Why the marathon is not for me

"Are you training for a marathon?"

I get asked that question a lot by people who find out that I like to run. It's a totally understandable question, given the prominence that the marathon has assumed as the presumptive "event" for recreational runners. And yet, I have pretty much zero interest in running one. To be sure, I say that with absolutely no intention of downplaying the accomplishment of those who train for and run (or try to run) one. If that's what gets someone motivated to run, that's great. It's just not for me.

Is a ban on "anorexic models" more thin-shaming?

France is going to make it a crime "to use anorexic models or encourage anorexia" - joining Spain and Israel in pushing for such measures:

The amendment forbids anyone with a body mass index below a certain level from earning money as a model. The level — based on height and weight — would be defined later by decree if the law is definitively passed. 

Any modeling agency or person who pays a model below that index would face up to six months in prison and 75,000 euros ($80,000) in fines if convicted. 

"The idea behind this law is not to send people to prison or fine them," said Veran. "The law will be dissuasive enough to make sure that the health of people working in the modeling industry is protected."

The underlying goal of this law appears to be to eliminate the cultural pressure that women may feel to adopt unreasonable weight loss goals and the like. It's hard to argue against that goal. But the mechanism of the goal is, for lack of a better term, censorship of the imagery of very thin models. It would seem a better approach (at least, better from my American free speech perspective) to provide incentives to the fashion industry to showcase a more diverse group of models.



Moreover, there is a strange disconnect between what the law purports to block and how it measures that same problem. It appears that the law is going to use body mass index as the measure of "anoxeria," such that if she fall below some BMI, she will be banned from modeling.

Does this blunt use of BMI sound familiar?

One of the big criticisms of using BMI to diagnose obesity is that BMI only looks at height and weight, with the result that very muscular people are considered "obese" by BMI when they are anything but obese.

The French law seems to do the very same thing, except on the other end of the normal distribution. I'm not a doctor, but it seems like anorexia nervosa is a medical condition that requires clinical diagnosis. How about requiring that fashion models get checked out by doctors and certified that they aren't suffering from anoxeria?

Otherwise, this well-intentioned law simply discriminates against a subset of people, those who happen to be very slight of build, and for whom modeling is a natural career. I suppose the response would be that such people - mostly women, of course - can "simply gain weight" if they want to work as models.

But why would it be okay to tell people they should "gain weight" if they aren't unhealthy? Should the government go around telling overweight people they should "lose weight" and block their ability to work in particular professions until they do? Each person has a zone of weight in which he or she is healthy, and where within that range a person chooses to be is entirely that person's business, isn't it?

I mean, I'm not underweight according to BMI, although I am pretty lean these days, and I get occasional comments from people that I'm too thin. At my last check-up, though, my doctor did not think I was too thin, and I happen to like my current build, because it seems to work well for running. 2012 Olympic 10K silver medalist Galen Rupp has a BMI of 19.5, which isn't too far from being declared underweight by BMI. Pro runner Lauren Fleshman checks in at 19.0 (and psst, she has modeled Oiselle's running clothes!), and Kara Goucher and Shalene Flanagan are at 18.8. They're all above the BMI cut-off for being declared underweight (which is a BMI of 18.5), but as world class athletes, they also have tremendously low body fat percentages and probably look as thin as people of the same height who are under an 18.5 BMI. Should Rupp, Fleshman, Goucher, and Flanagan be body-shamed for being too thin when their bodies are configured for elite performance in their chosen profession? And if not, are models different?

To be sure, modeling isn't a competitive performance like racing is, and I'm not blind to the idea that there are cultural pressures to be thin that can lead to unhealthy behavior in an effort to "look right" for the job. But as discussed above, perhaps that should be between the model and her physician, rather for some meddling legislature to dictate.

Finally, I'll admit that being seen as too thin is not the same as being seen as too heavy, and I'm not trying to draw a direct equivalency between the two. What I am saying is that the principle that shaming people for their bodies - particularly where the shaming involves, as with the French law, an actual prohibition on work - isn't something the law should be encouraging.

"The X-Files" revival

The news that Fox is bringing "The X-Files" back for a limited 6-episode run is a week or so old now, but here are my thoughts.

At one point, "The X-Files" was my favorite TV show on the air. (This was well before I had TiVo, but I did tend to record them on videotape so that I could skip commercials. The downside of videotaping, as opposed to DVRing, was that I had to wait for the episode to finish airing before I could rewind the tape to start watching.) I liked the alien-government conspiracy myth arc stories better than the monster-of-the-week ones, for the most part, and I was not a 'shipper.

However, the central problem with the long-time stability of the series was that it became impossible to sustain plausible Scullysque explanations for the phenomenon being depicted on-screen. About midway through the third season, it became clear that Mulder's view of the world was indeed correct and that Scully's continued refusal to accept the existence of extraterrestrial life was just pig-headed stubbornness.*

San Diego running

Boy, there sure are a lot of runners in San Diego! I just got back from a few days down there, and it seemed like there were runners in the morning, mid-day, early evening, and even night time.

We arrived on Sunday and were staying right near Balboa Park, near the Hillcrest Area. The place we were staying at had a small gym on the top floor, with reasonable hours (closing time at 10 p.m.). However, due to the need to do some grocery shopping so that we'd have breakfast the next morning, I wasn't free to go running that night until 9:40 or so. I asked the front desk how stringent they were about the hours, and the clerk said they locked down the elevator at 10 p.m. (I discovered later that you can take the stairs there, and I don't think they were all that strict. Oh well.)

This is, of course, San Diego, which has about the best weather imaginable in the continental United States, so I headed outdoors. I think much of San Diego is pretty safe, but when you aren't familiar with a location, nighttime can often bring a sense of unease. I headed over toward the part of Hillcrest that was still happening at night - restaurants, night clubs, and strip clubs. I got in a decent 4 miles at an easy pace before calling it a night.

Me, on the deck of an aircraft carrier

I should have gotten up early the next day (Monday) to go running, but hey, I was on vacation, so I slept in. During the day, we toured the U.S.S. Midway museum. I've been on a decommissioned battleship before (the U.S.S. Missouri), but never an aircraft carrier, so this was a pretty neat experience. I did find myself wondering, "if the seas were calm, did any sailors go running laps on the flattop deck?" Of course, when the ship was on active duty, there were no fences along the edges, so perhaps lap running was not recommended.

We weren't staying near the San Diego harbor, which was too bad, because it looked like it was an awesome place to go running. In the picture below, you can see the Midway to the right, the parking lot for the Fish Market to the left, and in the center (in the distance), the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan.

San Diego Harbor at sunset (photo by me)

That night, I headed up to the gym and ran 9 miles on the treadmill before the gym closed. Rather, I stopped when I thought the gym would close, but I think I could've stayed longer. Anyway, why didn't I run outside? Mostly because I wanted to watch some "24" .... (darn TV addiction)

We went to the San Diego Zoo the next day. As I mentioned, we were staying near Balboa Park, but the zoo entrance was way on the other side of the park, and some of the extended family members would've had trouble walking there and back, so we drove.

Ah, the life of a panda bear....

Do lions mind being in a cage, if they're fed constantly?

I seem to be obsessed about running, because I was thinking that the zoo would be a great place for a 5K race. A bit hilly, to be sure, but with wide walkways. Then my wife pointed out that it would be incredibly disruptive to the animals ....

According to the pedometer app on my smartphone, we had walked about 4 miles at the zoo. That was a pretty good warm-up, but it certainly didn't satisfy my running addiction. With some free time available to me in the late afternoon, I went running through Balboa Park, including back to the zoo! One of the main attractions to the route was going across the Cabrillo Bridge - grassy park on one side, and lots of museums on the other side:

The Cabrillo Bridge connecting the two sides of Balboa Park

This too ended up being a relatively short run, just 4 miles, because of the need to have enough time to clean up before dinner.

It was appealing enough that the next morning, I ran through the park again. Now, it turns out that the primary landing path for airplanes headed to the San Diego airport goes right over the southwestern edge of Balboa Park. I happened to be in that part of the park when a jet roared overhead on its descent. I should've taken a picture!

I got in 5 miles at a cruising pace by circumscribing the park, and topped off the trip with a short workout in the gym that night (the last one).

Ah, San Diego. Neither Los Angeles nor San Francisco/Berkeley hold much appeal to me these days, but San Diego still does; if only California weren't so expensive....

Amazon renews "Bosch" for a second season

Titus Welliver (as Harry Bosch), with Jamie Hector (as Jerry Edgar)

Good news, Amazon has renewed the serialized crime drama "Bosch" for a second season. I gave my thoughts on season 1 a few weeks ago after binge-watching the 10 episodes over a week. According the L.A. Times:

The second season, which could start streaming in early 2016, will draw primarily from Connelly's novel "Trunk Music." The season will also include elements of "The Last Coyote" and "The Drop."

Season 1 also drew from three novels, although it used only a part of the third one ("The Concrete Blonde") and otherwise melded together two.

I'm not surprised that "The Last Coyote" will be included in season 2. One of the penultimate scenes in season 1 was taken from the beginning of that book, and "The Last Coyote" storyline follows naturally from the end of the first season, when [SPOILER!!!!!]

40-something doesn't seem so old now ...

Vertical Run, which was published 20 years ago, is a terrific thriller, kind of like "Die Hard" with a protagonist trapped in an office building with a bunch of trained killers, but with a much different plot and mystery. I first read it when it was a selection of the Book of the Month Club in 1995; it was one of three thrillers I chose as the opening selection, along with David Baldacci's Absolute Power and a third one that I don't recall now.

Anyway, I just re-read Vertical Run, and it was as much of a thrill-ride as I remember, so I highly recommend it to anyone who likes fast-paced, kinetic action books.

But what struck me on the re-read was how back in 1995, I had thought smugly that, at age 47, the main character (David Elliot) seemed kind of old to be doing all kinds of action-packed running and fighting. 47 seemed so far away ...

Fast forward to now, when I'm ... 47. It doesn't seem old at all. Obviously, I don't have the Special Forces background that David Elliot did, which you can imagine comes in handy in the novel, but in terms of running around and doing physical stuff, I'm better now than I was 20 years ago. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, with recent research reinforcing the life benefits of vigorous exercise. But it's also a good reminder to me about trying to avoid the smugness of being younger now than whatever age I'm going to be down the road.

Review of Amazon's "Bosch"

I've read every single "Harry Bosch" novel by Michael Connelly, and I've met him several times at book signings back when he and I both lived in Los Angeles, and he would always stop by the Mysterious Bookstore on the west side. Connelly used to be a crime reporter with the L.A. Times, and it shows in his novels, which are chock full of police procedural details.

A year ago, when Amazon unveiled its second slate of potential TV shows for viewer responses, I eagerly watched the "Bosch" pilot starring Titus Welliver (the Man in Black in "Lost") in the title role. I wouldn't have thought of Welliver as Bosch, but the trailer clips that I saw sold me almost instantly.