Where JavaScript and running meet

JSON born

Today's run (street): 2.5 miles

In my past life I studied programming languages and applied it at various jobs throughout my career. I liked the combination of structure and art that comes from programming. The structure was the syntax and logic and the art was the creation of an experience that came from typing many++ lines of code.

This blog allows me to do some fun stuff with HTML, but lately I've been playing with JavaScript. I've challenged myself to writing a process that will pull JSON data from Daily Mile that I can parse, query, calculate and display on the site. Daily Mile has widgets that do that, but they display more info than I want to show. With the work I've done so far, I can see that this will be a real challenge.

I was thinking about my approach to writing this process as I ran through my neighborhood this morning. It was a nice distraction and, more than once, I found myself further along on my route than I'd realized. I thought I was running faster than what the numbers showed, but perhaps thinking deeply and fast pacing are not compatible concepts. I ended up with a respectable time along with some new ideas about approaching my new coding project.

Cow Harbor 2012: rain or shine (but please shine!)

Not what I'm hoping to see tomorrow

Today is rest day number two, prior to the Cow Harbor 10K. The weather report for tomorrow is slightly discouraging due to some bad timing. They are saying that both Friday and the weekend will be beautiful, except for some rain that will sweep through between 7:00 and 9:00 AM. If that's accurate, we could be in for a soggy start.

I won't worry about the weather because there's nothing I can do about it. I don't enjoy running in the rain because it can cause some annoying visibility problems for me (glasses). Worse, I really dislike the feel of moisture permeating my socks and sloshing around my running shoes. On the bright side, if it's raining we won't have to deal with the hot baking sun. I hope it doesn't rain, but if it does I'll deal with it.

In terms of my readiness for tomorrow, I don't think I'm at the same level of conditioning as I was a year ago. I looked at Daily Mile and saw that I've only done four runs longer than 6 miles since the beginning of August. Half of those happened in the last two weeks, so it isn't like I've ignored distances altogether. But even with those workouts, my base isn't really optimal for a hard 6.2 mile run.

I'm still debating whether to do numbers pickup later today, or get them tomorrow before the race. I haven't chosen my race day gear but I have my nutrition figured out. I'm excited to be running Cow Harbor once again and I hope conditions are good. I'm also hoping my colleague FS also has a great race this weekend when she runs the Dutchess County Half Marathon.