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John Gardner’s Troubled Midnight was a jacket pickup. Meaning, I picked it up in the library after reading the book jacket and finding that one of the blurbs grabbed my attention.

Readers with a taste for intelligent international suspense in the spirit of Frederick Forsyth…should find this an exciting thriller.

Only after I got home did I notice that the blurb was for a different book! 😉

Troubled Midnight combines a murder mystery with an espionage tale from World War II, where the Nazis deep-cover spy is working to ferret out the destination of Overlord (aka, D-Day). I didn’t love the mix. Nor did I find the main character, Suzie Mountford, that compelling… apparently this is the fourth novel Gardner has written with her as the lead. I suppose others enjoyed these more.

Only later did I realize that I’ve read John Gardner before, in a few of his James Bond continuation novels, done at the request of the Fleming estate. I enjoyed those more, and did feel like he found the right rhythm there. (Side note: looking forward to Casino Royale shortly.

Note: from the news on the Gardner website, it’s not clear whether he’ll be writing again (he’s had a stroke).

Three days after running 5K in 19:22, I put in an 18:57 at Run Wild. According to the official results, 29th place overall, 7th in the M30-39 age group, with a 6:07 minutes/mile pace. I’d have to drop 90 seconds to get to top three in the age group. Not gonna happen.

The dinosaur T-shirt is already on the boy, even if it’s disappointing that Gary Larsen’s Far Side cartoons are no longer the signature of the event. (Wish I knew why.) But another Golden Gate Park race, this time with a big crowd, especially since the rain held off. The 5K is flat, though with a gradual slide downhill for the first half, and a returning gentle grade uphill in the second half.

Splits:
5:47
6:10
6:58 for the final 1.1 miles, which is effectively 6:20 pace.
(Round up for the missing seconds; splits were watch time only.)

I felt like I ran the last half-mile aggressively, but maybe at that point in the race, it’s all relative. There was no way I’d hang on to that first mile pace but I would hope to control the slowing. Still, I’ll take a sub-19 5K.

On Thanksgiving morning, I started by being thankful that Golden Gate Park is home to so many road races, including the 2006 Run for the Hungry. I entered both the mile, run at 8am, and the 5K, run 30 minutes later. I am running the Academy of Sciences race later this morning, again doing the 5K distance, but I felt compelled to enter the Thanksgiving Day races because tucking into a lot of food later in the day feels more acceptable somehow after racing and because this race is the next in the series I ran in earlier this year.

I finished 3rd in the mile, running a 5:31 (official results), which was at the slow end of my expectations, but so be it. Average of 1:22 per quarter-mile, with splits like this: 1:19, 1:20, 1:27, 1:23. To be fair, the only uphill grade was in the third quarter-mile. There were fewer than 100 people in this one, and many were walking. 30-39 age group is a challenge; I was third in the age group as well as the race.

The 5K had many more people racing, although it’s still a small race overall. With a bit less than a mile to go, I found myself even with the guy who finished just ahead of me in the mile… once again, he had more left than I did. 19:22 overall. 6:04 for the first mile, 6:26 for the second mile, and 6:50 for the final 1.1 miles (no 3 mile marker; it’s about 6:12 pace). There was a fast posse way out in front in the 5K, so I really ran my own race — neither passing nor being passed after the first mile. I finished 13th overall, 7th in the age group.

Off to warm up!

If my colleagues didn’t support a sense of whimsy and my sense of humor (?), I never would have been able to post this faux press release just before Thanksgiving.

For the record, I’m usually a no cranberries man, but on turkey sandwiches after the big day, the canned sauce is much more spreadable.

This DNS preference will expire shortly, so don’t miss it if you’ve got a free OpenDNS account.

I came downstairs this morning to hear the sound of cereal crunching away, and scurrying feet. The cereal sounds were coming from the girl, the feet were the boy’s.

Rather than wake me or wait for me to come down, as we’ve done for years, the boy had gotten breakfast for himself, including milk for his cereal. He’d also served his sister, who takes no milk. The boy was scurrying because he was already finished and was clearing his plate. The girl was just finishing up her first bowl.

This isn’t every morning yet, and he’s not flipping pancakes, but felt like a minor shift in my world. Breakfast isn’t mine alone anymore.

Of course, after breakfast, I still had to adjudicate a discussion about who got to use which marker on their drawing. So I’m not out of the woods on the father front just yet. I suppose there might be one or two other areas where I can contribute, too.

I committed to six pieces beforehand, and I did finish six pieces. Things were tougher than normal out there, but at least it wasn’t raining. I gave myself 200m of very slow jogging to recover between each one. Perhaps I need a bit more rest if I’m going to climb the pyramid again!

800m in 2:49
1000m in 3:30
1200m in 4:24 (took a bit of extra rest after this one… didn’t help much)
1200m in 4:27
1000m in 3:38
400m in 1:18

Tomorrow (Thursday) morning is some crispy tempo. This should all pay off late next week.

A useful reminder, prompted by this post: make sure you are an organ donor. Painless but potentially powerful. For information about signing up, visit http://www.shareyourlife.org/. Read frequently asked questions about organ and tissue donation. I’ve added a linked logo to the left-hand sidebar of my blog.

Yesterday morning on the Kezar track, it was 6x 1000m with 2 minutes rest (measured, this time). As usual, gentle to start, and pushing the final repeat.

4:09
3:59
4:01
3:55
3:55
3:30

Last time we ran similar distances, in late August, I ran 3:32 for 1000m on the final one.

These felt good, but spending the rest of the day on my feet at ISPCON made things interesting.

Speaking of Web 2.0… the only reason I would want to be at that conference is to hear Jeff Bezos speak. I think Amazon Web Services, and their other efforts to re-use their existing infrastructure across the web (and the real world, including shipping centers) is the most impressive change in how business works I’ve seen in years. BusinessWeek’s cover story was called “Jeff Bezos’ Risky Bet.” I’d put my chips on the same number. And I’m not much of a gambler. Only time will tell, but I’m convinced Amazon is both well suited and well positioned to become an even bigger force in both the business of technology and the technology of business. The latter is the big score. I think this is akin to the introduction of eBay in its ability to create new types of businesses, of all sizes, which could not have existed before.

Amazon has already had to build its own “river” of infrastructure; now they are opening it up to all “boats,” from entrepreneurs on inner tubes to businesses with barges. It’s not just about books anymore.

In the past, I’d be paying more attention to the Web 2.0 conference this week in San Francisco, November 7-9. Instead, I’ll be in Santa Clara for the same three days for ISPCON, the semi-annual conference for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the companies which work with them. We’ll be announcing a new service for OpenDNS which will be of interest to ISPs (and others), and it will be a great chance to listen to possible customers and partners. Won’t be as media-saturated as Web 2.0, but then what could be?

Find me at Kiosk O (for OpenDNS) in the LaunchPad area.

I’ll admit to one other curiousity: the Segway Raceway in the back corner is near our kiosk (PDF of the floor plan) .