Road Runner

Saturday's horrible run convinced me that treadmills weren't doing enough to prepare me for an outdoor 5k street race. I got home yesterday, suited up, cranked up the iPod, and ran down the street. We're high on a hill in the neighborhood, and jogging down it added to the stretching I had done after lacing up the shoes. Once the road flattened out, I opened up. I ran toward downtown, a slow uphill slope all the way. I wanted to run a mile, and I did, but I was achy in the ribs and really out of breath. Also, my quads turned to wood. I stopped after the mile landmark (the first redlight intersection) and walked a few minutes. I got back to the place where I stopped running, started again, and ran home. The second leg was much better. I kept my back straight to hopefully counter the rib pain, and it didn't re-emerge. I had a nice pace going and cruised home. I had to run back up that hill, and only the power of Duran Duran made that happen. When I stopped, I was shot. I breathed hard for 15 minutes after. I was breathing hard after my shower. But my shins were fine, and that was always my weakness when running on pavement. This morning, my thighs are a little tender, but I feel OK. I ran 2.4 miles yesterday, and that's more than half of the 5k distance. I have almost exactly a month to get ready for the race. I can do this. I'm going to do this. Now I just need that perfect costume ...

Green Day and U2 teamed up last night before the Saints/Falcons game in New Orleans. You can see some of the video here. You can also download the songs, but they will only work with Rhapsody and are dependent on a subscription. If you cancel the subscription, the files won't work anymore. I TiFauxed the concert for Your Sister. She's such a Green Day geek.

Sketch of the Day
Here's the Star Wars picture of Your Sister. I'm playing with highlights to build form within all the unlined black spaces. I'm also using lots of shadow in the clothing. The trick is going to be drawing the face in shadow under a black hood.


In the News
Condi Rice responded to Bill Clinton's response to the ABC 9/11 movie. The debate concerns who has done what to get Osama and prevent 9/11. While he was the president, she was the national security advisor to his successor. She was also one of the many people who didn't lose her job after 9/11. That kind of security breakdown, following alerts of a possible attack, is inexcusable, and her boss has many times said that capturing Osama is not a priority. But Clinton was chasing Osama while the GOP went after the Lewinsky affair and said he was only trying to change the subject. Now it's just a pissing contest with gainsaying and it could distract from the important matters during the mid-term elections. What Condi is doing is perpetuating the angle that 9/11 was Clinton's fault even though he had been out of office for eight months. What he is doing is fending off those claims. And it's only important if we ignore the fact that she herself was advising Bush about Osama but not enough for him to take the matter seriously. We were chasing Russians and crafting missile shields. I'd rather blame the men who carried out 9/11 than those standing watch, but it seems obvious from the evidence uncovered after 9/11 about the Bush attitudes toward Osama and his attitude about Osama just months after 9/11 that he's more concerned with using the event to spark foreign policy and majority support for domestic policies than he is with catching the bad guy. Osama is his boogeyman and has more value if left alive and hiding to scare people. And that is the most inexcusable offense.