Running Diary – 4 : a crazy marathon
So yesterday, I ran the Golden Gate half marathon in 2 hours 50 minutes. This run took about 46 minutes more than the Boston half marathon. Compared to the Boston run, yesterday’s run was brutal. You gain an elevation of about 1500 feet in the first 2 miles, the trail keeps going up non-stop. The total elevation gain over the entire run is 2200 feet.
Having done this run, I feel confident and humble. Humble because you see specks of humans crawling away on the hills. And it hits you that humans like us have been doing this for millions of years. We test ourselves against nature, and then we perish in less than a hundred years each. New offsprings do that over and over again for eternity. Yet the hills and the earth remain. The hills erode away too, but its much slower compared to our own erosion.
Another thought that occurred to me (and I’m sure this is no novel thought as such) was that each of us alive is at the end of a long line of survival starting right from the first man or men(if you believe in evolution). When you die without an offspring, you cut one of those lines of succession that had survived these millions of years. Hardly does this occur to me when someone passes away who had no children. But it is true. But then does it really matter that this happens? I mean, there is mating within the human population between pretty random points(though traditionally the randomness has sometimes been confined to sub-populations such as Americans, Brahmins, Hindus, Catholics, Norwegians etc..). So is there really a true identity one might have of oneself? How long can one go back in time and trace one’s identity?
Now for very long, I’d argue. You go back a few thousand years and all these notions of nationality and religion and community that we have today would be nonsense then. Go back a few million years and even the distinctions of race vanish. So does the line of survival idea make much sense? Yes and no. Yes, its true that you who are reading this blog post over the Internet are a member of the survived community. You are at an end of a one-way succession over time and you have maybe already produced or will produce the next generation. But if I go back many million years, I can’t really tell the distinction between my ancestor and yours, even whether they were different at all. A lot of our present day notions just vanish.
Think of civilizations like the Incas, highly developed civilizations of which there is not a trace today. When we feel like we are the ever powerful humans, the most developed species, do we ever stop and think if we’ll disappear like the Incas, and our technology that is all so cool and advanced(or so we think!) will just go away? This is not such an impossible scenario. I am sure an Inca guy developing a smart invention or technique had never imagined his civilization just doing a disappearing act.
Well, coming back to the run, it was much fun. I met two girls, Katie and Rebecca on the way and we ran together most of the route till they sped away to the finish while I followed close behind. Katie is from Berkeley, so my Stanford shorts were unhappy and sulking later over my letting a Cal girl beat me at marathon timing 
.
But then I have an excuse. I was running with a foot I had sprained last weekend, and I had to stop and rest several times, or hop with my weight on the right foot whenever the left foot started hurting. It was kinda challenging, but I enjoyed it. And I really enjoyed the beautiful views all over the race route. What a sight!
I am wondering if there is a marathon(other than crazies like in the desert or on the south pole) which has a more challenging course than the golden gate marathon. I’d really like to know.. 
Coming back to my original point, doing this run has definitely been a confidence booster. I only had a month to train, with work schedule forever screaming for attention, and a sprained foot. But it wasn’t as hard as I felt the night before the run. I did not feel like I was going to die. And now I feel I could run a full marathon sometime later this year. Maybe the NY in Nov! After all, Louis Armstrong, the biker I reallyyyy admire, also runs it! 
Paneer Masala
Yesterday I made paneer masala and it turned out to be really yummy. So here’s the recipe:
1. Cut paneer into cubes and deep fry in butter until it becomes spongy. Remove the paneer from the pan.
2. Chop 1 large onion, few green chillies, ginger and garlic. Chop 2 small tomatoes or use marinara sauce. Fry them in the butter left over from frying the paneer.
3. Add haldi, salt, meat masala and some sabji masala and fry until the onion turns golden brown.
4. Add half a cup of water.
5. Add the paneer cubes and cook on low/medium low for 15-20 mins. Towards the last 5 mins, squeeze half a lemon and add mint leaves.
6. Remove and serve.
Running Diary – 4
Yesterday I ran on the Stanford campus. I had actually intended to run on the dish area, but I made the BIG mistake of taking central expressway. I arrived well after the dish area had closed, so I just decided to run on the campus. It has anyways been quite a while since I used to run there.
I had a discussion with my good friend Helen(self-proclaimed ex-athlete) about my getting tired during runs. She suggested it might be a dehydration problem. But I drink a lot of water all day and make N trips to the loo at work. So dehydration it can’t be. Perhaps, she suggested, it is an endurance problem. After all, running on hills is brutal compared to plains.
Well I ran about halfway on the campus drive loop and got tired again. So I got an idea. After resting for a minute, I started a 240 step sprint. I didn’t really feel any lack of energy in sprinting. I jogged for 240 steps after the sprint and repeated this 5 times. By the end of which I was thoroughly tired with my energy well spent. So my body was just lying to me about being tired?
I suspect that is the case here. Sometimes you just need to put your foot on the gas I think. Alternate sprints and jogs are anyways a good exercising technique that I saw on some marathon training website. I think doing that on a hill might be even more fun..
Meanwhile I have gotten serious about getting myself a heart rate monitor. It looks like a really useful device to optimally train for a long run. But the difficult question is, which one to buy? Choice always makes life tough, doesn’t it?
Running Diary – 3
So yesterday I went running to the Marin headlands itself, the site of the actual half marathon 2 weeks from now. Now I didn’t have a map, and as usual I don’t like to carry anything on a run, including my iphone(which had the map). So I headed off just with my car keys. It was a nice warm sunny day, with a beautiful breeze blowing across the face. The breeze was actually strong enough to make you feel some resistance against the running. And man, the climb was quie steep! Unlike the Stanford hill where the steepness ends after a while, the Marin climb goes on and on. The total ascent over the full run is 2200 feet.
Now being without a map, I naturally lost my way. I couldn’t find the wolf-ridge trail, even though when I came back later and checked the map, I realized I must have been on it. I did take the head trail which takes you to a peak(hill 88) where there are a few abandoned one-room buildings with graffiti all over. I did a couple of sprints on the last leg of the climb.
At one point the main road suddenly stops and you have to take a dirt path. And when you have walked a bit on that path, you get the old road again. Now that part of the road in between has landslided, and it looks kinda scary to see the steep and sharp fall along what was once the road.
So overall I ended up doing the path usually taken by 7-milers, not half-marathoners. But it was a good run and I felt somewhat energyless at the end. Maybe because of the repeated hill climbs. Or perhaps not enough energy nutrition. I lay on the beach as the sun was coming down and the sunset was very pretty. A hispanic couple to my left were acting silly and taking photos while 3 guys sat on a log, and brooded. Then they quietly walked away.
I drove back while the sun was still setting and gave a ride to 2 girls from SF who had lost their way on the hills and had gotten late. They really didn’t have much idea of how long their walk was going to be to SF (that was their plan until they flagged me down). I don’t remember much, except that one of the girls’ name was Dora(n), and the other was…..hmm that was an easy name but I just can’t remember. They are environmentalists in the city.
Tiring and somewhat satisfying run overall. I’m lying in the bath trying to warm my sore legs as I type this. If the headlands wasn’t so far, I’d go there every single day..
The running diary – 2
I have finally been able to figure out a way to not have to stop to catch breath when you reach the top of a steep incline. This must obviously be an old trick that I’ve rediscovered. So when I run an incline now, I do 2 things:
- I decrease the frequency of footsteps and try to keep my pace length(steps) long. Its like running like a cat, taking slow soft and reasonably long steps, not short quick steps because that tends to tire me out and push my heartbeat very high.
- When I get to the top, I run at a very slow pace, with longer steps, and match my breathing with the running. So I force the breathing to be slower then its naturally trying to be. The recovery is pretty fast this way. I tried this yesterday and didn’t have to stop to catch breath after any of the slopes.
I kinda believe I had this figured out when I used to run in Boston in 2006, but I surprisingly seem to be forgetting all the tricks if I stop running.
I have stopped listening to music on my runs. It interferes with my natural pace of running by speeding me up(if the song is fast) or trying to slow me down(if its a heart rending serenade). It also doesn’t let me think clearly about something. But the key thing is when I play music, I am constantly thinking that the music is helping me by distracting me and I am actually tired. Even though I am not. So, no music on my runs. Also, the GG marathon doesn’t allow headphones.
Yesterday I did a loop of the Stanford dish, then ran 2 miles on the campus. I wasn’t tired, but I felt out of energy somehow at the end of the run. My original plan had been to do 2 loops. Maybe I need to feast on more carbs now as my frequency of rest days keeps going down..
The running diary – 1
The Golden Gate marathon is round the corner. I won’t say I am scared, but I need some confidence boosting sessions on the hill. So far I have limited myself to one loop of the Stanford hill.
The Golden Gate is a hard marathon as Scott Dunlap says, from experience. Actually I didn’t quite know that when I signed up. I was looking for a nearby half-marathon that was happening soon, which would get me into running again, and I signed up. I thought it was some trivial local marathon. Apparently not. And I should have known better, after my repeated visits and treks to the Marin headlands where this run will happen. I’ve been on the trails and walking itself was tiring.
Its taking me about 41 mins to do a loop of the stanford hill, which is about 3.7 miles. That makes it almost 3 hours to finish the half-marathon, much worse than the 2.04 I took to finish the Boston half-marathon. The Boston run was not hilly, although the road went up and down a few times. GG is very hilly, but I need to rehearse it and time myself to see how good or bad I am doing.
I’ll miss Lien at this event; he got too busy and forgot to register and now its all sold out. He actually did the Boston run in 1.52 which is pretty good timing He could have actually done better, but he stayed with me when I was having a nibbling backache during the run. Very good running mate and friend.
A snowy weekend
Last weekend I went on a trip to Lake Tahoe. South Lake Tahoe for the split-hair specific-minded Jhajee.
A week later, I have a very vague idea of what the lake looks like. Like, come on, having gone on a trip to “lake Tahoe” one is supposed to at least visit the lake, right? Not quite. Most people just go there for the snow and ski, and forget the lake. But we actually stumbled across it, and realized that we were driving next to the lake on our way back.
Now the adventure.
We had planned to leave on Friday afternoon – Tyagi Suman and I – so I dutifully left work somewhat early. But Tyagi just happened to realize that his application to a bigshot B-school had to be mailed immediately. Also, it had to be written by hand! So he spent the entire evening( till midnight) finding someone to write and then making him write multiple copies of the document till he did one without an error in it. Naturally, we skipped the trip that day.
But Saturday was different. There was a laziness plus restlessness in the air. And it felt like a day of skiing wasn’t such a bad idea either. So we left Stanford at 3 pm (the plan was at 1, but…) and drove north on 101. The wind was pretty strong that day so it was kinda fun seeing the car try to negotiate itself into the next lane . In a little while we got onto I-80 and then I-50.
It didn’t take us too long to get to the chains area. For the uninitiated, one needs to put chains on a car’s tires while driving on a snowy mountainous road unless you have a 4-wheel drive with snow tires. Now I have a 4WD Mitsubishi Eclipse, but the tires didn’t look like the snowy type. So we stopped at the entering point and were able to raise 29$ between the 3 of us(a dollar less) to get our car ‘chained’. Now since ours is a 4WD, the guys just chained the back wheels. You just chain one set of wheels, the wheels that power the car.
We got moving and it was kinda fun driving in the slushy snow at 20 mph. However, the car seemed to skid a little bit occasionally. I was however prepared and we kept going on. At one point we had to pull over because with our slow 20 mph speed (4WD with snow tires can be driven much faster) we had held up a lot of traffic behind us. I had also gotten tired of peering through the snow to figure out which way the road turned ahead since I had been leading.
Now when I tried to get the car back on the road, it skidded real badly. Tyagi and Suman were casting aspersive glances commenting mentally on my driving in their head. The car would just veer right and left. But I finally managed to get back on the road and get going.
However after about a mile or so, we got totally stuck.
The car would just not move forward. After veering right and left a couple of times, we began wondering what the hell was wrong with the car. Even with chains, we were somehow not able to drive the car!!
While we were pondering over this, it was snowing heavily and heavenly. Utterly beautiful flakes that I had been missing so much. Boston had a lot of snow, and I enjoyed both my winters there. So it felt very homish, even though we were stuck on an icy-snowy road somewhere on the way. The last milestone had indicated that we might be about 95 miles away from Tahoe. We had a loooong way to go. At 20 miles an hour, it’d take 5 hours. And we weren’t even moving.
So finally, one of the god-sent snowcleaning angels arrived. He asked us what we were doing. We said we were stuck. Then he asked me to press on the gas. I was amused, but I humored him. This was obviously not going to work, and we had tried it enough. But he had something else on his mind. He told us we had the chains on the wrong set of tires!! My car was a front wheel drive, he told me. And the chains on the back wheels were useless. You might as well take them off, he said.
So with some help from him and my comrades (pushing the car) we got out of the icy side patch of snow and started downhill. We were able to wake up a general store owner who apparently also sold chains and doubled as a chain putter and remover. In about half an hour we were ready to go with the chains on the front wheels. Tyagi and Suman did manage to save us 20$ by taking it off from the back wheels themselves .
To be continued..
Obama in the midst of Machiavellian wo(men)
I have always considered myself very indifferent to politics. In my 5 years of college, only once did I go to vote, because some friends needed every vote badly for their candidate to win. I mostly ignored the action and was happy with my life.
And that, when I seem to have an opinion on every government policy, and greedily devour political stories. In my opinion, politics is about doing something difficult and uplifting for the people, and that truly fascinates me. A politician has an incredible power and ability to influence the lives of millions. Whether he actually does that or is caught stealing fodder is an entirely different matter.
So consider my incredulity when Bill Clinton, one of the few politicians I have admired for a long while suddenly blows my frame off, totally. yes I’m talking about the US elections going on right now. Bill Clinton being so negative? Bill Clinton making racial comments? Bill Clinton making demeaning remarks about the opponent’s vision and mass appeal. Hearing that from a guy whom most women seem to love(and vote, many have admitted) just for his looks sounds a bit too ironic. Not just ironic, but nasty. Irrespective of the results of this election, Obama is clearly the winner here. He deserves applause and respect for his sincerity and vision.
Now some(not the majority even) of my female friends suggest that I’m just trying to block the election of a female as president(hell I’m still on a student visa, forget voting rights!). If you know me well, I’m one who’d support a woman between two candidates who are otherwise equal. I believe in women having equal rights as men. But arguing that a leader should be chosen for her gender doesn’t hold much logic for me.
So why this rant? Well I’m just disturbed by the negativity used by the Clinton campaign. A friend suggestd that Bill Clinton is a politician and no different from any other. He said that the aim was to win, and Bill was timing his remarks to get maximum effect. And I’m like: No Bill isn’t like that! He’s a statesman, and I don’t know what the hell has gone wrong with him. Why is he being so desperate to win an election at the cost of his reputation and conscience?
Some would argue that Bill doesn’t have a conscience. Look at what he was doing in the white house, they’d say. But I disagree. I think he feels bad when he’s lying in his bad and planning another diatribe on Obama. I think he knows he’s not fair. And I really respect Obama from not following in Bill’s footsteps and throwing mud. Bill Clinton has been an admirable person, but doesn’t in my opinion have the moral authority to make such value judgments and false accusations. And he should probably remember that he’s not running himself.
Looking at the drama that’s unfolding, I can’t help but think that the Clinton camp is being wily in their campaign, while the Obama camp carries on its campaign without using slander as a strategic weapon. I have no doubt that this is hurting Obama’s campaign, perhaps a more Machiavellian personality would increase his probability of being in the white house this fall. But he chooses to stand up and be fair in his fight for the presidency. And that, my friends, is admirable. Thats the stuff great leaders are made of.
Kuch is tarah
Someone suggested I listen to this song, and I’m totally hooked now. Its a somewhat difficult song to translate, but amazing lyrics and well sung with good music. Here’s a try:
Kuch Is Tarah – Atif Aslam
Kuch is tarah teri palkein
Meri palkon se mila de
Aason tere saare
Meri palkon pe saja de
Lets make your eyes meet meet mine,
such that
all your tears
adorn my eyes.
Tu har ghadi har waqt mere
Saath raha hai
Haan hai yeh jism kabhi duur kabhi paas raha hai
Every second, every moment
you’ve been with me,
yea this body
has sometimes been together, sometimes far apart.
Jo bhi gum hai yeh tere
Unhe tu mera bata de
All the sadness you have
give them all to me.
Kuch is tarah teri palkein
Meri palkon se mila de
Aason tere saare
Meri palkon pe saja de
Lets make your eyes meet meet mine,
such that
all your tears
adorn my eyes.
Mujhko to tere chehre pe
Yeh gum nahi jajjta
Zaij nahi lagta
Mujhe gum se tera rishta
Sun meri guzarish ise chehre se haata de -2
I don’t like to see
this sadness on your face,
it’s just not fair
this relation of yours with sadness,
please listen to me,
and wipe it off your face.
Kuch is tarah teri palkein
Meri palkon se mila de
Aason tere saare
Meri palkon pe saja de
Lets make your eyes meet meet mine,
such that
all your tears
adorn my eyes.
Done
Graduated from MIT! Traveled to India. Starting a job soon…
Yey!
Interesting stats
46,326$ = median US household income as resported by the census bureau
40,000$ = price of a limited edition louis vuitton handbag
splurge!
Health entrepreneurship
John Swen
————-
Big killers:
Malaria,
Very effective drugs. Increasin resistance to some strains of Malaria. Different in different countries.
1. Impediment to provide access? Main solution: political stability.
In some African countries HIV itself is creating political unrest.
2. 3 things redq for access
– the drug has to exist. 3 impt diseases for which no effective therapies: dengue, …
– be able to price/available to make it accesible
– a distribution system that delivers in some way thats useful
You need to solve all three at them. Otherwise it doesn’t work.
Pfizer like large companies main role is in creating them. Access and ability to deliver are not Pfizer’s strengths.
Of 53 countries in Africa, only 1(S. Africa) has intellectual property barriers. Yet that is perceived as the leading roadblock.
Alan Sager
————
Gates foundation – 60 Billion $. Say 6 Billion$ a year. 6 billion is less than 1 day’s of US healthcare spending. 2.3 trillion US health spending = 4 times defense spending. 1/6th of the economy. Other needs in the country are underfinanced. Family coverage in MA 14k a year. Worlds drugmakers get 50% of their revenue from the US , although US has 4% of world population. Prices are highest here, much more higher than prices in other wealthy countries.
Have to make existing pharmaceticals more affordable for americans. Drugmakers know that the storm is coming. Have to reward innovation. 3Ms. Pay for performance for drugmakers should be the key.
Bill Rodriguez
—————–
Talk from demand/supplier side. Good treatment for most diseases in dveeloping world. HIV, TB or Malaria trend is constant. 65 million contract HIV and 25 million die. Between 2002 and now, more than 2 million people have been started on HIV treatment. The Politics for HIV changed. But what else changed was that the market was fractured and irrational. There was an enormous problem with leakage: someone buying drugs cheaper and selling expensive. Market with low volume/transparency. Now it has become a high volume market. Its rational now. Money to be made there. Its happening for additional drugs too. It was really entrepreneurs coming in and makig a transparent supply chain and promising to make payments in time and promising to evaluate suppliers, and govt saying they’d pay low margins.
Diagnostics: Don’t know who to treat and when to change treatments. More tests are being made available for low margins and high volumes. Different diagnostics need new lab technician treatments. Its hard to raise money for new TB test technology, because its low margin and there’s no hope there’ll be high volume in the US. Need new drugs, diagnostics and vaccines.
Lita Nelson(MIT Technology licensing office)
————–
Patents: tools or obstacles in providing medicines in developing countries.
Misconception: Univs control important patents.
Patents protect innovator from competition by copiers.
2 problems:
1. making current medicines and new ones available at accessible prices for developing countries.
2. Encouraging the development of new medicines for tropical diseases.
Universities are involved in embryonic stage of tech development. They control a very small %ge of drug patents.
Univ attitude:
1. require lincensee to sell at accessible prices in developing countries.
2. Compulsory licensing in developing countries.
Incentives for developing medicines for tropical diseases:
1. define profitable first world market in dveeloping countries
2. Govt and philanthropy reduce cost ine arly stage
3. Govt and NGO guarantees of buying
More
1. aggregate markets so total market size is profitable
- patents critical for aggregation
2. Encourage Drug development and mfg in larger developing countries
- patents critical for innovation, to preserve markets
-regulatory systems critical to assess quality
-legal system imptt to precent parellel imports
A patent is like a hammer. You can kill someone with it or build a house.
Doug Cole
————
Expand on a few questions. Focus on:
1. Transformation that happened 5 years ago that changed the game
2. Somewhere between the fully industrialized and totally desperate ones can be a set of opportunities
2 Qns:
1. How social entrep is different from for profit?
2. Does social entrep make sense?
When VCs talk about investment opportunities we ask: what are the problems to be solved. Easy to answer. The challenge is making a judgement on timing. A set of factors evolves evolves that makes solutions for certain problems timely. Are there a set of conditions, doing which, we’d have impact? Difficult assessment. Entreps come all the time saying new idea for schizophrenia. Usually they talk about how bad schizophrenia is.
Think carefully where in the spctrum of tractibility the problem lies, and convince yourself that there is a cogent argument to make. That scccess can be had with resources at hand.
SE vs for profit. Makes sense if a rigorous set of criteria are met.
SE model adds additional constrains in addition to usual speculative constraints. Much for profit investment is for socially beneficial things anyways.
The kind of incentive to get people doing what you want. In FP, you can use money as an incentive. Most people at some level are motivated by money. In SE, you are motivated by something besides just money, you can’t necessarily motivate others with something other than just money.
Swen: the notion of doability is very important. We don’t know where the science is going to lead us. Usually it leads us elsewhere.
Nelson: NIH is spending tens of billions for fundamental research. Whats the HIV virus thinking? So that industry can consider it doable enough to try.
Thomas Burke
—————–
The business of global health. GLobal health product pretty crummy. Business practices havent been used. No benchmarks, feedback loops.
Define the product:
Mission >> Vision >> Knowledge >> Strategy >> Product >> Strategy >> Knowledge >> Vision >> Mission
We need to bridge the gap between knowledge and product. We’ve really failed in getting our knowledge to te delivery of products.
Incentives, agendas, technoologies, Biosocial/integration, sustainability, scale
Focus on implementation science.
Maternal and infant health initiative. If you’re a10 yr girl in sub saharan africa 50% chance of getting disabled or die in pregnancy.
QNS:
Delivery in what sense
MIT Admissions director sacked
In a shocking revelation, the Dean for Undergrad education sent out an email this morning, informing that Admissions Dean Marilee Jones, who seems to be quite well known as a simple Google search will tell you, has resigned. This was after it was found that she had “misrepresented her academic degrees”. I wonder what that means. Did she claim she had a degree that she didn’t? Or did she not complete a degree and then claim that she had completed it?
I wonder if MIT is being too harsh. More details are needed.
Paper reading times
After reading Keshav’s elegant piece on how to read research papers, my effectiveness in reading papers seems to have increased. So lets do a log of how long its taking me to read papers now and see where the curve goes:
Deployment Experience with Differentiated services(6 pages) – 45 mins
Inter-provider Q0S(27 pages) – 2.30 hours
Congestion paper(14 pages) – 90 mins
SF Half Marathon
The SF Half Marathon is tempting me. I think I’ll do it. And break my previous timing by at least 20 minutes.
