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Monday evening I went for a short warm-up run before karate class began. It was snowing and cold, which seemed to keep everyone away except me, so I ran by myself, barefoot in the snow. The trucks were out dropping rock salt. During the last quarter mile of the run, I stepped on a big piece of rock salt, which ended up bruising the bottom of my foot.

Karate training was great — it was just Sensei and me. Spent most of the class working on form: in basics, combinations and kata. When I used to get to train with Sensei one on one, I naively used to expect some “special” secrets to be endowed. True, he shares information, but it’s not some well-kept secret guarded since the dawn of the origins of shotokan. In fact, I find the secrets he shares always have to do with basic principles and good form. I came away from class, once again appreciating the things new students are taught, but with my perspective and experience, understanding them even better. In fact, they are secrets from the origins of shotokan.

I ran my first scheduled long run of the 2009 training season. It was a ten mile run past Mercer Airport over Jacob’s Creek bridge, into Hopewell Township, and back home.

 
(Airport entrance on Bear Tavern Road)

(Jacobs Creek Bridge near Hopewell)

(Welcome to Hopewell Township)

There are a few nice hills along Bear Tavern Road, which took a bite out of my pace after mile five.

1. 8:20
2. 8:20
3. 8:17
4. 8:10
5. 8:12
6. 8:49
7. 8:30
8. 8:34
9. 8:46
10. 8:20

Average pace: 8:26. I must begin speedwork training.

I’ve been doing this race every year on New Year’s day since 2003. It’s a great way to start the year off. The results are posted at compuscore:

http://www.compuscore.com/cs2009/janfeb/hamhang1.htm

At noon, about 400 runners gather at the Kuser Road entrance to Veteran’s Park in Hamilton, NJ to kick off the year with a five mile race. This year it was nice and cold — about 20 degrees at noon so not many people were in shorts or short-sleeve shirts. I didn’t train for this race, but I did improve my time since last year: 35:08, about 30 seconds faster.

I started the race with Bill and the running gang this year. The next event for the group is the 7.2 mile chilly cheeks in PA.

I had a good long run yesterday. A good friend Bill joined me for the 20 mile training run. This was his first 20 mile run and he did awesome. I used gmap-pedometer to map out the course from the Lawrenceville Gold’s gym parking lot, along Village road to Old Trenton Road, then three miles into Mercer Country Park, and back to the starting point.

The weather was perfect! We started the run about 4:30am so there were not many cars on the road and the temperature was still very cool.

Nice Run Bill! Thanks for coming out hours before the sun and putting in the miles with me.

Here are the details and splits. We kicked at the end and pulled off some negative splits. Mile 12 was higher because we stopped for a water and orange slice break.

Elevation Gain (ft): +4,087 / -4,067
Pace: 8:58 mins/mile
Total Time: 3hr 01min 35sec

And here is the route on motion-based, uploaded from my Garmin 405:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/6657086

The largest project I’m presently working on at Dow Jones is the adoption of a publishing product from EidosMedia, a technology company in Milan. The product is called Méthode and looks very promising. Here are some article published recently regarding the selection of Méthode at Dow Jones.

Editor and Publisher – June 3, 2008 (requires subscription)
Dow Jones Selects EidosMedia’s Publishing Platform
Editor and Publisher (requires subscription)
E&P Technical: EidosMedia’s U.S. debut
Newspapers and Technology
Dow Jones blending print, Web

[correction- please see my new post]

I’ve done the five mile New Year’s run in Hamilton Veteran’s park for several years. The course follows paved trails for much of the distance. However, shortly after mile one the course turns left onto grass and eventually onto a dirt path, riddled with tree roots and sprinkled with mud puddles after it has rained. At least have of the runs I’ve done on New Year’s have been in the rain or just after a good rain. This always makes the second mile more exciting.

The course traverses three of the four entrances to the park: the start is near Kuser road adjacent to the tennis courts; mile two passes the West entrance adjacent the lake and hospital; mile three takes runners across the North entrance near the Veterans Memorial Plaza and gardens.

Each December I look for a map of the course online, but never seem to find one. So last January, I tucked away one of the paper maps that are distributed prior to the race. My intention was to put it on a website. I came across my paper copy a couple days ago which sparked a memory of my plan. So, I’ve scanned and uploaded the course map. If you’re looking for it, you will find it here. The map is the one provided by the organizers of the race each year.

Hamilton Veterans Park 5 Mile Couse Map Dated 3/24/1986.

See all you runners January 1st at noon.

It seems I’ve come to rely on Quest Toad. Now that I’ve returned to working with Oracle on a regular basis, I have to remind myself how to do things from SQLPLUS when I don’t have TOAD available.

Today I needed to examine the text of a trigger, but I couldn’t remember the view to obtain it from. Here’s the code to spool it to a text file:

-- eliminate row count message
set feedback off
-- eliminate headings from showing
set heading off
-- suppress output
set termout off
-- don't show sql in result set
set echo off
-- keep text body from wrapping
set linesize 1000
-- eliminate trailing blanks
set trimspool on
spool /tmp/trigger.sql
select 'CREATE OR REPLACE ' from dual;
select text from user_source
where name = 'TRIGGERNAME';
select '/' from DUAL;
spool off
set feedback on
set heading on
set termout on
set linesize 100
set echo on

Will Robert Thompson, editor of the Financial Times, be installed as publisher of The Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch? This remains to be seen after News Corporation passes the remaining regulatory hurdles it faces in acquiring Dow Jones. Sources cited by Guardian Unlimited say News Corporation has no official comment.

Link to Article at Guardian Unlimited

Since there is an extra day in 2004 (leap year), I plan to spend it taking the Polar Bear Plunge on February 29, 2004. This event helps raise money to benefit Special Olympics New Jersey.