High School Physics

This made me laugh and reminded me of Physics in high school (not that I provided any creative solutions).

The healthy alternative?

A couple of days ago the Freakonomics blog posted on bicycling safety:

Per kilometer, cyclists are 12 times more likely than car drivers to suffer a fatal accident, according to Rutgers University urban planner John Pucher and Lewis Dijkstra of the European Commission (the same study found traveling by foot to be 23 times more dangerous than driving, per kilometer). To put this finding in perspective, there were 785 bicycling fatalities on American roadways in 2005, compared to 4,881 pedestrian and 43,443 automotive fatalities that same year.

On the other hand, a Danish study found that people who do not bike to work suffer a 39 percent higher mortality rate than those who do. So, assuming you can avoid a fatal accident on the road, biking to work may actually help you live longer.

The risks associated with cycling decrease dramatically when more cyclists are on the road, and especially when those cyclists obey traffic laws...

I cycle often here in Cayman, and I can tell you, it is not for everyone. There are no cycle paths and roads are sometimes very narrow. Many of the local cyclists are also fairly reckless and often don't follow normal traffic rules. My experience, however, is that signaling and taking care to obey traffic laws, earns respect from the motorists, making it much less of a hazardous experience. Had it not been for the heat and humidity, I am sure far more people would cycle to work. The distances here in Cayman are relatively short. But most people prefer their air-conditioned SUVs. Go figure.

To read the Freakonomics post, click here. It contains links to the studies mentioned above.

Build Up #1

Sunday I got early for a build up triathlon event - not to participate (still lacking my tri bike), but to help out and meet some of the people from the Cayman Islands Triathlon Association.

See some pictures from the event here and get an impression of what it was like. There are not many picture of me, but if you do manage to find me you will see I am wearing a white cap, black shorts and a grey t-shirt (and holding a water bottle). There will be two more build up events before the olympic distance triathlon late November.

Ironman Triathlon World Championships

Lately, I have been giving some thought to triathlon training and my goals. One event I am very keen on doing is the Ironman World Championships in Kona Hawaii. The race encompasses a 2.4 mile (3.86 km) ocean swim in Kailua-Kona Bay, followed by a 112 mile (180.2 km) bike ride in the Hawaiian lava desert and ending with a marathon (42.195 km) along the coast. The event is coming-up this weekend so keep your eye out for media coverage.

Hawaii was host to the first Ironman Triathlon in 1978. If you have triathlon ambitions, Kona is definitely on the list of races you want to participate in. Entrance to Kona is on a qualification only basis. Here there are two main options, a lottery or to participate in a race that allocates slots to Kona.

Of course you could rely on pot luck, but since you want to complete the damn thing and do so in a reasonable time, you might as well try and estimate what the qualification requirements might be. This turns out to be a difficult task because of the way the system works. Luckily there are people out there like Neil Hammond who posted his analysis of qualification times on the internet. Now, Hammond's analysis is far from perfect, but it gives results that seem plausible to me. Indeed by using his analysis I cross-checked my initial thinking and came to more or less the same result.

Without making things too complicated these are the type of times I would need to qualify in the 35-39 age group (+/- 5%). 1:15 for the swim, 5:20 for the bike ride and 3:40 for the run. This adds up to 10:15, add to that 10 minutes in transition and my qualifying time is just under 10.5 hours. +/- 5% gives me a qualifying interval of roughly 10 - 11 hours. Is that possible? I certainly believe it is. Swimming 3.8 km in 1:15 should be fairly easy not least because it is in the beginning of the race. 180 km in 5:20 is just under 34 km/h. While my legs would not be able to cope with that currently, because I haven’t trained on the distance, that can be rectified with purposeful training. The part of the race that causes me most worry is the marathon. I am not sure how my legs or indeed body will react. I got a taste during the Brisbane marathon, but that was without more than 6 hours psychical exertion prior to start. However, as long as I can keep my legs running 3:40 should be possible.

Here are some stats from Kona for a comparison:

2006 WINNERS:
Normann Stadler - S 54:05, B 4:18:23, R 2:55:03, Total 8:11:56
Michellie Jones - S 54:29, B 5:06:09, R 3:13:08, Total 9:18:31

COURSE RECORDS:
1996 – Luc Van Lierde (BEL) 8:04:08
1992 – Paula Newby-Fraser (ZIM) 8:55:28

FASTEST COURSE TIMES:
Swim
1998 – Lars Jorgensen (USA) – 46:41
1999 – Jodi Jackson (USA) – 48:43
Bike
2006 – Normann Stadler (GER) – 4:18:23
1993 – Paula Newby-Fraser (ZIM) – 4:48:30
Run
1989 – Mark Allen (USA) – 2:40:04
1999 – Lori Bowden (CAN) – 2:59:16

I would of course not compete with the elite but in the age groups. The men’s division records are:

Age Record Name Age Year
18-24 8:55:02 Vassilis Krommidas 24 1994
25-29 8:41:02 Maximilian Longree 25 2006
30-34 8:45:59 Igor Kogoj 34 1993
35-39 8:47:02 Jim Beuselinck 39 2006
40-44 8:58:55 Bent Andersen 42 2006
45-49 9:11:56 Brian Keast 45 2005
50-54 9:26:23 Kevin Moats 51 2006
55-59 9:47:29 Reinhold Humbold 57 2005
60-64 10:40:49 Takahisa Mitsumori 62 2005
65-69 11:29:45 Milos Kostic 65 2006
70-74 12:59:02 Bob Scott 71 2001
75-79 13:27:50 Bob Scott 75 2005
80+ 16:21:55 Robert McKeague 80 2005

Robert McKeague is amazing. 80 years old and doing an Ironman. I wonder if Bob Scott will try to beat his record in 2010.

First things first though. Step one is to successfully complete the distance, if that can result in qualification to Kona that would be exceptional, but more likely a second attempt will be necessary. My timeframe is 3 years.

Anyway, you don’t get any faster writing blogs. Better to do some training instead! This video provides some good motivation.

Map of Internet

Ever seen a map of the internet? The Chris Harrison project has created a series of maps that show the geographical structure and distribution of the Internet.

South Sound Run

In a previous post I mentioned MapMyRun.com. The website enables users are to visualize their training progress through the use of maps, workout logs, fitness calculators/tools etc. Personally, I just use it to set distance markers and because it gives me a good overview of the course.

I have added my latest run to the webiste, click here. Note that you will have to turn on the satellite image to better appreciate the run. Google does not have road maps covering Grand Cayman. The run starts and ends at where we live.

Negative feedback

This issue of melting ice caps and global warming continues to worry me. Recent changes to the Artic and ices of Greenland are of particular concern. It seems to me that changes to our planet induced by melting ice might be one of most costly and yet still underappreciated factors in the global warming debate. A recent report in the NY times, emphasizing the role of vicious circles or negative feedback, provides some more food for thought:

Each summer over the past six years, global warming has trimmed this ice’s total area a little more, and each winter the ice’s recovery has been a little less robust. These trends alarmed climate scientists, but most thought that sea ice wouldn’t disappear completely in the Arctic summer before 2040 at the earliest.

But this past summer sent scientists scrambling to redo their estimates. Week by week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., reported the trend: from 2.23 million square miles of ice remaining on Aug. 8 to 1.6 million square miles on Sept. 16, an astonishing drop from the previous low of 2.05 million square miles, reached in 2005.

The loss of Arctic sea ice won’t be the last abrupt change in earth’s climate, because of feedbacks. One of the climate’s most important destabilizing feedbacks involves Arctic ice. It works like this: our release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases around the planet causes some initial warming that melts some ice. Melting ice leaves behind open ocean water that has a much lower reflectivity (or albedo) than that of ice. Open ocean water absorbs about 80 percent more solar radiation than sea ice does. And so as the sun warms the ocean, even more ice melts, in a vicious circle. This ice-albedo feedback is one of the main reasons warming is happening far faster in the high north, where there are vast stretches of sea ice, than anywhere else on Earth.

There are other destabilizing feedbacks in the carbon cycle that involve the oceans. Each year, the oceans absorb about half the carbon dioxide that humans emit into the atmosphere. But as oceans warm, they will absorb less carbon dioxide, partly because the gas dissolves less readily in warmer water, and partly because warming will reduce the mixing between deep and surface waters that provides nutrients to plankton that absorb carbon dioxide. And when oceans take up less carbon dioxide, warming worsens.

Scientists have done a good job incorporating some feedbacks into their climate models, especially those, like the ice-albedo feedback, that operate directly on the temperature of air or water. But they haven’t incorporated as well feedbacks that operate on the atmosphere’s concentrations of greenhouse gases or that affect the cycle of carbon among air, land, oceans and organisms. Yet these may be the most important feedbacks of all.

Read the rest of the article here.