Energy to Burn

Last night I did a fairly easy four mile warm-up, and then pressed Kent Ave to the BQE and back to the park. Running felt great, I felt fluid and relaxed, and pushing the pace felt right. O.'s computer said we ran negative splits that started at 7:20 and ended at 6:17. I'm going to try that in the Fred Lebow 5M race next weekend.

I had some shin pain this morning, on my right shin in the classic medial tibial area. Stretching seems to help it out. I think I'll try doing the standing series from Ashtanga for a couple of weeks, to see if that helps.

It's snowing and sticking, we'll see how my noon run goes.

Ready to Run

Since Gantry my only run has been 5-6 miles in Maryland while visiting my brother. It was treacherous, no shoulder on the road, patchy black ice and blind corners with traffic. Another word for it would be "stupid".

During my recovery week turned week and a half I developed shin pain, which I haven't experienced before. I hope it goes away soon.

I have a colony of ants in my pants, and can't wait for the club run tonight. Looking forward to a good long run on Sunday as well.

Gantry State Park with detour

Yesterday a nice group of us ran to Gantry State Park in Queens, and took a nifty detour down 2nd St to the tip of Hunters Point and watched the tugs pushing barges of recycling through Newtown Creek.

We opened it up on the way back, which kind of goes against "recovery week" mentality, but I'm not going to put on a hair-shirt over it, and it felt great. I'm resting again today. If I get a chance (meaning make time, don't puss out because of rain, etc.) I'll move my legs for a couple easy miles tomorrow.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Ted Corbitt 15k

Saturday was the Ted Corbitt 15k race in Central Park. It was two loops, neither of which included Harlem Hill, but they both featured Cat Hill. I finally managed to run a race with a sub 7 mile pace, which I was super happy with.

During the race itself I felt pretty worn out. I think a string of consecutive 40 - 50 mile weeks were starting to wear on me, so I'm taking a recovery week this week and cutting back to 20 or so, all a light effort. Hopefully that will leave me feeling fresh to start the 18 week cycle in preparation for Jersey.

Had a lovely run this morning, felt great after two days off. Kent Avenue was a bit of a nightmare, but we managed to find a bit of clear ground to run on. M. and I picked up a bit at the end, but kept it conversational and loose. It was 7 total miles for me. I can already tell I'll be chomping at the bit by the end of the week.

Getting out of the comfort zone

Talking to my middle hermano I said something along the lines of "my comfortable race pace" and was immediately ridiculed. Rightfully so. Because race pace isn't comfortable, of course.

Last night I pushed myself on the mile repeats and ran my four fastest timed miles, 6:07, 6:07, 6:14, 6:09. I was happy with my splits, but made the classic mistake of laying up a bit on the third of four. But I have no room to complain, other than over the lack of comfort.

I coined a new phrase. Long runs give me "runner's high". Intervals and repeats give me "runner's nut-punch".

Rested yesterday, mile repeats tonight

I took an unplanned rest day yesterday. I was feeling a bit worn out, and wanted to be fairly fresh for tonight's workout. Took a yoga class this afternoon with the incomparable Weena Pauly. It felt good to wring out a bit. Really must remember to do more twists in my home practice.

Tonight are cold-assed mile repeats. Earlier today I baked a pumpkin pie for the party at M.'s afterward. I'm stoked on the repeats, stoked on the party.

Tuesday Tempo Time

The club run was a four mile tempo run on the track. I warmed up for three miles, ran my pipe dream 15k pace for four miles, and cooled down for another three. I'm not really treating this week like a race week. I'll have three hard efforts in this week by the time Saturday rolls around, without two consecutive easy days. The runs sound too fun to miss, though, and that's why I'm in this. For the fun.

Caroling tonight, running 'round the 'hood spreading cheer. Mile repeats tomorrow, followed by a party at M.'s place. I'll probably rest completely on Friday, and hope by some strange twist that 45+ miles leading into the race this week leaves me with fresh legs come gun time.

Recovery run

Did a five mile recovery run today after the hard effort yesterday. I think I finally understand what a recovery run is, and that 40 minutes of increased blood flow without pressing too hard is just what the doctor ordered today.

I signed up for the Ted Corbitt 15k in Central Park on Saturday, and I'm pretty stoked. I think this might be the race where my current baby-trend of lowering my minutes per mile as the race gets longer ends. Or maybe not. We'll see on Saturday.

Nice to do this one while awake

When I first moved to Brooklyn I was a young buck. I liked to carouse, and would periodically wake up in Canarsie, at the end of the line of the L train, lulled to sleep by that beautiful BMT line.

Yesterday A. mapped out a route for the May marathoners that began at the Morgan stop on the L train, and followed its path to Canarsie and back. The route getting to Broadway Junction (a sight to behold from the ground) was well known to us, through Bushwick to the Cemetery of the Evergreens, then crossing Bushwick and the Eastern Parkway Extension. There we picked up Van Sinderen Ave, which is an urban running oasis. Van Sinderen is a one-way flowing south that hugs the elevated "L" line, with few through streets and little traffic. It is dark and creepy, with great views of graffiti in the fenced off areas under the trestle.

We all picked up the pace to a quick clip for the last few miles. On the last mile, the warm-down mile home, I felt absolutely whupped. I'm not sore today, and want to try fueling on the run for our next long run. I think it's possible I was out of sugar.

douglashunter

Douglas Hunter
6 Sharon Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
917.582.2324
douglashunter@gmail.com


Expert technologist looking for an opportunity to solve interesting
problems with a diverse group of colleagues who share a passion for
engaging with their work and each other.  Takes instruction well,
learns quickly and plays well with others.


Work Experience

2007 - Current
Freelance Computer Programmer

- (Oblong.com) Architected, built and deployed oblong.com using a
   front-end caching reverse proxy on apache2 built with the event
   MPM, mod_proxy and mod_cache.  Integrated backend apache 1.3
   mod_perl site with existing work-flow and intranet tools for
   publishing dynamic content.  Handily survived the Slashdottings.

- (allAfrica.com) Built and deployed a successful commenting and
   comment moderation system for allAfrica.com that drove up site
   traffic, increased user registrations and pages visited per site
   visit.

- (Open Source) Maintained XML::Comma, an open source information
   management platform available at http://xml-comma.org.  Added
   features, fixed bugs, refactored existing code.  Preserved
   backwards compatibility.

2007 - Current
Freelance Charcutier

- Struck a deal with a local farmer to process and cure his
   non-productive sows.

- Held community workshops to teach basic and advanced meat
   processing, curing and fresh sausage making techniques.

2006 - 2007
Line Cook, Blue Hill - http://bluehillnyc.com

- Meat Station: Kept inventory, ordered, prepared (portioned, cured,
   processed sous-vide, butchered) and cooked meats for à la carte and
   tasting menus.

- Pastry: Prepped, cooked and plated desert menu, including soufflés,
   ice creams and sorbets, cakes and fruits.

- Garde Manger: Prepped and plated all cold preparations for à la
   carte and tasting menus.  Kept inventory of perishable items and
   made menu recommendations and staff meals that led to 99% produce
   usage.

- Intern: Started at the bottom, picking herbs and pitting cherries.
   Was promoted to Garde Manger and a paid employee before my
   internship was over.  Received quickest promotion to the hot line
   of any intern at the restaurant.

2004 - 2006
Senior Programmer, allAfrica.com

- Wrote, deployed and maintained internal and external communication
   tools for progressive political and nonprofit organizations
   including Media Matters for America (http://mediamatters.org), the
   Democracy Alliance (http://www.democracyalliance.org), and
   allAfrica.com (http://allafrica.com).

- Developed Gadgets (http://gadgets.xml-comma.org), a communications
   platform that intentionally blurs the lines between Wiki, Blog,
   Mailing List Manager and Bulletin Board.

2001 - 2004
Founding Partner, Plus Three LLP - http://plusthree.com

- Co-founded Plus Three, a still profitable and growing technology
   startup specializing in delivering reliable, scalable and secure
   internet solutions to U.S. political and nonprofit organizations.

- Built, deployed and maintained the technology for a massively
   successful online fund raising effort for the Democratic party and
   John Kerry for President.

- Helped John Kerry set single day, single month and election cycle
   records for online fundraising by a candidate.  Delivered a
   fundraising system to the DNC that outraised the RNC for the first
   time since the mid-1970s.

- Wrote thousands of lines of high-performance Perl code (and a
   little C where it was needed), complying with web and mail RFCs, as
   well as FEC regulations.

1997 - 2001
Director of Technology, Bigfoot Communications - http://bigfoot.com

- Managed team of eight systems administrators responsible for
   heterogeneous server farm of 75 machines.

- Planned and executed migration of 75 computers between data centers
   with zero down time.

1996 - 1997
Technical Support, Seanet Corporation - http://www.seanet.com

- Handled high volume of phone support calls for local internet
   service provider with no customer service complaints.

- Taught self Perl and wrote scripts to automate boring tasks and
   report on system health.


Education

February 06 - July 06
Institute of Culinary Education - http://www.iceculinary.com

- Graduated from ICE's intensive six-month culinary education program
   with top marks.

1994 - 1996
University of Washington - http://washington.edu

- Studied English literature and psychology.

1993 - 1994
Shoreline Community College - http://www.shoreline.edu/

- Completed Running Start program.


Sundry

- Organized the 2009 Vendys, New York's street food vendor awards, at
   the Queens Museum of Art.  Headed bar operations and coordinated
   with Queens Museum of Art and Parks Department to ensure logistical
   and legal requirements were met.  Managed sound for three bands and
   multiple speakers.

- Organized Africa Source (Namibia, 2001), Asia Source (Bangalore, 2004)
   and Africa Source II (Uganda, 2006).  Negotiated with local
   governments to supply power and internet access, built out physical
   power grids, designed and taught computer programming courseware,
   facilitated a tone of appreciation and support.

- Acknowledged in Mark Dominus' "Higher Order Perl" as having stood
   out for contributing a "particularly large amount of concrete
   material" during the advance chapter feedback.

- Primary author of Net::SMTP::IMPP on the CPAN.  Contributer of
   upstream bug reports and patches to open source projects.

- Avid runner and yoga practitioner.

- Fermenter of foods.

New kicks

I'm about 800 miles into my first real pair of running shoes, and am retiring them. For my first pair, the lovely folks at JackRabbit put me in a pair of New Balance 1225s, a klunky stability shoe with a large, stable heel profile. It has a nice roomy toe box, and served me well. My problem with the shoe is that as I worked on my form I found the heel getting in my way. In any other shoe I would have been midfoot striking.

I had my gait analyzed again today at JackRabbit. I asked to see something less klunky, and he put me in a pair of Asics (I forget the model). He was quite surprised that I was running in the NB 1225s, and even asked, "You sure we put you in those?" I explained that I bought them when I first started running, and that immediately after the purchase started focusing on my form. The Asics were too skinny in the toebox for me, and the next pair of shoes was the Mizuno Wave Rider 12s, in a 2E. They fit like a glove, have lovely arch support, a skinny enough heel profile and a roomy toe box. They feel much lighter, and a bit softer than my NBs. Most importantly, the heel profile is low enough that it doesn't force a heel strike on me.

I'm stoked on these shoes, and hope that they carry me through a couple long runs comfortably. If they do, I'll pick up a couple more pairs and start rotating my shoes like a good boy.

It's probably time to buy some technical gear

Had a club run from McCarren along Kent to the BQE and back. It was way warmer than I anticipated, and I was as usual overdressed in non-technical gear. I sweat buckets and got cold when we stopped to do core. The run itself was lovely, 7 miles at a moderate pace. I definitely felt yesterdays workout, and will be skipping the early long run tomorrow to rest up, and may ditch track work for a recovery run. We shall see.

I'm so looking forward to our Sunday Funday Runday with the first timers crew training for Jersey that I may take extra rest in order to be ready for a good run. The weather is supposed to blow goat dick, which is where a group really helps.

I just three weeks I'm going to be into my first week of marathon specific training. Even though my mileage will back off for the first couple of weeks, I need to resist the urge to over-train between now and then. That said, just because I know better intellectually, I'm not going to beat myself up over a few beginner mistakes.

See you on the road.

Caterpillar run

A. renamed the "Indian run" to the "Caterpillar Run". This run is structured speed play, where the group runs in a single file line (or a pair of them) at a comfortable pace. The person in back sprints to the front and becomes the pace leader. Then the person in back sprints to the front and becomes the pace leader. Then the person in back...

The term "Caterpillar run" brought back some old memories, which I shared with the group. Now I'll share it with you.

In college I thought of "the worm" (you know, the dance move) as the caterpillar, which physiologically makes more sense to me. I still have a piece of scar tissue that disrupts my feeble whisker growth on the right side of the mental protuberance of my inferior maxillary bone. I picked up this scar when I dropped a tequila induced caterpillar on a group of unsuspecting house guests when "The Humpty Dance" came on the sound system at one of my parties

I put on a lot of miles for me today, between 17 and 18, at least half at a reasonably hard effort. It felt great, and now food and wine taste great.

Run to the hills...

Took the Tuesday morning NBR crew out to Ridgewood for the Onderdonk special. I'm running out of tricks, though, so it's time to start studying the AIA guide to come up with more runs.

M. took us through a great warm up routine that was geared toward fast feet, then we warmed up for three miles out to Onderdonk and ran a couple hard repeats. On the way back M. and I picked up for two quick miles, then took the last one into the park nice and easy. She also had a nice cool down routine planned out that was more strength and flexibility oriented.

A week of good workouts and good rest days has me holding steady on my mileage with no complaints from my body other than the occasional sore muscles. Oh, happy day.

Little Recovery Run

I did an easy baby loop 'round the hood today, just a few miles to remind my legs that they like to move. All in all I felt surprisingly good today, which of course makes me think, "hey there, I could have pushed a little harder". I like to think that the voice that says that isn't the self-critical-in-a-bad-way voice, but instead is the nice-but-wants-better voice. My favorite complement from M. while I was cooking on the line at Blue Hill was, "That looks good. Is that the best you can do?"

I think that's a good question to ask.

Joe Kleinerman 10K

Had a blast all the way around at the 10k today, from meeting up with the team on the subway platform at 6:30 to the commute there, the race itself and brunch afterward. It continues to surprise me how much I think of my fellow North Brooklyn Runners as friends.

I'm stoked on my results, especially after looking at them the following way. My first race was a 5k, where I ran 7:19 minute miles. This race was a 10k, where I ran 7:04 minute miles. I'm stoked to drop 15 seconds of my mile times, especially at double the distance. The glory of just starting out racing is that I PR in everything I do. My final time was 43:52 for 6.2 miles.

A bunch of the NBR crew did fantastically well. This race will necessitate a big update to our team standings spreadsheet. Congrats, everyone!

pain := 6 * 400

I was really glad coach J. cut our 400s short by two last night, as to not put too much wear and tear on us before the Sunday race. I hate 400s. They are by far the hardest distance for me to run, and doing them consecutively brings a special hatred out of me. On the bright side, for the first time I ran them consistently, all 78s with one 80 in the middle. Still not fast, but it's fun for me to look back. When I first started running, I couldn't run a 400 in 78 seconds. Now I can run six in a row with two minutes rest in-between.

Luckily, by the next time this workout comes around I will have completely forgotten how bad it sucks.

Newtown Creek Nature Walk

Three billion dollars of tax money came out of the city budget to furnish the DEP with enough cash to update the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant. To appease the neighborhood the DEP commissioned a small park, on the shores of waters whose banks are home to significantly more spilled oil than spilled from the Exxon Valdez. The plant itself is a sight to behold. It was designed to reduce "odor events" in a neighborhood that makes it hard to distinguish between said events, as 1/3 of the city's land based solid waste is already transferred here.

Now we can handle more than our fair share of shit, as well as trash.

Before our tour of the walk, I put a couple extra miles on, bringing me to eight including this route.

Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Sunday the crew training for the Jersey marathon (plus a good number of other folk) ran a sweet out and back to Flushing Meadows. You may know it as the home of the Unisphere, or the location of the alien spaceships from the movie "Men In Black". I wrote about my one way run to QMA previously.

Some of the highlights were grabbing a lemon ice at the Lemon Ice King of Corona (he deserves the self-applied handle), a tour of Flushing Meadows park that included the Queens Museum of Art, the Unisphere and the observation tower/pavilion, and of course Lefrak City. "Live a Little Better", indeed. Words of encouragement for anybody who commutes on the LIE, it was neat to run through the ground level of that monstrosity.

Coach O. and I picked up the last two miles of the twelve miler to 6:15 - 6:30 pace, which I didn't anticipate being within my reach. Slowly but surely.

Monday was a light short recovery jog, and then to the track yesterday for an interval workout with plyometrics for recovery, [laugh]. That workout brought the pain, and not wanting to be totally wiped for both Thursday mornings long run and the race this weekend, I laid off a bit. That left me with too much left in my tank, so I ran a few extra miles on my way home. I'm still trying to figure this out, the continual dance of asking enough of myself and staying healthy. So far I'm pleased with my footwork.