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Race report: Diamond in the Rough Triathlon 2010

A quick race report I tapped out on my phone for my friends last weekend (July 10). With apologies to Remy Charlip.

Unfortunately, when I walked out of my hotel this morning for the Diamond in the Rough triathlon in Perryville, Maryland along the beautiful Susquehanna river, it was quite wet out.

Fortunately, the AM forecast was just for scattered showers, with no thunderstorms until the afternoon. We got to the race site with no problems.

Unfortunately, it was raining steadily by then. And Meg had forgotten the umbrellas & we didn't pack rain gear. Someone in line with me said he had seen lightning.  When Meg was walking back from the car park she saw cars exiting the park, with bicycles. People were bailing. First race I bring my family to in like four years and it's first one that's got terrible weather. Told my family I wouldn't mind bailing but they said I should go ahead.

Fortunately (for me) they announced that the water temperature was 79 degrees so wetsuits were NOT allowed.  Yay! Finally a fair swim!

Unfortunately, they then announced that the swim would actually be canceled and the event turned into a duathlon. We would start with a run of 2.7 miles to replace the swim, and then as planned do a 27-mile bike & a 5-mile run. Just great - my weakest event & I gotta do it twice.  Reiterated to my family that I wouldn't mind going home but the boys were too excited to see the event, rain or not.

Fortunately, once the race started, it actually was nice to be running in a triathlon and feel pretty fresh & good doing so. It was also strange to finish the run in a triathlon at a steady pace instead of pushing to the finish.

Unfortunately, I was now going to have to bike with somewhat used legs instead of just used arms.

Fortunately, after a pretty quick transition (hoping one of, if not the, fastest), I spun up and my legs felt pretty good. Much better than last year (see brief summary of last year's race, below).

Unfortunately, the hills on the first half of the course were worse than I remembered them. I kept sipping gatorade steadily throughout the bike - last year at this race I ran up a deficit and drank too much at the very end and really felt it sloshing around when I started the run.  But I was going hard enough that I really did not want to drink.  But I forced myself.

Fortunately, I continued to feel strong and powered up the inclines pretty well (for me). I experimented with going a little more anaerobic than I usually do. After all, this was no Ironman, plus I've recently noticed on group rides than when I spike my HR in order not to get dropped, I recover pretty well and it's better than falling back on the hills, which causes me to lose a surprising amount of time from my friends, which takes me a surprising amount of time hammering the flats to make up. So on each hill, I pretended that Rodolfo or Ron or Bill or whoever was in front of me and channeled the feeling of that situation and worked hard. I also made it a practice to stand up and gun it one last time as I hit the crest of each hill - that way, once I had the mo, I could recover at 20-24 MPH instead of at 16-19 MPH. Seemed to work pretty well & I felt like I really hammered the bike.  Also, because I was in the second wave and I started with a weak run instead of a strong swim, I started back further than usual and moved steadily through the field, which was good for my morale.  I don't think I got passed by a single rider who I didn't later re-pass -- even on the big hill near the end of this race!  I felt very proud about that last bit.

Unfortunately, my bike time was around 1:16. I was hoping with how good I felt it would be even faster. Maybe the rain, which never once let up, and became quite a downpour during much of the bike, was a factor. I had to really squint to see in the rain and had to be super careful on all the turns - there were sheets of water on the road in many places, sometimes several inches deep.

Fortunately, it was still over 4 minutes faster than my bike last year. And I knew I had a good shot at reaching my goal of #1 fastest T2 time, because I was running barefoot I didn't need to put on shoes. All I had to do was 2 things: rack the bike, and take off my helmet.

Unfortunately, I still managed to forget one of those two things and started to run out of the transition with my helmet on and had to turn around.  I thought, "I bet that just cost me my #1 spot!"

Fortunately, I was still pretty quick.  And it was so great to see my family at each of the transitions, cheering me on!

Unfortunately, I was very tired from the bike and people began to blow by me as I chugged along the first mile at what felt like a pathetic pace.

Fortunately, as slow as I was running, I still did an 8:09 mile for the first mile. That put me in contention to meet my goal time of 40:00, which was my time from last year.  You always gotta remind yourself, all the people behind you who are NOT running faster than you, you don't see (until the turnaround).

Unfortunately, though I felt better after the first mile, for some reason my times slowed down instead of sped up.  One possibility: inaccurate mile markers.  (The other possibility: I was running slower.)

Fortunately, while all the other runners were dodging the puddles on the running path, some of them several inches deep and many yards long - I just ran right through them in my bare feet.

Unfortunately, while other runners ran right through the gravel portions of the run, I had to do a little dodging on THOSE portions.

Fortunately, there were only two gravel stretches, and the ground was so wet that it made the gravel parts feel much easier on my feet.  Also, my feet happen to be very tough right now since I've been upping my running mileage, and overall the gravel portions were pretty easy compared to what I remember from this race last year.

Unfortunately, I did not have my friend Will Colston running ahead of me to spur me on to run hard in the second half of the run after the turnaround, like last year.

Fortunately, I fell in behind a guy who was just a little bit faster than me and determined to stick with him.  He was going just the perfect pace for me - faster than I felt like going, but any faster and I think I would have had to let him go.  At the finish of the 5-mile run, I felt good enough to sprint, hard to the finish.  Felt great -- and if my watch is accurate I met my goal with a run time of 39:55.

Unfortunately, by this time my family was pretty soggy and cold.  Rested for a bit, and then got back on my bike and got the car which was parked 2 miles away, picked up the family, and we headed home.

Overall, a fun time despite the unfortunate weather.  Sucked not to have the swim, esp. since it would have been non-wetsuit, but was nice not to be competing in 105-degree heat and the rain felt great on the run.  Despite rumblings of thunder there was never any lightning. Piranha Sports did a good job with the race and adapting to the circumstances, gave out a very nice technical shirt and hat (and a volunteer let my kids each have a hat too which really made the day for them).

And now, for the first time -- I am a duathlete!  Even if the distances were a bit non-standard.  Never would have thought.

- Jay

p.s. This just in: they've already posted the times (so fast -- Kudos to Piranha for that!)

Split                  Time                                     Rank (out of 377 finishers overall)
2.7 mile run        0:18:27 (pace 6:50/mile)       177
T1                      0:00:29                                    1
Bike 27 miles      1:15:44 (pace 21.6 MPH)         19
T2                      0:00:33                                    3
5-mile Run          0:39:25 (pace 7:53/mile)       150
Overall              2:16:40                                 54

Looks like I was 8th out of 42 finishers in my 40-44 age group and 54 out of 377 finishers overall. Pretty happy with the #19 rank on the bike.  Funny to me that I ranked higher on the second, longer run than the first one. Either I paced myself better or it's a reflection of my good long-course conditioning staying power.  But of course, most crucially: I finished #1 overall in my T1 time -- thank you, thank you, yes it's good to be on top -- but due no doubt to my helmet supidity I slipped to third for T2 (the #1 guy 

Here's note I sent to my friends before this race:

Looking forward to Saturday's race - hoping no thunderstorms.  Going to be tough to run as fast as I did last year when the prospect of catching Colston at the finish line spurred me on to run through a lot more pain than I may be motivated to do this year.  On the other hand, I've been running more recently.  I didn't feel great on the bike last year so I'm hoping to improve on my bike time however.  I was surprised by how fast my swim time was last year -- the equivalent of 3 straight 6:56 500-yard swims in the pool.  Either the course was short, or my new wetsuit provided more of a boost than I expected. If the former, then my swim may be slower this year -- either way, I don't expect much of an improvement esp. as I haven't been in the water much since IMSG.  This year I was thinking I'd try something new that I've never done before at a triathlon:  warm up.  I'm also going to be more conscientious about taking gels as I've been noticing recently that doing so really helps me on the run.

Most of all, I'm gunning for the #1 fastest T2 time!

Ironman St. George race report

Swim

I screwed up the swim.  Going into this race, I was in the best swim shape of my life.  I was easily racking up 2.4 mile swims in the pool in around 1:03.  Wearing my fast new wetsuit in the race, I thought there was a chance I could best that time, perhaps substantially.  On the other hand, I was well aware that anything can happen in an Ironman, especially with their mass starts where all 2,000 racers start at once (leading to a lot of, let us say, churn, as encapsulated so well in this famous parody video).  I expected that as long as I didn’t have a major mechanical or crash, I would be okay on the bike.  It was more a question of just what it would take out of me; when I do a hilly century ride with my friends, my legs – especially my hill-climbing muscles – are typically pretty trashed by the end, not exactly where I want to be starting off a marathon.  I'm more of a time trialist than a hill climber; I did the pancake-flat Beach to Battleship ironman in 2008 in under 5 ½ hours.  On the other hand, when I did the extremely hilly Savageman half-ironman, it took me about 3:45 to do 56 miles, which would translate to a full-iron bike time of about 7 ½ hours. 

With Will at the swim exit ramp on the day before the race

I knew the St. George Ironman had significant hills - 5,000-8,000' of climbing depending on who you ask - but my biggest worry was the fact that I was rather alarmingly unprepared for the run, having done (according to my workout log) almost exactly 4 miles a week of running on average in the 3 months leading up to this race.  I just didn’t seem to have time for more.  I was also undertrained for the run on my first ironman, and I managed to eke out a 5:08 marathon on a run course that like the bike was totally flat.  In St. George, the run course was, in the words of a pro athlete who pre-ran the course, a “doozy,” said to be definitely the hardest Ironman run course in North America and one of the hardest in the world.  There was not a flat mile on the whole course.  Coming out of T2 it was a 500’ climb in the first 3 miles to the top of a ridge overlooking the town, and then down the other side, and then turn around and back up, and down, and then do the whole out & back again, for around 2,500 feet of climbing.  I didn’t know what would happen to me on this run course, but I figured I’d cross that 26.2 mile bridge when I came to it.

But the swim, I was looking forward to.  I was busying getting ready, and Dave and I walked over toward the swim start (Will having wandered over earlier), and there was a huge bottleneck of people going through the swim gateway where the timing chip was, and then I walked down the water and spit in my goggles as I always do and then rinsed them out and put them on, and then put two swim caps on over them (since the water was 59 degrees) which took a few tries to get right.  Then they were on and then I was startled by a really loud “boom!”  “What was that?”  I looked up and the swimmers were off!  I was standing in knee deep water about 100 yards from the front of the pack out in the reservoir for the in-water start.  I had wanted to start at the front – I figured if I was at the front, I might get passed by some people but at least I wouldn’t have to pass anybody.  I took off in a panic to try to make up for my lost time, swimming through and over people to try to get toward the front.  But it was too late.  I was surrounded by hordes of swimmers. I repeatedly got caught in “V” formations, where people squeezed me from left and right, and I had to swim over them, fight them, or stop and go around . I got one solid uppercut to the jaw from somebody's elbow, plus a lot of bumping and jostling.  Plus, the water was quite cold and that took my breath away, so combined with the panicked/rushed start my pacing was totally out of whack.  I am used to fighting crowds at the start of a triathlon, but what I usually experience in the first minute or two in a swim, lasted until the second buoy– probably about 20 minutes or so.  Plus, I was just kicking myself – how could I be so distracted and inattentive at the start after training so long for this race?  After the second buoy, however, I settled finally into somewhat of a better groove.  Overall, my 1:07:26 swim seemed to go by very quickly – much much faster than when I do 2.4 mile swims in the boring old pool.  How much faster would I have been if I’d started up front? It’s possible I would have been as much as 5 minutes faster.  It’s also possible it wouldn’t have made much difference.  It’s also possible I would have had the same time but not started out swimming too hard which I may have paid for later.  When I swim 2.4 miles in the pool, my time ranges from 1:03 – 1:08, so my swim time here was on the slow end of the spectrum – in the pool I can swim a 1:07 at the heart rate of a brisk walk.  But there are just so many things that are different about an open-water race swim, it’s impossible to know really how much better I could have done.  But I was irked.

From one perspective it's silly to fixate on a few minutes in a 13+ hour day I know - but on the other hand, the whole thing is about bragging rights anyway, right?  And, about setting and trying to meet arbitrary goals for yourself for no really good reason.  Anyway my time was good for 305th place overall out of 1637 finishers and 54th out of 307 finishers in my male 40-44 age group (these don't count the 14% of starters who didn't finish the race).

My transition was smooth except for the fact that the zipper on my new bike jersey, which against all advice, I’d bought the day before at the race expo and never worn before except to try it on, got all screwed up. My awesome volunteer who was there serving as my helper and valet, finally got it all fixed for me.  I had all kinds of warm weather gear but as I always do after cold swims, I ended up up just going with a single-layer short-sleeved shirt.  Although a lot of people wore a lot more layers, I have high cold-tolerance and this was just perfect for me throughout the bike.  My T2 time was 9:13.  If I do more Ironmans I might start striving to cut those a little shorter as I like to do on shorter tri’s, but this day I maximized comfort & preparation. 

Bike

I felt pretty good starting off on the bike.  The first 22 miles of the bike course I have nice memories of, cruised along, not too hard.  There were one or two hills but not much else. I did feel kind of bloated in my stomach, I regretted eating as much breakfast as I did – half of a sugar bun, a Yoplait, and some peanuts, plus a gel at the start, and some carbo-pro mix in transition.  In training I never eat breakfast, but the whole Ironman day-long thing is just a different beast, and I don’t have much experience with it, and it just seems like you should start off your day with a bit of a solid meal.  Next time I'll eat only a little, I think I'm better off erring toward being in deficit (as I was in my first Ironman) rather than overdoing it and not feeling 100% stomach-wise.  On the other hand, there’s no way of knowing whether all this intake helped me later on.  Maybe I should just skip the dairy products (yogurt, plus I had a frozen custard the night before – not recommended, but hey, what could I do, it was too yummy!) 

I guzzled 6-10 oz of carbo-pro mixture after the swim but otherwise left T1 with only a few ounces of plain water in my one bottle.  One thing I did quickly notice after leaving T1 was that in strapping and restrapping my bottle onto my aero bars the afternoon before, to get it right, I had ended up putting the bottle on backwards!  The result was that the straw, instead of facing me, faced outward toward the front of the bike.  Making matters worse, I had removed the straw extension which I had in the past found to be unnecessary.  The result was I had to bend comically far toward the front of the bike, with my butt off the seat and my forehead just about touching my aero bars, in order to drink.  For the whole 112 miles.  Definitely had to be careful – don’t try this at home kids, take my word for it, this position is not the most stable position on a bicycle at 17-25 MPH.  But no mishaps.

At 22 mile point we started the first of our two bike loops.  As we headed west and north, we found ourselves heading into a definite headwind, which made for some hard pedaling, plus there was some rough pavement, and consistent undulations and rollers that, mile after mile, just erodes your leg strength.  There were probably 5-6 hills where I had to go into my granny gear.  I got passed by a steady stream of people on this section and could feel myself drifting backwards in the pack.  Tried to pace myself, not go too hard.  We came to one pretty steep hill and I labored up it.  A little while later I suddenly came upon a u-turn switchback and found myself confronted with the “Veyo Wall” hill, the worst of the day.  I went granny and labored up this one too, muttering things about how I “should have signed up for Florida” as people passed me. (The Florida Ironman being one of the world’s flattest). 

Meanwhile, through all this, the scenery was spec-tac-u-lar.  Just amazing red cliffs and valleys, like from a different planet. At one point the road went right under a rock overhang, and I shuttered to think about a chunk of rock falling on my head as I pedaled along (on the second lap, I was hoping one would).

Not long after the Veyo Wall, we hit the tiny town of Veyo, and soon thereafter I rode by a volunteer who I heard yell my race number (#1703) into a walkie talkie.  Then I was upon the halfway point (mile 56) where a volunteer was standing by ready to hand me my special needs bag.  Nice service!  I took a look but found the thought of eating any of the foods I had put in there revolting; I just took my pre-mixed bottle of carbo-pro/water/gatorade (300+ calories, only a slight gatorade taste) to keep those calories going into my system.   Up until this point I had eaten I think one, maybe two gels, and kept pouring the regular Gatorade from the aid stations into my front aero bar-mounted aero bottle (which was the only bottle I carried with me).  Having the minimum amount of liquid with me at all times helped with the hills, but I never went thirsty.  This Gatorade was my main source of calories during the ride.  I also ate a chocolate chip cookie at some point on the second loop, maybe another gel I don’t remember. 

Soon after the special needs bag I found myself with a nice tailwind for a change, and then hit the extended downhill portion of the route from Veyo back south toward St. George.  This was a really nice stretch, though I tried to keep my effort steady by pedaling when I could.  At times I hit 45 MPH and more. 

Then we turned west and began our second loop and, after a pleasant downhillish mile or two, found myself headed on long flat roads with a headwind that had picked up considerably since the first loop.  This was the longest and hardest part of the ride.  For you DC riders, imagine a bad day out on windy Hains Point – with hills, and stretching for 25 miles.  So from about mile 65 to 90 I didn’t go too fast, but I tried at least to put out a steady and unrelenting effort.  The whole time I was worried I wouldn’t have anything left in my legs for the Veyo Wall & other hills (I couldn't even think about the run).  But when I hit it, it didn’t feel too bad and I think I took the hill in almost the same time as on my first loop (perhaps that's because a granny gear is a granny gear and there’s only so slow you can move if you want to remain upright).

Then it was back down the big hill into St. George, one more climb, and then a nice downhill ride through town and crowds into the Second Transition.  My bike time was 6:28:13, an average speed of 17.3 MPH. I was 82/306 finishers in my age group, and 423/1637 overall.  I used T2 as a bit of a rest, again did a full change of clothes, stuffed a couple kinds of energy food in my jersey side pockets (most of which I never ended up using), walked outside, used the porta-potty, let some volunteers slather me with sunscreen, and, having run out of things to do/excuses to linger, reluctantly crossed the timing mats and, after a T2 of 9:08, set off at a trot toward the red hills looming over the downtown. 

 

Run

My legs felt stiff and tired as they always do at the beginning of a triathlon run, but as the road bent upward, I also felt a weakness that I don’t usually feel and I knew this was going to be a long day.  As always I forced myself to run the first mile.  Then I walked for a while and then tried running but soon came to a sharp hill so I walked again.  And so it went.  After a few miles one’s legs usually wake up and start to feel better on a triathlon, but it just wasn’t happening this day.  Finally around mile 5 and 6, near the turnaround point for the first loop, my legs begin to get a little life in them, and I had a few good miles.  For the first 6 miles or so I averaged about 10:30 miles.  Then things went downhill (actually, uphill) and I fell to 13 minute miles on the way back to the start.  I looked for Dave and Will and saw Dave but missed Will, who I figured was probably not far behind me.  Coming back into town, with the crowds, it gave me a lift to see my friend Jeff Jonas there to cheer me on, and stopped briefly to chat with him.  He was supposed to be in this race – he was actually the one who prompted me to sign up for this one – but had been sick with a stomach bug for the prior week and didn’t feel like he had the strength to do it. Here is a picture Jeff snapped of me at this point: 

I ran back into town, to within a hundred yards of the finish line, which I could see and hear – but had to turn around for my next 13.1 miles of running, even as I could hear the announcer calling out the names of (far superior) athletes who were at that time crossing the finish line.  Once again I dipped into my special needs bag, ignored the variety of foods I had thrown in there just in case my body was craving something, and took another bottle of carbo-pro mix.

On the next (outbound) 6-mile leg, I started getting a lot of cramps, something that had been bothering me intermittently since the second bike loop.  At the aid stations I had mainly been drinking gatorade and water, and eating an occasional orange.  I think I also took one more of my Hammer banana gels from my pocket during the run.  I was eating some potato chips to try to get more salt in me, which supposedly helps cramps, but the fat in the chips was making me feel gross, so at one aid station I did just what you’re not supposed to do and started grabbing every kind of food there was, including pretzels, which I normally hate, oranges, a piece of banana, and some warm chicken broth.  I could barely carry it all.  But I had no ill effects from this smorgasborg.  It also told me what I need to know:  chicken broth.  Good god now I know why they always serve it, it was just right, and within a mile or two, my cramps were gone, never to come back! 

That’s not so say I sped through the rest of the course.  On the way out I did improve my pace a little to an average of 12:28 per mile for miles 13-20.  By this time my feet were hurting (I was not barefoot but was wearing my super-lightweight puma H Street running flats, which I had planned to ditch at some point but I just never did as the pavement looked too rough).  Perhaps because I was pounding my feet too hard on those thin soles since I couldn’t feel them with shoes on, or because most of the running I was doing was downhill, or just because of my lack of training, or because I wasn’t accustomed to these (or any) shoes, my feet were hurting me – not the outer skin, but the bones.  My last six miles were at an execrable pace of 14:36 per mile.  To put that in context, I timed myself once and found that it takes me about 18:30 to walk a mile.  That tells you how much walking I was doing between mile 20 and mile 26.  At some point Dave and I strolled by each other, and I also saw Will who was running at that moment and looking strong (having recovered from some GI issues earlier in his run). I also walked/ran with several different guys at various points of the marathon, and enjoyed chatting with them and getting my mind off the ongoing test.  

As usual on a sunny tri I wore my broad-brimmed Australian/cowboy hat.  Just seems sensible to me, keeps the sun off my face and neck - but it also generated a lot of love and attention from the crowds and volunteers, who for some reason really dug my hat, and added an element of positivity and fun to the run. 

Slowly the mile posts ticked by until it was mile 25 and then 26 and then I ran into the town and the crowd was thick and I got high-fived by a couple of kids as I ran by and it was a blur of people and the announcer called out my name “Jay Stanley, You ARE AN IRONMAN!!!” and I crossed the line and found myself in the shoulder-grip of a volunteer who was there to make sure I could still stand and was coherent and didn’t need to go to the medical tent and some young volunteers took my timing chip off me, hung a finisher’s medal around my neck, gave me a hat and shirt, and snapped my photo:

 

Then my great volunteer Sam, still holding me up in case I wobbled over, guided me to the athlete’s finishing pen, sat me down on a soft pice of grass, asked me what I wanted, and fetched me two slices of pepperoni pizza and a coke.  Heaven.  Soon after Jeff found me, and like a true friend provided above-and-beyond valet assistance to me as I hobbled around on my sore feet wrapping up logistics the rest of the night and finding Will and Dave. Another snapshot by Jeff:

My run time was 5:30:00, 209/306 in my age group and 1077th of 1637 finishers.  My total time for the IMSG was 13 hours and 24 minutes exactly.  I came in 654th place out of 1915 starters and 1637 finishers.  About 14% of those starting did not finish. 

Overall it was a tough, tough race - much harder than the Beach to Battleship, and I'm very proud to have done it. The consensus of experienced athletes seems to be that it is one of, if not the, toughest Ironman course in the world, because of its combination of hilly windy bike and hilly run. But it was a wonderful and rewarding journey, especially thanks to the support of my friends and family at home and at the race. 

Furious over health care situation

I"m furious over what's happening to health care reform -- including at Obama's wan and lackluster effort at pushing for true reform.  For months I've been wondering why he hasn't been using the power of the presidency to ram through reform.  The degree to which the White House has the power to shape and define the public debate can hardly be overstated.  He could be on television every night, ratcheting up the pressure.  He could be putting insurance company victims on television three times a week.  He could be making every person out there who has insurance think about whether, if they get really sick, their insurance might contain fine-print loopholes that leave them out in the cold (who among us has read every line of our policy?) 

But we're just not seeing that.  And this is just so central to how this administration will be judged -- in the short term and by history. 

Glenn Greenwald lays out one possible answer: this is exactly what the White House wanted all along.  Right or wrong on that theory, he nicely sums up how Obama could be doing so much more.  Among his points:

• The White House has been vocally denigrating Howard Dean for attacking the Senate bill for being too weak -- but they've never actually gone out and denigrated Joe Lieberman, the one who is actually blocking decent reform. (Must be that Joe-mentum at work).
• The White House didn't hesitate to knock heads in Congress when opposition began to build to the supplemental war spending bill -- threatening members that they would be cut off and lose help with reelection from the DNC. But on health care reform?  Nope.
• Obama defenders argue "that progressives should place their trust in the Obama White House to get this done the right way, that he's playing 11-dimensional chess when everyone else is playing checkers, that Obama is the Long Game Master who will always win.  Then, when a bad bill is produced, the exact opposite claim is hauled out:  it's not his fault because he's totally powerless."

It's far from clear that Obama's wet-noodle approach to health care reform is good politics either.  Howard Dean is already being mentioned as a possible primary challenger to Obama in 2012 as he emerges as the voice of the progressive opposition to a weak "centrist" bill. If we don't get good health care reform and it's because Obama didn't try, sign me up. For me, health care reform is a core, nonnegotiable policy goal bigger than party loyalty or admiration for Obama or anything else. It is central to my vision and that of most progressives for what this country most needs that it does not now have: decent social policies to reduce the unnecessary human suffering brought about by our barbaric health care system, in which people are expected to buy insurance for their own bodies on the open market the way a merchant might shop for insurance for a warehouse full of appliances.

The best thing to do is to support and give money to MoveOn and other groups that are pushing for a decent bill -- that's how things work in Washington, through interest groups.

Update: Check out this piece by Eric Wattree calling on Obama to get some toughness. Sample: 

The irony of Obama's presidency is that if he fails in his first term...it's not going to be because he wasn't cultured enough, or intellectual enough, but because he's not ghetto enough.

Mount Weather century ride from The Plains, VA

Photoblogging at 20 MPH

Went on a great century ride Sunday.  I brought my camera, and kept it strapped around my wrist for nearly the whole time.  Added a new element of novelty & fun to what was my 5th century ride in as many months (training for my May 1st Ironman). Click on photos to see full-sized shots.

We parked in the parking lot of this Post Office in The Plains, VA, about an hour from Arlington, and hit our saddles at about 7:10:

Born to Tout

So the APMA, the podiatrists' association, has put out a statement on barefoot running. I would characterize it as "grudging."  As always barefooting is forced to bear the burden of proof -- it would make more sense it you swapped "running barefoot" and "running with shoes" in their first paragraph.  Then it would read like this: 

Running with shoes has become an increasing trend, and a possible alternative or training adjunct to running barefoot. While anecdotal evidence and testimonials proliferate on the Internet and in the media about the possible health benefits of running in shoes, research has not yet adequately shed light on the immediate and long term effects of this practice.

Running barefoot "has been touted" as having benefits, they acknowledge (grudgingly), before quickly moving on to the risks, such as "puncture wounds" (okay, I'll grant it's a risk but in my experience and others', small) as well as "increased stress on the lower extremities" (this is a bald assertion that I would be interested to know the basis for, since the studies I've seen have shown *less* shock moving up through the skeleton when barefooting).

Finally, the podiatrists encourage the public to consult a podiatrist -- now there's a surprise.

I think this is what you call "being dragged kicking and screaming" into a reassessment of professional folklore, which is how I would characterize the belief by most podiatrists, in the absence of any supporting evidence, that shoes and shoe inserts are presumed beneficial. Born to Run is to podiatry as last year's economic crash was to economists.

It's amazing how entire professions can be totally full of it. 

Barefoot Media Wave

So barefoot running is enjoying a bit of media wave at the moment. 

In fact, according to this New York Times blog post, barefoot running is actually now "trendy."  Or, at least, "as trendy as any millenia-old activity can be." 

Wow, how did I go from freakish to trendy practically overnight? 

Of course, the answer is Christopher McDougal's best-selling book Born to Run (a phrase I used myself a few years ago to close out an April 08 post here on one of what become the major theses of the book - that humans are evolved for endurance running).  The barefoot running idea has always percolated through the media - there have always been a slow trickle of stories on the subject since I've been barefooting - but now it's a flash flood. 

One of the best pieces I've seen is this other NYT blog piece with accompanying video, which gives McDougal a chance to really concisely lay out the rationale for running barefoot.  In McDougal, the barefoot running community has really gotten a top-flight spokesperson for the cause.

The only caveat I would add to that piece is, I hope nobody out there tries kicking off their shoes and just setting off on a 6-mile run like the NYT guy did – not sure how he got away with it but most people if they are even able to do so they WILL get blisters at a minimum as well as wicked calf soreness (which is usually felt some by first-time barefooters as the achilles is stretched out in absence of high-heeled shoes).

Other recent media include this so-so business story that actually ran in the printed NY Times, and this very good, widely reprinted story in the Baltimore Sun story. This is one of the few articles that fails to feature the obligatory quote from a podiatrist pulling some assertion out of thin air about the harm that barefooting will do. One thing I would correct is that running barefoot does not create calluses, just thick, soft but tough skin (like a dog’s paw).

McDougal's book, to which we owe all this fuss, is a hoot. It actually has very little directly and explicitly on barefoot running - rather it tells a story and sets a context within which barefooting looks not "quirky" (to quote NYT article) but a perfectly natural and sensible thing to do. It is part travelogue, part "great race" story and part meditation on the meaning of running. If you are a runner at all it will inspire you and if you're not it it probably will make you want to be one. At times I was conscious of being in the presence of a *storyteller* in the good and bad senses - not someone who makes things up but someone who definitely knows how to sharpen and highlight and dramatize reality in the stories he tells. I had McDougall pinned as a gregarious British reporter type in the tabloid tradition (I was wrong; he is American). But it is also a rip-roaring narrative, fueled by genuine passion and amazement - an amazement that many barefoot runners have experienced when they realized that they'd been lied to by our culture and just what their bodies are capable of.  Realizing you don't need shoes is kind of like realizing one day that you can fly.

Many people who read Born To Run will come away with a new appreciation for barefoot and minimal-footwear running. For me, a lot of the concepts in the book were familiar ground, and the main takeaway for me was to its theme that running should be approached with joy and abandon, and not like some grim discipline, eating our wheaties and grinding out miles on suburban sidewalks according to rigid formulaic "training plans."  After I read this book I starting doing more trail runs, and worrying less about my pace and my distance and just going out and running.  That message is a whole other form of liberation on top of the shoe-liberation, and for that I am grateful to McDougal. Trendy or not.

Of course, the trendiness declaration is probably premature. I have noticed, as I mentioned after the Savageman triathlon, that fewer people think I'm totally nuts when they see me running around barefoot. But, on the other hand, outside of a few New York Times readers and fitness enthusiasts who have noticed this coverage, I think most Americans still think it's pretty freakish.

But, eventually, in a few years when a third of everybody at every local race is barefoot, I expect I will feel like the guys who used to be fans of U2 when they were playing in small clubs, or something like that.  Glad that the world finally gets it, but missing the fun of being cutting edge and, to be honest, the charge that comes from feeling one is possession of an esoteric truth. 

Obama's Afghanistan problem

Obama has a big problem in Afghanistan -- one of many problems he was handed by his predecessor the walking national disaster George Bush.

Actually to be precise he has two problems: Afghanistan the military/geopolitical problem, and Afghanistan the political problem. 

As far as the military/geopolitical problem, I am deeply skeptical that having a bunch of frightened, heavily armed, militarized 18-year-old American kids running around Afghanistan can do any good, advance the national interest, at all. There are rare times when force makes the world a better place, so I am open to well-reasoned arguments from those who are actually on the ground there, but they would have to be awfully well reasoned. 

As far as Obama's domestic political problem, however, I know exactly what I would do if I were president.  I would announce that I am withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan within x months unless Congress approves a declaration of war.  The country is divided? Obama is in danger of being painted as soft on terror if he does anything less than a full-bore commitment to this war?  His base is getting mad at him for considering escalation?  Simple: throw the vote to the people.  Let Congress debate the issue.  Let members of Congress hear from their constituents on the matter.  Let talk radio light up over the issue.  Let letters to the editor flow.  Let the talking heads argue for hours on end.  And then let the people's representatives make a decision.  And then honor that decision.

You know what?  The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they invested Congress with the power to declare war, and all the other powers that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gives to Congress to deal with national security issues.  We're supposed to be living in a democracy and warmaking -- when it is not an emergency decision -- is supposed to be a decision that is up to the people's representatives.  The Cold War and 9/11 have so distorted our democratic system that nobody bats an eye that one guy -- Obama -- is going to decide what our nation will do in Afghanistan. 

By following my suggestion, Obama can kill 2 birds with one stone: take the weight of the political decision off his own shoulders, and start to restore the health of our democratic system of government.

Race report: Savageman Half '09

Deep Creek Lake, MD
Sept. 20, 2009

I was stressed about 3 major things on the Savageman Triathlon, the “world’s hardest half.”  First, would I be able to make it up the short but super-steep 31% grade “Westernport Wall” without unclipping or falling over (which is hard enough that succeeding earns you the privilege of getting your name engraved in a brick they put in the roadway), humilitating myself in front of the big crowd and getting an ignominious video of myself posted on YouTube?

Second, would I be able to handle the bike course -- 5,800 feet of climbing, most of it packed within 30 miles of the 56-mile course -- without my legs totally blowing up and leaving me walking my bike up every little riser and generally miserable as hell?  I jumped into this race somewhat casually, aware of “the wall” but not really aware of how difficult the *rest* of the race was.  A month before the race, I finally took a look at the course, freaked out a little (as someone who is not an especially strong hill climber) and peppered my biking group with a series of panicked e-mails.  

Third, would I be able to do the run, which was a little longer than I was conditioned for, without reinjuring my old stress fracture injury, when I thought (imagined?) that I was feeling some pain in that area after an 8.5 mile run two weeks before.  Worst case scenario: sharp shooting pains during the race, followed by a DNF and 6 weeks wearing a boot. 

Piled in the car on Saturday with my friends Will Colston and Dave Phillips for the drive to Deep Creek lake.  Driving toward the check-in, we saw a sign that said “Mile 35” and got excited to realize we were actually on the race course.  So when we came to the course turnoff, we followed it while Dave, who had pre-ridden the course several weeks earlier, narrated what it was like to ride it.  Basically, we drove straight up, and then straight down, and then straight up.  I took a few photos along the way.  It was good to get a realistic sense of what we’d be riding the next day. 

Dave and Will -- checking out Killer Miller the day before the race

After checking in and racking our bikes and attending the race meeting, we wandered off to our motel, had a nice pasta dinner and shared a pitcher of beer, and I had ice cream, then we crashed early.

We woke up at a civilized hour of 6:00 AM and had breakfast, not leaving the hotel until after 7:00. The race didn’t start until 8:30, because in prior years the start had been delayed by fog.  The temperature was in the mid 60s I think, with the water in the high 60s. An absolutely gorgeous day. Our wave was the last of 4 and didn’t go off until around 10 before nine. 

The gun went off and I started strong but as always concentrated on staying loose and relaxed at the start, when it is so easy to overdo it.  I felt good, though after a few minutes I felt my paucity of swim training over the previous summer (hadn’t done a single swim in 2 weeks).  On the first third of the swim it was impossible to sight because we were swimming straight into the sun, but I was surrounded by plenty of other swimmers so I didn’t sweat the navigation.  I noticed that a bunch of swimmers pulled ahead of me and then I felt I was swimming alone, until I started passing through the back of the prior wave. This made me feel I was swimming slowly.  Then a while after the first turnaround I found myself 25 yards to the left of the buoys and all the other swimmers and cursed the element of navigation, which always adds a wild card to swim times.  But, at least it kept me from swimming into the prior-wave swimmers.  Overall I felt good on the swim, relaxed and comfortable. My time was 30:56, which is actually a PR for me on a half ironman swim.  I think it was new wetsuit, which feels faster than my old one; it certainly wasn’t my swim training.  I ranked 39th of 219 male starters and 6th out of 48 men in my 40-44 age group.

I swam up the beach until my hand hit sand, stood, passed over the timing mat, and then did something I don’t think I’ve ever done in a triathlon:  I walked to transition. Unlike every other race I’ve done, except the Ironman, I made no effort to log quick transitions.  I sauntered over to my bike, pulled off the wetsuit, toweled myself off, put on a shirt (which I didn’t wear underneath my wetsuit as usual as I wanted to be dry on the bike), socks, bike shoes, jammed a pump and some food in my pockets, and headed out for the bike course.  Having been warned about how an 18-mile downhill ride at 9:20 in the morning wet from the swim could be very cold, I had thought about wearing arm warmers and a windbreaker.  Except, I forgot my windbreaker at home. But once in transition, as usually happens to me, I felt plenty warm and departed with just my wet tri shorts and my usual sleeveless tri shirt. T1 time: 3:32. Amazingly to me, despite all that leisure in T1, I still logged a faster time than all but 46 of the 219 men who started this race.

I barely got out of transition when I had my first hill experience.  I coulda sworn I’d put my bike in a low gear before parking it but as I mounted I had to grind to avoid falling over as it was already a bit of a pitch and I was in way too hard of a gear.  Recovered from that, rode up the hill to the main park road, and headed out for about a mile to the first steep hill – a nice little wakeup call maybe the equivalent of Tilden Road in DC.  Then it was 18 miles of flat and downhill (some of it dangerously steep and winding) on a beautiful road along the Savage River.  Then into a valley where we were met with what to me was the most dramatic sight of the day:  a gigantic paper factory, nestled among the beautiful hills, shooting great plumes of white smoke into the air.  I guess they do still make some things in America.

Then into the town of Westernport, where I could hear the noise of the crowd in the distance.  “Okay here goes” I said to myself as I made the turn and looked

straight up and the hill in front of me ribboning up into the sky.  I was expecting it to be bad, so it didn’t really freak me out.  I muscled up the first few hills; since I was uncertain exactly what I would be dealing with on the last, toughest block with the rough pavement (see here for a taste -- but the videos generally don’t capture just how steep the hill is) I took my time and did some zig-zagging to conserve my legs as much as possible. Then I got to the big block and concentrated on keeping my weight forward so my front wheel wouldn’t lift up but not so far forward that my rear wheel would spin out, and my chest down, and just motored straight up it, concentrating on the 4 feet of pavement in front of my bike and the

crowd around me was a blur, and just like that it was over.  “That wasn’t such a big deal” I said to myself.  Then I looked up and saw that after like a 5 yard pause the road continued up toward the sky at a pitch scarcely any shallower than the much-balleyhood wall and I knew I had 7 miles of steep climbing ahead of me.  Crazy. 

The next 30 miles was a blur of laboring up mountains and twisty, frightening, almost surrealistic plunges into hollows and valleys.  At one point there was a 3 mile climb (in Savage River state forest) averaging 4%, and that was my favorite, since that’s the kind of grade that’s close enough to flat that I can do well in, and I actually passed some people on that hill instead of being passed.  That hill led without a break straight into the 9% McAndews Hill, which was followed by some flat and then in short order by the 8% Otto Lane.  Meanwhile through all of this I knew that coming up was the formidable Killer Miller climb (1.3 mile, 8% average, 22% peak grade) that I had seen from the car the day before.  After a long, steep descent – too twisty and technical to really relax on –- I was there and I labored up it, proud to be passing a guy or two walking their bikes, though I did some more zig-zagging again on this hill.  Though I had seen it from the car, I was shocked just how long it was.  It just kept going and going and going.  Meanwhile, as on all the hills of this race, there were humorous teasing signs on the side of the road such as “How is that aero working for you now?”

If you were to think that was the top of the hill, you'd be wrong

Finally reached the top and stopped to refill my one water bottle at the aid station there.  Then back on the bike – straight up another hill.  The last 15 miles were flattER but not flat.  We still weren’t exactly in Kansas.  In some ways this was the hardest part of the ride, since the excitement was gone, and yet there were still lots of hills (even if not as crushing as what came before) and I was feeling very tired.  The fact that a group of 4-5 guys overtook me and drifted ahead was also kind of demoralizing – I wanted to feel that at least on this less hilly section I could make up some ground on the field (however, I did overtake these fellows on the last 2 miles or so when there was a lot of downhill and true flat). 

Such sympathy!

Climbing Big Savage Mountain I dropped my chain once, and I stopped at the aid stations on top of Big Savage Mountain and Killer Miller but otherwise never had to unclip.  It is nice to know I can survive this kind of a ride.  My 12/27 cassette and compact crank certainly helped -- and I did spend a huge amount of this day in my granny gear. Of course, part of the reason that it was so tough was not just the hills, but the fact that it was a race, with the time pressure that entails (no long chit-chats at the top of big hills as we are wont to do on our Sunday group rides), and also the fact that it was preceded by a refreshing but somewhat energy-draining swim, and followed by a half-marathon run.

Total bike time: 3:44:20.  That is roughly an hour slower than my other four half-irons, and only 1:45 faster than my bike split on my ironman race (and I spent a lot more time in anaerobic territory on this race than on the ironman).  For the bike split I ranked 100th of 219 men and 20/48 in my age group. 

The run.  Ouch.  I’ve done a fair number of triathlons in the past couple of years, including four prior half ironmans, but good god my legs were shot as I came into transition.  Again I took my time, unloading the 2 empty gel packs from my shirt, sitting down, taking off my socks, and putting on some shoes.  My plan was to run the first lap with shoes on, since according to the course description there were numerous gravel portions, and then hopefully, depending on what I observed, do the second lap barefoot.  I hadn’t run in shoes since my Ironman.  Unfortunately I was running late when I left my house for this race and I left a number of things behind, including my Puma H Street running flats, which I was planning to use here since they did not injure me for the Ironman.  So though I hated to do it, I ran in my absolute favorite shoes of all time, my Vivo Barefoot Aqua shoes.   They are actually great for running, it’s just that I like them so much, they are so much like going barefoot, and I can get away with wearing them to somewhat formal occasions, and expensive enough that I hate to wear them out by running with them.

Again I actually *walked* out of transition.  I was just so tired; my chest was sore from breathing so hard and so long on the bike, and my legs were pretty beat up.  But, I always force myself to run the first mile of a tri no matter how bad things are (since my desire to walk actually declines once my legs loosen up after the first couple of miles) so once I crossed the timing mats I reluctantly set into a jog.  I did so quite gingerly because I was still afraid of my old stress fracture which first hit me on my very first half iron race (which I ran in shoes BTW).  To my surprise, what hurt was my left knee.  But that didn’t worry me; a little tendon and ligament pain was something I could handle.  I figured I’d run the first 3 miles, which would bring me back by transition, see how my ankle felt, and make a decision at that point.  The knee pain probably came from the fact that I did the bike ride with my bike set to a brand new geometry (road instead of aero).  In any case it soon faded away (and I didn't feel it after the race).

The first 3 miles were just tough, tough, tough. I suffered through the first mile, and then the second, walking wherever there was a hill.  At mile 3 still no ankle pain so I kept slogging along.  Around this point I saw DC Mayor Adrien Fenty.  Last time I was in a race with him he passed me at mile 10 of the run, but this time he was already well ahead, probably 3 miles.  I gave him a cheer and he waved and cheered back.  Poor guy, I thought afterwards, he probably just wants to put his head down and suffer through the run like everybody else, but probably has to keep acknowledging jerks like me. 

The course looped through a campground, along a main park road, and then headed for an out-and-back up a very rocky and steep fire road for about a quarter mile.  Then back to the main road, and along some gravel roads back to transition.  I just walked up the fire road (“Swim, Bike, Hike!” I thought to myself) but enjoyed the run back down it.  By this time I realized my legs and the rest of me was feeling much better.  I still walked every hill, but felt stronger. 

On the loop at the campground and the fire road out & back I passed Will, who looked to be about a mile behind me.  He and I would probably have been running side by side if I didn’t have about 7 minutes on him on the swim.  About 3 miles in I was passed by a very strong and sprightly looking Dave, who was on his *second* lap.  Holy cow, amazing.

After passing by transition, and running through a short gravel road, I paused to take my shoes off and jam them in the back of my shorts and race belt.  Ah, liberation!  It felt great to feel the road again, and I tackled the task of getting this second loop done.  This also meant that the comments began – though since a widely read New York Times article on barefooting came out, I find fewer people think I’m plumb loco (though more might think I’m just some trendy guy responding to something I saw in the paper).  I was periodically bedevilled by cramping in my right hamstring – a cramp that had first emerged in the latter stages of the bike ride, and cropped up in the first loop of the run and the first part of the second.  Usually I find I am able to “think away” a cramp and for the most part that continued to work.  I also ate some salt tablets, but I don’t have much faith that they actually do anything so any placebo effect is lost on me, though it’s possible I would have been worse off without them.  In any case, with the amount of walking I was doing anyway, the cramps weren’t more than an annoyance. 

By this time I had settled into a tolerable steady state of low-level pain and just counted off the miles as I ran, seeing Will again twice at about the same spots as on the first loop.  I continued to walk the steep hills, and put my shoes on for the quarter-mile out and back up the fireroad. Despite some uncomfortable gravel at the end of the loop, I otherwise kept them off, and finished the run in 2:24:01, the slowest half iron run I’ve done (though only by 12 seconds, and it wasn’t nearly as painful overall as my worst run, when I persisted in thinking I should run the whole race without walking breaks).  My run time put me at 126th of 219 among men and 19th of 48 in my age group.  Amazingly within my age group I placed better in the run than on the bike, which has got to be a first for me and must reflect how bad I am at biking hills relative to flats.  My pace was just under 11:00 a mile – pretty bad but I’m still proud I did this run. 

Overall my time was 6:45:42, which put me in 94th place of 219 men and 16th of 48 in my age group.  Will was just a few minutes behind me, and Dave Phillips’ performance was amazing, finishing in 5:22 and winning his age group.  Although my time was 70 minutes slower than other half irons I’ve raced, I am more proud of completing this race than any of the others!

Overall, it was simply a wonderful race and I can’t wait to do it again next year!  The swim was great, the bike course was challenging and exciting and fun, the run was painful but perfectly nice, the venue was gorgeous, and the production of the race was flawless.  This was a race that clearly was not put on by any corporate machine –- it seemed to be a labor of love, the object of pride of a group of people that is genuinely passionate about this race.  The food was good, the logistics were relatively hassle-free, the volunteers were super, and a sense of fun and friendliness pervaded the event.  One thing I especially appreciated was that they had many many photographers stationed around the course, and promise to sell pictures for reasonable rates for once (when will the rest of the world figure out that photography, like everything that’s made of bits, has been devalued and is no longer worth what has traditionally been charged? But I digress...) 

After finishing, Will and I went for a swim in the 68-degree Deep Creek Lake, which felt so great I have no words for it.  We ate the wonderful french fries and BBQ they were serving, cheered for Dave as he collected his age group prize, and went home happy (Savage)men. 

The Gates Affair

The Henry Louis Gates incident is a couple of weeks old now and a lot has been said & written about it, but I am still bothered by it.  I have been a fan of Gates since I read his excellent memoir Colored People in the mid-1990s.  But the thing that bothers me about this doesn't have anything to do with race -- it's that many of our cops seem to think they can arrest someone for disrespecting them -- and an amazing range and number of Americans seem to think either that this is correct -- that it is illegal to give a police officer a piece of your mind -- or that a cop's retaliation against such behavior is something that should just be accepted. Have Americans really become such a weak, docile, timid and authority-cowering people as that?

The woman who called the police was blameless.  I would not be surprised if America's racial context and history played a role in the initial telephone call to the police reporting a possible break-in; on the other hand the house HAD been broken into before, and what homeowner wouldn't prefer that someone in such a situation make a report rather than not, if there is any doubt.

The police were blameless for showing up at Gates's house.  I would also not be surprised if race played a role in the attitude and bearing of the police officer, James Crowley, when he challenged Gates.  Gates reports that his bearing was hostile.  However, unless you were there, this is subtle and fundamentally unknowable.  On the other hand, if Crowley just accepted that Gates was the homeowner, and Gates later turned out to in fact be a burglar, he would have become the laughingstock of the Boston Police Department.

Gates was blameless for being angry. Given our national history of which Gates as much as anyone was all too aware, as well as whatever personal animosity took place between the two men, any anger that Gates may have displayed may have been understandable (and let it be noted that Gates denies being verbally abusive, and in fact says that a throat condition prevented him from raising his voice - his most detailed account of the incident is here).  And, regardless of whether it was understandable, it was entirely within his rights as an American not only to ask for the office's badge number (which under Massachusetts law the officer was required to furnish him) but also, if he so chose, to express his anger verbally to the officer in any way he saw fit short of credible threats of violence.  It may not be prudent to shower verbal abuse upon a police officer, given the inevitable discretion that the police have in enforcing the law (in many circumstances there may just be a legitimate infraction to be found under which a police officer can legitimately charge you).  But when a man is standing in his own house, that is not a circumstance in which any self-respecting self-governing democratic citizen of our brave nation should have to cower and crimp and swallow anger before an official who has no legitimate business on your property (and from the moment Gates had established his residency by showing Crowley his Harvard ID and driver's license with address, Crowley no longer had any legitimate business on Gate's property).

Up until this point, other than the probable but ultimately unknowable role played by the overall racial history and culture in the United States, everyone was pretty much blameless in this unfortunate incident.  Then the cop arrested Gates.

Crowley had no legitimate or legal basis on which to arrest Gates.  This was implicitly recognized by the Cambridge prosecutors who dropped the charges faster than molten lead.  He abused his authority in a very serious manner, handcuffing and bringing to jail an innocent man as a retaliation for having his personal feelings hurt.  As those prosecutors surely know, "disrespecting a police officer" is not a crime and indeed is an activity protected by the First Amendment as much case law around the United States makes clear.  The ACLU regularly takes and wins cases of people arrested for "flipping the bird" at officers of the law who are not professional enough to handle it without abusing their power in retaliation.  Overbroad "disturbing the peace" statutes are the most common vehicles for such abuses of authority.

This incident prompted a lot of discussion about race in America, and that is as it should be, but the nation should have risen up and recognized as one that the arrest constituted an abuse of power, and should have been used as a teaching moment not only to the public, but also to many police officers, who apparently need it, that disrespecting a police officer may be justified or it may not be, but it is every American's right.  Instead Crowley was allowed to continue defending his abuse of power, seeming or perhaps worse genuinely unaware that Gates did not break any law, as in this appalling piece.

Five factors behind the Town Hall Crazies

Everywhere I go everyone seems to be talking about the recent health care town hall meetings and how the country feels like it is going a little bit crazy right now.  My take is that there are five factors behind this:

1. We have a serious situation in this country: a pretty crazy right-wing media machine that pumps out lies and disinformation to a receptive slice of the population. For years a lot of people have talked about the fragmentation of media, and now it has come to pass.  The fact is, we must share our country with a lot of fellow citizens who get their information from liars and crazy people, and whose reality is defined by those broadcasters.  Many smart philosophers have concluded that reality is socially constructed; we all live in a complicated world - much more complicated than we can directly observe ourselves - and most of our understanding of our world comes not from direct observation but from imaginative construction based on the reporting of others.  However, as I have discussed before, this is a highly unreliable process, and when people hear that Obama was not born in the United States, or that he is threatening to take away everybody's health care, and do not access any sources of information that refute that claim, they in all earnestness believe it.  The anecdote cited by Paul Krugman just sums it all up: the guy who stood up at a meeting and demanded, "keep your government hands off my Medicare!"
2. The country has always had a foaming right wing fringe.  Before the Birthers, there were Birchers (members of the loony John Birch society) and other wild-eyed far-right conservatives driven crazy by civil rights and socialism.  And a history of "respectable" business interests making use of that fringe from time to time for political and/or economic purposes (such as in the McCarthy and civil rights periods). In many ways what we are seeing is not new, it is just more apparent because it is being pumped up and turned out by the right-wing media machine, as well as by certain for-profit organizing groups that are being paid by the health care lobby in order to turn out the crazies. 
3. It looks like there is a racist element here as well - that many of these people feel alienated from their government because someone who is irrevocably "other" to them has taken over leadership of the country.
4. The media is overdramatizing individual interactions because they make good television and making the lunatic fringe look like a significant political force.  (The reform forces need to make the media's inability to convey abstractions work in their own favor by finding and dramatizing individual victims of our barbaric health care system.)
5. The economic situation may, in some diffuse way, be creating a pool of free-floating angst and anger that is finding a (perverse and counter-productive) outlet in these incidents.  The Great Depression sparked grassroots movements and leaders such as the Townsendites, Huey Long, and Father Coughlin.  Whenever the nation experiences such turmoil, people will cast about for answers, and that process of defining blame and solutions is highly unreliable; it can lead to genuine reform that actually solves problems and makes people's lives better, as happened during the New Deal, or it can swing right and turn nasty, as happened for example in the 1930s in Germany, or in the U.S. South, where poor whites, oppressed by a wealthy aristocracy, occasionally banded together with poor blacks to push for unions and other economic reforms, but more often were led into lashing out against their black brethren in a long-term conflict that set poor man against poor man and increased misery and unhappiness for all instead of addressing its causes. 

All of this insanity raises an obvious question: if Obama's mild, gradualist health care proposals have sparked all of this right-wing gnashing and bashing, why shouldn't he have gone ahead and proposed a health-care fix more far-reaching and direct?  It's not as if the opposition could be any less vociferous. Then at least it would give progressives like me something to get excited about to counterbalance these misinformed loonies. 

So far Obama is looking like just another weak, spineless début du siècle Democrat - all reconciliation, no ferocity.  But reconciliation with crazy and utterly misinformed people does not make sense; there's no percentage in it, and people who are dying because of our health system deserve a little ferocity on their behalf for once.  This fight will test Obama's meddle; if he loses this round, will he cave and never bring up health care again, as Clinton did, or will he pick himself up, propose something even tougher, and get right back into the fight again?

This is the "hope" we all heard about, time to produce.