Pacific Ocean Tsunami Warning

There has been a massive earthquake in Chile, magnitude 8.8.  It has resulted in a tsunami warning from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center  for the entire Pacific ocean basin.  As I write, it is 1910 UTC on the 27th, past initial arrival time for many locations.  But not past first arrival for many.  The predicted arrival times are also available (keep an eye on the site for updated information!).  Tsunami can be dangerous for hours after first arrival time as different waves arrive.  Tsunami does not necessarily equate to disaster, some of the wave heights being observed are less than 1 meter (3 feet).  But if you're near the Pacific Ocean, it is definitely time to get informed and take appropriate action.

h/t Phil Plait

Update:
See All of My Faults Are Stress-Related: How big was that EQ? Magnitude vs intensity in Chile and Haiti Kim Hannula's blog, shearsensibility, for informed discussion of what magnitude means. 8.8 is far bigger a quake than the 7.0 that hit Haiti.

What is training?

It's easy, but wrong, to think that training is what you're doing when you're working out in the gym, or running outside, and so on.  That misses some important parts of what your body is doing -- normally, during exercise, and following exercise.  I've constructed a casual sort of diagram to illustrate what happens:

 

 

If you do nothing, your fitness declines over time.  (At least for those of you over about 30-35.)  What's happening is that your body has very strong 'use it or lose it' tendencies.  It is always tearing down muscle and bone, for instance.  It is always, also, building muscle and bone.  As you get older, though, the 'build' tendency declines, and the tear down takes over.  For some good descriptions of the processes, and places to read deeper, see Younger Next Year, by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, MD.

The main signal to your body that it needs to do more building is to use it.

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Dare to ask a question!

I sometimes browse the referrals to my site, and was surprised to see someone commenting that they 'dare not' post here.  Most peculiar.  Unless the author of that comment is incapable of writing without profanity, or can't staying on topic (and his comment there showed no such signs), they certainly may 'dare' to post here.  At least as far as I'm concerned.  If there are employer-based reasons, well, that's out of my hands.

It's a while since I've put up a 'question place' note, so here's one for current questions.  Be daring, ask a question!

Which sources to trust?

Weeding sources is my tag for articles about deciding which sources to trust.  I'm far from the only person who considers this an important topic, of course.  The articles I prefer are, like mine, ones where there's some detailed effort to look at what a source doing and what is dishonest.

Lately Tim Lambert at Deltoid has been taking up the question of a journalist -- Jonathan Leake -- and paper (The Times, in the UK) and their reporting on climate.  The Rabett has written up a nice summary of Tim's posts on this theme.  The upshot being, Leake and The Times are unreliable sources, both for making up things and for not correcting their errors.  But see Tim's researches that establish those points.  Much more work there than Leake is putting in to his artifices.

Setting goals for your workouts

One of the more important things coaches do is set goals for their athletes.  If the coach is more of my type, it's a matter of helping the athlete choose good goals.  I'm writing here on the principle that you're your own coach. 

Good goals are opportunities for successes.  Each success helps invigorate you, and encourage you towards your next goal.  This gives us some guidance on how to select goals.  One part is, there should be a progression of goals.  Rather than have one major goal, for instance 'run a marathon', you should have a number of goals that build towards the bigger one.  In this case, it could be something like 'run a 5k', 'run a 10k', 'run a 15k', 'run a half-marathon', and then, finally 'run a marathon'.  (I strongly recommend this if you're contemplating the 'run a marathon'.)  Break down the big goal in to a series of stepping stones.  That gives you successes along the way, and some positive feedback to encourage you.

A second aspect comes from considering the 'opportunity for success'.  When I was racing regularly a few years ago, I ran the mile in 5:51.  I was both happy and sad, mostly happy, with that time.  The reason being, I had multiple goals for my time that day.  The optimistic goal, which was probably achievable if I had paced myself better and not gotten some bad personal news a few minutes before the race, was 5:40.  My realistic goal, something that I figured I should be able to reach if I didn't race particularly stupidly or get particularly tangled up in a pack, was 6:00.  And my conservative goal, which should have been hard for me not to reach even if I had run stupidly and did tangle in a pack, was 6:10.  Ok, I didn't get the optimistic goal (which was probably too optimistic, given the others).  But I did beat the conservative and reasonable goals, so a success.  And some feedback on how to race the mile better.  That was my first mile race in over 20 years.

Results, though, are a little dicy as goals.

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