Jason and Leah Do Some Speed

Running that is.

Today was the first day of our running careers that we attempted to run a speed workout. The Hal Higdon plan called for 5x400. So we decided that we would need to do these at work because we had meetings all day and wouldn't be able to get it in when we got home or before we left for the lab in the morning. So my original plan was going to be to use my Timex GPS watch system and run until the thing go to .25 and then walk .25 and so on around the ring. However when I looked at my watch this morning I was saddened to see that there were no numbers, so the battery must be dead on the watch. Damn. so the site said that you should run the 400's at about a 5K or 10K pace. I figured this was about 8 min/mile so I decided that we would run for 2 minutes and that would be able 400m. This worked pretty well. We warmed up a bit and finished with a cool down and had some excitement inbetween. It was nice to have a change from our usual plodding on for more distance. I think I am going to like this new training plan as there are many different types of runs (speed, tempo, @race pace and so on).

Other super excitment happened at the lab today. Daniel Dennett who wrote a book called Dawin's Dangerous Idea came and gave the weekly Fermi Lab Colloquium presentation today!!!! Wow was it amazing. I dated a guy in college that told me I should read Dawin's Dangerous Idea. I think I made it through about 1/3 of it....me being 19 at the time and not having enough under my belt to handle the book. However, I know his name along with Richard Dawkins as big evolution guys so I was really excited to see Dennett's presentation today. He has a new book out called, Breaking The Spell : Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. It's a really fasinating idea in which he talks about organized religion from the view point of a scientist and tries to break it down and so on. It was a really AMAZING talk and I am excited to read this book as he just wet my whistle on the topics.

Another reason it's fun to work at Fermi Lab because we get really intersting talks that aren't necessarily physics based. The biggest science lab in the country gets that I guess.