Truth, cont.

Livestrong, a photo by Stewart Dawson on Flickr.

As a follow-up in fairness, I must report that federal prosecutors have closed their investigation of Lance Armstrong and will not indict. What does the mean? Simple that federal investigators have closed their investigation and will not indict. Many questions remain and we will have to wait for the tangled truth a bit longer (and maybe forever).

Choosing Sides

With another story in today's paper about the Susan G. Komen flap (this time a profile on founder-president Nancy Brinker), I reflect again on what it is that bugs me most about the entire sad saga (well, aside from the bald-faced lies they told while in CYA-mode). For me, it's that the anti-abortion movement has brought their fight to this arena where it really doesn't belong, and it turn forced everyone involved to pick aside. They won't allow anyone to pull a Switzerland on this topic.

The amount of money clearly is not the issue (it's minuscule to both organizations). What I don't understand was that if some donors were bothered by the Planned Parenthood grants, why didn't they just opt not to give? Was this really costing Komen that much in donations? It couldn't have hurt that much given they are widely recognized as the Google of Cause Related Marketing. It appears that for this AA crowd, it wasn't good enough to say we'll withhold all our money if you give one dime of it to PP. No, we don't want you to give them anybody else's money either, even if it is for breast cancer screening for women in poverty. Instead,  by forcing Komen's hand, they stirred up a hornets nest they clearly underestimated.

The episode has been called a proxy for the culture wars and I'm afraid we'll have to go on fighting for quite a while longer. I'm reminded of the scene in Saving Private Ryan, when a exhausted army sergeant, played by Paul Giamatti, stops with the platoon to rest inside a half blown-up house. As he sits to remove his boots from his aching feet, he accidentally knocks a loose beam into a wall, which collapses to review a roomful of Germans. Both side quickly grab their guns and start screaming at the other side to drop their weapons.

I assume that most people were like me, and had either raced for the cure, or donated money to someone else who was racing or walking for the cure, and hadn't thought too much about how Komen spent it. (A recent survey I saw said only about a third of donors to charities do ANY research on the organizations to which they give.) We gave and had a good time. Only now, someone has knocked down the wall and we find ourselves standing between two armed factions screaming past each other. They probably didn't know each other was there, but now that they do, the fight is on. And we all need to decide which side we're on. 

I know I've learned more about Komen and PP in the past two weeks than ever before, and a lot about who dislikes both and why. I while I wasn't planning to get involved, I know what I need to do when it comes time to write the next check. I'll make it out directly to Planned Parenthood.

Between the Uprights

Funny thing about goals. They say that if you really want to achieve them, you need to make them public. Say them out loud. Display them for the world to see.

Well, here goes. I've got some strange ones. I've been running a lot for the past five years, averaging more than a 1,000 miles in each. The vast majority of those have been run on the same bike trail near my house, the W&OD Trail. I like it because I know every crack and mile marker in a 10-mile stretch, and thus can step out my front door and know exactly where to turn around for anything from 3 to 20 miles.

But on January 1, bored with the trail I've literally run 1,000 times,  I stepped out the front door and headed the other way. I've done this before, mind you, so those course wasn't unknown. But two miles into the run, something different happened. I stopped to tie my shoe, and when I was done, I looked across the street and saw a park that I had never been in before. There was a trail off to one side leading to the far end of the park and I decided to follow it to see how far it went.

Not very far, as it turned out, and it spit me out onto a street. But again, it was one I can't recall having ever run (or driven or ridden) and I was only about 2 miles from the house I'd lived in for 18 years. So I followed it and soon found myself back on familiar turf, knowing exactly where I was. Then I realized that I could quickly turn off this street and back into uncharted waters (for me) and see some things I'd never seen before in my own neighborhood and community.

Years ago I read about some guys who set out to walk every street in Manhattan. One did it in 2 years. Another tried to finish in 2 months. So it occurred to me that I could knock out every street in Arlington county in a year, and hit my annual goal of running 1,000 miles. With just 26 square miles, Arlington is one of the smallest geographic county in the U.S., and has 961 "lane miles" of roads. I'm not going to run every lane, but I figure hitting them all once is going to get me close to 1,000 (I will obviously need to run parts of some multiple times).

There are a few rules:
1) No interstates or major highways.
2) For now, every run will start and end at my house. I may revise this as the end gets near.
3) If it's dangerous, I can skip it. I already had to do this once on Glebe Road near Chain Bridge. No shoulder, blind curves. Not a place to run.

Why? You ask. Why not? I reply. It's my own version of trainspotting. It doesn't make any sense but it's what I'm doing.

The map below, created with my handy-dandy Garmin Forerunner 310XT GPS watch, will show you what I covered in January (12 runs for 61 miles: will need to step it up if I'm going to make my goal). I can also see that I need to study maps before I go out. The long run up to north corner of the county shows where I turned around at the end of a loop street. I didn't know where I was or where the street was heading, it was getting late and I needed to get back. Turns out I could have kept going and knocked out that little secluded neighborhood. Now I have to go back to pick up those three blocks. Ugh. (Again, it makes no sense.)

(and I'm working on embedding the Google Earth map directly in the blog. If any of you readers know how to do that, I'd be much obliged.)
Goal post photo by Anthony Ferretti.