It's funny how circular the web can be.  This morning I was looking for people to add to my dailymile.com friends list.  I saw a user’s icon that I recognized and clicked to view his profile.  My click was prompted by lingering curiosity from last week.  I had followed this person on Twitter.  The individual is both a runner and someone in the tech field; it seemed like a relevant fit.  A few minutes later I received a direct message thanking me for the follow and referencing our common interest in running.  Interesting, I’d never been thanked for following before.  My first thought was, “Hmm, nice touch.”  My second thought was, “Has some sort of Twitter etiquette, no doubt labeled ‘Twetiquette’, evolved that encourages these social graces?”  I didn’t have time to reply at the time, but made a mental note to do so later.  That night I saw a tweet in the person’s feed, a blip.fm song reference about which I made an @reply comment.  Then I typed out a direct message and sent it off only to be told that I can’t send a direct message to someone who is not following me.  Strange.  I checked my small list of followers and, yep, I’d been quit.  Had the delay in my response to the afternoon’s direct message offended?  Now I felt like a lout, especially after making a presumably unwelcome @reply.  Better to just un-follow and move on.

Return to this morning where I’m reading through this person’s blog from the dailymile profile click through.  The second post catches my eye because it mentions Twitter and Qwitter.  Qwitter I learn is a service that will let you know when people stop following you.  And not only that but also the tweet you made immediately preceding when they stopped following.  That way you can parse your 140 or less characters to get a glimpse into the quitter's psyche.  Honestly, people, it’s just Twitter.  Is this kind of thing really necessary?  Before you say “Well of course not, Will” read on because at the end of his post there I was.  He was apologizing for having offended me to the point that I would quit him, complete with “Brokeback Mountain” reference.  Huh?

Well, as it turns out I hadn’t been quit.  I had mentally checked the box that said this person had followed me when I received the direct message when in fact he had not.  (I backtracked through my email trash and found no ‘This person is following you on Twitter’ message.)  I had not offended him by not responding, and he had not un-followed me.  I suppose I never would have made this mistake if I’d been using Qwitter because I would not have received a ‘This person is no longer following you on Twitter’ email.  Foolproof clarity for free.

My wife makes fun of me for using Twitter.  I can't say that I blame her, especially after wasting half an hour writing this post.  For me Twitter wanes while dailymile.com waxes.  I’m looking for camaraderie not an audience – not that having an audience is bad.  You’re reading this now.  Will I Qwit Twitter?  No, I’m going to stick with it for now.  I have some friends that are traveling overseas and they decided to use Twitter as a low bandwidth intensive way of sharing their experience.  After that, who knows?  It’s not every day that you get have this kind of convoluted misunderstanding with a person you’ve never met.

I took the afternoon off on Tuesday to got to Frankfort.  My wife had made the trip to the state capitol last week to get the necessary seals for our adoption paperwork.  China requires certifications for the required documents as opposed to apostilles.  We initially received apostilles, but found out only after sending the paperwork via FedEx overnight to D.C. at great expense that we should have gotten certifications.  This is our fourth time through the China paper chase and each time there are new documents or variations in the process.  So back came the documents and it was now my turn to head to Frankfort. 

Until Tuesday I had not been to Frankfort and have only been to Louisville a few times, but I knew there were other parks and trails in the Frankfort/Louisville area.  If I was going to take the day off from work to make the trip I figured that was a good excuse to also find a trail run in the area.  A quick search turned up Capitol View Park conveniently located along my route.  The trial map on the site was too small to be of much use, but I found a larger version on another site. 

After getting the certifications on the paperwork I took them to a nearby FedEx office and sent them on their way.  Then it was time to run.  I found the park on the East West Connector and parked at the kiosk.  From there I followed the notes on the trail map that direct you to proceed through the parking lots to “The First Section”.  I actually overshot that trailhead and ended up heading down the double track and hoping onto the section of trail that runs along the upper perimeter of the map.  I went to the right and found myself on the abandoned railroad bed that took me back to the kiosk.  Realizing what I had done, I simply turned around and retraced my steps, moving counterclockwise as suggested.  After a full circuit of the park I grabbed a quick drink and bite at the car and ran clockwise this time, skipping the long loop that runs behind the library building.  I picked up the trailhead of “The First Section” this time around.  All told I covered about 12 miles of great trail under a blue sky.

If you go note that the trails are marked better in some areas than others.  Also, there a few details like side trails and intersections not included on the map so you may have to feel your way along, exploring, to make sure you’re on the main course if want to get the full mileage out of the park.  That’s part of the fun though.

As I’ve mentioned before my wife and I bought a treadmill early last December.  So far I love it.  Without it I would never have been able to keep any sort of training regimen with the shortening daylight hours and lowering temperatures through the winter.  We made our purchase at the local Dick’s Sporting Goods.  I know one of the managers there from church, and he let me use his friend’s and family discount when the sale rolled around.  That saved us about 20% and allowed us to get a much better machine than I thought we could (read: spend more than I thought my wife would let me.  Thanks, Honey).  Of course in purchasing said treadmill we used that card that a lot of these big chain stores have.  Best Buy has one too.  You know, where if you purchase $5000 dollars of stuff in a year they’ll send you a certificate for $5.  I’m exaggerating but not by much.  I did the math on the Best Buy one once and it works out to a 2% rebate.  I’m not sure what the percentage is on the Dick’s version, but it’s pretty close.  Still, a treadmill added up to a lot of points and sure enough in late January we got a certificate worth $40.  That’s when the trouble started.

Truth be told $40 is $40, even if you have to spend it by the end of February to prevent if from not being $40 anymore.  So what do you do with $40?  Shoes of course.  A runner always needs shoes.  Brooks Trance?  Sure, but Dick’s charges more for them than everyone else.  Asics DS Trainer 14?  Nope, but they’ve got the 13.  In the store?  No, online.  Hmm.  Asics Hyper Speed?  I need racing flats.  No.  Brooks racing flats?  No.  Any racing flats?  Not really.  Shorts!  A runner always needs shorts.  I’m the old school type that likes the ones where the front panel overlaps the back panel.  Nike makes them.  Dicks caries Nike, right?  Well they do and they don’t.  You see where I’m going with this. 

I can’t expect Dick’s to be John’s Run Walk Shop, or Omega Sports, or Phidippides or any of the other places that end up being running’s equivalent of Cheers.  And to be honest, I don’t want them to.  Big box stores are about getting a good price on a treadmill and some orange cones to mark an Ultimate field.  When I need the next larger sized ball and cleats for the start of kids’ soccer season, I go to the big box.  But when I want to feel the difference in fit between an Asics Hyper Speed and a Brooks T6 Racer I’ll head to John’s.  And while I’m there I’ll probably linger and talk about running with people who love to run.

Long live the specialty running shop.

I like Craig’s List.  It facilitates a face-to-face, cash exchange that is inherently scam-free for free.  This is as opposed to EBay which has become a wasteland.  I’ve got a Craig’s List listing now for an Archos 605 that I’m trying to sell.  I previously sold a PSP and a Garmin Forerunner 50 (which is a great, no-frills heart rate monitor by the way).  Not too long after I  posted my PSP last year I got an email from someone who was going to pay more than the asking price and just needed my PayPal ID.  All I had to do was box it up an ship it off.  Of course it was a scam.  I got another one yesterday regarding the Archos from anitamorgan82@gmail.com. 

The text was in light gray and looked like an auto-generated signature line.  Still, I wrote back and said that I did.  Within seconds I got a reply.  Actually, I got two replies.  The first was from the original address with the same content as the first email.  The second was from Anita’s other email - anitamorgan85@yahoo.com.

Hey, $350 plus $180 when I’m only asking $225 is not bad.  Spelling and grammar aside, Anita must be a real sweetheart.  At this point I’m curious just how this scam works.  I do a little searching and find this poor guy’s experience.  Being a computer guy, I’m also wondering if Anita, sweetheart though she may be, is a human or an auto-responder.  I write back before going to bed.

This morning I learned that Anita is a human because I found two responses from the previous night.

That one arrived just eight minutes after I sent my $1093.37 fee list (including the anti-dolphin coating charge).  Anita is willing.  And not just willing, but eager (probably due to the long delivery time) as evidence by her second email which arrived less than an hour later.

By this morning my curiosity had run its course.  I had my fun, and as Anita might say, it was a “hamless deal”.  The sad thing is that there are people out there who are in for plenty of ham.  They’re well intentioned or naive or inexperienced or lured into getting more than their asking price.  Whatever they are, ultimately, Anita is going to take their money and waste their time.  So watch out, folks, because I’m here to tell you that Anita is a non-sweetheart human eager to do you ham harm.  And she’s probably not the only one.

When I started running again last fall I picked up The Competitive Runner's Handbook by by Bob and Shelly-Lynn Florence Glover.  During my high school and college days I had the luxury of a coach to guide my training.  From that experience I have a reasonable understanding about how to train for distances from 5K to 10K.  My new goal race distance is the half-marathon and marathon for 2009.  While there are obvious similarities in training for a 5K and a marathon you can’t just take a 5K plan and multiply by nine.  The Competitive Runner's Handbook helped me begin to get a feel for the training regimen changes necessary to race at the marathon distance.  It even has suggested training schedules for runners of various ability levels.  Still, I wasn’t finding the information I was looking for.  There are a thousand and one half-marathon or marathon training schedules out there.  But where do they come from?  How are they created?  It wasn’t long before I realized that what I was really looking for was not a mini-encyclopedia of running but a book that would teach me how to be a coach so that I could coach myself. 

When I went looking for that kind of book I found Brad Hudson’s Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon: How to Be Your Own Best Coach.  In this book Hudson and his co-author Matt Fitzgerald lay out Hudson’s adaptive coaching philosophy.  In a nutshell Hudson approaches coaching each athlete as an individual with different strengths and weaknesses and seeks to tailor a plan that best suits their race goals.  The book is narrowly focused.  You won’t find chapters on nutrition, stretching, or race strategy.  While there are training schedules laid out in the back of the book, they are intended to be guidelines around which to build your own schedule.  So far I’m in week 7 of the half-marathon level 3 schedule.  I started at week one on January 4.  My plan is to stick as close to his 16 week schedule as possible leading up to the Country Music Half-Marathon.  From there I’ll should have plenty of information both from training and the race to assess where to go next in my training.  And that is what Hudson’s approach is all about – train, assess, refine, repeat.