will read this, but if someone else finds it interesting, then more power to them.

Aside from writing these inane blog posts, it is intrinsic motivation that keeps me working on long research projects.  It’s what gets me up in the morning with the hope that I’ll be able to run normally again after knee surgery.  I run slow, go out every other day,  only go ten minutes, and feel terrible, but I know if I do it enough I’ll be able to run faster and longer.  By keeping at it and going one step at a time, things will get done.

It could be that biking is just making things tight and that maybe I should run first.  I also really shortened my stride so I didn’t have to bend my knee as much, which probably helped.  It might be that bending it too much is causing the pain in the damaged area, so I might be constrained to shuffling around everywhere.  If my body permits me to go more, maybe that will work itself out.  Regardless, it was the best four minutes I’ve experienced in quite a long time.

Pain is a weird thing.  When you don’t have it, you don’t think about it, but when you’ve got it, it makes things miserable.  I remember my high school coach giving a speech about pain before a workout.  It was during the first few weeks of my freshman year.  He asked how many of us had older siblings in our families.  A lot of guys raised their hands.  He then went on to say that our minds don’t remember pain and if our mothers had remembered the pain of childbirth that many of us who were second or third children would not exist.  The point was to illustrate that though you’ll be suffering through the workout, an hour later, you’ll be fine and you’ll be willing to do it again a few days later.  The same thing goes for injury pain and illness: it’s hard to concieve what it’s like when you’re healthy, but when you’re down, it really sucks.

An interesting study/article points this out: that the little things like pain are what make or break our lives.  People believe that it’s the big things that really make us happy or sad, but it isn’t.  It’s not the new and exciting job, it’s not the move to sunny California, and it’s not winning the lottery that makes your life better.  People who survive natural disasters and other traumatic incidents and those that even lose their vision or hearing don’t report that they feel any less happy than they were previously.  However, those that develop strong ties with family and friends report being happier, while those that develop chronic pain or discomfort never adjust.  It seems that indeed, pain is something that can never be adjusted for, and it’s probably some kind of evolutionary survival mechanism.  Without pain, I would have run even farther on my knee last year and probably to the point where I would become unable to walk.

For now, I’ll get while the getting’s good and try to run in real small increments all the while being on the lookout for any serious problems.

All I can say with certainty is that my knee hurts when I run.  I went about twenty or thirty steps before pain started somewhere around the joint.  I went about a minute, stopped and stretched, and then walked for a few more minutes before going again for another minute.  It wasn’t any better the second time around, and the pain seemed to get worse.  I haven’t had any serious knee pain in a very long time.  It doesn’t hurt when cycling: I can mash the pedals and ride up hills out of the saddle or sprint to beat a light and I have no pain at all.  It doesn’t hurt when I climb stairs, nor do I feel any popping or locking that I used to.  It still doesn’t hurt when I put in the clutch to shift in my car.

While running for the first time since November or December felt awkward, the pain eclipsed any biomechanical weirdness.  Run enough, and the biomechanics will smooth out.  Oddly during a recent practice, one of my old teammates told me that my coach gave me as an example of good running form.  I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone comment on that.  It’s like saying I’ve got great coordination — I struggle just to get my feet in the bicycle clips.

It feels as though the pain is in a different place than last July when the knee pain took me out.  Since it’s been so long since last July when I experienced the knee pain while running, my perceptions of how things feel have been invalidated.  That said, last July, I could tell that the pain came from a very specific place right next to the kneecap and that it was deep in the joint.  This time it seems more spread out, more to the surface, and more lateral in its location.  I had occasional pain similar to this at PT when the leg brace came off, and the PT told me it was my IT band.  It could be my IT band, but when my teammate who eventually had microfracture first started feeling pain, he thought it was his IT band too.

The pain really comes down to one of two sources: either the microfracture failed to produce enough fibrocartilage to protect my knee from the impact of running, or it’s something soft tissue that I can deal with.  Since the doctor and PT were extremely optimistic that the microfracture worked and that the cause of my pain was most likely from my IT band, I will first try dealing with this as a soft tissue problem.  That means loads of stretching to try to smooth stuff out.  I am not without precedent: when one guy with torn cartilage and microfracture first started running in the early winter, he experienced a lot of pain like I am now.   Now he is running six, seven miles a day and the pain is much more manageable or even nonexistent on some days.  Initially, I thought he was crazy the way he talked about running in excruciating pain, but it appears as though the pain wasn’t from the torn cartilage.  At least not if he is feeling better while running more.

I can say that I am feeling a lot better overall than even before the surgery.  I can go harder and longer on the bike than I could before.  I can go almost two hours before I start to feel tired, while last summer I would be exhausted if I went that far.  I can now power up hills that previously left me in the lowest gear and I can take on someone who passes me, when previously I would struggle just to stay on their wheel.

I will try to run small amounts as much as I can and see if this pain is manageable, while hopefully not making things worse.

The weekends are different: there are gobs of cyclists out on the back roads, making it seem like a highway of bikes.  A few years ago, it was never like that.  I wonder where they all come from.  I’m sure some of them get up really early on the weekdays, but I think a lot of people drive from Hampton/Newport News and Richmond to get out of the more populated areas.  There’s no way all those people actually live around here.  On an average weekend in Virginia Beach, I never see anywhere near that many cyclists.

With the exception of running into Adam out in the middle of nowhere a few weekends ago, I just ride by myself.  It’s a rare occasion that someone else comes along that goes along with me for awhile, so when they do, I take advantage of it and try to get them to get up and go.  There was a guy last week that sat on my wheel for awhile, but didn’t really make any effort to take over.  Adam was in a whole other league when I rode with him, and really put the hurt on me up a couple of hills.

When someone comes up on me, it’s kind of unnerving.  It always happens when I’m just tooling along with not much else around but some farms.  They sneak up without me hearing or seeing a thing.  I’ll be looking out at the road ahead or just thinking about something when suddenly there’s a “ker-chunk” from someone right behind me shifting gears.  I just about jump out of my skin.  Then comes the typical greeting from the other person, though sounding friendly, really means: “I’m about to kick your ass.”  That means it’s time to go.

Today a girl came up on me on a triathlon bike and did that, scaring the crap out of me as usual.  I got on her wheel when she passed me and then overtook her again going up a couple hills.  Unfortunately, she didn’t stay with me for long, but I have a feeling it’s because she didn’t want to, not because she couldn’t keep up.

Mainly I just bike for the fun of it, not to really punish myself.  I did that with running for ten years, so right now I’m just out to have fun.  But, now I’m starting to miss that competition that existed just from running with others on a daily basis.  I got a new pair of running shoes this week and was planning on running after one of my rides, but time has been a bit of a limiting factor with the paper I’m working on.  Today with really hauling butt for about 30 minutes in the middle of the ride, I was completely wiped to do anything more, but at this point I’m just making excuses.  I think just running again with some of my old teammates is enough of a motivating factor to get me to start running again.  I get asked by someone every week when I’ll start again.  I’ve had several professors even ask me.

I said earlier that I wanted to be running by the summer.  Time is getting tight.  It’s time to get out of my comfort zone again.

But now, it’s almost worse. I started working on my current project in September, right after my knee surgery. It’s been going for nine months and now I am finally cramming all of those nine months into ten pages or less, double column.

To put this in perspective for an undergrad: take all the papers, all the projects, all the homework assignments, and all the exams, tests, and quizzes in the last two semesters and make them all due next week. That is the weight of what I am working on. It nags at me every day that I have been working for so long and have nothing to show for it. I think about it in bed before I go to sleep, I think about it when I wake up, I think about it when I’m in the shower, and I think about it when I’m on the bike. As an undergrad and even for the first part of grad school, I got closure incrementally: with periodic assignments and tests and at the finish of each semester when classes end. Closure is now when I get a paper out, and the time span for that seems indefinite.

My first project and paper was faster — it took a semester and a summer. However, I’m still dealing with that project now — I’m going to present it at SECON and when I do, it will almost be a year since the first version of the paper went out.

It seems most undergrads treat papers lightly: “Oh, I can crank out a ten page paper in a few hours and still get an A…” I was the same way — it was spit something out as fast as possible to get it over with, but put enough effort into it to get a decent grade. Now, papers are everything. The paper is how everyone else sees your work. I may have spent the past nine months creating something that could have huge implications for the future of wireless sensor networks, but nobody but my adviser would know about it unless I tell them in a paper. The reviewers will lay the smack down on you if you try to whip out a paper in a matter of hours. Yesterday, I spent six hours writing and got out about five paragraphs. They were five critical paragraphs about the core of what I did, and they had better be comprehensive and understandable from the perspective of an outsider.

I find it hard to tell the story of my project, but I think the difficulty is from inexperience. There are key things that reviewers look for that I must give special attention in addressing. Because of this, there is a pretty rigid way to write a research paper, but even then I find it difficult. It is hard to convey specific algorithmic details, yet be concise and easy to understand. I have to remember the main selling points of my work and refer back to them throughout the paper. For these projects, I find the initial problem discovery, solution design, and implementation to be interesting and sometimes even fun. Enough experience programming and thinking about solutions to problems has helped with that, but I haven’t done much writing.

With time, I imagine writing will get easier. I will know exactly what to do. With my current paper, I’m almost there. I’m almost to the point where I feel good about what I have written and know that everything will turn out okay. I just have to keep working and get it done. Then there will be some closure.