Lost in the shady grove

In the end, it was all because of Santhosh.

It was supposed to be a quality workout along the Powerline. Joe said "Run easy", up the Hill of Death and then we'll run the Powerline hard; 4 lengths. He then showed us a short-cut to get up the Hill of Death instead of going all the way to Sculpture Falls and come back. When I say showed, he told us where to cross the creek, and told us to follow the trail to run up the Hill of Death. Once we all gathered together, we crossed the creek, and at the very first fork in the road, we promptly did not care to realise it was a fork, left the good path, and comfortably ventured into uncharted territory. A few winding hills, add to it a couple of instinctively-wrong turns, and couple of clearings with multiple roads later, we were decidedly lost. Gaurav became Colombus, and Santhosh alternated between his evil laugh and the famed imitation of the grey wolf.

A lot of consternation and conversation later, including some merry moments (I climbed a tree to see if I could spot the direction of the Powerlines, and could only see the setting sun), we emerged at the other end of the Powerline having covered an easy extra 3 miles than what we had intended to cover. Later turned out, we had amidst all our following the not-taken-road, we had atleast covered the Shady Loop if not more, in making our way to the Moon Shadow. (Moon Shadow, incidentally is the top of the Powerline, so spake Joe's map.) The rest was tame, we did 3 lengths of the Powerline instead of 4, and came down the well trodden path back to Hill of Life and to a smiling Joe, who promptly said, "No matter how hard you try to mark any trail, you can never make them idiot-proof".

If you are wondering how it was all Santhosh's fault, it must have been, there is no other explanation.

The 2nd week of Sunmart training

57 miles. This week was the most we've run in any one week so far. Monday and Friday with its cross-trainings were promptly skipped, or glossed 0ver if you prefer that. Thursday easy run happened around IF, close enough to home and such. Tuesday, I did track workouts with the full marathon folks at the School for the Deaf.

Wednesday we were slated for Hill of Life (HOL) repeats. The HOL if you dont know it, has an elevation gain of nearly 400 ft. over a distance of half a mile; and if you try running it, it feels like you've come 10miles in those 10minutes of the climb. Joe said we are going down the longer way, and climbing the hill the short (0.5mi) way back; we do at least 4 repeats; we dont do more than 6 repeats. Santhosh promptly asked if he should do 6 repeats. Joe left it to us how many we wanted to do; and just said, "4 will achieve the intentions of the workout, any more you do, is to show off that you are 'the man'!". Needless to say, Santhosh did 5. (To be absolutely frank, I did 5 too. But the last one was accompanying Ani on her last repeat. )

HOL repeats were a lot of fun. I learnt an important lesson of hill running. DONT. The two laps when I power walked up the hill were faster than the two laps I tried running up the hill. Joe also demonstrated the fun way to skip down hills where you just let go, and the foot will find its way. Of course, all good in theory only.

The weekend I was in Palo Alto, and I hooked up with Anil Rao to run my 22miler. Anil and me go back a long way, to our training for each of our first marathons, back in summer of 2003. Since then Anil has run 10 ultras including 3 50-milers. He's running one more first weekend of November, and he was also planning a 22-mile run on Saturday. We met at Campbell Park where rest of the Asha SV team was also doing a 20-22 mile training run for the Chicago marathon. The 22 was fairly uneventful, except that Anil gave me a lot of information about what he and Rajeev (my coach) had learnt over time, in terms of nutrition etc. Later Rajeev also gave me some gaiters to cover the shoe while running in dirt. Sunday run was more nostalgic than hard. I ran in Rancho San Antonio, on the familiar PG&E trail and the upper wildcat trail. Covered 14miles and actually felt good at the end of it.

I am really looking forward to the next week when all we do is REST, after Wednesday.

The 1st week of Sunmart training

My Sunmart training started on the Wednesday, unlike the previous Saturday for most people in the group. I promptly missed the Thursday 5-mile run, of course missed the Friday cross-training and landed up at HOL on saturday morning looking forward to a fun run on the trail again.

Anurag was in town, that and a dentist appointment kept Ani away. Sanjeev and Gaurav were going to do 7mi. Ganesh was planning to do a 7 and 7. Santhosh and myself planned to do the 10 and 7. We started off nicely, quickly got down the HOL, crossed the dam, and made our way up the hill towards the Powerline. Soon there was a fork, and the larger wider road along the right fork was apparently to be avoided. Santhosh promptly went along the wider road, and soon we lost sight of all flags, and came to another fork. Here we again randomly took the right fork, and after some time, voila, there were the flags again. Turned out, although we did not immediately realise, we had done a loop (2 miles) and come back to the start of the hill, right at the dam. Eventually, we meandered and muddled our way through forks, came upon Jim, our saviour for the day, and got to the top of the Powerline after 6miles of running instead of 4. Around then my allergies started acting up. We continued down Hill of Death, across Sculpture Falls, and almost up to 360 and back we came up the Hill of Life. By then I was sneezing incessantly.

I've always breathed through my mouth during running. But today I discovered that breathing only through the mouth, with a fully blocked nose, and continuous sneezing, is not a breezy proposition. As we started our second loop of 7mi, I was fairly out of breath, and had to start walking. That was when I first noticed that Santhosh with his colorful Motive socks, looked like he was wearing Clif Bars on the back of his legs. After a long time, I finally made it to the top of the Powerline. Having by then discovered a pace which kept my breathing steady, although heavy, I decided to run the remaining 3 miles back. At one point Santhosh heard my breathing and likened it to an asthmatic bull dog. All good things of course come to an end, so did the run. The rest of the weekend was spent in bed fighting the damned allergies.

And we are off...

The first day of SunMart 50M training. Fairly unsure about running on trails, and sufficiently scared by the laughs of Joe and Steve at the info-session, we joined forces at the head of Hill of Life. Santhosh could not make it since he was with the Half marathon folks, and Ganesh I think had an exam the next day. Gaurav, Ani, Sanjeev and myself started with the rest of the runners and of course Joe. Joe turned out crazier than we had expected, and most of the other runners had run ultras before or at the very least seemed very comfortable with trail running and the Greenbelt trails.

Steve's post had said the workout would involve 20 repeats of 30s-hard-30s-easy intervals. Without a watch, Gaurav and myself started counting (mississippi-ly) and we went past 10 repeats, then 20, then 30, when we decided we had to be lost. At that point we figured the smart thing to do was to conserve energy and water, and we walked some distance. Finally we saw Joe's flags again and made it back to the base of Hill of Life, only to find a smiling Joe who said we ran 6miles, and that Steve sets the workouts, while he, Joe, charts the route!!

All in all, a great start to the training. Trail running is incredible fun. Having run on the roads continuously for more than three years now, I discovered trail running is a whole different ball game. I am sure there are aspects of it which will make it much harder than road running. However, today, trail running was a far far better fun run than most road runs.

a new Mersenne prime

A new Mersenne prime was discovered a few weeks ago, the largest prime number discovered to date --- "2 raised to the 30,402,457th power minus 1".

Mersenne primes are a special category of primes expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, in which "p" also is a prime number. The theorems around mersenne primes turn out to be so aesthetic, that they had to have "come straight from the book". :)

Mersenne primes have a very interesting history:
[a] pre 1532
Mathematicians conjectured that all (2^n - 1) were primes for every prime n.

[b] 1532
Regius proved that (2^11 - 1) was not a prime.

[c] 1600
Cataldi proved (2^17 - 1) and (2^19 - 1) were both primes and conjectured that the theorem was true for primes 23, 29, 31, and 37.

[d] 1640
Fermat proved Cataldi was wrong about 23 and 37.

[e] 1644
Mersenne conjectured the theorem was true for primes 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 61, 127 and 257 and false for any other prime less than 258.

[f] 1947
It took excess of 3 centuries for folks to come to a mathematical conclusion about Mersenne's conjecture. Turned out, his conjecture was pretty close. He was right about all this primes, and had missed out 89 and 107. Took a lot of mathematicians, from Euler to our very own Ramanujam to verify Mersenne's theorem.

Subsequently, various folks have come up with tests for checking primality based on Mersenne primes (including the non-exponential primality test from IIT Kanpur) and with all the computing power available for brute force testing, what was discovered recently was the 43rd Mersenne prime.

Back in 1965 or so, math dept of Urbana cracked the Mersenne prime for n=11213. They were so kicked, they made a stamp out of it and would imprint it on all postal letters going out of the Urbana math dept (see below). This of course lasted until 1976 when Urbana math dept cracked the four-color theorem and proved it correct. After that for a while, the four-color theorem was on the envelopes.


More details about Mersenne Primes here

fun stuff.
Vinod

Development as Freedom

AMARTYA SEN, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998, is best known for his studies of poverty and famine. He has argued that no democracy has ever suffered a famine--a striking instance of his larger point that many issues of distribution cannot be analyzed in economic terms alone. Development as Freedom is an important overview of his thought, and one of his most accessible works, though still not an easy read.

Amartya Sen wants us to "think capabilities, not commodities." Sen places economic life within the wider context of personal and societal wellbeing. He thinks a central task of a good society is to "convert," as efficiently as possible, economic wealth into human capabilities. Some societies are better at this than others. Sen gives examples of countries with relatively high income per capita but low quality of life (South Africa, Singapore) and others with relatively low income per capita but high quality of life (Sri Lanka, Costa Rica). The purpose of economic development, then, should be not the production of more and more goods, or the creation of more and more wealth, but rather the expansion of people's capabilities to function and thrive in their communities. It is relevant to ask: Are people well nourished? Are they able to obtain a good education? Can they appear in public without shame?

This shift of framework can seem rather abstract until Sen applies it to matters, literally, of life and death. Take famines. Conventional wisdom long held that famines are caused by the lack of food. According to this view, the answer to famine is to provide emergency food relief and then increase or repair a country's total food production. Sen has shown that while food supply is relevant, the ability of people to control their access to that food is most crucial. A country in which people can share the available food supply can almost always avoid famine. Democracies are more successful at avoiding famine because starving people and their advocates are able to make their demand for help more politically compelling. Democratic India, for example, has managed to warn its politicians about impending famines, and thereby has avoided them, while authoritarian China in the late 1950s did not get that message to its leaders, and starvation followed.

The capability framework also sheds light on the household. Sen shows that income earned in the market by a male breadwinner is often not evenly distributed within the household, due to cultural as well as legal factors that discriminate against women. Standard economic analysis (if it doesn't peer inside the institution of the family) overlooks the resulting inequality. Households in which mothers have adequate education and access to outside employment achieve better health, not just for mothers but for their girls and boys alike.

The market system is often touted for the instrumental freedoms it provides for people--that is, the market helps people to meet basic needs like having adequate nutrition and shelter. But Sen argues that the market system also produces the intrinsic good of participation--participation in social life through "freely" chosen work and through buying and selling products of one's choosing. Even staunch supporters of the market often miss the significance of participation.

Sen aptly states that no market choices are fully free (they are constrained both by the talents and background of the individual and by the nature of society itself). This acknowledgment leads the author to note the potential value of redistribution to alleviate those severe inequalities that prohibit full participation in society. In addition, Sen points out that political and civic participation can help citizens to deliberate together about "what they really need" and what individual and societal ends are truly worth valuing.

In his final chapter Sen surveys the relationships between justice, freedom, and responsibility. And he reiterates the advantages of capabilities over narrower measures of human development. The idea of "human capital" is a step forwards, but is still too narrow in its restriction to effects on production; it fails to capture the direct contribution of human capabilities to well-being and freedom and their indirect effects on social change.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

or How the United States Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

John Perkins was a self-professed Economic Hit Man. He worked for a score and more years as chief economist at an international consulting firm in Boston called Chas. T. Main. His job was to persuade countries that are strategically important to the U.S. - such as Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Iran and Saudi Arabia - to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development from USAID and World Bank and then to make sure the lucrative projects were contracted out to U.S. corporations. This ensured that the principal money moved only from Washington D.C. to New York, Boston and San Francisco.

The countries which received all the infrastructure improved the lot of the top 2% of their elite and further marginalized bulk of their poorer population. Stuck with extraordinarily huge debts which they couldn't possibly repay, these countries came under the control of the U.S. government and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies. Terms of repayment were meted out and the foreign powers were forced to hand out free or cheap oil, allow U.S. military bases and other atrocious empire building actions.

As an economic hit man, chief economist John Perkins' job of persuasion entailed coming up with projected economic growth rate charts over a futuristic 25 years in the event of the country accepting the generous loans of the empire-building aid agencies. According to Perkins, when he and his ilk failed to convince the heads of state, the CIA (he calls them sharks) would move in and silently assassinate the president and instead place a puppet at the head who would agree to the terms of the loan. When this failed, U.S.A. would go to war, an Iraq would occur.

Very lucidly in his new book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins takes one through his career, from being hired as an econmic hit man to his actions in Indonesia, Equador, Panama, Saudi Arabia and Colombia. An insider's view to building an empire.

Here is a link to an interview with John Perkins with Amy Goodman on the Democracy Now website.

Lament for Eorl the Young

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

-- J. R. R. Tolkien

Although these lines are purported as a Lament for Eorl the Young, the first king of Rohan, clearly, this is not simply a paean for one man or his heroic deeds. It is a lament for all who have passed away; the horseman and the minstrel, the tiller of fields and the harvester of crops, the woodsman, the woodcutter and the tender of household fires and affairs. The Rohirrim (Eorl's people) were a tribe of nomadic horsemen and pasturers, who settled down a few hundred years before the events in The Lord of the Rings. This song is a lament for the last of the nomadic chieftains (the aforementioned Eorl), who was also the first of the Kings of the Golden Hall (as his seat of power was called).

The stanza recited by Aragorn evokes vivid scenes of a vibrant society and though it is mournful in tone, it voices no regret. It is constructed as a series of queries regarding the whereabouts of horse, rider, horn, helm, hauberk, etc. and are answered by allusions to the natural order of things – death being integral to that order.

The final question that you ask "Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning, Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?" deviates from the preceding litany by asking for an identity. It is, pointedly left unanswered, however. As it regards the ceaseless flow of time and the unending cycles of the tides, a continuation of natural events is implied.

And even though all these are rhetorical questions, they are nevertheless addressed to the characters listening in the story – Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli - as well as to the reader. One might assume that the answer to the last question, the one who is left unidentified in the verse, at one level are these listeners, and yet at an other level the reader him/herself, the audience to these lines of collective memory.

Either way, the survivors of Middle-earth, are the ones who will hold and treasure these memories, pass them along to their inheritors and behold the flowing of years.

A few comments on the form, from Martin of the minstrels site: the poem is consciously modelled on Old English verse - specifically, in the rhyming-couplet scheme and the heavy alliteration. Indeed, Tolkien based the Rohirric language on Anglo-Saxon at a sort of meta-linguistic level - it (i.e., true Rohirric) bears the same relation to the Common Speech of the characters in the book as does Old English to our modern language. As you've probably realized by now, a large part of the seeming 'authenticity' of The Lord of the Rings stems from the author's attention to detail and his linguistic skills; Tolkien himself commented (on more than one occasion) that the languages of Middle Earth were the most important component of his 'sub-creation'.

Three years running...

Its been a better part of three years now, and going past the finish line has easily been the most addictive feeling of my life. It even beats bridge.

Here's a full list of my races (best times for any particular distance in red).

[027] 04DEC2005 :: Dekker Challenge 20K :: Austin, TX. (1h-59m-53s)
[026] 20NOV2005 :: Motive Half Marathon :: Austin, TX. (2h-16m-20s)
[025] 16OCT2005 :: Pervasive PowerCharge 10M :: Austin, TX. (1h-32m-43s)
[024] 09OCT2005 :: Chicago Marathon :: Chicago, IL. (4h-58m-43s)
[023] 02OCT2005 :: IBM Uptown Classic 10K :: Austin, TX. (0h-58m-15s)
[022] 15MAY2005 :: Bangalore Half Marathon :: Bangalore, India. (2h-19m-21s)
[021] 04APR2005 :: Texas Roundup 10K :: Austin, TX. (0h-55m-39s)
[020] 13FEB2005 :: Freescale Marathon :: Austin, TX. (4h-33m-04s)
[019] 25JAN2005 :: 3M Half Marathon :: Austin, TX. (1h-55m-06s)
[018] 16JAN2005 :: RunTex Buda 30K :: Austin, TX. (3h-09m-31s)

[017] 05DEC2004 :: Dekker Challenge 20K :: Austin, TX. (1h-52m-01s)
[016] 21NOV2004 :: Motive Half Marathon :: Austin, TX. (2h-07m-12s)
[015] 24OCT2004 :: Pervasive PowerCharge 10M :: Austin, TX. (1h-38m-04s)
[014] 03OCT2004 :: IBM Uptown Classic 10K :: Austin, TX. (0h-54m-42s)
[013] 01SEP2004 :: Congress Avenue Mile :: Austin, TX. (0h-05m-57s)
[012] 05JUN2004 :: San Diego Marathon :: San Diego, CA. (4h-59m-05s)
[011] 17APR2004 :: Texas Roundup 10K :: Austin, TX. (0h-57m-18s)
[010] 15FEB2004 :: Motorola Marathon :: Austin, TX. (4h-34m-47s)
[009] 25JAN2004 :: 3M Half Marathon :: Austin, TX. (1h-47m-31s)
[008] 11JAN2004 :: RunTex Buda 30K :: Austin, TX. (3h-15m-42s)
[007] 18JAN2004 :: Houston Half Marathon :: Houston, TX. (2h-02m-14s)

[006] 07DEC2003 :: Dekker Challenge 12M :: Austin, TX. (1h-49m-37s)
[005] 20NOV2003 :: Motive Half Marathon :: Austin, TX. (2h-01m-13s)
[004] 26OCT2003 :: San Antonio Relay(2) Marathon :: San Antonio, TX. (2h-01m-01s)
[003] 19OCT2003 :: Pervasive PowerCharge 10M :: Austin, TX. (1h-29m-01s)
[002] 12OCT2003 :: Royal Victoria Marathon :: Victoria, Canada. (5h-36m-17s)
[001] 05OCT2003 :: IBM Uptown Classic 10K :: Austin, TX. (0h-53m-12s)

My first marathon...

When I ran the Victoria Marathon...

I finished the Royal Victoria Marathon in 5 and 1/2 hours and raised $3224.80 in a total of almost $160K raised by the entire Asha marathon team.

At the end of it all, the most profound revelation that I experienced was the infinite capacity that man has, to eat multiple kilograms of pasta for three weeks at a stretch and not retch at the merest mention of the Roman delicacy.

We pretty much had the entire plane for ourselves. We were 50 extremely noisy and hyperactive, aspiring marathoners on our way to Victoria. We received stares of amazement, amusement and abject displeasure from airline authorities, shopkeepers, and from the general public at large. Victoria from the air is an amazing sight. We landed the day before the marathon, went around the marathon course, felt very discouraged looking at the hills, and came back very apprehensive and tense. Little did we know the role to be played by those hills the next day.

The morning of the race was a disaster. It started out badly with the hotel alarm guy calling up to say "Sir, it is 4 a.m. and is expected to rain heavily all morning". And, was it raining. Seemed like we were back in the monsoons. It was also 30 degrees F, and was quite windy. Luckily there were large tents with heaters in them, and we were huddled around them "warming up" until the race started. We were scheduled for the early 6 a.m. start. Beautiful Victoria drenched in rain is a sight at 6 a.m. We were in high spirits! We were singing "Chale Chalo" from Lagaan and "In the morning" and we had the other runners laughing non-stop. Many of the non-Indians were very amused and were admiring our cheery attitude. It was very cold and getting warmed up was taking for ever.

The rest just happened in a dream. The course at various times went along the ocean. The view seen through a large film of water was breathtaking. I was doing good time until mile 18. I crossed the half way mark in 2 hrs 12min, and the 18 mile point in 3hrs 8min, and was on course to finish in about 4 1/2 hours. Then my quads cramped. I think it was because of the cold. After that, it took for ever to reach the end. Finally I finished in 5 1/2 hours. It took two more hours for the cramp to release.

Between miles 19 and 20, there was a hill of introspection. It was a good 800m long. Seemed like it was gaining many hundred feet of elevation. With 20mph winds blowing against us from the ocean and the ceaseless rains, the hill was quite conducive to the realization of self-evident truths, viz. This path doth cease. I felt nothing. I thought of nothing. Most of the time I felt empty. The next prominent thoughts were, "I am darn hungry" and "I could really use some sleep right now!". It was quite surreal.

However, the end was quite an emotional experience. It felt great to see 50 people huddled in one tent cheering each other on finishing the marathon task. I was upset at not finishing at my targeted time of 4:30 and was eager to participate in a nicer, gentler, flatter marathon where I could do it in a reasonably decent time.