founding Dulcinea

8 Ways to Support Your Loved Ones in the NYC Marathon

2011-11-03T15:12:00.002-04:00

This guide is for those who are watching the race to spot and support their friends and loved ones. It is not a guide to watching the elite athletes. You can find that here for the men and here for the women.

#1 - Let your runner find you

It is extremely difficult to spot your favorite runner on the course, unless he or she is in the top 100. After that, the crowds get quite thick, everyone looks the same, and it's difficult to project when your friend will come by, as you don't know when they started (although the new runner tracking app may make this easier, if it works as advertised). What works MUCH better is if your friend finds you. Tell them EXACTLY where you will be (i.e. on the runner's right on Fifth Ave right at 117th St.), and they will likely find you. Also consider carrying a distinctive mylar balloon on a ten foot string so they can spot you from a few blocks away; this works brilliantly.

#2. Plot out NOW exactly where you will be, so your runner knows where and when to find you

My support group was ambitious and knows the city well, so in my 3 NYC marathons, they met me in 3 places, at Miles 14, 18 and 23:

A. Long Island City (approx 13.5 miles) on Vernon Blvd. Between 47th and 48th (on the right hand side of the runners), right outside the Vernon/Jackson stop on the 7 train.

B. Then, they took the 7 towards Times Square and switched at Grand Central to the Lexington Line UPTOWN 6 local to 103rd St and walked back to 101st St, and met me on the northwest corner (runner’s left side) of 101st and First Avenue (Mile 18). They go to 101st because First Avenue is very, very crowded, particularly at the streets of the subway stops; consider going even further uptown.

C. Then they walked across 101^st St and met me on the northeast corner (runner’s left side) of 101st & Fifth Avenue (Mile 23).

The good part of this arrangement is (1) Long Island City is less crowded and easy to get to - the meeting spot is right outside the subway station, and (2) It allows for three spots; you REALLY appreciate seeing them at Mile 23, and it's a great place to view the race.

The bad part is (1) they have to move quickly to get from stop 1 to 2; if the runners moves at a 9 minute pace (4 hour marathon), it's only about 38 minutes, and they have to take the 7, switch to the 6, then walk 3 avenues east and 5 blocks north; but it is doable, my family has done it 3x, with kids in tow, and never missed me; and (2) it is a LONG walk - about 2.5 miles - from 101 and Fifth across the park to CPW and down to the meeting area around 77th St. It will take them about 50 minutes, while you'll finish about 30 minutes later at a 10 minute pace, so they won't find you till 20 minutes after you finish; but that's OK, you need the time to recover.

A less ambitious plan would be to see your runner in LI City and then take the 7 to the R train in Times Square; then take the R uptown to 59th and Lexington, walk up to 6th Avenue and watch you in Mile 25 along Central Park South; then it will only be about a one mile walk to where your runner exits the park.

#3 Come bearing gifts

It is very likely that all your marathoner needs from you is a big smile and a few words of encouragement, and if they see you in a very crowded area, they won't be able to get very close to you, so they will just run by. There is a small chance they will have a desperate look on their face, praying that you have in your possession whatever it is that they need. It may be (in the order or likelihood) vaseline, pretzels, a bandage to cover a blister, an extra gel pack (ask them), something - anything - to sip that does not taste like lemon-lime gatorade, a hat, fresh pair of socks, $20 or a metro card in case they continue to falter, etc. Be prepared, and you'll be a hero if they need you, but know they probably won't, and don't be insulted if they just blow by. This is their moment.

#4 Please don't tell runners they are "almost finished" unless you are at Mile Marker 26.

A few years ago, I was watching the race at Mile 23, and a couple next to me asked out of the blue, "how many marathons have you run?" I answered "five; but how did you know I've run marathons?" The wife responded, "because you're not saying 'you're almost finished.'" The three of us then launched into a diatribe about how dispiriting it is to hear that so many times in the last six miles. When you seriously doubt you can make it 50 more yards, being 3 miles away from the finish line is NOT "almost finished" - it's a 1,000 mile journey across a hot desert. In the first half of the race, everyone's doing great, and anything goes; but once runners pass the halfway point, they are beginning to suffer, and would really appreciate encouragement such as "you look great," "you're beautiful," "hang in there," "finish strong," "keep rolling," "smile!' but not "you're almost finished," or "gosh, there's ONLY 7 miles to go." Now that you know, if you get a death stare in response to such a comment, you deserve it.

#5 If you are crossing the race route at any point, PLEASE do not walk directly across the route, at a 90 degree angle, and do not cross in a pack. Cross diagonally, alone.

Crossing straight across the street is extremely dangerous for you and the runner, as they do not see you until they are right on you; I have seen quite a few wipeouts as a result of this behavior, including one that cost an older woman a Starbucks latte grande. In one race, a young girl half my size literally stepped on my shoe; I never saw her, and had I been running 5 seconds a mile faster, it would have been disastrous for both of us.
When you do this in a pack, you are all but guaranteed to seriously impact a runner.
Instead, begin walking - ONE by ONE - in the direction of the runners, and gradually move over.
There are plenty of runners walking on the side of the course, so a spectator doing so is not a disruption. Walkers and runners also drift sideways in the latter parts of the race, so again, you walking and gradually getting over is not a serious disruption; done right, it is almost seamless.

#6 Know that, for most runners, the race is physically and EMOTIONALLY exhausting and unnerving. Treat them gingerly at the end.

When my friend - a 6'4" 210 lb basketball player - ran his first marathon, his fiancee greeted him at Mile 25 with a very enthusiastic pat on the back. It threw him to the ground. In ordinary circumstances, she could leap into his arms and he would swing her around. At Mile 25, a pat on the back was enough to send him sprawling.

It's the same emotionally; the runners are elated, but they may also be emotionally trained after weeks of anxiety, with an avalanche of competing emotions washing across their drained psyche. I've seen many runners burst into tears after crossing the finish line. One of my running partners - a lifelong friend - went from yapping the whole way to suddenly going very silent, unable to engage in any conversation at all; she was literally stunned by the whole experience, and that wasn't even in NYC. Others may be despondent over missing their time goal. Be positive, tread lightly - don't ask "why did you fall apart after mile 22?" - and follow your runner's lead. He or she may be just fine, but be judicious in your comments and questions until you know that's the case. If they're upset at missing a time goal, don't tell them they are silly for feeling that way; they won't be ready to hear that for weeks. Say, "I'm sorry you're disappointed, but I am so proud of you."

#7 Plan to celebrate when it's all done.

After I finished my first race, I went home, thinking I'd be exhausted to do anything else. After recovering, I spent the rest of the night eating and drinking and talking to friends about the race on the phone for hours, wishing I had instead just met them all at a bar.

We did that the second year, but had no plans, and ended up schlepping in a big group around a very crowded midtown area trying to find a table for 14. This was painful.

Reserve a great place NOW to have a terrific celebration, and make your runners WEAR THEIR MEDALS proudly.

I highly recommend these places, all clients who promise to roll out the welcome mat for marathon runners:

The Brickyard Gastropub is at 52^nd and Ninth – about a kilometer from the finish line. It has great food, terrific craft beers, and a great ambience – and NO STAIRS. They had a blowout bash last year, full of runners and their families all day and night. Call them at 212-767-0077 to reserve, or email them at Info@BrickyardNYC.com.

Tir na nog is at 33rd and 8th - perfect for those staying in hotels in the Madison Square Garden area or leaving the city through Penn Station or the Midtown Tunnel. It is a terrific upscale Irish pub with terrific food and beers, and NO STAIRS, and accommodates groups very well. Call (212) 630-0249 to reserve your spot or reserve on Open Table. To get there, take the C train downtown from 81st St (if the station is accessible) or the 1 train downtown from 79th or 72nd, each to 34th St.

Also near Penn Station (take the 1 train downtown from 79th or 72nd to 28th St) is Mustang Harry's, a large facility that will be showing all your favorite sports teams, has an excellent line-up of drinks and a solid menu of comfort food. Call them at (212) 268-8930 or reserve on Open Table. A block away is sister restaurant Mustang Sallys; call them at 212-695-3806. (Their other sister Restaurant, Seven, is not open on Sunday but offers a fabulous, nutritionally perfect pre-race Prix Fixe Menu for marathon runners).

For those on a budget, Tempest Bar NYC, at 30th and 8th, is a traditional Irish tavern with an excellent line-up of inexpensive beer and it lets you order-in food from several excellent eateries nearby, including NY Pizza Suprema and The Gardenia Deli. No reservations necessary.

#8 Let your runner talk about the experience for several weeks

Running the NYC Marathon is one of the great experiences in a lifetime. The race doesn't end when your runner crosses the finish line. After my first race, I woke up at 3 am every night for two weeks, wondering if I had really just done that. Be patient, know that this is their time, and let them enjoy it and relive it, and plan to do something equally fabulous yourself.

What to Eat the Week Before a Marathon

2011-10-27T01:03:00.000-04:00

It’s 10 days to the NYC Marathon. Your training is essentially done, with just one run of 8-10 miles at a moderate pace, plus a handful of shorter runs, left. The inactivity is making you anxious. You wish there was something that you could do to improve your chances of running your best on November 6.

There is one thing.

You can plan your diet for the next ten days.

When you’re about to drive your car on a long trip, you probably visit Jiffy Lube to make sure all the critical fluids are “topped off.” In that same vein, you have to figure out what you can eat in the next ten days to make sure that your body goes to the starting line with full stores of all essential vitamins and minerals, and with muscles that are ready to fire when asked.

How can you do this?

For the next three days, you can more or less eat your normal diet, presuming that your normal diet is generally healthy, with a good mix of carbs, proteins, fruits and vegetables. If you don’t have these on hand in your home, go food shopping today. If you eat most of your meals out, only visit places where you eat smartly. Tell your favorite fast food joint goodbye until after the race.
Then, starting on Monday, it’s time to take down the carbs – that’s right, take down the carbs – a few notches for three days, to 60% of calories on Monday, 50% on Tuesday, and 40% on Wednesday. This prepares your body to “carbo load.”
Finally, from Thursday through Saturday, it’s time to carbo-load with low glycemic carbs, and, particularly on Friday and Saturday, max out on fruits and veggies, with a decent amount of protein as well. NOT ALL CARBS ARE EQUAL. Low-glycemic carbs (whole wheat pasta, vermicelli, vegetables, fruits, Sweet Potatoes) are much better than high-glycemic carbs (white potatoes, white pasta, white bread) because they help you release a slow, steady stream of energy, rather than a short, rapid burst.

To make following this regimen easier, our friends at SevenBar and Grill and Mustang Harry’s (next to each other on 7^th Ave between 29^th & 30^th) and Mustang Sally’s (on 7^th Ave between 28^th & 29^th) are offering prix fixe lunches and dinners that incorporate a terrific mix of all these foods on Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the NYC Marathon. Lunch will be just $13.10 and Dinner will be $26.20. Call for reservations today.

On Saturday, make sure to avoid spicy meals that may upset your stomach the next day. Also avoid red meat or anything else that you think may impact your gastrointestinal system during the race. When you wake up on Sunday morning, eat the same foods you’ve eaten before all of your long runs – this is not a time to try something new. A muffin, a roll, scrambled eggs, cereal, yogurt, some fruit are all good choices. Now is the time to focus on potassium – orange juice or bananas are handy sources that likely won’t sit too heavily in your stomach. Continue to hydrate – without overdoing it, as this can be more dangerous than under-hydrating – right until race time. If you ate light foods during your long runs, consider doing so during the race; again, pretzels or other snacks in small bites can stave off hunger and provide much-needed energy.

Sources:

Running Planet

U.S. Department of Agriculture: The Role of Carbohydrates inExercise.

Advice for Running the 2011 NYC Marathon

2011-08-22T01:22:00.009-04:00

I have run the NYC Marathon 3 times, plus three more marathons out of town. I’ve dealt with adversity: under-training, under-tapering, near-fainting, horrific cramps, and hunger so bad I nearly chewed my fingers. My last effort was nearly perfect, because I finally learned how to prepare properly in the last few days before the race. Here's how you can do the same. It's long, but so is the race!

Note: because there is no longer an official family reunion area for the NYC Marathon, I get a lot of traffic to this blog from runners looking for a post-race NYC Marathon meeting spot. Thus I have ordered the paragraphs to address that issue first; then I discuss info about pre-race nutrition, the start area, the course, where spectators should watch, etc.

MEETING AFTER THE RACE

Most runners exit the park at 77th and Central Park West; other runners will exit at 81st or 85th, and should have gotten an email telling them where they are scheduled to exit. New York Road Runners has just announced the runners will be guided out to Columbus Avenue, one block West, and that no one will be able to meet runners east of Columbus.

The areas closest to the exit streets & Columbus will be an utter madhouse for most of the day. I would STRONGLY urge you to walk several blocks or avenues-which is good for you after the race anyway- to meet up with loved ones.

Outdoor locations are iffy if the support group shows up well after the runner and it's cold or rainy. There are plenty of restaurants and coffee shops nearby where you can wait indoors, and perhaps by some food or drink, while waiting for the other party to show.

View Larger Map

Possibilities include:

Starbucks has stores on Columbus Avenue, at 67th, 73rd, 76th, and 81st Streets.

Cosi Sandwich Shop is at 2186 Broadway (77th St.)

Lenny's is at 74th and Columbus.

Ray Bari Pizza, City Pie, 72nd St. Bagel (a huge place) and Subway are on 72nd btw Columbus and Amsterdam

New York Sports Club: If you belong to a gym with a nearby facility, consider whether you can walk there, shower, then meet your family in the entrance area. New York Sports Club has a club on 73rd St., a half block from the park, and one 62nd St., about two blocks from the park.

If you end up winging it, the ING New York City Marathon Mobile Spectator App includes a GPS option for runners; this allows fans to follow your progress throughout the race and through the post-finish area. Friends can also call the Runner Information Hotline number: 800.496.6193 on marathon day and key in your race (bib) number to track your whereabouts both during and after the race. Because this is a new service, you should fully expect it to be buggy, so don't panic if, two hours into the race, it says your runner is still on Staten Island.

CELEBRATING AFTER THE RACE

After you recuperate for an hour or two and re-hydrate and begin to feel human, you will not want to sleep - you will want to celebrate and talk about your achievement. Find a great place to have a terrific evening, and WEAR YOUR MEDAL proudly. I highly recommend these places, all clients who promise to roll out the welcome mat for marathon runners:

THE TAPER

Yes, it’s maddening. But no, you’re not ruining all your training by taking it easy these last few days. Relax, continue to recover, the race will come soon enough, and your legs will be ready. I just saw a quote by a runner: "undercooked is better than overcooked." What he meant was that tapering too much is WAY better than tapering too little. Take it easy!

NUTRITION

The most important thing you can do right now is eat smartly right through race day. I took this for granted and thus screwed it up badly in my fifth marathon, and had my most disappointing effort. I got it precisely right in my last, and ran my fastest final 10K ever, even though I hadn't trained enough.

For the 7 days leading up to the race, food is fuel that will drive your engine on Sunday. Hydrate adequately (but don't overdo it!!), and eat LOTS of fruit, veggies, the right kind of carbs, and protein.

For more on this, read What To Eat in the Week Before the NYC Marathon.

WEATHER

The weather can change drastically right up to race time, so be prepared for anything! Regardless of the forecast, there are two things you need to know: first, the early morning wait before the start will be very cold; you have to turn in your post-race bag about an hour before the start, so plan to have a throwaway blanket and lots of throwaway clothes. Second, the weather may warm up by mid-race, causing you to toss your hat, gloves and extra shirt – and then temps may drop again in the later miles, leaving you freezing. For more on this, read What To Wear in the NYC Marathon.

THE START AREA

This area is crowded and uncomfortable, and you spend most of it waiting on a bathroom line and talking to other runners. Don’t wait too long to bring your baggage to the truck, it can be a chaotic process that leaves you sprinting to the starting line!

THE RACE

If you have an ambitious time goal, do your best to be near the start of your wave. I've started further back and no one was monitoring bib numbers; while it may be different closer to the front, you should be able to move up past your assigned number. Unless you start near the beginning of a wave, there will be times in the first ten miles when you are very crowded; at times it will open up nicely, then get crowded again as waves come together. Don’t sweat it, and don’t waste a lot of energy zig-zagging. Go with the flow and know that it will clear out by about Mile 10, letting you run the final, most important 16 miles unimpeded.

There are three separate groups crossing the Verrazano - one on the upper left, upper right, and then lower - and they eventually join back up, one at a time. If the weather looks warm and sunny, try to start on the right side of the upper level of the bridge (green start?) - this means you run several miles in the shade on 4th Avenue, while the left side people run in unprotected sun - this makes a BIG difference. Conversely, if it is cold, you may prefer the sun, so run on the left side of the upper level.

YOU CANNOT CROSS FROM ONE SIDE OF FOURTH AVENUE TO THE OTHER - YOU WILL END UP RUNNING EITHER 25.7 OR 26.7 MILES, SINCE EACH SIDE TAKES TURNS VEERING OFF FOURTH AVENUE FOR A HALF MILE.

Running across the Verrazano is an unbelievable experience - the views are stunning – NYC Skyline, Statue of Liberty, fireboats in the harbor spraying water. The first mile is straight uphill, but you don't feel it much since you're fresh and pumped; the second mile is a nice, rolling downhill, to the end of the bridge. DO NOT WORRY about freaking out on the bridge; I thought I would the first time, and I know dozens of others who felt the same way. I've never seen anyone actually do it, once you are up there, it is not intimidating in the least (but be forewarned of a phenomenon called "simultaneous lateral excitation - thousands of pairs of feet hitting the bridge in the exact same direction at once actually cause it to shake a tiny bit, and can make it feel like the ground is shifting underneath you. It takes about 3 seconds of nervous laughter till everyone gets used to it).

Then you run straight up 4th Avenue for about 4 miles, then weave 4 miles through ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn. These crowds are the best you'll see - spirited, proud of their heritage and eager to share it with the runners. ENJOY THEM!

The halfway point is on the Pulaski Bridge, going into Queens. It is fairly hard, but not that long.

You then run around Long Island City and onto the 59th St Bridge, the hardest part of the race. It is a long climb, somewhat similar to the Verrazano, though not quite as steep or long; it rises 110 feet over a 3/4 mile stretch to the top. There is no crowd support, and you're on the lower level, so it's dark and dank, the mood of all the runners drops, and you run seemingly forever before you even get over the water. I found it very hard the first two times, as I was not in top shape, but a bit easier the 3rd time. EMBRACE the solitude and gear up for the last ten miles.

Beware of the down hill of the 59th St Bridge - it is a short, steep, spiraling drop, and the 3rd time I wrenched my back a bit by taking it too fast - nothing too bad, but any little thing at 16 miles is a big thing.

Running up First Avenue is great - a rock star experience - the crowds are gigantic and boisterous and loud - though mostly obnoxious drunk young people, not as interesting as the crowds in Brooklyn. First Avenue has a slight incline the whole way. Make sure not to get carried away by the crowds; one elite runner famously ran a 4:34 mile on First Avenue because of the excitement, and did quite poorly the rest of the way.

When you get near the top of First Avenue, past 100th St or so, the crowds thin for the only time of the race; you cross a bridge at 138th St., then run a mile in the Bronx, then came across another bridge back into Manhattan. I've worn headphones for this 4 mile stretch, but otherwise you should not wear them, as you'll miss out on the crowd.

You then enter Spanish Harlem and Harlem, which are interesting places, and then end up on Fifth Avenue for a long run down to the entrance to the Park. The crowds on Fifth are fantastic because they are right on top of you; but they also shout "you're almost finished" when to you, 3 miles away is NOT almost finished. You enter the Park around 5th and 89th, and 8 blocks into the park, you get a fantastic, long, sloping downhill, that is rudely followed by a short, steep uphill - be ready for it so you don't come to a dead stop. You then run down to 59th and out onto Central Park South, then go back into the park on the West Drive, to the finish.

A virtual tour of the course created by a 2010 runner using data from his GPS system.

An ING "Runner Cam" that appears to by someone who ran the course near the back of the pack.

A view from a dashboard camera from someone who drove the course (you won't see any cars!)

SEEING FRIENDS AND FAMILY

The runner has to find the spectators - if they simply stand at some random spot and look for you, odds are overwhelming that they will miss you, since many runners look the same and in your running get-up you don't look much like you do when they usually see you. So I always knew where they would be and ran right up to them; it gave me something to think about! They also got a distinctive mylar balloon so I could spot them a few blocks away.

My support group was ambitious and knows the city well, so they met me in 3 places, at Miles 14, 18 and 23. I always met my group at:

Long Island City (approx 13.5 miles) on Vernon Blvd. Between 47th and 48th (on the right hand side of the runners), right outside the Vernon/Jackson stop on the 7 train.

Then, they took the 7 towards Times Square and switched at Grand Central to the Lexington Line UPTOWN 6 local to 103rd St and walked back to 101st St, and met me on the northwest corner (runner’s left side) of 101st and First Avenue (Mile 18).

Then they walked across 101^st St and met me on the northeast corner (runner’s left side) of 101st and Fifth Avenue (Mile 23).

The bad part is (1) they have to move quickly to get from stop 1 to 2; if you run a 9 minute pace, it's only about 38 minutes, and they have to take the 7, switch to the 6, then walk 3 avenues east; but it is doable, my family has done it 3x, with kids in tow, and never missed me; the reason they go to 101st is that First Avenue is very, very crowded, particularly at the streets of the subway stops; and (2) it is a LONG walk - about 2.5 miles - from 101 and Fifth across the park to CPW and down to the meeting area around 72nd St. It will take them about 50 minutes, while you'll finish about 30 minutes later at a 10 minute pace.

A less ambitious plan would be for them to see you in LI City and then take the 7 to the R train in Times Square; then take the R uptown to 59th and Lexington, walk up to 6th Avenue and watch you in Mile 25 along Central Park South; then it will only be about a one mile walk to where you exit the park.

Have a great run!

What to Wear While Running the NYC Marathon 2011

2010-11-04T02:29:00.026-04:00

This is not fashion advice. But if you want to be comfortable and not have clothing be a hindrance to your best effort, I have a few words of advice to impart.

For more general advice about the NYC Marathon, read this.

Once you've finished this article and decided what to wear, pack into one giant bag every single thing you need on race morning - right now - this includes your bib, the chip for your shoe, your gels, your watch - every single thing. You think you're anxious now? You'll be out of your mind at 4:45 am on Sunday, and in no position to hunt for any must-have items buried in your closet.

By the way, it is Daylight Saving Time in NYC on Marathon weekend - you get an extra hour of sleep. But be forewarned that iPhones should not be trusted as alarm clocks that weekend. Don't ask, just don't trust them.

[[Have you thought as much about your diet as you have about your clothing? Read What To Eat in the Week Before the NYC Marathon.]]

The most important thing is what you wear closest to your skin. Avoiding chafing is the top priority. You should wear on your body whatever you wore during your successful long runs. Not merely the same type of outfit, the VERY SAME OUTFIT. The only way you can be sure the t-shirt/shorts/socks/jock/underwear/bra is suitable for you to run 26 miles in is if you have worn the exact pieces on an 18+ mile run before. (As I note below, I often change the shirt closest to my skin during the race, so you may need several trusty t-shirts).

With your primary outfit chosen, now you need to figure out the outer layers, to deal with the weather.

The weather right now calls for mostly sunny skies, with a low of 51 and a high of 61 degrees F. This can change drastically right up to race time; you need to mentally note the weather as the race goes on, as it may impact your hydration strategy. As I wrote, the first two times I ran this race, the forecast was quite similar, calling for a high of 61; each time, it ended up in the 70s, and the promised clouds did not materialize. There is a world of difference between 61 and cloudy and 72 and Sunny.

But whatever the forecast, the early morning wait on Staten Island and on the Verrazano Bridge before the start will be very, very cold - 51 degrees, windy, you not moving much for several hours, on the waterfront - did I say very, very, very cold? Even after reading this, you'll say on Monday, "I didn't think it would be THAT cold."

You also need to know that you have to turn in your post-race bag about an hour before the start. It must contain at least one heavy layer - think heavy sweatshirt - that you can put on shortly after you finish. You might also pack a favorite blanket or jacket to keep you warm on Staten Island that goes in your post race bag.

But once you give that bag up, you are left with (i) the outfit you plan to run most of the race in, (ii) additional layers that will accompany you for parts of the journey, (ii) throwaway clothes and blankets.

Think of yourself as the Space Shuttle, fully laden at launch and jettisoning superfluous parts as you go.

BOTTOMS

The weather described is exactly what I experienced in my first two NYC Marathons, and if anything, it may be a bit too warm for you. I personally would not wear anything other than shorts on the bottom for much of the race. If your legs tend to get cold, you may decide to add a pair of tight sweats/capris for your whole journey. My personal choice, when I add anything beside shorts, is an Under Armour thigh-hugging bottom you wear under your shorts that extends half way down your thigh; you'll be taking a chance on wearing something new close to your skin, but I can't imagine them causing you a problem; perhaps wash and dry them once first.

Even if you're going shorts only, you should consider having a pair of throwaway sweats/long underwear / pajama pants (my personal choice) / Tylek pants (on sale at the Expo) to wear after you dump your post-race bag, up on to the Bridge, and even for the first 2-3 miles, till you warm up - at the apex of the Verrazano Bridge, you will be 230 feet in the air, with harbor winds blowing, and you'll not be warmed up at all. COLD!!

TOPS

For the upper body, I always wear a large singlet with my race number and nickname written on it as my outer layer.

For this race, I would expect to start wearing two t-shirts and the singlet, and, just for the run on the Verrazano, a large shirt over all of it.

Once I got over the bridge, I'd lose the outer t-shirt.

If things heat up, at some point around 6-13, I'd take off everything, toss the first (sweatiest) layer, put back on the middle t-shirt, and then the singlet.

At the halfway point, I'd meet my family, and perhaps put on another fresh t-shirt closest to my skin, then the singlet. I can't tell you how good it feels to take off a soaked shirt and replace it with a dry one when you have two hours yet to go. Sure, this is easier for guys to do, but most gal runners I know are quite comfortable stripping down to a sports bra.

Write your name on your outer shirt! Better yet, write a nickname that you are fond of. If your name is Kelly, you'll hear thousands of shouts for Kelly, will never know if they're for you, and they won't be very enthusiastic. On the other hand, if your nickname is Twinkle Toes, then you'll know the shouts are for you, and they'll be enthusiastic. Or just write something funny or inspiring on your shirt - the crowd will engage you.

HEAD/FINGERS

It won't be so cold that you need a ski-cap, but a head band covering your ears will likely be useful. I don't wear gloves - I wear white sweat socks on my hand, so my fingers can touch each other.
BE PREPARED FOR DRASTIC CHANGES

Now comes the most critical part of my advice.

The weather may warm up by mid-race, causing you to toss your hat, gloves and extra shirt – and then clouds or wind may very well cause temps to plunge in the later miles, leaving you unbearably freezing. Consider keeping a shirt wrapped around your waist, and at the very least an extra pair of gloves and a head warmer in your pocket, or have a spectator available to meet you with them in the later miles. A friend gave me this advice based on his run in NYC, when he thought he might drop out because he tossed his gloves and his hands nearly froze. A month later, I ran Philly, and it was 26 at the start, warmed up nicely, and I tossed everything, only to find myself running along the river with fingers that felt like they may crack - only to realize I had heeded his advice and had a spare pair of socks in my back pocket, saving the day.

In a worst case scenario, ask someone in the crowd to give you gloves or a hat – believe it or not, someone will.

POST RACE CELEBRATION

After the race, you will not go back to your room and sleep. You will be buzzing with adrenaline, and will want to celebrate and talk about your great achievement. These three clients are rolling out the welcome mat for marathon runners:

Tir na nog is at 33rd and 8th - perfect for those staying in hotels in the Madison Square Garden area or leaving the city through Penn Station. It is a terrific upscale Irish pub with terrific food and beers, and NO STAIRS, and accommodates groups very well. Call (212) 630-0249 to reserve your spot or reserve on Open Table.

Also near Penn Station is Mustang Harry's, a large facility that will be showing all your favorite sports teams, has an excellent line-up of drinks and a solid menu of comfort food. Call them at (212) 268-8930 or reserve on Open Table.

For those on a budget, Tempest Bar NYC, at 30th and 8th, is a traditional Irish tavern with an excellent line-up of inexpensive beer and it lets you order-in food from several excellent eateries nearby, including NY Pizza Suprema and The Gardenia Deli. No reservations necessary.

Advice for running the NYC Marathon; where to meet after the NYC Marathon

2010-11-02T01:18:00.008-04:00

It is Daylight Saving Time in NYC this weekend - you get an extra hour of sleep. But be forewarned that iPhones should not be trusted as alarm clocks this weekend. Don't ask, just don't trust them.

Because there is no official family reunion area this year, I am getting a lot of traffic to this blog from runners looking for a post-race NYC Marathon meeting spot.

Thus I have re-ordered the paragraphs to address that issue first; then I discuss info about pre-race nutrition, the start area, the course, where spectators should watch, etc.

After Race– keep walking after the finish! You have little choice, since it’s a walk to exit the park, but you cannot lay down; you need to keep blood flowing. Drink lots of water, and eat the food they offer you, even if it’s the last thing on your mind. Have an indoor meet-up place to meet, because it will be very cold and it will take your family longer than they imagine to reach you.

Runners will likely exit the park at 72nd and Central Park West. Meet-up possibilities include:

New York Sports Clubs (NYSC.com) at 73rd, half block west of Central Park West, or 62^nd St. half block west of Broadway; you could pay $10 and use the shower while waiting, and meet them in the lobby.

Trattoria Sambuca on 72nd St, on the south side, a half block west of Central Park West

Cosi Sandwich Shop, 2186 Broadway (77th St.)

Starbucks, a block west on Columbus Avenue, at 67th, 73rd, 76th, or 81st.

Celebration- After you recuperate for an hour and re-hydrate and begin to feel human, you will not want to sleep - you will want to celebrate and talk about your achievement. I highly recommend these three places, all clients who promise to roll out the welcome mat for marathon runners:

The Brickyard Gastropub is at 52^nd and Ninth – about a kilometer from the finish line. It has great food, terrific craft beers, and a great ambience – and NO STAIRS; I know the owners, and they say several runners have reserved tables, so it should be festive. Call them at 212-767-0077 to reserve, or email them at Info@BrickyardNYC.com.

For those staying in the Penn Station area, I recommend Tir na nog, a terrific upscale Irish pub, at 33rd and 8th. It also has terrific food and beers, and NO STAIRS, and accommodates groups very well. Call (212) 630-0249 to reserve your spot.

For those on a budget, Tempest Bar NYC, at 30th and 8th, is a traditional Irish tavern with an excellent line-up of beer and it lets you order-in food from several excellent eateries nearby, including NY Pizza Suprema and The Gardenia Deli. No reservations necessary.

I have run the NYC Marathon 3 times, the last in 2007. I’ve since run Boston, and Philadelphia twice. The 3 in NY I ran in 5 hours; the next two close to four hours; and the last was my best effort of all, as I ran 4:28 on little training after getting over pneumonia. I’ve dealt with adversity: under-training, under-tapering, near-fainting, horrific cramps, and hunger so bad I nearly chewed my fingers. Andyet I can't wait to run it again this year!

I’m so eager to run another marathon because, as my last race showed, I’ve learned how to prepare properly in the last few days before the race. Here's how you can do the same.

The Taper – Yes, it’s maddening. But no, you’re not ruining all your training by taking it easy these last few days. I tapered too much the 1^st time and not enough the 2^nd; not enough was far worse. Even as I got ready for my 5th marathon, I was frantic that the inactivity would haunt me in the race. Part of the anxiety comes because heavy training puts you in a steady zen state, and as you cut back, you come down off a high. And you want to start the race NOW, prove to yourself you’re still fit enough, and get back that high. Relax, continue to recover, the race will come soon enough, and your legs will be ready.

The Nutrition – the most important thing you can do right now is eat smartly the rest of the week. I screwed this up in Boston, and had my most disappointing effort; I could have solidly broken 4:00, but ran 4:04. I got this precisely right in Philly last year, and ran my fastest final 10K ever, even though the lack of training had me believing I’d walk from Mile 15 on. For the next 5 days, food is fuel that will drive your engine on Sunday. Avoid alcohol, hydrate adequately, and eat lots of fruit, veggies, carbs and protein. On Friday and Saturday, overload on the fruit and veggies, particularly ones high in potassium, including bananas and sweet potatoes with the skin on. Eat small snacks until late on Saturday night and even on Sunday morning, whatever you think you can tolerate. Bring small snacks to munch on during the race. You should know by now what you can eat and still run. You cannot eat a last meal at 6 pm Sat night, a small breakfast at 6 am on Sunday, and then expect to run a strong 26 miles ending around 2-3 pm on Sunday. That was my method in Boston, and that's where I nearly chewed my fingers at Mile 20. You should also consume a gel every 4-6 miles. If you have never tried gels, I confidently recommend Hammer Gels, from Hammer Nutrition; you can buy them at JackRabbit sports on 14^th St. I’ve turned half a dozen people on to them on race day and everyone has loved them.

The Weather – right now, it looks very good – cloudy and a high of 50 degrees F. This can change drastically right up to race time; the first two times I ran, on the morning of the race they projected partly cloudy and a high of 60; each time, it was sunny and in the low 70s by noon. Using current forecasts, there are two things you need to know: first, the early morning wait before the start will be very cold; you have to turn in your post-race bag about an hour before the start, so plan to have a throwaway blanket and lots of throwaway clothes. Second, the weather may warm up by mid-race, causing you to toss your hat, gloves and extra shirt – and then temps may drop again in the later miles, leaving you freezing. Keep at least an extra pair of gloves and a head warmer in your pocket, or have a spectator available to meet you with them in the later miles. In a worst case scenario, ask someone in the crowd to give you gloves or a hat – believe it or not, someone will.

The Start Area - it is crowded and uncomfortable, and you spend most of it waiting on a bathroom line and talking to other runners. Don’t wait too long to bring your baggage to the truck; in 2007, this was a chaotic process, but I’m sure they’ve improved it.

The Race – If you have an ambitious time goal, do your best to be near the start of your wave. I've started further back and no one was monitoring bib numbers; while it may be different closer to the front, you should be able to move up past your assigned number. Unless you start near the beginning of a wave, there will be times in the first ten miles when you are very crowded; at times it will open up nicely, then get crowded again as waves come together. Don’t sweat it, and don’t waste a lot of energy zig-zagging. Go with the flow and know that it will clear out by about Mile 10, letting you run the final, most important 16 miles unimpeded.

There are three separate groups crossing the Verrazano - one on the upper left, upper right, and then lower - and they eventually join back up, one at a time.

If the weather looks warm and sunny, try to start on the right side of the upper level of the bridge (green?) - this means you run several miles in the shade on 4th Avenue, while the left side people run in unprotected sun - this makes a BIG difference. Conversely, if it is cold, you may prefer the sun, so run on the left side of the upper (orange?).

The halfway point is on the Pulaski Bridge, going into Queens. It is fairly hard, but not that long.

You then run around Long Island City and onto the 59th St Bridge, the hardest part of the race. It is a long climb, somewhat similar to the Verrazano, though not quite as steep or long; it may be 3/4 mile to the top. There is no crowd support, and you're on the lower level, so it's dark and dank, the mood of all the runners drops, and you run seemingly forever before you even get over the water. I found it very hard the first two times, as I was not in top shape, but a bit easier the 3rd time.

Beware of the down hill of the 59th St Bridge - it is a short, steep, spiraling drop, and the 3rd time I wrenched my back a bit by taking it too fast - nothing too bad, but any little thing at 16 miles is a big thing.

If you ever find you need a bathroom stop, the Manhattan side of the 59th St Bridge always has a long line of porta-potties for which the wait is usually not bad.

Running up First Avenue is great - a rock star experience - the crowds are gigantic and boisterous and loud - though mostly drunk young people, not as interesting as the crowds in Brooklyn. First Avenue has a slight incline the whole way. Make sure not to get carried away by the crowds; one elite runner famously ran a 4:34 mile on First Avenue because of the excitement, and did quite poorly the rest of the way.

When you get near the top of First Avenue, past 100th St or so, the crowds thin for the only time of the race; you then run a mile in the Bronx, then came across another bridge back into Manhattan. I've worn headphones for this 4 mile stretch only in some races.

Friends / Family - The runner has to find the spectators - if they simply stand at some random spot and look for you, odds are overwhelming that they will miss you, since many runners look the same and in your running get-up you don't look much like you do when they usually see you. So I always knew where they would be and ran right up to them; it gave me something to think about! They also got a distinctive mylar balloon so I could spot them a few blocks away.

My support group was ambitious and knows the city well, so they met me in 3 places, at Miles 14, 18 and 23. I always met my group at:

Long Island City (approx 13.5 miles) on Vernon Blvd. Between 47th and 48th (on the right hand side of the runners), right outside the Vernon/Jackson stop on the 7 train.

Then they walked across 101^st St and met me on the northeast corner (runner’s left side) of 101st and Fifth Avenue (Mile 23).

Have a great run!

Search is Dead, Long Live Gourmet Content

2009-12-17T16:02:00.008-05:00

A critical ingredient for investing success is patience. In One Up on Wall Street, author and legendary investor Peter Lynch explained that "Most of the money I make is in the third or fourth year that I own something. ... If all's right with the company, and whatever attracted me in the first place hasn't changed, then I'm confident that sooner or later my patience will be rewarded." I've had the same experience in my (less legendary) investing career. I invested in a tiny biotech stock called Celgene in April 1998; six months later, it was 1/2 the price at which I bought it; 18 months after I bought it, I was still in the red. Now 12 years later, it is up 90-fold from my initial purchase price. Apple was another that tested my patience, sitting underwater for the first 13 months I held it; now it's up nearly 30-fold.

It's no different with entrepreneurship, which is simply another form of investing. The time for your idea may not be quite right, so you have to hang on until the marketplace comes around – or you bring it around.

Three years ago I founded Dulcinea Media, a human-powered search alternative, on the premise that most Internet users cannot find the information they need online, and that search engines will never match the ability of a human curator to find the best content. At the time, this was a contrarian view. A report by Pew Internet in January 2005 had shown that 75% of Internet users were satisfied with search engine results, and most pundits believed Google and Wikipedia would dominate the online information landscape forever.

In the past three years, the market has warmed to my view that uncurated, general search engines are a less-than-perfect tool for finding information online. More recent studies from the USC's Center for the Digital Future showed that user satisfaction with search results declined to 62% in 2006, and again to 51% in 2008. A survey commissioned by Yahoo! curiously issued a damning indictment of search engine results: 85% of initial search queries fail to return the information users were seeking, causing the users to try and try again, resulting in "search engine fatigue." A study from the UK exposed as a myth the notion of a “Google Generation” of young people with native ability to find information online.

Next, Nicholas Carr, who famously asked “Is Google Making Us Stupid?", and a number of other columnists bemoaned the reality that most users today read an Internet that is a mile-wide and an inch-deep. The center of their media world is a technology driven algorithm and “the wisdom of crowds” that simply uncover the same recycled headlines and updates from a slew of news sources. Google dipped a toe in the “human-powered” waters to tweak some of its search rankings, although it still accords technology most of the weight in the equation. And Roger Schank, an artificial intelligence expert from Yale University, reversed his 30-year-old prediction that we would create machines as smart as humans in his lifetime. Schank came to recognize that "[h]umans are constantly learning. ... [e]very new experience changes what we know and how we see the world." Schank attributed this to "an unconscious indexing method that all people learn to do without quite realizing they are learning it."

And now a growing chorus of observers is acknowledging that search engines often fail the user. The impetus is the rise of “content farms,” which assure that search engines are only going to get worse at delivering quality results on the first search results page. Demand Media, Associated Content, Mahalo, Bukisa, eHow, HubPages and a voracious pack of others are paying freelance writers a modest per-article fee to create tens of thousands of articles each day. And these companies excel at getting their content to rank high in search engines, regardless of quality.

The biggest challenge with these sites, paradoxically, is that some of the content is actually good, and most of it reads well. But, as Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb wrote after analyzing Demand Media’s content, it “lacks passion and often also lacks knowledge of the topic at hand.” Worse, the quality varies greatly from article to article – these brands stand for nothing other than “we create lots of content cheaply, SEO it superbly, and monetize it well.” Since no flashing neon lights warn “keyword-ridden trash” for weak submissions, the average Internet user does not know that the article was written in 20 minutes by someone with no expertise on the topic.

Many pundits agree that this spells trouble for search engines, but differ on further implications. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch sees the “end of hand crafted content.” In his view, the “fast food content” created by content farms has produced a “race to the bottom situation, where anyone who spends time and effort on their content is pushed out of business.” Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures is more hopeful. He sees search engines being displaced by social media tools, where, “with the help of machines, our friends and trusted sources” will tell users what content matters.

What I see is that this avalanche of fast food content will lead to the “clarion call” that I predicted, in a July 2008 article would cause a “flight to safety.” Internet users will turn to the "new portal" - trusted sources that consistently deliver “gourment content” - important, relevant, reliable and comprehensive information, from a wide variety of resources across the Internet. And the only sites that will succeed at this are those that rely on a human touch. Indeed, many users will rely on their own touch, using personalized aggregation tools such as PageFlakes, but most users will turn to trusted third parties. For all the dismissive talk about Yahoo, its audience is massive - because it gathers content from around the Web, albeit of inconsistent quality across the verticals. Companies that aggregate and organize content in an elegant way, and combine that with their own proprietary, high-quality content, will inherit the position at the top of the Web food chain that search engines abdicate.

So where is Dulcinea Media in all this ? Naturally, planning to be one of those trusted sources, or perhaps an engine that powers the new portals to which users flock. We are still executing on the business plan we created three years ago. findingDulcinea now offers Web Guides to the best information alone about more than 700 broad topics, and we’ve created thousands of Beyond the Headlines and Features articles that provide a full context view of news stories. A Spanish-language sister site, encontrandoDulcinea, replicates much of this content in Spanish.

To make all this content easier to access, we’ve introduced SweetSearch, a custom search engine that harnesses Google’s technology and the 100,000+ hours of Web site evaluation that is the bedrock of findingDulcinea. SweetSearch returns results only from a “whitelist” of 35,000 sites that we’ve evaluated and approved. And we are tweaking SweetSearch to ensure that it remains the best search engine for students, and indeed, the only one they can use effectively. We've also introduced SweetSearch4Me, which is the only search engine that displays prominently high quality sites created for younger learners.

As our audience continues to grow steadily, we’ve also found that our “best customers” – those who visit our site the longest and consume the most pageviews, and thus are most likely to return – are college, high school and middle school students. And thus we focus our content on subjects that would be of interest to teachers, librarians, and students. We presented at two national conferences in the fall - the AASL conference for school librarians, and the NCSS conference for social studies teachers - and we received an overwhelmingly positive response to our products. We learned there is a critical need in the marketplace for free products that promotes effective, efficient, safe and responsible use of the Internet, and that ours fit the bill magnificently. And we've also had some very encouraging discussions with forward-thinking media companies about partnering with us to help make them trusted sources for content from around the Web.

We remain steadfast in our principles that (i) we will not use technology to aggregate links for Web Guides or articles; everything will pass through the prism of human judgment; and (ii) we will never compromise on the quality of our product, which will all continue to be created by our full-time editorial staff or subject-matter expert freelancers, and edited by a full-time editor.

To address scaling issues while holding form to these principles, we plan to introduce a program early next year in which we invite librarians and educators to submit content. Practitioners of these professions are trained to find, evaluate and recommend outstanding information resources, and library Web sites have always been the closest comparable to our Web Guides. We envision findingDulcinea and SweetSearch becoming a repository of the knowledge and insight of tens of thousands of librarians and teachers.

And we’ll stick with that vision, for as long as it takes to make it a reality.

From low expectations, great satisfaction

2009-11-22T21:25:00.000-05:00

As I've written before, Marathon Fever is highly contagious. In 2004, two colleagues dragged me to the start of the NYC Marathon. Since then, I've run 5 more marathons, and have recruited a dozen first-timers. Days after my Boston Marathon last April, my very good friend Liz Perlman opened the door: "hey Mark - I've been thinking alot about your marathon shove. Your love of it is really contagious..." Soon I had persuaded her to register for the Philadelphia Marathon, by promising to run it with her. I had decided that I wanted to run only one more serious marathon for time, and then run several each year in a casual mode, with first-timers or people just having fun. So I started to look for an early marathon for my final serious run, to be followed by a casual stroll with Liz in Philly. While I ran 4 half marathons over the summer, my training was not very consistent. In September, a spate of minor injuries that I was too busy to properly address were followed by a nasty virus. In early October, 7 weeks before the race, I ran 5 miles of a half marathon with Liz before telling her to go ahead. I struggled mightily to breathe, and ran finished in 2:34, 46 minutes off my best. The next day, I was in a doctor's office contemplating a diagnosis of pneumonia and a chest x-ray pocked like a shooting range target. My "serious race" was out the window, and even a casual run Philly seemed highly unlikely. Fortunately, I was able to use an elliptical and stationery bike despite my condition, and soon both the pneumonia and x-ray cleared up. But things at findingDulcinea are more exciting than ever; we attended several national educator conferences down south and are pursuing some enormous opportunities, and I struggled to find time for the training I desperately needed, and didn't do a single run over 12 miles, and only about 5 runs of 6-12 miles. The few runs I did get in were ugly, since I didn't find time to stretch adequately beforehand. But two episodes told me I might be able to compete; one was the night before I went to the doctor for a definitive reading of the x-ray; I was so anxious to convince myself I was OK that I put myself through a vicious routine of calisthenics and fast miles, and held up very well. A week later, I ran 7.5 hard miles nearly as fast as I could a year ago, when I set a PR in Philly. Not wanting to leave my new convert in the lurch, I decided I may accompany her for 15 miles and then walk the rest of the way. I set an internal goal of 4:38, the average of my best & worst times so far, but would have been thrilled to break 5:00. A friend told me that when you are undertrained, hydration & nutrition become ever more important. Because I had fallen down on that front in Boston, I spent the past two days eating and drinking lots of good stuff and lining up the perfect breakfast for today. The race weather was utterly perfect. It was very crowded early on, and we ran the first three miles in 10:45, 10:30 and 10:15. I felt great, but worried that this would be as fast as we run. The next 5k was done in close to the same time. Then we picked up steam, running a 9:20 mile. Recalling that running miles 6-9 too fast in Boston came back to haunt me, I reined us in, and we soon were back to steady 10:00s. When we hit 10 miles, I realized I was in less distress than I had ever been at that point in the race, but the 3rd lesson I learned in Boston was not to celebrate too early, since there I very quickly went from thinking I'd break my 4-hour goal by 10 minutes to thinking I wouldn't finish. But our steady pace and stress-free feeling continued till Mile 19, when I was far beyond the distance of any training run and began to worry about running in a quality way for another 70 minutes. I focused only on the next half mile, and took that approach all the way in, never looking ahead more than 800 meters. Around 22 miles, I realized Liz was gaining strength, so I became determined not to hold her back any more than necessary. I realized that at our current pace, we'd just miss 4:30, and focused on that target, a half mile at a time. We finished in 4:28:48, and were utterly thrilled. I realized that the last 10k, which I thought I would largely walk, I had run faster than I ever had before, and our splits of 2:12 / 2:16 were the closest I had come to running even halfs. The realization that I can run decent marathons without adequate training was a big surprise. But fortunately I am focused on the realization that breaking 4:00, which I nearly did in Boston but which seemed remote as I struggled this fall, is very much within my reach if I have a healthy few months, and I plan to go after it hard early next year.

A Digital Defense of School Librarians

2009-11-05T15:15:00.000-05:00

Books are giving way to e-books; newspapers to news aggregators; encyclopedias to Wikipedia. And that is why we need librarians, especially school librarians, now more than ever.

If you think that librarians are archaic, you’re most likely thinking of a 1950s bespectacled stereotype. Librarians are no longer – if they ever were – those hushing and shushing guardians of books. They are media specialists, guiding children and adults through every form of media, from books to databases, newspapers to blog posts, and even from YouTube to Twitter.

In the libraries of old – the ancient days of 1990, say – mastering the Dewey Decimal system was enough to get you started on your research. But there is no card catalogue 2.0. In order to use the Internet as a library, you need 21st-century research skills: the ability to pick out reliable sources from an overwhelming heap of misinformation, to find relevant material amid an infinite array of options, and to navigate the shifting ethics of creative commons and intellectual property rights. As good as your kid may be on Facebook, she is not born with a digital M.L.S. These skills are learned, not instinctive, and the only way for students to learn them is for someone else to guide and teach them.

This seems as elementary as the ABCs – but apparently nobody’s told the school districts. Librarians and teacher librarians, who are double-credentialed, are being driven out of their increasingly stripped-down libraries. Painful as it is, it’s no surprise to come across a tweet like Shankhead’s: “being an engaged school librarian, at least in my neck of the woods, now means being an ‘Austerity Specialist.’ Whatever it takes.”

I’m not sure what it takes to convince the school districts of common sense, but it definitely takes librarians to teach students how to evaluate credibility, create content of their own, and conduct research in their increasingly interconnected world. And it might take the SKILLs Act, a bill in the House of Representatives, to ensure we still have school librarians to train the next generation.

Students will create and consume online content, and even social media will find a way into their research. Should a student trust a blog as a source in a paper? If not, then how about a blog on The New York Times website? A blog run by an online magazine? Can they use collaborative technology, like wikis? Even teachers need help answering these questions. There are no official guidelines to using the Web, and even if there were, they would change by the minute.

As the information landscape becomes more and more complex, why would we abandon our professional guides to it?

A curated search engine for students

2009-10-12T15:51:00.000-04:00

Most educators today struggle to harness the potential of technology and the Internet, which have only just begun to change the skills that students need to succeed.

David Ligon's post on "New Media Literacy," is a comprehensive look at the opportunities and challenges 21st century teachers face. It is exhilarating - and terrifying. As Joyce Valenza and Doug Johnson recently wrote in the School Library Journal blog, "School librarians, as we once knew them, may no longer be relevant. And, yet, this is undoubtedly the most exciting time in history to be a librarian."

I agree emphatically. In my school days, evaluating the accuracy of information was rarely part of the mix - if it was in the library, it was accurate. To fully develop critical 21st century learning skills, students will have to be taught how to find, evaluate, use and communicate information gleaned from a dozen credible sources, chosen out of the millions of resources available a fraction of a second after the click of a "search" button, and in countless other places. It is a transformative moment in the history of our education system.

So how do we teach students these critical skills ? When they conduct online research, most students heavily on major search engines, and review only the first few results. Students sense that some results are better than others, struggle to distinguish effectively, and worry about wasting time on the wrong one. So they put their faith in the search engine, hoping it has somehow placed the best results are the top.

This is not something that can be overcome in a 30-minute tutorial. Just as students develop writing skills by reading hundreds of great books, they learn to recognize a credible Web site by using hundreds of them, and learning from the experience. Teachers and librarians should refer students to the best Web resources, and let students devote most of their energies to distilling it and communicating the information they find.

With that in mind, our first product, findingDulcinea, directs users to credible and comprehensive information online about thousands of subjects. It is accessed through both an internal search function and by rooting through the category-driven tree-structure. After we spent 75,000 hours over 18 months creating it, we realized all this information we had amassed could be accessed in a manner that was more consistent with established user behavior.

And thus was born SweetSearch, a custom search engine that is derived from our work on findingDulcinea. SweetSearch only searches 35,000 Web sites that have been evaluated by our staff. It does not include results from the unreliable sites that often rank high in other search engines and waste students’ time. You know those hundreds of bookmarks you have to lists of great sites selected by teachers, librarians and subject-matter experts ? Think of SweetSearch as a giant, searchable repository of all of them.

This curated pool of Web sites allows students to choose, from a list of credible results, which ones are most relevant to their research, rather than spend much of their time deciding which sites are worth their consideration.

We launced SweetSearch in February of this year and have been improving it ever since. We've been gratified to see usership grow dramatically in recent weeks. Most encouraging has been the fact that every day, we see more school librarians linking to SweetSearch from the school library Web site. Some examples can be found here and here.

We invite the educational community to help us curate SweetSearch; please send any suggested additions or deletions to SweetSearch@DulcineaMedia.com

A Gallop for the Great Grete Waitz

2009-10-03T20:55:00.000-04:00

I had an "I'll never wash this hand again" moment today. I didn't merely touch greatness, I high-fived it, wrapped my fingers around its fingers and stared into its eyes. As I crossed the starting line of "Grete's Great Gallop," a half marathon today in Central Park, enthusiastically greeting and high-fiving as many runners as possible. was the Great Grete Waitz. Yes, the word "Great" is misplaced in the title of the race. Wayne Gretzky is called "the Great One" because he annihilated the hockey record books. Similarly, the Great Waitz laid waste to world records in women's marathoning in the 1970s, and to the notion that women could not compete among the top men in the marathon.

In 1978, Fred Lebow, founder of the New York City Marathon, invited Waitz to participate as a "rabbit", pacing the top runners and dropping out. But fate had other plans. After setting the early pace, Waitz decided to complete the entire 26.2 miles. Despite not having done any training runs beyond 12 miles, she won the race and set a women’s world record of 2:32:30.

The following year, Sports Illustrated's cover story was about an epic duel in the men's New York Marathon; it noted that, shortly after the men finished "all of them were near the finish line, and Rodgers, at least, was cheering when Grete Waitz, the Norwegian schoolteacher who insists she has always been, is now and ever will be a track runner, not a marathoner, crossed the finish line in 2:27:33, almost five minutes faster than the world record she set last year in New York, and 11 minutes faster than any other woman in the race."

SI reported that Rodgers said admiringly, "She's pretty outrageous. I saw her come across the line, and, well, she's inspirational." SI also noted that, the prior year, nobody, including the announcer at the finish line, knew who she was, but that "this year she spent hours signing autographs wherever she went."

At the starting line today, they rattled off a list of Waitz' accomplishments, including her winning the New York City Marathon an unprecedented nine times and a litany of other records.

What can get lost in her long list of stunning accomplishments are two particular points worth noting:

Over the course of 7 years, Waitz lowered the women’s marathon world record by more than 9 minutes. In the 25 ensuing years, despite great advancements in training methods, nutrition, etc., today's women have managed to lower Waitz' record by only 3 minutes.

And most importantly of all was Waitz' influence on all the women who followed her. In 1979, she was the only woman to finish in the top 100 overall in the New York City Marathon, and the notion that a woman could do such a thing was staggering. In the 2008 New York City Marathon, 12 women finished in the top 100 finishers.

In the spring of 2005, Waitz began battling cancer. Throughout her treatment and recovery, she has been a tireless promoter for many charities, particularly around children's health, and of course a great ambassador for the sport of running. It was because of the latter role that I will never wash my right hand again.

Teaching kids to find online, evaluate, organize & communicate infomation

2009-09-29T11:30:00.001-04:00

Dulcinea Media has a lot of ambitions for a little company. And we madly pursue them all at once. And thus we take great pride that all of our initiatives have gelled together in a single endeavor: findingEducation's On This Day Challenge.

Our mission is driven by the fact that most people cannot find online, evaluate, and put to use the critical information they need in their daily lives. This is true even of students, who facilely use the Web for social purposes, but can’t effectively research online. They rely heavily on major search engines, and review only the first few results. They can’t discriminate between a credible resource and a suspect one, can’t locate primary sources and, above all, don’t know how to digest what they’ve learned and communicate it to others.

Our company mission is to help educators change it.

In furtherance of our mission, our first product was findingDulcinea, a content Web site that helps users find credible and comprehensive information online about thousands of subjects. Its most popular feature is "On This Day," which each day details an important event in history, including the preamble and the denouement. In November 2008, I explained the genesis of our On This Day.

The second site we launched was EncontrandoDulcinea, a Spanish language sister site that offers much of the content on findingDulcinea, translated into Spanish. Its traffic has begun to boom in large part due to the popularity of the On This Day feature in Spanish.

The third site we launched was SweetSearch, a custom search engine that is derived from our tens of thousands of hours of work on findingDulcinea. SweetSearch only searches 35,000 Web sites that have been evaluated by our staff. It eliminates results from the junky sites that rank high in other search engines and waste students’ time.

Earlier this month, we introduced findingEducation, a free tool that serves as a meeting place for educators to share insight and outstanding links, assignments and lesson plans with each other and their students. We have seeded the links library with hundreds of links contributed by the teachers and librarians who created findingDulcinea's Web Guides on education topics, and SweetSearch is available to help find other high quality links. Our hope is that teachers from all over the world come to view findingEducation as their community site, one whose continued development they largely direct.

And the endeavor that arises from all of our years of hard work on each of this products is findingEducation's On This Day Challenge. Through this Challenge, students, working individually or in teams, will learn to find and evaluate quality Web sites for online history research, learn how to organize and write a research article about historical events, and gain an appreciation of how historical events have shaped the world.

Drawing on the plethora of material on findingDulcinea, we provide extensive guidance to teachers and students on how to find and evaluate Web resources and organize them into an article about an important historical event. SweetSearch can be used to search all of these resources at once. All articles in the Challenge will be published to the teacher's public page on findingEducation, and a broad range of impressive entries will be highlighted in our newsletter and on findingDulcinea.

The number of early sign-ups to the Challenge has been gratifying, and we eagerly look forward to sharing reports about its progress throughout the school year. We believe that, for students who participate in the Challenge will learn critical life skills of finding online, evaluating, organizing, using and communicating information.

May their love give us love

2009-09-10T22:43:00.000-04:00

Last year, I wrote about how, when I think of 9/11, I choose to remember the love.

The love shown by thousands of rescue workers and ordinary citizens, in NYC, Washington, D.C. and on Flight 93, when they knowingly put their lives at grave risk so that others may live. The love expressed by the many victims who lived for a desperate hour or more after their fate was sealed, and used the last precious minutes of their lives to call loved ones; all that mattered at the end of their lives was the love they created along the way. The loved expressed by victims’ family members, many of whom spent weeks desperately hoping that their loved ones had somehow miraculously been spared. And the love that I witnessed when I emerged from my office building in midtown Manhattan in early afternoon, and indeed throughout America and much of the rest of the world, for months afterward.

And so tomorrow, I will once again think about the manner in which so many people responded to the certain end of their lives by calling their loved ones. Though I hopefully won’t be imperiled myself, I will call or email many of my loved ones that I have been meaning to get back in touch with, and with that small gesture let them know how I feel about them.

I will also recall my Aunt Eileen’s comment to my post about how the heroes of 9/11 and the ensuing months (and indeed years) saved us “from having that day be remembered as one of being simply victims, totally demoralized…. and turned the story into one of great pride in our values as a country and in the bravery and devotion to duty that our people can show.” And I will beam with pride about our values as a country, and how brave and devoted to duty our people can be.

And recalling the timeless words of firefighter Mike Moran, who in October 2001 declared that his brother and his many close friends and crewmates who perished “are not gone, because they are not forgotten,” I will recall all of those ordinary people who lovingly did remarkable things that day so that others may live.

May their love give us love.

Tips for Enjoying Saratoga Race Course

2009-07-28T14:17:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is my favorite day of the year – it’s when track announcer Tom Durkin and the entire crowd at Saratoga Race Course join together to announce “And they’re off at Saratoga” as, for the 141st time, the horses spring from the gate for the first race of the meet, which runs 36 days through Labor Day.

The mere fact that you’re reading this means I probably don’t have to explain to you why so many horse racing fans of all stripes consider the Saratoga race meet to be heaven on earth. So instead the focus of this blog post is to provide some tips on how best to enjoy it, from someone who has visited Saratoga every summer for 34 years.

Where to Stay

For many, the only place to consider staying is in the city of Saratoga, and there are many fine, though expensive, choices there. For those willing to drive a little bit to and from the track each day to save $100 or more per night on a room, you will find outstanding, moderately priced lodging at each of the Hampton Inn at Clifton Park (10 miles south), the Century House in Latham (15 miles south) and the Desmond, (north of Albany, about 20 miles south of the track).

The Crowds

Some people love big crowds and packed restaurants; others prefer to attend when things are more staid. While Saratoga is never really quiet during the racing season, the town and racetrack are most crowded on Opening Day (July 29), and during the ten days preceding and including Travers weekend (August 19 to 30). The quietest weekends are the first one (August 1 & 2) and Labor Day (Sept 5 to 7).

Families

Saratoga is famous for its picnic tables in the backyard, which offer a terrific view of the horses entering and circling the paddock where they are saddled. However, it is a long walk to the track to see the horses race. Arrive very early and stake out a spot on the picnic tables at the top of the stretch, where you watch the horses duel at the most critical juncture of the race.

Tickets

You can buy general admission to the grandstand or Clubhouse at the gate. If you want reserved seats, they go on sale at 8 a.m. at the booth at Gate A on Union Avenue. But to get the best reserved seats, buy them on eBay, where they are usually available at a reasonable mark-up.

Parking at the Track

Savvy baseball fans park near the exit to the stadium lot, so they are first out after the game. So it is with Saratoga, where on a crowded day, a five-minute walk will save you 25 minutes of fighting traffic afterwards, and a few dollars as well. Many of the homes near Nelson Avenue let you park on their lawns for $5 - $15; the closer to the track, the more it costs, and the longer it takes to escape. If you are driving to Saratoga from the south, take exit 13N from the Northway (Rte 87) rather than Exit 14, and take a right on Crescent Avenue up to Nelson.

Breakfast / Backstretch Tour

What they say about this is really true – for the novice racing fan, there is no better way to experience Saratoga than eating breakfast at the rail and watching the morning workouts, and taking a tram tour of the backstretch.

Nightlife

Saratoga’s main street, Broadway, is bustling most nights of the week during the racing meet, and has dozens of fine restaurants and lively nightlife establishments, with something to suit everyone’s taste, and always a slew of new openings each season.

The Starting Gate Sports Bar, the Ole Bryan Inn and the Parting Glass are three of my favorites.

Must Visits

On every visit, I drive ten miles out of town on Route 29, in Greenwich, NY, you’ll find The Hand Melon Farm, which grows and sells the best cantaloupe melon you will ever find. It also sells other fruits and vegetables grown on the property. A short distance further up the road, you’ll find The Ice Cream Man, which sells outrageously good ice cream made in the shop.

Saratoga State Park is stunningly beautiful with its tall pine trees, and offers a great place for running, walking or biking.

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center offers an eclectic calendar of artists, including Bruce Springsteen on August 25. Spots on the lawn offer a decent view at a bargain price of $41 for the rock concerts.

To see how the other half lives, be sure to drive by the mansions on Broadway, out past Route 29/50.

Web Links

Visit the official Web sites for Saratoga, as well as for the local newspapers, in advance to get a sense of the local flavor.

The Saratoga Chamber of Commerce has info on where to eat & stay and what to do.

Saratoga Race Course is operated by the New York Racing Association; visit its official Web site.

The Saratoga Special is a terrific, free publication available ubiquitously in town, and also available online for (free) registered users.

The Albany Times Union offers some of the best coverage of all aspects of racing at Saratoga. Here are links to its blogs about the Racing, the town from the perspective of shop and restaurant owners, and a newsy blog about goings on in town.

The Saratogian is the local newspaper.

My favorite Web site is Equidaily, which offers a great roundup of horse racing coverage and advice about Saratoga.

Well Blog Fail: One PB&J Doesn't Fit All

2009-07-10T12:49:00.000-04:00

The New York Times Well Blog recently hosted a conversation with a fitness guru about eating before a run. Anyone who read this, and who has read my “Ten Tips for First-Time Marathoners” immediately thought, “uh-oh.”

Leslie Bonci, the sports nutritionist consulted by the Times, gives some good advice. As my Tip #9 says, you should think of food “as part of your equipment,” or to put it another way, as fuel that powers your body. But as to her detailed advice on exactly what, and when, to eat…

Re-read Tip #1 (this time in caps): BEWARE OF ONE SIZE FITS ALL ADVICE.

Bonci instructs Times readers to eat “a peanut butter and jelly wrap cut into little pieces” an hour before exercise. That might work well for Bonci, but I recently ran the Fairfield Half Marathon three hours after eating a peanut butter sandwich; I knew this was wrong for me, but alas my body woke up 45 minutes before my brain did. I abhor TMI, so suffice to say that I was repeatedly reminded of what I ate for breakfast as I plowed through the hills of Fairfield. And visited a porta-potty for the first time ever during a race. Three times. And struggled to breathe up the steep hills because of gooey peanut butter lining... you get the point.

The comments section of the Bonci post particularly concerns me – and proves my point. Commenter Sharon writes, “Wow, I do everything wrong!” and then describes a routine that doesn’t fit Bonci’s advice. But it may well work for her, and now she’s going to change her routine to what works for Bonci. Amazingly, Well Blog editor Tara Parker-Pope replies, “You’re not alone… I’m doing everything wrong too!” So, the writer of Well Blog, along with the bulk of its readers, has suddenly discovered they’re “doing everything wrong” after years of successful exercise, because they don’t do everything exactly like Bonci does? Well Blog Fail.

Everyone’s different. As I wrote in my “Tips,” you need to trust your own body, not the word of experts. A few years ago, a fitness guru sent me and 600 other first-time marathoners an email saying that stretching is all but unnecessary for long distance runners. And this undoubtedly was true for him. But if I don’t stretch for three days, I can’t even walk without intense pain. And last year, when I was advising two small-framed women on their first marathon, I asked an experienced small-framed woman marathoner to give them advice on hydration. Why ? Because I perspire heavily and weigh 200 lbs., and so I consume more than a gallon of fluid during a marathon, as repeated experience has told me this is the right amount for me. If these women followed my routine, they may have drowned, and I could not begin to guess what amount of fluid was proper for them.

I have some recommendations on eating for a race – I eat continuously the night before, and snack lightly on granola bars and orange slices as I run – but you need to test out different strategies when you train. You’re the only expert on your own body. If your body chokes up when you chew granola, or orange slices, or peanut butter, ditch them and try something else, and when you find what works, stick with it, no matter what I, Ms. Bonci, or the Well Blog may say.

Steal This Blog Post

2009-07-07T12:51:00.000-04:00

Columnist Connie Schultz is trying to save newspapers by putting some Web sites out of business. Writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, she advocates “saving” newspapers by expanding copyright law, so that “originators' stories would be available only on their Web sites for the first 24 hours.” Schultz’s commentary follows on the heels of similar commentary from the esteemed federal judge Richard Posner. Such a law would threaten a good part of the ecosystem of the Web, which has been built around the well-accepted principle that it is permissible to link to, and comment on, anything published on the Web.

When a newspaper breaks news, everyone else has to summarize that story in order to build upon it or present an alternative viewpoint. Giving one newspaper a 24-hour monopoly on the story, per the proposed law, sounds like a severe infringement on the First Amendment. Let’s say the Washington Post runs a shocking expose about the President, based on tips from Deep Throat Jr. I decide to write a blog post about it, explaining my skepticism about the charges; how can my counterpoint be useful to readers if I can’t link to, or even paraphrase, the article I’m criticizing? Not only would this law limit free speech, but it would cripple the creative possibilities of journalism – at the exact moment that the business most desperately needs innovation.

As Wendy Davis blogs, this isn’t in the readers’ interests, and would probably hurt newspapers, too, by cutting off the online traffic stream that aggregators send their way.

And yes, newspapers are in trouble, but as Mitch Kapor writes, “it would be a giant mistake to equate the death of newspaper with the death of journalism.” The old business model for breaking news, as Schultz admits, is itself broken. Journalists and publishers need to look to the internet for ideas, not for lawsuits. They can’t legislate their way back to the glory days of print media.

Still, some legislation could help without entombing journalism in a 1970s newsroom. What is needed is a tighter definition of Fair Use, greater penalties for violation of it, and a practical mechanism for copyright owners to pursue Fair Use claims and seize any advertising revenue generated from the guilty parties. That way, journalists could still build off of each other’s work and yet protect themselves from blatant abuse.

But the Schultz strategy reminds me of the music industry’s battle against piracy. Instead of embracing the possibilities opened up by the web, they stuck with the same business model and then sued the ripped jeans off of a bunch of download-happy college kids. Anyone know how that’s worked out for them?

Assassins and their Fatal Fictions

2009-07-02T15:37:00.000-04:00

FindingDulcinea's "On This Day" for July 2 contains several fascinating, little-known facts about the assassination of President Garfield. One that struck me was the defense asserted by assassin Charles Guiteau at his trial: “Some of these days instead of saying ‘Guiteau the assassin’, they will say ‘Guiteau the patriot.’”

Guiteau believed that the murder was an act in the public interest. This belief is hardly exceptional as assassins go. Self-delusion of a noble, heroic purpose is a common thread connecting murderous lone actors of history.

What convinces an assassin that he’s a national hero? How does one man, out of so many millions who might share similar political beliefs and passions, conclude that it is his destiny to commit murder for the greater good?

Guiteau defended his action as “a political necessity,” and was so confident of general approbation that he instructed General William Tecumseh Sherman, “I am going to the Jail. Please order out your troops and take possession of the Jail at once.”

A prior findingDulcinea “On This Day” about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln reveals a similar theme, as John Wilkes Booth was shocked at the public’s grief and failure to applaud the murder. His letters provide disturbing insight into his motivations, such as this excerpt printed by the New York Times: “When a country like this spurns justice from her side, She forfeits the allegiance of every honest freeman, and should leave him untrammeled by any fealty soever, to act, as his conscience may approve.”

The recent assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller once again echoed this same sad, deluded tale. Although many tried to link the murder to the heated rhetoric of our cable news culture, only one man translated this passion into violence.

FindingDulcinea Senior Writer Shannon Firth analyzed Tiller's murder and explored the motives of assassins, detailing the three types categorized by author Kris Hollington. There are “wolves,” who seek notoriety, “jackals,” who are hired hands, and finally “foxes,” who are “novices hoping to make a political statement.”

According to Hollington, these foxes are intensely passionate, but are also “ordinary, unremarkable people, often failures: the antithesis of the men and women they try to kill.” Although they justify their actions in political and often religious language, “it’s all within the troubled mind of the lone individual… almost a movie in their mind.”

Do their personal failures, then, prod them towards an alternate reality, in which they can play the film-star heroes? John Hinckley, Jr., possibly inspired by the movie Taxi Driver, believed that by shooting Ronald Reagan he could win the love of actress Jodie Foster. He later explained himself, according to PBS, with this rumination on fiction: “The line dividing life and art can be invisible. After seeing enough hypnotizing movies and reading enough magical books, a fantasy life develops which can either be harmless or quite dangerous.”

I suppose heroism, and even history, is always something of a fiction, a combination of reality and the myths built around it. But I can’t stop wondering what it takes to push an individual into a myth so fatal, so extreme, and so disconnected from the society he believes he is saving.

Parenting, Not Lecturing

2009-07-01T14:39:00.000-04:00

Reading findingDulcinea’s recent article on what parents should know about teen dating reminded me of Otto Frank's remarks when he first read his daughter Anne Frank’s diary in the 1960s:

“For me, it was a revelation. There, was revealed a completely different Anne to the child that I had lost. I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.”

Isn't this what every father reading his daughter's diary would think?

So, short of reading a diary, how do fathers (and mothers) learn the depths of their children’s thoughts and feelings? And how can parents use this knowledge to safely steer their teenagers past the risks that confront today’s teens?

I don’t want to set myself up as a parenting guru, out of fear that my Internet-savvy daughters will post a counterpoint in the comment section. But that findingDulcinea article confirmed many of the strategies and insights I’ve stumbled upon while raising kids.

First off, I’ve found that an “open dialogue” is, as the article says, essential. Don’t do all the talking. Or even most of it. Ask questions – their answers might surprise you. More importantly, behave as if there is no "right" answer, and no repercussions for the "wrong" answer. Listen to and reflect on their responses, and then act on them.

Heatedly lecturing them about drugs or sex, for example, is often counter-productive. Before you try to scare them, ask about the landscape they encounter and how they feel about it. For all you know, your kid may be struggling not with drugs or alcohol, but with fitting in as someone who doesn’t use them. In that case, she’d need support, coping strategies, and a sympathetic ear more than a threatening harangue.

And, having felt invincible myself at age 16, I always attributed reckless teen behavior to illusions of invulnerability, but a recent study found the opposite can be true. A shocking number of teens simply don't care about their safety because they believe they will die by age 35. Imagine shouting at an irresponsible teen that she wasn't invincible, only to discover that her recklessness stemmed from hopeless fatalism. Ask about the problem before you try to solve it.

Another way to build trust with your teen is through “ground rules” – for both child and parent. Your kids should understand what you consider unacceptable behavior, but should also feel they can come to you when there’s a real problem. Everyone makes mistakes, and your son or daughter is not only a human being, but one still very much developing. Who survives adolescence without a crisis or three? And when that crisis comes, they need to turn to you, without worrying about the repercussions, or else you may only found out about the crisis from someone else, and when it’s too late to do much about it.

For instance, if they’re stranded somewhere drunk or high or just in a troubling situation, it’s more important that they get home safely than that they get grounded for a month. Let them know that they can call you with immunity. The very act of picking up the phone to ask for help is an admission of wrongdoing, and, for their safety, you need to accept it as their apology.

That said, they should still take such situations seriously. If they’re calling you for help often, then there’s a bigger problem to address, and one that requires both vigilance and consequences. Some parents even make contracts with their teens, so that each party acknowledges its own responsibilities.

I don’t have all of the answers, and neither do you. But, as another article stresses, a strong family support system can make the difference between a healthy and a troubled teen. That support system can only be built through great communication with your kids. Your role is not simply to impart wisdom learned from "when you were a kid." Things change, teens change, and things likely never were the way you remember them anyway.

A Casual Marathon: It's Relay for Life Season

2009-06-26T14:47:00.000-04:00

You’ve read about my running, but you may not know that my passion for marathons was born in a tent on my local high school football field. Long before the Boston Marathon, I walked/ran the Relay for Life, and currently teams across the country are running and preparing to run in support of the American Cancer Society.

I love the challenge and rigor of a full-fledged marathon, but I know how daunting it can be. The Relay for Life is the perfect first step for people looking for the community and exhilaration of running for charity, but not prepared to abandon their hot chocolate by the fireplace for a grueling regime of winter training.

The 24-hour event requires no experience, and participants only have to keep one team member circling the track at all times. The rest of the team can cheer the others on or, of course, recharge in tents with vital doses of sugar and caffeine. The money raised supports cancer research and awareness, while the experience itself promotes community for cancer survivors and their supporters.

I can’t promise, though, that you’ll be able to stop there; as I’ve written before, marathon fever is surprisingly contagious. After the Relay for Life, I – along with five other findingDulcinea staffers – ran an incredible twelve-person, 181-mile, 26-hour Ragnar Relay. This amazing event may seem, well, miles beyond the Relay for Life, but it also welcomes novices and offers training programs for the beginner and the experienced runner alike. Take a look at their website, and, if you still need inspiration, read our reasons to run.

You can find your local Relay for Life here, along with other ways to get involved on the event’s main website. And just in case, you may want to check out our Web Guide to Running. Who knows? Maybe next year the Boston Marathon won’t seem quite so far-fetched.

Ten Tips for First-Time Marathoners, from a Former Fat Guy

2009-06-24T20:12:00.000-04:00

Most marathon advice is given by tall, thin people who run 3,000 miles per year. It sounds great in theory, but can be unrealistic for mere mortals to follow. I do not fit the prototype of a marathon runner. When I began training for my 1st marathon in 2004, I was significantly overweight, and even on race day, I was 30 pounds overweight, walked a lot, and struggled on severely cramping legs to barely finish, in 5:12. The next 2 marathons were similar - started training way overweight, was too heavy even on race day, and improved modestly each time. Last year, I again started training way too heavy, but this time I lost 31 pounds for my November race, improved by 36 minutes, and have since trained steadily, losing more weight and nearly breaking 4 hours in the Boston Marathon in April. I’m still a normal person, leading a normal life with a normal diet, but I’ve figured out how to do so and yet compete successfully in marathons. And how to guide others through the process as well - I now count 15 people, including three brothers, who have successfully completed their first marathon with my encouragement and advice. If you’ve ever thought about running a marathon, but don’t want to trade your social life and family time for an austerity diet of bird food and daily three-hour runs, I have the top ten tips to get you safely across the finish line.

1. Beware of One Size Fits All Advice

The universe of people training for their first marathon includes men and women, teens and seniors, gymnasts and linebackers, athletes and couch potatoes. Beware the gurus who think they have The One Approach to training for a marathon that will work for all. And what worked for your friend may not work for you. Always test advice, even the advice found in our Web Guide to Running, and adjust it to fit your body and circumstances.

2. Create a Detailed and Realistic Plan

You won’t become a marathon runner overnight. I’ve covered before the difficulty of keeping resolutions, and a plan, created with reasonable expectations in mind, is essential to staying on track. Writing down incremental goals and planning how you will gradually intensify your training will help keep you going. Each tick-off of the check list will be one further encouragement to conquer the next un-ticked goal. Besides, it’s easier to rationalize laziness in your head than to make excuses to a piece of paper.

3. Include Cross-Training in that Detailed Plan

I owe one of my biggest running breakthroughs to a pair of boxing gloves. As I’ve mentioned before, an early-morning boxing boot camp revolutionized my marathon training, and helped me knock off 31 pounds and 36 minutes. Varying your exercise routine can improve your overall fitness and flexibility, while giving your running muscles a break. And, in addition to strengthening different muscle groups and reducing the risk of injury, the image of you in boxing gloves should do wonders for your reputation. For more, see findingDulcinea’s article on cross-training.

4. Make Training an Integral Part of Your Life

A marathon is not a throwaway task, done after the dishes are washed and the kids are asleep – and the training for it can’t be treated that way either. You don’t have to make running your life, but you should make it a habit, an essential part of your daily routine. My life is busy, even chaotic, and I would never get in shape if I only exercised when everything else was done. You sleep, you eat breakfast, you go to meetings, you shower… and you run. Don’t accept excuses to skip your run; does a bad day at the office excuse you from brushing your teeth?

5. Find Training Buddies

From Don Quixote to the Wizard of Oz to the Lord of the Rings, any classic quest film will tell you that all great journeys require companions. Although my friends are fully equipped with hearts, brains, and courage, they see me to finish line after finish line as surely as Dorothy’s friends escorted her to the end of the Yellow Brick Road. I’ve written before and I’ll say it again: running partners are essential. Friendly competition with co-workers at my previous company first coaxed me back into the running habit. One findingDulcinea writer first encouraged me to try boxing and kept me going back, and another kept me, quite literally, on my toes during my weekly long runs. And as proud as I was when my brothers called me to announce better and better training times – after I had personally lured them into the contagious running craze – I could not help becoming competitive with them. Without sharing our accomplishments, we would never have achieved them.

6. You Will Be Frustrated, Then Astounded, by Your Progress

The first part of your training will be discouraging. When you first push yourself to run further than you have before, your body will push back, and it won't get much easier for several months. You'll doubt that you’ll be able to complete your long runs, never mind the race itself. And then, about 8-10 weeks before the race, the clouds will part, the sun will glint off of your newly-sculpted legs, and you will experience that breakthrough moment. You’ll suddenly improve in leaps and bounds each week, until finally you start saying silly things like "I never knew 15 miles could seem so easy."

7. And Once Astounded, Contentment is Thy Enemy

Sure, smug self-satisfaction feels good – even deserved – when you’ve lost that first 10 pounds or improved your time by half an hour. Perhaps, you complacently think, you can skip this week’s training for some TV, or replace your run at the gym with a late-night run to Ben & Jerry’s. Sorry, but no. As I’ve told you before, now is exactly when you have to work harder. Whenever I begin to feel that creeping sense of contentment, I double my efforts, knowing that I’ll only slide backward if I don’t run forward. If it feels this good to shave off that first 10 pounds or 30 minutes, think how great it will be to lose the next 10 pounds – and how disappointing it would be to gain it all back.

8. Don’t Let Small Setbacks Cause Total Failure

You’re human. Over 18 weeks, you WILL bend. Don’t break. You will have three consecutive days where you are busy, hurt and tired and not run. The difference between success and failure here will be determined by whether you let these three days became ten. Draw a line in the sand and, after a few days back on your plan, it will be as though you never missed any training at all.

9. No Running on Empty

Nutrition is as important to successful running as training. Food is fuel, and you must approach it that way: when you’re eyeing that chili hot dog for lunch, remember that it won’t provide the energy you’ll need at mile 15. And empty calories will be excess baggage on your journey.
And you may not realize this on your 10-mile practice runs, but you also have to eat real food during the marathon. As I learned at the bottom of Heartbreak Hill, water and Gatorade alone won’t cut it in a 26-mile race. Ignore how foul “carbohydrate gel” sounds and learn to love them for long runs and the race. My personal favorite is the Hammer gel. And during the marathon, you’ll need to eat real food as well; granola bars and orange slices work for me. Don’t just accept my suggestions, though – you might do better with peanut butter packets, nuts, fruit, or a bagel. Test them out on your training runs, and find the food that best fuels you. Rather than wolfing down whatever snack you choose, eat it in small doses continually. Break up a granola bar into seven pieces and make it last seven miles. And eat continuously the night before the marathon, too, since you can’t wake up to a big breakfast. The night before I ran Philly, I did not stop eating; I was curled up like a rabbit with a granola bar for a carrot, trailing crumbs all over the pillow until I fell asleep. The next day, I felt fully energized, and beat my best time by 35 minutes.

10. Invite Your Cheerleaders

Cheerleaders provide more than just distraction during half-time, as you’ll learn when you become the athlete and your friends and family band together as your cheerleading squad. Even if you can’t coerce your friends into training with you, their support, encouragement, and even high expectations can spur you on to faster miles. As I’ve written before, my late brother James has been a constant inspiration, and when you hit mile 12, nothing can provide an extra burst of energy like the sight of your excited, cheering family. A support network is essential to a successful marathon.

For further tips, inspiration, videos, and interactive tools, see the findingDulcinea feature Training for Your First Marathon.

Five Seconds That Were Just Packed

2009-06-24T18:25:00.000-04:00

I caught a late train into the city today. Penn Station was quiet as I got on the short escalator to exit the track area. Just in front of me, several commuters balked at the bottom of the escalator and stepped quickly to the side. I pushed ahead of them and saw that a man in his 60s had fallen backwards and was laying on his back on the escalator steps, and sliding down and bumping his head, with his wife two steps up, shrieking. I had actually encountered a similar situation a few years ago, when a woman tourist had fallen back over her luggage, and thought that, as I did back then, I would pull his shoulders up and forward and he'd get his legs under him and stand. I knelt down and put my arms under his shoulder blades to assist him up. Suddenly his eyes rolled back in his head, and he went fully limp in my arms. I thought he had just died. His wife was shouting for help while I was shouting at her to run up and hit the emergency off switch, but thinking it may not matter. Believing that I had two seconds to save a corpse from desecration, I broke every back safety rule for lifting, uhh, dead weight, pulled him nearly upright, and prayed I could somehow get his feet off the ground as they passed the exit step. As we were a step from the top, the escalator stopped abruptly, and my shoulder bumped into his head, jarring him awake. The now risen man walked off the escalator, as I supported him until I could prop him against a wall. A railroad worker came up the escalator with my bag, followed by four cops who grabbed onto the no-longer-recently-departed. I picked up my bag and walked to the office, with a seriously strained lower back and fervently hoping that these would be the most excitement-packed five seconds of the day.

10 Takeways from the Kentucky Derby

2009-05-04T18:51:00.000-04:00

1. The Kentucky Derby is the only major sporting event regularly won by the common man

Sometimes Kentucky Derby trophies are handed to wealthy breeders such as Paul Mellon and Frances Genter, who are justly rewarded for decades spent improving the breed. And on rare occasion they go to a wealthy newcomer who pays millions for a horse like Fusaichi Pegaus. And yet deliciously often, the Kentucky Derby is won by a horse that was purchased for a pittance, such as Seattle Slew, Real Quiet, Funny Cide and now Mine that Bird, who was originally bought for $9,500. The “dollar and a dream” fantasy is very much alive at the Kentucky Derby.

2. Pace Makes the Race

The early pace in the Derby was insanely fast, considering the track condition. With a half-mile to go, Mine That Bird was still more than three seconds behind the leg-weary leaders. While it looked as though he accelerated down the stretch, he merely ran an even pace all the way around, and the other contenders were staggering in the home stretch.

3. There is only one Bo-rail

From the very first race on the Derby card, horses that ran along the rail pulled away at the end of the race, while those who swept wide into the stretch faded. Riding the rail is always the shortest way around, but on Saturday, it took on added advantage, as the ground was clearly firmer near the rail than in the middle of the track. ESPN analyst and former jockey Jerry Bailey noted it several times. This left many fans wondering why every jockey didn’t emulate Calvin Borel’s rail-skimming ride aboard Mine That Bird. But such a ride takes patience and courage, and Borel reported that his small horse barely fit through some of the holes, and indeed scraped the rail at least twice. It was as remarkable a ride as you will ever see, and if they ran the same race tomorrow, few other riders would have the moxie to do what Borel did.

4. Sealing a racetrack yields inconsistent performances.

Since horse began racing on dirt, horse bettors have had to try to divine which horse would run well when rain turned the track muddy. But in the past 20 years, when a track is soaked and more rain is called for, many track superintendents “seal” the track – in effect, steamroll it and pack it tightly so that further rain will not seep in. Then, as the big race nears, the track is harrowed. Supporters of sealing believe it creates a more even and safer surface, a noble goal. But few doubt the proposition that even some horses who do well in the mud may flounder on a sealed racetrack. Friesan Fire and Dunkirk are just two horses that ran inexplicably poorly on Saturday’s surface.

5. Experience does matter

Many purists have shuddered in recent years as the Derby was won several times by horses who defied convention, whether by having fewer lifetime races or more rest than previous winners. But Mine That Bird had run 8 times before the Derby, starting his career in July of last year, and most of the horses who finished in the top half of the field fit the same profile. Meanwhile, favorite Friesan Fire finished next to last off his 7 weeks of rest, and second choice Dunkirk also finished well back in his 4th lifetime start.

6. With many trainers, it is still the case that a horse will show improvement in his 3rd start off a lay-off

This maxim has long been true, but has lost some of its currency in recent years. Nowadays, many trainers have their horses fully primed for every race, because they race them only a handful of times per year. But with throwback trainers like Chip Woolley who actually still believe in letting a horse race himself into shape, there is no better time to bet on their horses than the third race back off a layoff, which is where Mine That Bird was on Saturday.

7. Mine That Bird Ran an Extraordinary Race.

While many pundits will forever speculate why some horse ran poorly on Saturday, the fact is that the final time for the race was excellent, given the muddy track. While comparisons from one race to another are difficult to make, Mine the Bird ran much faster than Smarty Jones, Go for Gin, and Sunday Silence did when they won the Derby on a wet track. And few questioned whether any of them were worthy of the title of Derby champion.

8. Horses who jump up from obscurity don’t always go back there.

Derby upsetters like Giacomo, Lil E. Tee and Gato Del Sol enjoyed little, if any, glory after their two minutes of Derby fame. But Canonero II, Derby champ of 1971, perhaps the most obscure Derby winner of all, next won the Preakness Stakes. While he then finished 4th in the Belmont Stakes and lost his first 7 races the following year, he validated his brilliance when he defeated three-year old champion Riva Ridge in the Stymie Handicap at Aqueduct racetrack, setting a track record in the process. I think there are more big wins in Mine That Bird’s future.

9. There is a huge carryover into Churchill’s Wednesday card on both the Pick Six and the Super High Five.

More than $100 million was bet on Saturday’s racecard. Mine that Bird’s shocking upset meant that no one picked the winners of 6 races in a row, nor the top 5 Derby finishers. More than $1 million carries over and will be paid out to people who hit these bets on Wednesday. And so many of the veteran handicappers who at 6:30 on Saturday night swore they will never bet again are today buying a Racing Form for Wednesday. And that is because.......

10. There is no breed of human being more indomitable than a horseplayer.

How to Bet The Kentucky Derby Online

2009-05-01T09:55:00.000-04:00

As we all know, there are a lot of topics for which search engines miserably fail to deliver accurate and reliable information.

One such topic that is near and dear to my heart is betting on the Kentucky Derby. But if you search "How to Bet the Kentucky Derby Online" or any variation of it, almost all of the top 25 results lead you to illegal, shady or at least questionable betting sites, or spam that doesn't offering what you are looking for. And even the legitimate information sites will only offer you their in-house option. I could not find anywhere a list of all legal options for betting on the Derby.

Of course, our mission at findingDulcinea is to find, evaluate, compile, organize and add context to the best online resources about any subject. And so we have created a Web Guide to the Kentucky Derby, which includes a list of all the legitimate online betting services and links to their Website.

For your convenience, I repeat it here:

WHERE TO BET THE KENTUCKY DERBY ONLINE

Most racetracks that are open for live racing, and most off-track betting outlets, in the U.S. offer betting on the Kentucky Derby. The NTRA provides a calendar of racing at all U.S. tracks.

Youbet is the largest online horse racing wagering site. It is free to open an account online. The wagering service is available to residents of 37 states.

TwinSpires is managed by Churchill Downs Incorporated and offers wagering on races at Churchill Downs to all U.S. residents. Accounts require an initial $50 deposit, but there is no monthly subscription fee. TwinSpires is open to residents of 36 states.

XpressBet offers wagering online and by phone to residents in 32 states. Opening an account is free with a $50 deposit.

TVG.com offers wagering through multiple platforms to residents of 15 states. Unlike the other services, TVG charges a small fee to place each wager, with a maximum charge of $19.95 per month.

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Autotote is also a legitimate online wagering firms, but does not enable you to open and fund your account on a same-day basis. Some racetracks also offer online wagering accounts, but most do not offer same-day opening and funding options.

Be wary of any other online wagering provider, other than the four on the list above; they may be located offshore and may not be legally permitted to accept wagers from U.S. residents. If you search "how to bet online" in a search engine, almost all of the results will be these offshore companies that cannot legally offer wagering services in the United States.

It appears that generally, residents of these 13 states are not eligible to open accounts with these services, due to state law: Alaska, Arizona, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah

Why Heads Must Roll Over Monday's "Photo Op" Over Lower Manhattan

2009-04-27T23:25:00.000-04:00

On Monday morning, residents and office workers in lower Manhattan and Jersey City got quite a shock. What appeared to be a large commercial jet was flying very low over the Statute of Liberty, and then circling close over the Goldman Sachs Tower in Jersey City. Close in pursuit was a military jet. Millions watched in horror, anticipating the third terrorist attack on lower Manhattan in 16 years.

Fortunately, it was merely a "photo opportunity" - Air Force One flying over the Statue of Liberty to create mementos for President Obama to give to guests.

While some authorities in NY and NJ were given advance notice of this photo op, they were also told to keep it close to the vest, as the mission was "classified." Only local authorities with a "need to know" were to be told. Apparently Mayor Bloomberg did not make the cut.

Why was this mission "classified" ? The mission was not military in nature; it was a purely political stunt. And therein lies the answer. What was the sensitive information that needed to be kept from public scrutiny ? The fact that the Obama administration had authorized a mission at great expense to taxpayers and the environment for a "photo op."

Just last week President Obama ceremoniously demanded that his cabinet cut $100 million per year in expense, and of course has generated a lot of goodwill with his environmental policies. Now it is headline news that his administration sent out a 747 and a fighter jet from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to circle around New York City to make gift cards. And I bet they didn't even purchase carbon offsets. The "Top Secret" classification is suddenly quite understandable.

And of course the colossal waste of taxpayer money and the harm to environment pale in comparison to the great damage done to the psyches of those who witnessed it. How did anyone imagine they might react ?

The New York Daily News reported the reactions of two people in lower Manhattan that explains it better than I ever could:

"I was crying and praying to God to forgive me my sins because I thought I was going to get killed," said Kathleen Filandro, who fled from 1 New York Plaza when she spotted the planes.

"It's like someone coming up to you, sticking a gun to your head for 15 seconds, walking away and hearing 20 minutes later it was an undercover cop posing for a photo," said Wall Street worker Bill Privett.

For many, it was like having a gun to your head for 30 minutes, 8 years after you had another gun to your head for several hours, while you watched 3,000 people get shot in the head.

The entire incident shows a stunning lack of judgment that cannot be dismissed. Has no one in the White House been introduced to the concept of writing a list of pros and cons and weighing them before approving an action? Or, as one wry commenter put it, haven't these guys heard of photoshop?

Last year, I wrote a post about missteps by Facebook (which continue to this day), where I quoted an essay by Judge Joseph McLaughlin, of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and former Dean of Fordham Law School. He wrote that he long ago learned that "the world pays off on judgment - not brilliance, knowledge, and not experience or compassion either, though a fair portion of all of these is essential to the exercise of good judgment."

In a single, precise word, Judge McLaughlin had captured why many brilliant people fail; they have bad judgment. I vowed to use this word to focus my thinking in all future critical situations. This vow was cemented a few days later when I read a WSJ article about the sacking of a CEO of Coca Cola; a board member discussed a situation that the CEO handled very poorly, and said that the Board help a CEO overcome a deficiency in skills, but what the CEO did showed bad judgment.

The decision to go ahead with today's photo op, and to limit advance disclosure of it, evinces a stunning display of poor judgment, and a reckless disregard for the people of New York and New Jersey. Anyone who participated in, and approved this decision, is beyond salvage and should be removed from the administration.

Fortunately, some good did come out of this incident. In light of the reaction to two planes buzzing New York yesterday, a planned mission to have two plans buzz Washington DC in two weeks has been canceled. Maybe there is some hope after all.

Running the Boston Marathon: Days Like These Are a Great Gift

2009-04-21T16:46:00.000-04:00

For someone who began running in the 1970s, the Boston Marathon is the pinnacle of sport. It has been run since 1897, and was the only marathon of consequence until the NYC Marathon came of age in the late 1970s. And so every runner dreams of running the Boston Marathon once. But the qualifying standards are high, and for most runners it remains but a dream. However, when the race began to offer spots for runners who raise money for designated charities, I jumped at the chance, joining the Habitat for Humanity team.

The weather was ideal, in the 40s and cloudy. As my brother Matt drove me to the start in Hopkinton, I was more full of anticipation than I have ever been for a race. I met up with my Habitat teammates, who are as fine a group of people as you will ever meet, and shared mutual encouragement and then went to the starting line.

I ran with Brett Holey, director of NBC Nightly News. He is a veteran marathoner who has run some remarkable times, but his training was slowed by injuries. He was thrilled to have recovered enough to run, and was merely looking to finish. We ran a 21 mile practice run together 3 weeks earlier, and I mentioned my hope of running under 4 hours, which would be 18 minutes better than my previous record and nearly an hour faster than my best NYC Marathon 18 months ago. At dinner the night before the race, Brett offered to be my "rabbit," keeping me on pace to break 4:00, regardless of the effect it would have on his race. You don't meet many people like Brett.

We started at the rear, and it was extremely crowded for 3 miles. We hoped to run 8:20 for these downhill miles, but ran closer to 9:20. Brett's "zen like state" calmed me, where if I were alone I may have fought the situation, burning a lot of energy for little gain. The road finally opened up, and we picked up the pace. As congestion eased further and our legs loosened, I felt like a bird who had escaped the cage, and we accelerated from miles 6 to 11. I was running faster than I imagined I would, but the miles went by easy, so much so that I missed some of the mile markers.

After mile 12, we began to hear the thunderous roar of the Wellesley College "scream tunnel." It reminded me of approaching Niagara Falls; it was stunning to hear how loud it was from so far away. We hit the half on target, at 1:54, and I began to think a 3:55 finish was assured. Brett said I should feel no obligation to stay with him, and at mile 16 I told him I was going to take the downhill hard, and he fell a little behind me (happily, I later learned he finished very well). I sailed past Mile 17 and up the 2nd biggest hill on the course. I got to the top in good shape, and my confidence soared. But as I hit the next two smaller hills, they took far more out of me than I had expected. I realized that in fifth marathon, I had begun to take it for granted and had not carefully thought through my food and fluid intake. Adding in my zeal to overcome the slow start, I had not hydrated enough, had eaten nothing, and had very suddenly become weak, nauseous, dizzy and was cramping badly in my left leg. And this was at the bottom of Heartbreak Hill ! I had hit The Wall before, but never so suddenly, where in a half mile stretch I went from thinking a 3:55 finish was assured to wondering if I could even finish the last 6.2 miles.

Realizing I had no other means of transport, I walked quickly up the hill, inhaling every orange slice, pretzel, gummy bear and cup of water offered by the angels of mercy in the crowd. This strengthened me some, and the task ahead seemed easier at the top of the hill than it had at the bottom. I realized I could still break 4:00 if I could maintain a 9:35 pace, and this seemed achievable, given that I had run faster than 9:00 for 18 miles in a row. I gave it all I had for the next mile, but ran it in 10:00; I pressed even harder to mile 23, but again hit the marker in 10:00. I realized the cramping in my left leg and the resultant lack of fluidity was slowing me measurably. I realized that even if I could maintain the 10:00 pace, I would finish in 4:02, which would cause me to spend months analyzing how I could have gone 2 minutes faster. So I went into "safe mode," running moderately from mile marker to mile marker and walking through the water stations. Around the 24.5 mile mark, I suddenly felt compelled to stop. I walked a few yards trying to figure out what was wrong and finally concluded, like Forrest Gump eventually did, that I simply didn't want to run any more. But I had 1.7 miles to go, and put one foot in front of the other and repeated, and staggered to the finish line. My time was 4:04:58, disappointing considering how great I felt at Mile 19. And yet it was 13 minutes faster than prior best last November, and a lot better than I feared as I stood weak, dizzy and nauseous at Mile 20.

And then they hung around my neck a blue and gold medal that signified I had completed the Boston Marathon, which I had been dreaming about for 30 years. I realized that days like these are a great gift that should be cherished, with no energy squandered on rethinking what went wrong and slowed you for a few minutes.

And a smile came across my face that hasn't left since.

Well, except for when I walk down stairs.

Twenty, twenty, twenty four hours to go to the Boston Marathon

2009-04-19T11:18:00.000-04:00

And yes, I wanna be sedated, before I go loco. The last weeks before a marathon are maddening. After 4 months in heavy training; you downshift, rest 2x a week and cut workouts back in intensity and duration. This is my 5th marathon, so I understand why, and yet I fret that the inactivity will haunt me in the race, even though my experience says it won't. Part of the anxiety stems from the fact that heavy training puts you in a steady zen state, and as you cut back, you come down off a high. And I want to start the race NOW, prove to myself I'm still fit enough, and get back that high. I feel good about my training and am hopeful for a good race, perhaps breaking four hours. This won't put me on any "top 100 finishers" list but would be a feat for me. As I wrote earlier this year, I ran around 5 hours in my first three marathons between 2004-07, and then decided to get more serious about my training. I added a boxing class to my routine, lost a lot of weight, and improved 35 minutes in the Philadelphia Marathon last November. I have continued to lose weight, add muscle, and run faster during my training runs, and any meaningful further improvement will be enough for me. Surprisingly, after training for two marathons 5 months apart, I am not broken down at all - physically I feel great, and mentally I'm even better - I'm actually thinking as much about future races as tomorrow's, and I know I can continue to improve a lot from here. I've benefited from participating on a charity fundraising team for Habitat for Humanity, one of my favorite causes, for which we are raising funds to buy foreclosed homes, rehabilitate them, and sell them on an affordable basis to first time buyers, thereby turning around entire neighborhoods. Though most of my teammates are from the Boston area, we've been emailing each other for four months and I met about half of them during a 21-mile practice run on the course last month, and we've supported each other quite a bit. Having a support network like this is crucial to the success of any ambitious training program.

FindingDulcinea's Redesign: Better than Facebook's

2009-03-24T12:16:00.000-04:00

Facebook recently redesigned its homepage, and the results are overwhelming. ly. bad. In a poll, 94% of Facebook users preferred for the old homepage. Farhad Manjoo of Slate argues we'll learn to love it once we give it time, but I'm not of a mind to give it time, and many other users feel the same way. Heavy Internet users are adding new sites, tools and functionality to their repertoire every day. And Facebook friend requests I get from new members is skyrocketing. And each of these groups, when frustrated by a drastic, befuddling change that no one asked for (except Facebook executives envious of Twitter's growth), may be just as likely to largely abandon Facebook as they are to figure it all out again. At the very least, they'll react as my young niece did in this story: her family moved every year or two due to his career. Shortly after arriving in a new city, my brother tried to wake her for her first day of Kindergarten; she looked at him through sleepy eyes and said "naaah, I'll go to Kindergarten when we get to the next city." And that's how I feel about the new Facebook redesign; I'll figure out how to use the next one.

By contrast, the redesigned homepage of findingDulcinea has received nearly unanimous plaudits. True, most of the people I've asked work for the site, but we think you'll like it, too. We've significantly reduced the number of photos on the home page, as they made it difficult to concentrate attention on any one spot. And we've given more prominence, and more permanence, to our most popular features, On This Day and Happy Birthday. And we've invited Elvis Presley and Harry Houdini to help us launch it. Elvis sings "Unchained Melody" while Harry tries to unchain himself and leave the building before Elvis finishes the song. History addicts will be able to see a whole week of On This Day features as at a glance. Please check it out and let us know how you like it !

Three Simple Words: No More Excuses

2009-01-01T14:08:00.000-05:00

Today's New York Times carries yet another article confirming the obvious: most of us fail to keep our New Year's Resolutions. This stokes our love affair with self-improvement reality shows, which chronicle the struggles of ordinary people trying to turn their lives around. For me, resolutions have always involved weight loss and fitness. For the past 8 years, I have exercised vigorously for half the year, losing a good deal of weight (though never quite enough) and running several marathons (slower than I would like). After each marathon, my exercise and nutritional zeal waned and I regained all the weight by the time I began marathon training again the next summer, and then did not quite meet my loss/exercise goals for the next marathon. I blamed shortcomings on the extraordinary demands the rest of my life posed, and took comfort in knowing that my conditioning was gradually improving as my marathon times slowly got better. And again last July I began serious training, heavier and less fit than I should have been. But this time, I lost 31 lbs, twice the usual drop, and ran my best marathon by 35 minutes. After 5 weeks of rest (sloth), I am back at it today. What changed this time ? There were many factors; for one, I previously wrote of how adding early morning cardio boxing workouts helped. But another major factor was a simple gesture by my friend Bill Germanakos, who won Season 4 of NBC's Biggest Loser by losing 167 lbs, or half his body weight, and has kept almost all of it off. After his win, Bill hit the lecture circuit, and at each stop he listened to sad people explain the litany of reasons they had not hit their goals. Finally, he put his arm around a man and said, "listen: No More Excuses." The man was startled, and began to cry and admit that all his "reasons" were really "excuses." And so Bill adopted this mantra, and even created some black bracelets imprinted with it, and gave me one. And nearly every time I found myself thinking "I should run tonight, but it's raining," I glanced at the bracelet, realized that I was making excuses, and set off on a long, soggy jog. I also adopted most of Bill and Jim's Nine Tips for Keeping Your Resolutions. Each of these is spot on. For instance, #1, making the resolution an integral part of your life means you don't let the demands of the rest of life always take precedence, which was critical for me. Creating a detailed plan (#4) for achieving your goal makes you set a realistic goal to begin with, and helps you track your progress. And perhaps most important of all, having a resolution buddy (#7) keeps you on track; two colleagues ran the marathon with me; one is the person who introduced me to boxing class and made it fun, and the other ran with me on the crucial mid-week long runs that I never found time for before. FindingDulcinea offers a lot more advice on keeping resolutions, including advice specific to the most common ones. As for me, a tenth tip that I would add is "Contentment is thy enemy." Getting half way to your goal can cause you to smugly ease up. This year, each time I felt that way, I doubled my effort. And, recognizing that if I don't go forward, I will surely go backward, I have resolved to lose the final extra 22 lbs I am carrying and improve yet another 35 minutes, to 3:43, when I run the Boston Marathon in April. There will surely be days I'll try to fashion an excuse to make choices inconsistent with this goal, and I can only hope that each time, I will look down at my black bracelet and read its three simple words.

Why We Do What We Do

2008-12-31T13:53:00.000-05:00

Our On This Day today features the story of Roberto Clemente (click here). He had a Baseball Hall of Fame career for the Pittsburgh Pirates, highlighted by his remarkable MVP-earning heroics in the first World Series ever played at night in 1971. And he was just as solid on the social front, being active in so many causes in his native Puerto Rico, his adopted home city of Pittsburgh, and elsewhere in the world. So it was no surprise that Clemente chose to celebrate New Year's Eve in 1972 by collecting relief supplies for victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua and flying on the plane that was delivering them. Tragically, this gesture resulted in this noble figure being taken from us way too early, as the plane crashed on takeoff. My young son wears a t-shirt with Clemente's name and number on it; grown men stop him in the street with tears in their eyes as they speak admiringly of Clemente. I sent the story around to a slew of friends today; a few wrote back to say they remembered exactly where they were when they heard the news. And yet several wrote back "great article, funny, I had never heard of him." With most current articles about our top athletes decidedly negative, we need to keep alive the memory of athletes such as Roberto Clemente, who had a mission in life that did not end when he crossed home plate.

In the vein of keeping stories alive, FindingDulcinea also presents today the Ten Stories that Defined 2008.

Michael Phelps: Where's the encore ?

2008-12-05T10:17:00.000-05:00

To the surprise of no one, Michael Phelps was named the 2008 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. Sports Illustrated has taken varied approaches to its selections. Sometimes the award is more of a "lifetime achievement award" - it goes to someone who surely was considered multiple times and wins it as a crowning achievement; Brett Favre, Cal Ripken, John Wooden and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are in this category. And then there are those who are chosen more for their impact off the playing field; 1987's "Athletes Who Care," Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King come to mind. And often, as this year, the award goes to a young athlete who does something truly extraordinary in a single year; Phelps, Dwayne Wade, Steve Cauthen, and the first winner, Roger Bannister are in this category. What is impressive is how many of the winners go on to lead impactful lives after their playing days are over. So this week, while we dutifully published yet another bio piece about Michael Phelps, we also presented articles about four former winners whose post-athletic achievements were at least as amazing as their athletic feats. Rafer Johnson was the world's greatest athlete, winning the Olympic Decathlon in Rome in 1960, but, as our article reports, he has trumped that with many decades of involvement in global youth groups. Peter Ueberroth once said "If you made a list of the ten top role models for young men in America, I don’t know who the other nine would be, but Rafer would be one of them." Then there is our article on Arthur Ashe, who helped end apartheid in South Africa; he spoke of his own life in these words: “True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.” We also wrote about running legend Kip Keino, whose foundation has created the Kenyan long distance running dynasty but also supports a school and orphanage; and we wrote about Roger Bannister, who, not content to merely be the first human to break a four minute mile, went on to become a highly regarded neurologist. For now, Michael Phelps is known for swimming faster than any man ever has, and a 13,000 calorie a day diet. Let's hope he follows in the footsteps of these remarkable men to one day be known for so much more.

Finalist for the Mashable Open Awards !!

2008-12-04T12:31:00.000-05:00

One of the hard parts of starting a new company is answering the question, "how are you doing" ?

When you take a one-year old child to the pediatrician, you get a full report measuring your child's height, weight, other measurements, fine motor skills, etc. against the average one-year old.

There is no such report for one year-old Web sites.

We do know that traffic to the site is growing in leaps and bounds, doubling traffic in every quarter thus far, and it looks like it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And we know we have three prestigious content-sharing partnerships starting in the next 30 days, and that our education initiative, the core mission of the company, is about to launch and has generated a very enthusiastic response thus far. Still, for every moment of exhilaration in a new company's life is another moment of terror that our efforts are going unappreciated. But this week we received pretty strong affirmation this week that Internet users like us, they really, really like us.

The Second Annual Mashable Open Web Awards is in its final round of voting. More than 50,000 companies were nominated, and 250 were selected to complete in 25 categories. After two rounds of voting and more than 80,000 votes from the entire Internet global community, there are now 3 finalists in each category.

And in the Search and Social Search category, findingDulcinea is one of those three finalists.

And it is my sense that we have a fair shot at winning, which would be a very good thing for us.

Please vote ! Simply (i) visit our home page (click here to do so), (ii) enter your email address in the box on the middle right of the page (Open Web Awards), and click "Vote Now," and (iii) check your email box for the vote confirmation, OPEN UP the confirmation and CLICK on the link included therein to confirm your vote.

You can vote every 24 hours until midnight December 14th! And the rules allow you to vote as many e-mail addresses as you have. And to tell all your friends.

Again, don't forget to confirm your vote(s) when Mashable sends the follow-up e-mail.

Thank you !!!

Finding Renewable Energy at Mile 13

2008-12-01T12:38:00.000-05:00

I have written about how contagious running marathons can be, and how I improved dramatically in my fourth try by incorporating cardio boxing into my training. Now let me tell you about how an inexplicable, overwhelming surge of energy at the halfway point propelled me to my goal.

My goal was 4:24, a PR by 30 minutes. In my first three marathons, I ran the first half in about 2:17, but the 2nd half took 20-35 minutes longer, as my legs cramped badly and lost much of their function. In running parlance, I am a “Clydesdale,” a person blessed and cursed with a large frame, a head the size of Neptune and thick, dense legs. The legs would be great for pulling a hay wagon, but quizzically ask, “are you kidding me ?” when I implore them into a 21st mile.

For this race, I was very confident I could easily run the first half in under 2:04, and hoped that 2:20 would somehow be attainable for the second. It would all depend on how long into the second half I could maintain a decent pace, and how badly I would slow once my legs started to fail me.

My running partner and I ran the first three miles at a 9:17 pace, right on track. She then struggled through a race day injury. We slowed to a 9:50 pace for the next 3 miles to see if she could shrug it off, but she stopped to stretch and urged me to go ahead. I tried to revert to the faster pace, but struggled to do so, and mile after mile, another 9:50 had elapsed. My legs grew heavy, and my energy began to fade, much earlier than I had expected. As I struggled up a hill in mile 9, I began to ponder what had gone wrong, and to re-adjust my expectations. Where I hoped to glide the first half in 2:04, 2:07 had become likely, and I was much more tired than I expected. 4:30 became my Maginot line, and a tenuous one at that.

I looked down at the face of my late brother, James, on my t-shirt, and muttered “I’ll need you in the second half,” and then prepared to dodge ice on the road at the next water stop.

When I was struggling through long runs for my first marathon in 2004, I called James to encourage him through the difficult physical therapy he was enduring to learn to walk again after a stroke, caused by a staph infection. “I know it hurts,” I said, “but when it hurts the most is when it’s most important that you push on.” As I hung up the phone, I asked myself, “were you talking to him, or you ?” A few months later, I finished the marathon, and the most treasured memory of it is when James called to tell me how proud he was of me. After he passed away, I got three other brothers into running marathons, and it is a family tradition to wear James’ face on the front of our t-shirt.

I then began to push hard in Mile 10 to avoid slipping even further behind my first half goal. As I approached the halfway mark, I was thankful the split would at least be under 2:07, but I looked ruefully towards the second half.

I’ve been running for 32 years, covering an estimated 25,000 miles. Many times, a run that started badly got much better as my legs loosened up, I found a reserve I didn’t know I had, or I just got “locked in” mentally. Innumerable times I’ve experienced “runner’s high,” which is an all-encompassing, serene feeling in which you hardly feel your feet touching the ground, all pain disappears for awhile, and you feel you can fly.

But what I felt as I crossed the halfway mark was so much more than that.

It was a dramatic surge of energy, consequent confidence and other emotions, and focus. You know when the Grinch decides to return the toys to the Whos down in Whoville, instead of tossing them off a cliff ? He gains the strength of ten Grinches – plus two. It was that transformative. Or when the five o’clock Calvin asked the six o’clock Calvin to do his homework for him, so it would be done for him when it became seven o’clock ? Yes, it was as though I had handed a baton to a fresh teammate to run the second half, and all I had to do was show up at the finish to celebrate. I was startled to feel tears streaming down my face. I posited that I was exhausted from a 4 a.m. wake-up call, cold, wet, and hungry, and my emotions were on edge after a difficult few weeks. But that didn’t quite answer it. Because these were tears of joy. I suddenly knew, with ironclad certainty, that I would continue to run 9:50 miles far longer than I had ever dreamed possible, and certainly a lot longer than seemed realistic as I trudged up that hill a few miles back.

A half-mile up the road, I saw my family. My wife, who was being emailed my splits, excitedly told me how well I was doing. Even though there were 12 miles left, I declared confidently in response, “I’m going to make it, I’m going to shatter my goal.” At mile 15, my legs began to cramp, and I thought, “this is where you slow down, try to stay under 10:30.” But 15 seconds later, a voice on my other shoulder said “no, this is where you reach down, and run just as fast, even though it hurts more.” And the next three miles were my fastest of the day, other than the start of the race. As I approached mile 19, I wondered how long this burst would last. And then I realized the energy was renewable, and understood the tears.

You see, the energy emanated from the seven words I muttered to James in mile 9.

On four previous occasions, I have felt an unmistakable other-wordly intervention in my life. All four related to a loved one who faced grave physical peril. I prayed to deceased love ones, and received an overwhelming feeling of assurance that the crisis would pass, and in each case it did. Because of this, I reserve my prayers for serious situations, and never pray for personal success or material gain, and had not done so on this day. I merely advised my brother that a little company on the back 13 would be appreciated. And it had been delivered in spades.

Where the year before I was running a 12 minute pace at this stage, I glided through mile 19 in 9:45; mile 20 went in 9:55; mile 21 in 9:40. I began to feel twitches throughout my legs, and, well ahead of my goal, purposely slowed and ran the next three miles in 10:30 each. I sped back up for a triumphant final mile, finishing the race in 4:18, an improvement of 35 minutes over my all-time best, and about 12 minutes faster than I hoped to run while struggling through mile 9. As Leonardo Da Vinci once said, "Oh Lord, thou giveth us everything, at the price of an effort."

So how do I follow up a race like that ? I'm planning to run the Boston Marathon in April. And gunning for yet another 35-minute improvement.

But this time, I’ll talk to James before the start.

Giants Among Us

2008-11-26T12:39:00.001-05:00

Men like to share stories of toughness and courage. Perhaps by sharing such tales, we'll acquire the attributes exhibited in them. One oft-told story involves football Hall of Fame safety Ronnie Lott. Ronnie won four Super Bowls and a slew of individual honors. But he is often recalled for what he refers to as a "Paul Bunyan" tale of his allowing the tip of his pinky finger to be amputated, since rehabilitating it would have meant missing a season of football. And Lott is a laudable figure, and this is a good story of dedication and courage. But there are many stories of far greater toughness and courage that never get our attention. One came to the fore this week in the wake of the tragic death of FDNY firefighter Robert Ryan. We all should admire anyone who runs into a burning building to help others escape, but Ryan's story is more noble than most. In October 2006, Ryan stretched a hose into a burning three-story building. In the intense heat, melted plastic seriously burned the back of his head and neck. Did this end his shift ? No, he had another firefighter turn a hose on him to cool his burns, and continued to fight the fire. He then endured a year of painful rehabilitation. He was entitled to retire on full disability, and, with a painting business on the side, you might think he would have done so. But he returned to the job, and also began to help child burn victims. In a eulogy, a cousin's letter to him was read: "You didn't talk about helping people, you just did it. You didn't try to save the world, just your little corner of it." His passion for helping placed him in harm's way this week. Having worked through 9/11 and countless other tragedies, Ryan knew very well that this day may come. Yet despite having endured extensive, serious burns, and being given an opportunity to gracefully walk away from the job and be paid anyway, he continued to save the lives of strangers, while putting his own at risk. So whenever stories of noble sports legends and amputated pinkies are told, listen respectfully. And then puncture the contemplative quiet that follows by saying, "I got something even more amazing. Let me tell you about Robert Ryan."

************

A scholarship fund for Ryan's four children has been established; a check may be made out to Robert Ryan Children's Educational Fund and sent to: FDNY Foundation, 9 Metrotech Center, Brooklyn NY 11201.

A great number of FDNY firefighters support the work of the New York Firefighters' Burn Center Foundation, 21 Asch Loop, Bronx, New York 10475.

There is Only the Past, Happening Over and Over Again - Now

2008-11-09T11:11:00.000-05:00

A year ago today, I read Newsday and saw the familiar "On this Day in History" feature that you can find in almost every newspaper. It is always an uninspiring rote listing of a dozen significant events that occurred over the past 500 years. On this particular day, this lackadaisical approach troubled me, because two of the events were momentous; Kristallnacht in 1938, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I was embarrassed that I knew less about these events than I should - and puzzled why Newsday would not devote more space to conveying an understanding of these events that were so rich in historical significance. The older I get, the more interesting history becomes to me. As a college student, I remember being struck, for reasons I did not fully comprehend, by the intro to Leon Uris' Trinity, which was borrowed from Eugene O'Neill's "Moon for the Misbegotten":

"There is no present or future - only the past happening over and over again - now."

And so I wondered; what was the ultimate significance of Kristallnacht ? I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, but when was it erected, and why, and how long was it ? I did some research and learned that Kristallnacht was merely the most overt manifestation of an evil hatred that had been festering for years. I also learned that, after 2.5 million citizens had fled East Germany from 1949 to 1961, the 28-mile long Berlin Wall was erected to stop citizens of East Berlin, which was in East Germany, from fleeing to West Berlin, which was in democratic West Germany; the Berlin Wall was only one small segment of an 860-mile barrier that rendered East Germany a veritable prison. And I also learned that nearly every adviser in Ronald Reagan's cabinet implored him not to demand "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall", and he said it anyway, and it became the seminal moment of his presidency.

And so I decided that our Beyond the Headlines section would henceforth include a well-researched exposition of a significant event that occurred on this day in history. We choose our events by mining the innumerable lists on the Web; oddly, some days are quite rich in truly momentous events, while on others we're scraping the bottom. We usually avoid very recent history, as there is not much perspective to bring to these events yet. And we try to steer clear of the few events in history that are generally quite well known already.

And only today, when we published our treatment of these two events, did I realize the irony that on the same date, we commemorate the most overt manifestation of the emergence of one murderous regime and the most overt symbol of the fall of another.

User response to this feature has been very gratifying. Of the top 10 most popular articles we have created, 6 of them came from this category. We've told of Japan floating balloon bombs across the Pacific during WWII to try to set our forests on fire; of the Polish spy who gave himself up to Nazi soldiers so he could report first hand on the atrocities at Auschwitz, and explained the significance of the Charge of the Light Brigade.

findingDulcinea is a phenomenal resource for students at every level. And when it comes to history, all of us need to be students. But don't take my word for it; Eugene O'Neill said it much better than I ever could.

For our complete On This Day index, click here:

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My Vote

2008-11-04T08:44:00.000-05:00

In the fall of 1980, I cast the first vote of my life for Ronald Reagan. He was running at a time where runaway inflation and double digit interest rates had laid waste to the economy, America had suffered embarrassment on the international stage, and our national spirit was so low that an Olympic hockey victory was the only thing we had to cheer. Reagan optimistically declared that it was "Morning in America," and that our best days were ahead of us. With Paul Volcker's stewardship, Reagan righted the economy, and he used his moral authority and the force of his personality to stare down the Soviets, roll back the Iron Curtain, and get America believing in itself again. Reagan remains my modern-day political hero, and has even recently been adopted as such by many who so reviled him during his years in office.

I admired George H.W. Bush, was sorry he never became all he could have been, and watched with great contempt when he was defeated by Bill Clinton, and again when Bob Dole lost to Clinton in 1996. I made my first ever political contribution to John McCain during the primaries in 2000, and of all the political "could have beens" in my adult life, McCain's loss of the Republican nomination to George W. Bush is the most tragic of all, an impression rendered indelibly in the late morning of 9/11, and confirmed many times since. Still, Bush, for all his many significant faults, was a better choice than either Al Gore or John Kerry for the Presidency.

So why did I cast my ballot today for Barack Obama ?

The John McCain who ran in this election is not the maverick who barnstormed across America in the Straight Talk Express in 2000. He lurched so far to the right to win his party's nomination that he can't find his way back. And the Republican Party whose support he won is not Ronald Reagan's Republican Party. Blessed with the Presidency for the past 8 years and a majority in Congress for much of that time, it has not championed fiscal conservatism, small government and effective deregulation that enables the private sector to responsibly foster growth in our economy. Today's federal government more closely resembles that of the Carter years than Reagan's. McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential running mate is mind-boggling. It smacked of mindless pandering, and evinced bad judgment. I do not want this woman a heartbeat away from the Presidency, nor the presumptive Republican nominee in 2012.

Barack Obama gives us more reasons to hope than John McCain 2008, at a time when we again need a new President who declares that America's best days are ahead of it. Yes, he is unproven, untested, and has left a lot of questions unanswered, and indeed many unasked. Many in the media have uncritically coronated him in the way they did Eliot Spitzer, whose effectiveness was compromised long before that press conference. But Obama is highly intelligent. He appears to be a rare breed whose ego is not greater than his love for this country and its people. Bill Clinton spoke endlessly from his first days of wanting to building an extraordinary legacy, but was unwilling to make the well-considered, difficult and unpopular decisions to do so. Conversely, Obama appears to be an effective consensus builder who is wise enough to surround himself with the best and brightest of this country without regard to political affiliation, including Paul Volcker, and to make difficult and unpopular decisions for the long-term future of this country. And Obama appears to be a God-fearing man whose far-left votes on abortion, and shockingly, even care of infants born alive, reflect more of a gross political calculation than an ideological belief that will send us hurtling even further down the slippery slope of that debate.

And so I bought into this hope. Despite a lot of trepidation, I believe Barack Obama will prove to be a great President, and that young people who cast their first ballot today for him, and even those who vote against him and loudly revile him during his term, will be able to look back on his tenure as fondly as I and most others do on that of Ronald Reagan.

And if I am wrong, then the Republican Party will lick its wounds, regroup, and nominate someone in 2012, not named Sarah Palin, who will rescue it from what it has become over the past 8 years and help it take back the Oval Office.

September 11: Remember the Love

2008-08-19T17:16:00.000-04:00

One mundane tasks for a start-up is creating company policies. Most companies take an ad hoc approach to commemorating September 11. On the first few anniversaries, many offices turned on televisions for staff to watch the ceremonies. And this seemed fitting.

But before last year’s sixth anniversary, The New York Times published an article in which many wondered if it was time to put 9/11 behind us. The sentiment was best captured by a psychologist who said, “Our society has a very low tolerance for grief—it’s exhausting and unrelenting, and we don’t want to hear about it.”

But a focus on the tragedy and grief ignores what should be the central takeaway of 9/11. Because to me, the enduring memory from 9/11 is about love.

On 9/11, we were humbled to learn that a good number of remarkable people are willing to put their lives at grave risk so that others, unknown to them, may live. As we later learned, these rescue workers were not fearless; they knew they were in grave danger. And still they went about saving the lives of people they had never met. And this takes more than courage; it takes love, and indeed there is no greater love. And many of the victims at the WTC and on Flight 93 lived for a desperate hour or more after their fate was sealed, with access to phones, and used the last precious minutes of their lives to call family and friends; all that mattered at the end of their lives was the love they created along the way.

After watching the towers fall from my office, I emerged to find New Yorkers treating one another with compassion and concern, which persisted for months. Steelworkers finished their regular jobs at 3 p.m. and marched downtown to cut the massive sheets of steel that would be the first step to a rescue and recovery operation. Other people formed a persistent mob on the West Side Highway, simply to cheer the vehicles leaving Ground Zero with workers who had put in a difficult day. Politicians spoke respectfully to one another. And Europe demonstrated its solidarity with a day of mourning, punctuated by three minutes of silence in which cars and buses stopped in the middle of highways, radio stations went quiet, and even pubs delayed opening.

As I thought about how our company should commemorate 9/11, I recalled the memorable words of firefighter Mike Moran at the Concert for New York in October 2001. Moran paid tribute to his fallen brother John and the dozens of colleagues, loved ones and neighbors he had lost. And in his most noteworthy line, he said, “They are not gone, because they are not forgotten.” And if we close our office 11 times a year for holidays, and for five half days to get a head start on these holidays, surely we could spare an hour or two to remember the love we witnessed on and after 9/11, so that those who were lost are not gone, are not forgotten?

And then last weekend I experienced the joy of Ronan Tynan in concert, singing with a children's choir. Tynan makes every song sound as though you are hearing it for the first time. As he introduced Bruce Springsteen's "Into the Fire," from the album "The Rising," which is the ultimate musical tribute to the loss experienced and gallantry witnessed on 9/11, I realized for the first time that Springsteen also beseeches us to remember the love of September 11, and the strength, faith, and hope as well, so that we may draw from it:

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your love give us love

And so our policy is set, for this year, and for as long as I run this company. From 8:46 am till 10:29 am EST, our employees will be asked to stop work and think about the remarkable manner in which so many people responded to the challenge of their lives, or the certain end of their lives, seven years ago. They can attend memorial ceremonies or watch them on television, or call or e-mail loved ones they’ve been meaning to catch up with. And I will ask them particularly to remember the 443 men and women who, as first responders, rushed to the World Trade Center and gave their lives. That’s about 14 seconds per person.

Fourteen seconds for Pat Brown. At an apartment fire long before 9/11, Brown and his crew were on the roof of a burning building, with a man desperately hanging out a window. A rope rescue was in order, but there was nothing on the roof to anchor the rope to. So they anchored the rope to Pat Brown, and as the rest of his crew strained to hold Brown in place, a firefighter was lowered to the window. Brown knew that when the desperate man was pulled from the window and his weight doubled the burden, all six of the men involved might very well plunge to the ground. But he did it anyway, and the man’s life was saved. And of course on 9/11, Pat Brown led his crew into the WTC, and was last heard from on the 35th floor.

Fourteen seconds for my friend, John Moran, who had been injured during the devastating 2001 Father’s Day fire that killed three firemen. On 9/11, John ended his shift and was getting in his car to go home, but instead literally fought his way to the WTC and shouted as he ran in, “I’m going to make a difference here today.”

And 14 seconds for Timothy Stackpole, who had suffered horrifying injuries in a fire years before, and battled with the fire department medical staff simply for the right to return to work, only to then give his life on 9/11.

Fourteen seconds for Moira Smith, a police officer who stormed into one of the towers to find the revolving doors were preventing people from fleeing quickly enough. So she shot out a giant plate glass window, allowing the lobby to empty and, with the lobby cleared, ran upstairs to guide thousands of frightened people out of the building.

Fourteen seconds for Stephen Siller, who was on his way to play golf, but hearing the news, picked up his fire gear and headed to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to enter lower Manhattan. With his truck hopelessly blocked by traffic, he ran through the mile-long tunnel on foot in full gear, and perished.

And 28 seconds for the Langone family. Peter Langone was a fireman about whom was said he "had only one speed, and that was fast forward." Thomas Langone was an officer in the police Emergency Services Unit. He collected 42 medals in 18 years and went to Oklahoma City in 1995 to help recovery efforts after the bombing there. Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma said at his funeral that Officer Langone and his colleagues "brought with them honor, courage, humor and occasionally a funny accent." Mayor Giuliani, speaking at the joint funeral, told the four children of the Langone brothers that "We owe you a great deal….it will be paid back."

For 103 minutes, we will reconnect to those we love, recall a time when all of New York, and much of the world, recognized our common humanity, and think about every one of those 443 ordinary people who did remarkable things and whom we owe a great deal.

May their love give us love.

Big Brown: His Connections, So Eager to Celebrate, Forgot their Horse

2008-06-08T23:25:00.000-04:00

In "And Justice for All," Al Pacino plays Arthur Kirkland, a criminal defense attorney. In the climatic scene, he explains to the jury that the prosecutor "wants a win so badly today, it means so much to him, he is so carried away with the prospect of winning, that he forgot something absolutely essential to today's proceeding. He forgot his case. He forgot to bring it." And so it was with Richard Dutrow and Michael Iavarone, trainer and principal owner of Big Brown. When Funny Cide and Smarty Jones were preparing for their tries at history in the Belmont, their trainers spoke with cautious, pensive optimism, mixed with respectful concern. Not so with Dutrow. As soon as the Preakness was over, a triumph in the Belmont was a foregone conclusion. Cracked hoof ? No problem. Four days of missed training? Won't hurt him a bit. A new, clearly talented opponent ? Has no chance. Thirty years since a Triple Crown ? The other trainers didn't know how to train their horses. And Iavarone held discussions with NYC officials about a ticker tape parade, mused about how hefty sales of Big Brown merchandise might be, planned a $100 million horse hedge fund and signed a sponsorship with Hooters. Since I thought about betting Casino Drive heavily to win the Belmont, I read their comments, looking for any foundation to justify their confidence. And I found none. As I wrote on Friday, Big Brown faced some serious obstacles in this Belmont, and most of them remained obstacles even after Casino Drive was scratched. And Dutrow had no plan to overcome them, and his owner was on the same joy ride. And when the gates opened up on Saturday, it was revealed that Dutrow and Iavarone wanted a win so badly they had forgotten something absolutely essential to the day's proceeding: their horse. From my vantage point, I knew the race was over before they entered the first turn. The horse, so placidly professional in the Derby and Preakness, was very rank and his head was not in the game; after settling down a little bit, he again began to get rank as soon as the serious running started, and his rider wisely eased him. And there was Dutrow in the stands, wearing a Trump hat and preparing his acceptance speech. As Arthur Kirkland would say, he was out of order.

Casino Drive Will Win the Belmont; Big Brown May Be Off the Board

2008-06-06T15:13:00.000-04:00

In my Kentucky Derby post, I noted it was one of the most difficult to predict in years. For the Preakness, I offered "some half-hearted picks." For the Belmont Stakes, I have a strong conviction that Casino Drive will win the race by a lengthy margin. And Big Brown may finish off the board.

Horses, like people, have good day and bad ones, and sometimes they get good, and sometimes they go bad and need a rest period. The essence of betting on horses is to predict whether a horse is going to run his best race, or throw in a clunker.

Big Brown has been in serious training since February and is running his 3rd race in five weeks; he will be tested for the first time ever; he is running a distance well beyond what his genes suggest is optimal for him; he missed a few days of training with a hoof injury; and his connections have sorely tempted fate by trampling on the dignity of the race by inviting Hooters onboard, and by planning victory celebrations, including discussions of a ticker tape parade in NYC. Did they learn nothing from the Patriots ?

Casino Drive ran just as fast in the Peter Pan Stakes as Big Brown did in the Preakness. As a half brother to Jazil, winner of the race in 2006, and 3/4 brother to the filly Rags to Riches, winner of the race in 2007, his breeding is ideal for the distance. And he has an "old school" Japanese trainer who has been the leading trainer in Japan 11 times, has had much success on the international stage, and has been pointing the horse to this race for more than a year. Casino Drive may have his own hoof problem which as of this moment could lead to his being scratched from the race, but rest assured that if his trainer runs him, he is sound. Based on what I saw of this horse in the Peter Pan, I think he will grind Big Brown down, and that Big Brown will wilt in the face of his first serious competition. He is certainly good enough to beat the rest of the horses in the race, but his battle to win the race may weaken him, allowing the others to pass him for the Place and Show. This is what I expect to happen, and I'll be betting on Denis of Cork, Ready's Echo, Icabad Crane and Anak Nakal to round out the triple underneath Casino Drive. I will also box them with Casino Drive in case the top two choices do each other in.

For everything you need to know about the Belmont Stakes, visit our Web Guide.

On Internet Privacy, Fend for Yourself

2008-05-22T13:57:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post ran a story today about the FTC's review of behavioral targeting by Internet advertisers. I have followed the regulation of Internet advertising for ten years, and I believe the privacy issue is much more interesting to privacy advocates and journalists than to the average Internet user. It's not that the issue needs more publicity; thousands of articles have been written, speeches made, press conferences held, and lawsuits filed, not to mention billions of banners ads run by well-intended marketers themselves. And still, most people have little interest in the issue, and those who do care about it protect themselves with cookie-deleting or ad-blocking tools that are inexpensive and readily available. The FTC has repeatedly told Congress that it already has all the regulation it needs to protect Internet users, because deceptive practices are already illegal, and almost any egregious intrusion on your privacy can be connected to a deceptive practice.

With my good understanding of the landscape, I recommend to friends that they familiarize themselves with the information that marketers collect, and when it crosses outside their personal comfort zone, take action, which often is as simple as opting-out or adjusting browser tools. Do not rely on the government law or regulation to protect you; the landscape shifts too quickly for that ever to be effective.

For instance, when AOL released supposedly anonymous search histories to academics and journalists a few years ago, the New York Times was able to track down one of the users within hours. Someone noted that, for a heavy Internet user, your search history is essentially a record of every thought you've had for the past several years. For some people, such a history is a benefit, because they can retrieve old searches and perform them again. To others, it's creepy. And fortunately for those in the latter group, most search engines make it easy to opt-out of their collecting your search history. And some Internet Service Providers are working with marketers to track every single Web site you ever visit, and then create a targeting profile. They provide assurances that the profiles are anonymous, and carefully secured. Many people actually prefer that any ads they receive be targeted to their interests. As long as these ISPs adequately disclose their practices and enable users to opt-out (which they can do by switching ISPs, for starters), there is no need for the government to do anything more, other than to ensure there is adequate competition in the marketplace.

How do you familiarize yourself with Internet marketing practices ? FindingDulcinea's Web Guide to Internet Marketing and Privacy is a narrated guide to the best resources for understanding both off-line and online marketing practices, and how to take steps to opt-out of practices you personally are uncomfortable with.

Big Brown: To Fulfill the Promise of Barbaro ?

2008-05-04T20:14:00.000-04:00

The parallels are eerie, and hopefully they end here. Barbaro & Big Brown are both Kentucky-breds, with a profound influence of Native Dancer in their pedigrees. Both won their first race at age 2, by huge margins (8 1/2 & 11 1/2), at a mile on turf. The connections of both planned to keep them on turf, but tried them on dirt at Gulfstream Park early in their 3yo season, and kept them on dirt after they won. Both won the Florida Derby in their final prep for the Kentucky Derby, from outside posts, five weeks before the Derby. Both entered the Derby lightly raced and unbeaten (5/5 & 3/3). In the Derby, both enjoyed clean stalking trips under top, veteran riders (Prado & Desormeaux), took over at will approaching the stretch, and drew off to easy, lengthy scores (6 1/2 & 4 3/4 lengths) in decent time (2:01 2/5 & 2:01 4/5) before nearly identical sized crowds (157,536 & 157,770), both the second-largest crowds in Derby history.

After a young brilliant athletic career is ended, sports fans are left to wonder what could have been. Every longtime Red Sox fan believes Barry Bonds would be chasing Tony Coligniaro's career home run record if not for a tragic beanball in 1967. And so racing fans were left to conjecture about what might have happened had Barbaro not broken down, and instead confronted Bernardini (then a newcomer who went on to become quite a good horse himself) late in the Preakness. And if he had won, whether he'd have gone on to become the first Triple Crown winner in 28 years. And whether his owners would have followed through on hints they might move him back to the turf after the Triple Crown, perhaps even entering The Arc de Triomphe, Europe's premier race. This would have been the first time ever that an American classic winner went to Europe to take on the world's best grass horses. Before Barbaro, only the incomparable Secretariat showed such brilliance on both dirt and turf.

And now we have Big Brown. He cannot yet begin to be compared to Secretariat, who had already run 13 races by this point in his career, and won the Derby in track record time. But he can very much be compared to Barbaro. And racing fans around the world hope that Big Brown completes the journey that Barbaro did not. Here's hoping that Big Brown stares down a talented newcomer in the Preakness, wins the Belmont to become the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years, goes back to turf and takes on the world's best in the Arc de Triomphe in the fall. Among his opponents there could be Curlin, last year's top American 3yo, whose owners have hinted at such a try.

Such an outcome could not come at a better time for the sport of horse racing.

Kentucky Derby - the Day After

2008-05-04T13:56:00.000-04:00

With the Derby favorite prevailing, the "wise guys" who usually try to beat the favorite nurse their wounds. They were relying to much on history. Yes, no horse had won from the 20 post since 1929, but there had been only 11 Derbies with 20 horses in that time, and plenty of horses had won from far outside posts. To be sure, Big Brown had much to overcome with the post and his lack of experience, but as I wrote yesterday, while he had to "be far, far better than anyone else in the race to even be in the picture.... he just may be that much better than this mediocre field." And the field proved to be mediocre, and Big Brown far, far better. I did bet him on top in a lot of triple keys.

Unfortunately, while my top pick, Denis of Cork ran third at 27 to 1, I did not bet the filly, Eight Belles, at all. Sometimes a horse is so improbable that I would not bet on him or her even if they ran the race again in three weeks; but Eight Belles is one that, in hindsight, I should have had, due to her consistency in a field comprised largely of inconsistent, and mediocre, horses. Tragically, there will be no next time for Eight Belles, as she had to be euthanized after breaking two front ankles. NBC used bad news judgment in its coverage; it was clear to any experienced observer, of which NBC had many working the broadcast, that the horse had been euthanized immediately, and yet NBC pressed the reluctant Dr. Bramlage to explicitly say so on the air.

As with all Derbies, the large field caused some serious traffic problems. One horse I liked, Visionaire, appears to have gotten a particularly difficult trip, and I'll be giving him another chance if he makes it to the Preakness of Belmont. Big Brown certainly seems like a formidable Triple Crown candidate based on his emphatic win, but there's a reason no Derby winner has gone on to win the the next two in the past 30 years. Maintaining his form without a deep "base" of prior experience will be quite a challenge. And while it doesn't appear that any of the vanquished foes from yesterday are likely to turn the tables any time soon, there's always a few "dark horses" who show up to provide a fresh challenge. When Barbaro tragically broke down the Preakness two years ago, it obscured the fact that the winner, Bernardini, was a fresh horse who ran a remarkable race and might have won even if Barbaro ran his best race. One intriguing possibility this year is Casino Drive, a half brother to the past two Belmont Stakes winners, who plans to come from Japan for the Belmont.

Oh Danny Joy

2008-03-10T20:51:00.000-04:00

Shaun Clancy, keeper of Foley's Pub in New York City, banned "Danny Boy" from his establishment for the next few weeks. Clancy says the song, immensely popular with Irish Americans, shouldn't be played on St. Patrick's Day because it is a depressing tale of longing and loss. I loved this story because after years of mindlessly listening to this funeral dirge on a day of celebration, Clancy lowered the boom. Imagining yet one more St. Patrick's Day of customers singing mornfully "And if you come, When all the flowers are dying, And I am dead, as dead I well may be," Clancy pre-emptively shouted "cut, cut, stop the madness, give me Star of the County Down."

Now that I've got your Irish up, why do we celebrate St. Patrick's Day at all ? Something about snakes, right ? Well there's more to it than that. St. Patrick was born in Britain in 391 AD. At the age of 16, he was kidnapped and enslaved by raiders and taken to Ireland, where he herded sheep for 6 years. Isolated from the world, he turned to daily prayer for sustenance. He eventually escaped and returned to England, where he studied religion for 15 years. He then came back to Ireland and accelerated the introduction of Christianity. A practical man, he incorporated the sun, which Irish pagans worshipped, into a Christian cross, creating what is still known today as the Celtic Cross. And why on March 17 ? Well, you see, that's the Feast Day for St. Patrick, believed to be the date of his death in 460 AD. Tired of corn beef and cabbage ? I have a recipe for Ballymaloe Irish Stew. Had enough of NYC's St. Patrick's Day parade ? Boston and Dublin are obvious alternatives, but two of the best celebrations are in Savannah, Georgia and Butte, Montana.

Am I a Hibernophile who Googled the whole day to find all this information ? No, I spent about 8 minutes on the Web Guide to St. Patrick's Day. Drop in for a visit and before you know it, you'll be the one railing against incongruent "traditions" and shouting "cut, cut, ..." at a St. Patrick's Day celebration of your own.

Almost Perfect Feedback

2008-03-07T15:05:00.000-05:00

To start a company is to climb aboard an emotional rollercoaster. I left the office on Monday on a real high; we had spent much of the day discussing development plans, and I was exceedingly optimistic about all of them. As I rode the elevator down with a colleague, I said "today was so great that tomorrow is certain to be a downer." And it was, as we focused on all the hard work in front of us to make these plans a reality. Because of my prior experience, I've been able to adopt the Stockdale Paradox (see my earlier blog post) of confronting reality while never losing faith that we will ultimately be successful, in large part because I've assembled a truly remarkable team of talented and passionate people, and passionate people are unstoppable. And yet its still quite rewarding to receive third-party appreciation to affirm our efforts. A week ago, we published AlmostPerfectSeason.com, an anthology of media coverage of the NY Giants' remarkable 2007 season. To read how the media elite emphatically wrote off the team, its defense, quarterback and head coach as hopelessly mediocre, and then celebrating the dramatic Super Bowl win is a terrific tale of redemption.

On Monday, Sports Illustrated named AlmostPerfectSeason a "hot click," and wrote "Here's one of the more amazing sites we've seen in a while." The glowing reviews have poured in steadily since:

"A great website called Almost Perfect Season serves as a time capsule of the incredible 2007-08 Giants campaign..... It is really interesting to look back at many of these articles and how down on the Giants many were early on. "

"stumbled across this amazingly comprehensive synopsis"

"This is an amazing read. If you have the time you can get lost in it for hours."

"Ah, absolutely loved it."

All of these pats on the back don't change the reality that we have a lot of hard work in front of us to make FindingDulcinea the next great Internet brand. But they do strenghten our conviction that we will ultimately triumph.

Plenty of Room at the Inn

2008-03-06T16:05:00.000-05:00

Since the commercial Internet began to seriously take shape in the mid-1990s, pundits have been eager to declare “game over,” anoint the “winners,” and deem all subsequently launched ventures to be “too late to the party.” An August 1997 article in the San Francisco Chronicle noted that Microsoft and CNET were joining “an increasingly crowded field now dominated by Yahoo Inc., Excite Inc., InfoSeek Corp. and Lycos Inc. The new sites will also face off against a host of other search services, including Alta Vista, HotBot, WebCrawler, Inktomi, Open Text, Deja News and Magellan.” Star stock analyst Keith Benjamin is quoted saying "There's a prize for first place. There's also a prize for second place, though I don't know how big the disparity is between the prize for first and the prize for second. I don't think there's a prize for third." More than a decade later, Benjamin’s observation proved true, as the largest search engine dominates the space, and the horse running in third is desperate to combine with the one in second. But no one predicted at the time that the search leader a decade later would be Google, a company that at the time existed only in the brainwaves of a pair of college students.

It can be difficult to look at a start-up and predict its ultimate success against apparently entrenched competition. I’ll admit to discouraging a friend from buying stock in AOL in 1995, because I believed it could never overcome Prodigy’s headstart and superior backing from IBM and Sears. And I have on my bookshelf “The 100 Best Internet Stocks to Own for the Long Run,” published in 2000. Based on a quick glance, I estimate that half of them are out of business or a mere shell. And of course the fall of giants is not just an Internet phenomenon, as IBM and AT&T attest.

And yet despite the brief history of the Internet, in which “entrenched” leaders can disappear quickly and new companies can rise meteorically, most start-ups are still greeted with “you’re late to the party.” The New York Times reported today on “Women of the Web,” a venture backed by a cadre of elite women from the book publishing, journalism, advertising, television and acting professions. The CEO, Joni Evans, was a star agent and chief executive for William Morris, Simon & Schuster and Random House, and thus apparently understands what people want to read. She believes that women over 40 (and with a modicum of intelligence) are tired of being talked down to on the Internet. So she’s putting together a series of “conversations” on issues germane to these women’s lives. Readers will enjoy informal and intimate musings of gossip columnist and TV personality Liz Smith, advertising guru Mary Wells, noted author Peggy Noonan, 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl, as well as stars such as Lily Tomlin, Marlo Thomas and Candace Bergen. Each of these women has staying power; they have all been in the public eye for 20-40 years. The site will develop a significant, and more importantly, affluential and influential audience, eager for the opportunity to read intelligent fare and interact with these icons.

Pundits, including the Times' writer, question whether users will use it in lieu of iVillage, More and other leading women’s interest Web sites (and it is worth noting that the Times ran this piece in its "Fashion and Style" section rather than "Business"). But this site’s audience is not visiting iVillage and indeed is not heavily using the Web at all right now. A core belief behind FindingDulcinea is that a large swath of Internet users significantly under utilizes the Internet because of how difficult it is to find quality, credible content. WomenontheWeb will build this, and people will come. As writer Joan Buck told the Times, “iVillage has always puzzled me …. I love the idea but it’s like Macy’s or something.”

The one thing I’d change is the domain name (yea, I know, glass houses. We went out on a limb with “FindingDulcinea,” and 18 months later I’m still convinced it’s a long-term winner). The Times article discusses the lengthy debate the founders had over the name. Liz Smith’s suggestion of “HotVoodoo” seems like a damn fine one to me. Ms. Smith, who claims to “still write with a feather” and faxes in her posts, has a great future as a domain name consultant.

And if Liz Smith can acquire domain name savvy, then this site's audience can use the Web more if presented with content that appeals to it.

The World Pays Off on Judgment

2008-03-05T20:53:00.000-05:00

In 1998, I became general counsel of a start-up company (24/7 Media) in a new industry (Internet advertising). I was right-hand man to CEO Dave Moore, and advised the Board. Like all companies caught in the "no rules" wondrous bubble, we made strategic decisions we'd like to have back. But we made good ones as well, especially when our backs were pinned to the wall during the 3 year crash, and we were one of the few survivors from our peer group. I used to clunkily explain my role as "when we're facing a difficult situation and Dave asks 'what should we do now,' I'm good at helping him come up with the right answer." And then I had an "Aha !." I read an essay by Judge Joseph McLaughlin, of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and former Dean of Fordham Law School, in which he wrote that he long ago learned that "the world pays off on judgment - not brilliance, knowledge, and not experience or compassion either, though a fair portion of all of these is essential to the exercise of good judgment." In a single, precise word, Judge McLaughlin captured why many brilliant people fail; they have bad judgment. I vowed to use this word to focus my thinking in all future critical situations. This vow was cemented a few days later when I read a WSJ article about the sacking of a Fortune 50 CEO; a board member discussed a situation that the CEO handled very poorly, and said that the Board could forgive a mistake, but what the CEO did showed bad judgment. And over the remainder of my long tenure at 24/7, most of the blow-ups that I witnessed at other companies could usually be pinned on bad judgment, often at companies run by young CEOs who may have lacked "experience or compassion." And now Facebook keeps popping up in scandal lately. It has a 23yo CEO whose prescience in a critical decision - whether to accept lucrative offers to sell the company for much less than its current value - is almost overshadowed by some colossally bad decisions that can only be ascribed to bad judgment. And now I read that he has hired a 38yo COO from Google, and plans to hire other senior executives. And no doubt all of them will be brimming with brilliance and knowledge. One can only hope these qualities will be supplemented with equal measures of experience and compassion, and that this young CEO will rely on their good judgment to put an end to the parade of poor decisions that has made his job so difficult lately.

Randy, Paula and Simon Pick the President

2008-01-27T00:14:00.000-05:00

Ryan Seacrest: Welcome to the South Carolina auditions for the 2008... American....Idol !!!!

(McCain) Hello, I'm John McCain, and I'm a big fan of Barbara Streisand.

(Paula) That was like butter !!! You're voice is a velvet fog.

(Simon) Paula, you live in a velvet fog. Mr. McCain, it's one song per contestant. And shouldn't you sing something more suitable ?

(McCain) Well I like "Barbara Ann", but my mother told me not to sing that in public any more.

(Simon) Next !

(Hillary) Hi, I'm Hillary Rodham. Clinton. Rodham Clinton. Clinton. How y'all doing this morning ? I've found my new voice.

(Randy) Where are you from ?

(Hillary) Where do you want me to be from ? This song is about refocusing on the critical issues in this campaign, like, how do I win the nomination ?

(Paula) Terrific, Rodman. What were you trying to say ?

(Hillary) That we need to work together to defeat big business, which is that hammer thrower, dashing the dreams of working class people all over America.

(Randy) But it looked like the face in the screen represents big business ?

(Hillary) Oh. Well let's do it again, this time I'll be the hammer girl.

(Simon) No, I don't want to hear another word from you.

(Hillary) This is a vast right wing conspiracy !!

(Seacrest) Next !!

(Obama) My name is Barack Obama, and I'd like to sing a song for you.

(Randy) Barack, that was cool, you were keeping it real. But wasn't it a little too safe ?

(Obama) That's because anything I say just gives Clinton another chance to misrepresent who I am and what I believe in.

(Paula) We can't have contestants talking smack about other contestants !

(Simon) Right, only we talk smack about contestants.

(Obama) Well actually it wasn't Mrs. Clinton. It was her husband.

(Randy) Well which one of them is the contestant ?

(Obama) Tell me when you figure that out !

(Seacrest) We have one more, but he doesn't want to sing today. He says if the two finalists are really lame, then he'll enter the contest.

(Simon) He sings now or he's out !

(Seacrest) But he says he'll spend every penny he has to win.

(Randy) We can't be bought ! The people decide !!

(Seacrest) He has a trillion pennies.

(All judges) Well maybe we can work with him.

(Seacrest) But he actually only spent $100 a vote to win his last contest.

(All judges) Who does he think we are ?

(Seacrest) I'm not going to haggle with the man for you. In our out ?

(Randy) Isn't there one person who will give us a performance we can get behind ?

(Seacrest) We do have one more guy, but he also doesn't sing. He has nice background music, and he talks about why he's the candidate for change.

(Simon) For goodness sake....

(Seacret) He's taken on the bloated establishment and won, with a "give the people what they want" mantra. His "broken windows" theory is brilliant.

(Randy) Guiliani ?

(Seacrest) No, Rudy said he'd only audition in Florida. Look, I really think you're going to be wowed by this new guy, Mack.

(Simon) He can't be any worse than the crop we've seen tonight. Send him in.

(Seacrest) Judges, your American Idol for 2008 !!

Information on the Net: Instant, and everlasting

2008-01-25T20:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I blogged about the race to be first with news on the Internet. And today I'm blogging about how news on the Internet never stops being "news." So Internet news is produced in an instant, but has perpetual life.

Today I received an email from my sister, with a great subject header:

"Fwd: FW: FW: THIS IS IMPORTANT !!!!

This email had been widely circulated several times in the past day by sophisticated people, so I figured its story may actually be true. And indeed it was; a local TV news story showing that children are not awakened by conventional smoke alarms. I can't say this surprised me; my younger brothers would have slept through a meteor crashing into our house. But it wasn't surprise that set this email trail in motion. It was the realization that our kids were vulnerable to something - particularly since we use young teens as sitters - and we hadn't done anything about it.

But the story also offered hope - a prototype in early development that lets a parent record a familiar voice calmly saying "wake up, get out of bed" into a smoke alarm. And my sister wants to know when it hits the market.

An hour later, she's learning that it is available. Now. Here. And they even have a way to train your dog to respond to the smoke alarm.

How did the development of this product conclude so quickly ? Because the "news" story is from February 2004. And indeed the knowledge base that informed this story is at least 25 years old.

And yet a slew of intelligent, informed and caring parents was unaware of it, as they had not seen the original news report, which appeared but once, or any of several other reports that have appeared - once each - in recent years. But they did learn it because on the Internet, news lives forever, and an email trail that starts in 2004 continues to circulate four years later, albeit without any updated information appended to it.

At findingDulcinea, we unearth and append updates to terrific news reports and columns created over time, and gather them all in one place. Do you wonder what happened to that spy who was controversially convicted in 1950? We did too, and published our findings. Those columns that point out healthcare Web sites with credible information ? We put this intelligence all in one place. Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile barrier in the 1950s. Was that it for him ? Not by a longshot. Every day, we gather credible Web sites together, update you on a "Day in History," introduce innovative people and far flung places, and string together a cogent theme from several news reports created over time. Because no one should have to rely on outdated, unappended information.

And now I just have to figure out what I can record onto that smoke alarm that will rouse my kids from their slumber, if ever needed. "Wake up, get out of bed," has been known to fail, even when loudly shouted repeatedly.

I'm thinking something like, "your brother is in your room, he's stealing your stuff."

That should work at a whisper.

Right, or Right Now ?

2008-01-24T10:43:00.000-05:00

The Internet brings us information instantly. No longer do we have to wait till 6:00 pm, or even the whole next morning, to learn what happened today. And three networks and two daily newspapers no longer constitute our entire news universe. And each of these, in many ways, is unfortunate. More viewpoints are better than fewer, but journalistic standards are no longer uniformly high. And in the race to be first, the race to be best is less important. A writer for the Columbia Journalism review characterizes the thinking this way: "talking can be just as important as saying something." Fact checkers stand aside; anything you uncover goes in the updated version. The LA Times blog pines for the days when journalists had "hours—not minutes or seconds—to craft a story from the blast wave of facts and factoids that comes in the wake of a bombshell.” How crass has the race to be first become ? The Associated Press has written an obituary for 26-year old Britney Spears. The editor clients of AP were embarrassed they didn't have one at the ready when 39 yo Anna Nicole Smith succumbed, and they don't want to be that woefully unprepared again. Slate movie critic Dana Stevens captures the tension in writing celebrity obituaries: “The deadline is, by definition, past, and you know you've already been scooped countless times.” Celebrities dying young is not a new: see James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, John Belushi, Chris Farley, et al. What's new is the need to start talking before the body goes cold. And AP's clients will be the first to start talking by prudently planning ahead. Or so they think. As Jon Thurber, the obit editor of the LA Times, warns, "Who in the '60s . . .would have thought Keith Richards would have outlasted John Denver?"

Bounding Down the Stairs

2008-01-17T11:24:00.000-05:00

Is Barack Obama a "speaker of genius" ? Or is it true that, "For all the hoopla about Mr. Obama's speech, traditional political rhetoric is a declining art" ? We ask these questions today, analyze several view points, and provide historical context by harkening back to a few of the finer political speeches in recent American history. Politicians today rightfully speak to the issues at the forefront of voter's minds, and in a manner they understand . As a Web publisher, I constantly struggle with the reality that our readers scan instead of reading, and that the hallmark of good communication is that it is understood.

But I do miss big speeches full of big ideas, and there should be room for them as well. John Kennedy delivered them regularly; so did Ronald Reagan. And there have not been very many since. And I hope that brilliant, memorably eloquent political speeches are not permanently in our past, but merely in a down cycle.

George Pataki read the Gettysburg Address at Ground Zero on the first anniversary of 9.11. Other elected officials read other historic addresses. And most saw it as altogether fitting and proper that they should do this. Indeed, some NY Democrats, seeing they would have no voice at the ceremony, considered marking it in their own way - by also reading the Gettysburg Address, in a television commercial.

But Robert Polner of Newsday, wrote that the"appropriation of a distant generation's tragedy strikes me as lame and uninspired"and asked why George Pataki wouldn't "offer a new Gettysburg address instead, one that he crafts himself from the heart and not from a hired speechwriter?" Andrei Cherney, a speechwriter for Al Gore, writing in the Washington Post, implored the leaders to "add to [the] fabric" of American History, not "hide under it," and said that "[f]earing a miss if they swing for the fences, they have decided to bunt." In an earlier Newsday article, Columbia History Professor Eric Foner noted that "Lincoln...did not have public opinion polls telling him what to say, and didn't worry about what would be the sound bite on the evening news.”

And maybe that's the real problem with political campaigns today. Every word is planned in advance, with an eye on the polls and the evening news. I'm not troubled when a candidate chokes up when asked about the burdens of a long campaign. I am troubled by the likelihood that it was planned the night before. When Ronald Reagan first met with Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan's team carefully planned it. Gorbachev's limousine would pull up to the Geneva chateau where they were meeting, and Reagan would stand regally at the top of the steps, letting Gorbachev look up to him. But seconds after Gorbachev's car stopped, the much-older Reagan bounded down the stairs, helped Gorbachev from the car, and slipped his hand under Gorbachev's arm to support him. A Soviet aide later said "I left like we lost the game during the first movement...We started with the wrong move." And so maybe that is what I really miss - politicians who are willing to swing for the fences, to tear up the script, and bound down the stairs.

Calling Admiral Stockdale

2008-01-15T15:39:00.000-05:00

It was shocking when Hillary lost in Iowa, and surprising when she won in NH. Huckabee came from nowhere to win Iowa. McCain rose from the dead to win NH. The "ofer" record of pundits hasn't halted the 24-hour coverage of their confident predictions. Following a college football season in the #1 and #2 teams lost with regularity and the BCS participants were decided at the last second, the media is eager to declare the final presidential nominees in mid-January, despite a public that is so confused that tools like this one are spreading virally. An inveterate gambler, I'm willing to bet only on more surprises. We haven't had a "brokered convention" in half a century. In a year when the networks offer a steady diet of live and reality programming, who wants to see a safe, tightly scripted coronation ? Alas, it is likely the nominees will be known after the 25-state primary on February 5. So the only hope for election excitement is Michael Bloomberg. Independent candidates have profoundly impacted recent elections; Netcetera today covers the gamut of major independent candidates over the ages. Ross Perot's 19% of the popular vote may have cost GHWB a second term, and Ralph Nader both siphoned critical votes from Al Gore and John Kerry. And neither Perot (post-withdrawal/re-entry) nor Nader had the gravitas of being the Mayor of New York with an $11 billion war chest. At the very least, Bloomberg could win a state or two, and if he does, there is a very good chance that no candidate will win a 270 vote majority of the electoral college. So, who wins then ? As discussed in Beyond the Headlines today, the House would determine the winner from the three leading Electoral College vote-getters. But if, as our story predicts is quite possible, the House reaches stalemate, then the Senate would choose an "interim" President from the Vice Presidential running mates of one of the top two vote-getters, until the first stalemate is resolved. So yes, the 44th President of the United States could be the losing Vice Presidential candidate ! If it sounds like a complicated process, that's because it is; Chris Weigant of Huffington Post compares it, and not in a favorable way, to the instructions for Monty Python's Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. We can be sure of Supreme Court involvement and assiduous efforts by everyone to de-legitimize the process whenever it appears to be pointing in the wrong direction. And if you think Hillary's loss in Iowa or McCain's win in NH was surprising, wait till you witness the inauguration as President of the United States of a person who failed in their role of enhancing the electability of someone else. Who was the last person to lose an election as a vice presidential candidate and eventually become President ? There haven't been many memorable losing VPs in recent times. With one notable exception. Admiral Jim Stockdale. Yes, he famously and clumsily opened the Vice Presidential debate in 1992 by asking "Who am I and why am I here" ? Admiral Stockdale's performance was badly misunderstood, and he faded quickly from the public eye and died in 2005. But he lives on through a philosophy that he developed while imprisoned in Vietnam for 7 years. This philosophy is now well known in management circles as "The Stockdale Paradox": "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." This sounds like a better prescription for facing our future than any of the sound bites I've heard from those atop the current polls, or their likely running mates. Let's hope there's an Admiral Stockdale somewhere out there, waiting to emerge from the chaos.

Please Sir, I want some more

2008-01-14T11:23:00.000-05:00

I've been molding the basic premise of findingDulcinea for three years - to help people better discover the Web. For 18 months, we've been refining the details and furiously creating content, following the original outline we created. But the joy of forging a different approach to a relatively new problem is that you get to call an audible occasionally. A moment of inspiration becomes a core part of the game plan. One of these moments came in early November, as I glanced through a newspaper and saw the familiar "On this Day in History" feature. It doesn't matter which paper, because they all handle this feature the same way - an uninspiring listing of a dozen significant events that occurred over the past 500 years. On this particular day, this lackadaisical approach troubled me, because two of the events were momentous; Kristallnacht in 1938, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I was embarrassed that I knew less about these events than I should - and puzzled why the newspaper would waste space with such a meager listing of these events that were so rich in historical significance. The older I get, the more interesting history becomes to me. As a college student, I remember being struck, for reasons I did not fully comprehend, by the intro to Leon Uris' Trinity, which was borrowed from Eugene O'Neill's "Moon for the Misbegotten": "there is no present or future - only the past happening over and over again - now."

And so I wondered; what was the ultimate significance of Kristallnacht ? I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, but when was it erected, and why, and how long was it ? If you happen across a terrific blog post such as this one, from prolific writer Ed Driscoll, you'll read a well-reasoned view that Kristallnacht ws not the "beginning" of the Holocaust, but merely one of the first overt manifestations of an evil hatred that had been festering for years. You'll also learn that, after 2.5 million citizens had fled East Germany from 1949 to 1961, the 28-mile long Berlin Wall was erected to stop citizens of East Berlin, which was in East Germany, from fleeing to West Berlin, which was in democratic West Germany; the Berlin Wall was only one small segment of an 860-mile barrier that rendered East Germany a veritable prison. And you'll also learn that nearly every adviser in Ronald Reagan's cabinet implored him not to demand "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall", and he said it anyway, and it became one of the seminal moments of his presidency.

And so I decided that our Beyond the Headlines section would henceforth include a well-researched exposition of a significant event that occurred on this day in history. We choose our events by mining the innumerable lists on the Web; oddly, some days are quite rich in truly momentous events, while on others we're scraping the bottom (such as today, when we explore the marriage of star athlete and an actress). We usually avoid very recent history, as there is not much perspective to bring to these events yet. And we try to steer clear of the few events in history that are generally quite well known already. It is becoming apparent to us that findingDulcinea is a phenomenal resource for students at every level. And when it comes to history, all of us need to be students. But don't take our word for it; Eugene O'Neill said it much better than we ever could.

Patient, Educate Thyself

2008-01-10T10:40:00.000-05:00

Dr. Rahul K. Parish published today a provocative piece, "Is there a doctor in the Mouse," on Salon.com. It examines how doctors relate to patients who use the Internet to arm themselves with health information. He concludes that doctors should guide patients to high-quality web sites, both to reduce the chance that patients receive misinformation as well as to reinforce the physician's advice, as patients typically remember only about half of what a doctor tells them.

Many concerns doctors have about patient Internet research are well-founded. The Internet is rife with misinformation. Further, patients rarely know how to interpret results of studies and clinical trials that often apply only to patients fitting a narrow profile - something I learned as a lawyer advising healthcare companies, rather than as a patient.

But for doctors to "wish away" the Internet ignores inevitability and misses an opportunity. Intelligent people are going to seek health information on the Internet and try to make sense of it. And they are likely to be better and more compliant patients as a result. I imagine that nothing frustrates a doctor more than a passive patient who shows little interest in his or her care and expects the doctor alone to cure-all with magic potions and reassuring words.

But patients need to be realistic and know that Internet research is unlikely to put them on the same level as their doctor - and if they believe it does, they should find a new doctor. Doctors have years of rigorous education and training and hopefully have seen many patients with similar conditions as yours, and have support networks to consult as well.

I research to a farethewell everything a doctor tells me. I go into a visit armed with questions, observations and suggestions, and even research the answers I receive. But I trust the judgment of the doctors I have chosen, and don't try to substitute my judgment for theirs. If I serious reservations about their conclusions, I'll visit another doctor and get a second opinion. The primary reason I use the Internet to search health is, as Dr. Parish wrote, because it's easier to follow advice if you fully understand it, and the reason for it.

The FindingDulcinea Web Guide to Health has helpful information on how to approach health research and what to do with your findings, suggests how you can improve your doctor visits, and provides annotated links to credible sources of information from physicians' groups, the federal government, and well-established medical authorities.

Man vs. Machine - It's On

2008-01-09T09:46:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, we introduced findingDulcinea, Libarian of the Internet. It is one of several efforts characterized by the audacity to believe that the human brain can outperform an algorithm in helping users to find credible and comprehensive information on the Internet, and to add needed context that helps users make sense of it all. It's the most exciting man-machine throw-down since Kasparov battled Deep Blue a decade ago.

These “human-powered” efforts reflect a common belief that search engine queries, in many cases, do not provide satisfactory results for most users. Yes, for many simple queries, anyone can find an accurate answer from a search engine in a few seconds. And if you have many years of Internet research experience and know hundreds of varied sites you can trust and are well versed in the many ever-permutating permutations of fraudulent schemes online, and have gobs of free time to sift through search results, a good search engine will suffice in most cases. But for the vast majority of users that do not met these criteria, curated information filtered through human insight and knowledge may often prove more useful to you than a slew of barely differentiated search results.

Surveys consistently conclude that most Internet users cannot find credible and comprehensive information on the Internet. Yahoo recently published its own survey that suggested that 85% of searches fail to produce the desired information on the first try. Yahoo coined the term “search engine fatigue” to describe what ensues from the wild flailing at the search box to guess the magic words that will produce the information desired. And while many Internet users claim to be satisfied with search results, a Pew Internet survey has concluded they are “trusting and naive” and "strikingly unaware of how search engines operate and how they present their results."

Algorithms, search personalization, artificial intelligence, and the semantic web are all buzz words that describe Orwellian efforts to eliminate the need for human beings to use their own intelligence and judgment to find, critically evaluate and effectively utilize information. And most pundits give strong credence to these efforts. But human intelligence and judgment have an enviable track record that has lasted a fair bit longer than any punk algorithm. And I’ll always take the underdog with a solid track record over the neophyte riding the crest of popular wisdom.