Climate Change Continues

Many newspapers have pointed out the fact that the surface temperature of the earth has not changed markedly over the last 15 years. And in turn some seem to think that because of this climate change is not happening.

Although there is more to climate change than the surface temperature of the earth let us first look at the that claim. After some time spent websearching I found NASA’s downloadable global dataset of land and (surface) ocean temperatures (actually, temperature anomalies — the difference between temperatures and a baseline average). This dataset contains monthly and yearly anomaly data back to 1880. Links to the methodology for calculating the global summary data are here.

Temperature Anomaly between 1880 and 2012 (base temperature is the average between 1950 and 1980). The black line in the upper left shows the best linear fit to the anomalies between 1998 and 2012. It increases.

When I first looked at the data I immediately applied a least squares linear regression on the temperatures between 1998 and 2012. Rather to my surprise the regression is not flat as I had assumed the claim was. It is not nearly as steep as the regression from 1990 to 1999, but the yearly change is about the same as the change between 1880 and 2012.

Years	Temperature increase (slope of linear regression)
1880-2012	1.17°F/century
1998-2012	1.13°F/century
2000-2009	1.77°F/century
1990-1999	4.86°F/century

So what is it that hasn’t changed? Perhaps they mean the average temperature of the earth? And indeed, 1998 was (up until then) the hottest year on record, the average temperature of the following 15 years is less than the average temperature of that year alone. Well, you sort of expect that if you pick an exceptionally hot year as your baseline. On the other hand there have been 4 years hotter than it since then.

So as far as I can tell, the surface of the world continues to warm, just not as rapidly as it did in the 90s.

But why isn’t the earth warming as fast as it was? More greenhouse gasses are in the atmosphere, one would expect more heat to be trapped on the earth. The answer appears to be that in recent years more of the heat is going into warming up the deep water of the ocean and less into warming the surface. Indeed when this deep water warming is taken into account the heat transfer to the earth as a whole can be seen to be accelerating (Nuccitelli et al).

But climate change is not restricted to temperatures. The ice caps are melting, there are more droughts in our wheat-belts, more fires in areas with Mediterranean climates (who can forget that in SB there were three major fires in the 12 months from July 2008 to June 2009), more and more powerful hurricanes in the Atlantic, more flooding… Recently there have been a number of papers showing that individual storms, droughts, etc. are outside the range of historical variation.

The last time the CO₂ in the atmosphere was as high as it currently is the surface temperature of earth was about 3°C (5°F) warmer than now with the arctic as much as 8°C (15°F) warmer. Sea level was about 30 feet higher. So that’s probably the steady state condition we will obtain if the CO₂ concentration remains at its current level. We don’t know how long it will take to get there, but that’s what we’re looking at. Of course, the CO₂ concentration is still climbing year after year so as things now stand the steady-state condition will probably be even warmer — MIT estimates that by 2100 the CO₂ concentration will be about 900ppm with global temperatures rising to about 10°F higher (and Arctic temps ~20°F higher).

The climate has changed. The climate is changing. The climate will change, probably catastrophically. We just don’t know how long it will take or how far it will go…

Who hath measured the ground?

The first time I ran the SB Wine Country half marathon there were no mile markers. This time there were markers but they did not appear to be accurately placed.

My GPS watch is not the most accurate device itself. It is often off by 1%, rarely by 2%, but it is not off by 8%. According to it the full course was 13.1 miles so I’m inclined to think it was fairly accurate today. However it claimed the first mile marker was at 1.08miles. It took me 7 minutes to get there when I was trying to run 6:35. That’s a huge error. If I had been equipped with nothing more than a stopwatch (as I was 5 years ago) I should have been dismayed to see myself running so slowly. I might have picked up the pace and ended up running a 6:10 or something similar on the next mile, which probably would have destroyed any chance of doing well.

I didn’t do well, but I can’t blame it on the first mile marker, much as I wish I could. I was looking at my GPS generated pace and knew I was running somewhere around 6:30 (not 7min).

The last few weeks have not gone well for me (from a running standpoint). My tempo runs have been about 5 secs/mile too slow, and I’ve been getting increasingly bad shin splints. This week the splintered shins were the worst they’ve been — it was even painful to walk yesterday. But this morning they were not bad; and although I felt a few slight twinges during the race they continued not to be bad (until I stopped. Now they are awful again). So I can’t blame my problems on them either.

Anyway, I got to Santa Ynez, cautiously optimistic. I found the race start had moved slightly from 5 years ago. Not too surprising. I lined up near the front, behind Drea and Ricky. Drea pointed out another woman in the front row (“She ran a 1:18!”, so that’s Drea’s competition sorted).

There’s a moment of silence for the Boston victims.

And we’re off. Round the corner and down the hill. We fly. I glance at my watch, but my eyes don’t focus, I think I’m running 6:40. Round another corner and up a hill. This time the watch says 5:45 pace. Whoops. I don’t need to be that excited. There are lots of small rolling hills at the beginning. I can’t always take as much advantage of the downhills as I’d like — some are so steep that I hang back a bit fearing what sprinting down would do to my shins…

Santa Ynez is in fog, but once we get to the outskirts (and that’s happens pretty quickly in Santa Ynez) the fog fades, vanishes and we are in full sun. As we are for the rest of the race. (The picture here, indeed all the pictures in this post were taken on earlier visits)

At about half a mile things have settled down a bit. The lead men are out of sight and I get to watch the lead women. Drea has been running right behind Maria, and continues to do so for a long as I can see them. A third woman is some distance back. I often count everyone ahead of me, but I can’t today the men are too fast and I’m too slow. But I can keep track of the women…

Around 3/4 of a mile another woman passes me, but she doesn’t last long and I pass her back after a bit.

I’m relieved to see the 1 mile mark when it shows up (Yay! it’s there! I guess the others will be too!). My watch claims my pace for the last mile was 6:30. I was supposed to go out at 6:40 to warm up; but 6:30 is a reasonable pace. If I’m optimistic I’m shooting for that pace as the average for the race as a whole. If I’m more realistic I’m expecting 6:35.

We come to the first water station, and I have a bad hand-off and most of the water ends up on my shirt rather than inside me. Oh well.

We come up to mile 3 (where was mile 2?). My watch says I’m doing 6:34s. Okay that’s basically what I was expecting. No problems.

We’re now on a long slow uphill grind to Los Olivos (with the occasionally small hill thrown in to slow us down). At mile 4 there’s another water stand (I wish they wouldn’t do that. I can’t click my watch if I’m reaching for water, so I miss the split). This time I get a couple of sips.

At mile 5 I see I’ve slowed to a 6:40 pace. That’s not so good, but I console myself with the fact that it’s uphill. There’s a long downhill section ahead to counterbalance it.

Five years ago the edge of a field here was covered with California Poppies, but this year the edge has been plowed and there’s nothing but a few foxgloves. Which aren’t native.

I was expecting trouble from my shins, but it’s my quads which are grumbling. And I’m not halfway done yet.

I pass through Los Olivos. I don’t see it. I see the guy in front. I see the chip mat. Then a flat section.

And then the hill. Here we climb about 200 feet in half a mile. I slow. Considerably. No one passes me (they slowed too, good). I’m disappointed to see that someone has mown the verge here, and the wild flowers which were blooming three weeks ago are gone. But there are some magpies, don’t often see magpies. I know this hill, but even so I keep hoping the next bend will reveal the end. Finally it does end. The top is as close as we’ll get to a halfway point too. The view is spectacular (or it would be if I were looking at something other than the guy ahead).

There’s a vinyard to my left and a winery at the bottom of the hill to the right. The last time I was up here there was a buzzard sitting on a fence post with wings extended as if waiting for a runner to collapse.

I ran 7:30s going up the hill. Not unexpected, but not good either, and then did a 6 minute pace briefly on the downhill (not enough to cancel out the uphill though).

This is the last time I see the number 3 woman, she’s way down at the bottom of the hill when I crest the top.

The next two miles are about 6:32. That’s OK, but I’d hoped to go faster. This is a nice downhill stretch. Two people pass me.

There is a bison by the side of the road (luckily not in the road).

Just running through the fields

Then things start to get bad. The next mile (mile 10) is at a 6:52 pace and it’s very much a downhill mile. More people pass me. Dan Rudd passes me. The next mile, also downhill, is even worse 6:55. The #4 woman passes me. (5 years ago the #2 woman passed me about here).

But the chick lupines are still in bloom!

Then there comes the next big hill. Even though half the mile is downhill, I run it at a 7:42 pace. The final mile at a 7:03. The elevation profile shows it is mostly downhill with a small hill right at the end.

I do manage to pick up the pace slightly for the last tenth of a mile. My watch says I sprinted to the finish at a 5:34 pace for that last bit. I don’t believe it, but I do think I sped up. I was probably inspired by the clock, which I saw ticking down to 1:30:00. I would have felt terribly ashamed to be over 1:30, so I tried really hard, and finished with 1:29:51.

Which is pretty bad.

Finishing

I do get a bottle of wine

Trying to figure out what went wrong… I don’t think it was the shins. I simply payed no attention to the mile splits, choosing to go by the mile paces shown on the watch; so it wasn’t mismeasured miles. Other people complained about the temperature, but I didn’t notice it. What I did notice was that my mouth was dry and gummy. I think I dehydrated again. And, yeah, my heart rate reflects that. It was pretty constant at about 89% effort from mile 3 to 10, and then it started to climb, reaching 95% for the final sprint.

Heart rate (as a percentage of max), Speed and Elevation all on one graph. Speed hovers around 9mph for most of the race, heart rate just below 90%. Both react to elevation changes for the first 10 miles or so.

Workout

Rusty said a 2mile @90-91sec/quarter, rest, 2 by 1mile at 87sec/quarter, rest, an 800.

I considered that and felt that I probably couldn’t do it. My group-mates expressed similar sentiments.

I have a thing about 6 minutes miles. I’ve had it for at least 5 years. I know I can do a 6 minute mile, I don’t think I can go any faster. So I wasn’t sure if I could do two miles in 12 minutes, but I was almost certain I could not do one mile in 5:48.

Oddly my group-mates seemed to feel the reverse, for them the 2mile run sounded harder.

As I said I’ve had this thing about 6 minutes for years. Even in the days when I could run a 10K at 6 minute pace I felt I couldn’t go faster on the track. Now, I can’t run a 10K at that pace, and it’s hard, but possible to run 6 minutes for a mile.

Anyway we started. Eric was in the lead and the first quarter was 91. Perfect. Eric is good at pacing. Then it started to feel hard, but I pushed on. Another 91. This is often the case, the first lap feels easy-ish because one is fresh, then one tires by the second lap, but on the third lap I’ve warmed up and it’s easier again. I decided I should try leading, so I lead for two laps, and we finished the first mile at 6:03. Then Eric and Jill took over again while I dropped back and just tried to hold on. We finished in 12:03.

I was quite proud of that. I had been in real doubt as to whether I could hold the pace for 2 miles.

Then a four and a half minute jog/rest. And then…

A fast mile. I didn’t think I could make it. But I was going to try. By the 200m mark there was already a significant gap between me and Eric and Jill. The first quarter was 90. The next quarter was 93 and now Brian was well ahead. But I felt a little better and the third quarter was another 90. At the mark Rusty shouted that I should catch Brian. And somehow I did. I sped up. I passed Brian. I ran an 88. That was almost the pace I should have run the whole thing in. 6:01 for the mile.

Could I have done the whole mile at 88? It certainly didn’t feel that way on lap 2. Somehow it feels as though I need those first two laps as an additional rest before I can run faster? I don’t know.

Three minute rest/jog.

Another fast mile. This one is even harder. 91 on the first lap. 95 on the second. 92 on the third. And then, out of nowhere, 87 on the last. 6:05 mile.

Rusty tells me I can stop.

Now, two days later, I look back. Could I have run the miles at 5:48? Rusty thought I could. I thought I couldn’t. Did my negative attitude keep me from doing my best? I certainly ran the last quarters of each mile at pretty much the right pace — but I don’t think that was sustainable. More the horse sensing the stable door, final sprint thing.

My 10K mile pace has gone up by ~18 seconds in the last six years, but my mile workout pace on the track remains about 6 minute.

Rusty clearly thinks I can do better. He keeps telling me I should still be able to run a 10K at 6 minute pace. If I can run two miles at 6 minutes, why can’t I run one at 5:48? I see that my slow-down is in line with that predicted by the age-graded tables. But Maggy hasn’t slowed down, so …

How do I push/convince myself to run faster?

And then, to add injury to quandary, my shin-splints are back. And only 9 days to the race.

I won an Avocado

I like Orchard to Ocean 10K. I’m not sure why — it does have an interesting course with lots of park running on the way out and then a straight downhill swoop to the finish line… Or maybe it’s the steep little hill right at the turnaround. I’ve passed people on that hill. Good memories…

Anyway I signed up again.

I find it a little depressing to see how my race times have slowed over the years. I still think I should be able to run 6 minute pace for a 10K if I just tried harder… but every year I go a little slower. I got out my age graded calculator and plugged in my best 10K ever, and the calculator told me I should expect to run 6:15 to get that percentage at my age. And finish in 38:52. Sigh. That seems so slow…

I woke up this morning and the wind was blowing like crazy. Normally I bike out to the start, but I figured I would arrive exhausted after battling the wind for over an hour on the bike, so (shh! don’t tell) I drove the car.

It didn’t seem windy at all in Carp, so I felt stupid once I got there.

Registered. Bib attached. Chip attached. Warmup. Pleasant little run along the course. Still no wind. I turn back after about 3 miles and suddenly I find the wind. Oh great. I’m going to have to fight the wind for the last 2+ miles of the race. Is it going to be as bad as Sacramento?

Back at the start area I do some strides, and find my friends.

Ricky’s dog will not be running with him today so he’ll win.

I see that this race is, once again, half-way chip timed. There’s a mat at the finish but none at the start. Which means it’s all gun timed.

The siren goes off, and we start. I had intended to try and keep pace with David Silverander. He ran last week’s 10K at a 6:11 average pace, and although I didn’t really think I could go that fast, I thought it would be worth trying (as did Rusty). But when we start Dave is going way too fast for me to keep up. I look at my watch: 5:40 pace. Even that is way too fast for me. So I slow even further and soon lose sight of Dave and the Jeffs.

A bunch of other people pass me. Some I look at and say to myself “You’ve gone out too hard, you won’t hold that pace for even half a mile.” Others…

Even Matt Trost is ahead of me. I didn’t think he was that fast… Or maybe I’m just slow now. Oh well.

We cross the railroad track (no train today, yay!) and come to the one mile mark. My watch says 6:09. The first mile is always fast on this course, but that’s on track for a 6:11 pace

We run up the eponymous Dump Rd. and there on the left is a whole meadow of lupines. Much lovelier than what’s on the right.

Onto Carp Avenue. I notice that many, but not all, of the street signs here in Carp use essentially the same font as the ones in Santa Barbara. Oddly these street signs have a period after abbreviations like “Rd.” or “Ave.”, whereas the street signs in SB have no period. Oh. I’m racing now. No distractions.

Up to the top of a little hill, (passing the 5K turn) and out onto the bluffs again. The guy ahead of me (Black Shirt, I’ll call him) passes Matt and someone else, and soon I do too (not quite so slow then) and they fade behind us.

We’ve passed the 2 mile mark now. 6:22. I knew I’d slow. This mile and the next 2 are uphill (and twisty).

I’m amused that every time we make a sharp turn, Black Shirt looks behind. I think looking behind is silly. It slows you, and what info do you gain? I’m already racing, it’s not like I’ll go much faster or slower if I see someone behind me… Sometimes I’m right behind him, and sometimes there’s a 50 foot gap. I seem to catch up on the downhills and he takes off on the uphills. That’s opposite from how I think of myself as running.

Mile 3 is also 6:21. As is mile 4. There’s a lovely short steep hill just before mile 4. In years past I have passed people on this hill, but not today. Black Shirt sprints up it (and looks back at the top).

Then there’s a long downhill and I actually pass him. He passes me on the next up, I pass him back on the next down. I keep expecting him to pass me when we get to the next uphill … but he doesn’t. Then down again and here’s the 5K turn from the other side. Oh drat. I failed to click my watch at the 5M mark. A minute or so later, when I realize this, I look at the pace and see 6:01. That’s pretty good.

Another black shirt passes me, but I realize it isn’t the guy I was racing. This guy is going too fast for me. Then someone else passes me. White Shirt. I can hang with him, just a little behind.

Then down into the neighborhoods (all these streets signs use the SB font). White shirt follows the edge of the road, but I take a tangent and catch up with him. Then he again pulls ahead of me, but only by a foot or so.

We cross the bridge. He warns me of the steps on the far side. (which is really kind of him, I don’t have the breath to say much myself). There’s an enormous dumpster in the middle of the road. Hunh? I go to the left, White Shirt to the right and I pull a little ahead.

Mile 6. Average pace for the last two miles 6:15. OK, I guess I didn’t run a 6 minute mile back a bit. The watch pace function (even on lap pace) seems to give the occasional wyrd result. Or maybe my eyes misread it.

Less than a quarter mile to go and White Shirt is right behind me. I try to pick up the pace. My inconstant watch tells me 5:56 as I turn the final corner and try to sprint the last 100m to the finish. White Shirt right behind.

Done. 38:56, which is a 6:16 pace. Almost exactly what the calculator said I’d do.

My best 10Ks by year

Year		Time		AG %
2007		37:02		80.9%
2009		38:08		79.8%
2011		38:28		80.5%
2013		38:56		80.8%

(I don’t know why I only run 10Ks on odd years, but, um, I guess I do)

Even though I’m almost 2 minutes slower than I was 6 years ago, my age-graded percentage remains pretty much unchanged. Therefore I tend to think that the tables describe my age related decline.

But on this race, White Shirt and Black Shirt follow right behind me. We congratulate each other. Well, we don’t really say much because we don’t have much breath, but we intend to congratulate each other.

Eventually the preliminary results come out. I was 8th overall, first in my age-group (this means I win an avocado this year); but not the fastest over 50 — Jim Tripplet who is two years my senior was a minute and a half faster. Whee!

The final results have me running a 38:57. Not sure where the extra second came from, but it doesn’t change things much.

Did I jinx myself by deciding I couldn’t do better than a 6:15 pace? I don’t think so. I only paid attention to my watch at the very start of the race, and slowing from a 5:40 to 6:09 pace seems like a good idea. Aside from that I never looked at my watch and said “I’m going too fast, must slow.” On the other hand, perhaps I have learned what 80% effort feels like and am just unwilling to push more…

Then I take David and Jeff out to look at the seals as a cooldown:

Dreams

Sometimes I worry that I have lost my capacity to dream. Or, to put it another way, that I now have a good feel for my limits. The first formulation disturbs me, the second just sounds mature.

I decided to run a half marathon this spring. I looked at what I was doing in workouts… I’d just run 6 miles at a 6:30 pace so I figured I could probably race 13 at that pace (If I can run x at a workout then I think I can run 2x in a race). Then I did some age-grading: my best half marathon was 5 years ago and was 79.27%, at my current age that works out to a 1:26:41 time or 6:37 pace. On the other hand my best race ever was 80.94% which corresponds to a 1:24:54 time and 6:29 pace. So shooting for a 6:30 pace seems about right to me, or even a little adventuresome.

And then Orchard to Ocean 10K tempted me. I’d done 6:15 pace for a couple of 3 mile workouts and that seemed a good pace to try for at a 10K. A little work with age-grading said that my best 10K was 80.94% and at my current age that corresponds to a 6:15 pace (38:52 race). So that again sounded like the right ball-park.

I made the mistake of talking to Rusty about these. I should know better. First of all he didn’t like the idea of a 6:30 pace for the half. He said that would be too easy for me. “6:25″ was his suggestion. Ulp. Well. Maybe. I guess it’s not unreasonable to have a goal that I probably can’t hit but is close enough to possible to inspire me.

As for the 10K. He said I should think in terms of a 37:20 10K. That’s 6 minute pace! I can’t do that any more. That’s 84.25%! I’ve never done that. When I demurred he pointed out that if I didn’t believe I could do it, then I certainly wouldn’t be able to. “We are such stuff as is made of dreams.”

Today I had a 4 mile tempo. I felt that after Rusty’s talk yesterday I needed to try to pick up the pace a bit. So I led my group. We had two miles out, up a hill, and then 2 miles back down the hill. I went up at a 6:20 pace (and no one passed me, not even the people who are faster than I). Then I flew down the hill (one mile was sub-6!), averaging 6:03 pace. Average for the four miles was 6:12 — according to my watch. But it often (but not always) will overestimate the distance by about 1% and underestimate my pace by about 3~4 seconds. So 6:12 might just be my bog-standard 6:15 pace again… It isn’t a 6 minute pace yet. Maybe… if we had 6 miles of downhill I could run a 37:20…

Perhaps I should should try for a 6:12 pace though? That’s 38:30 and 81.7%. Not quite as frightening as 37:20. Perhaps I can dream about that without it turning it into a nightmare…

Santa Barbara Streets

The city of Santa Barbara uses a rather distinctive font for its street signs. Every now and then I think about this and decide I should find out about it, but then I get lazy and forget to do anything.

But a week or two ago I actually got around to looking it up on the web. I found a discussion on the topic. But I came away with little information. Someone actually asked the city what the font was, and was told “Mission”, but unfortunately it does not match any publicly available font of that name.

So.

When I was coming home from a run I passed the intersection of  and  and I thought ‘Well, there’s a “Z” and an “Ñ”. And round the corner has a “Q”. Why not make my own version?

So once I was home I went to google maps and looked in my neighborhood. I plotted a route. My street, Leslie, has no rare letters, so I didn’t bother with its sign. But Baldwin has a “B” and a “W”. Tallant is dull but I might as well use it, and Clinton is duller. San Onfre gives me an “F”. Hmm. “G”s aren’t common here so Alegria looks useful. Samarkand provides a “K”, and Wyola has a “Y”. Hermosa has an “H” (I’d have thought “H” would be common, but apparently not.) Then I cross State and get  Carrizo, Cañon and San Roque.

And then I take stock. I’ve got everything except “J”, “U”, “V” and “X”. Well if I take a slightly different route coming home there’s De La Vina and Junipero. But I can’t think of a street with an “X” in it.

I go out to the car for an old Thomas Brothers map and look in the street index. There’s an “X” street (nothing else, just X) out in Lompoc, but I’m not driving out there just to find a street sign. They probably use a different font anyway. Then I find there’s an online street index which I can search. And there’s a Foxen Rd not far from Carrizo.

Off I go.

I start processing my images, getting them all to a consistent size, and I realize that I forgot about street numbers. I page through my images and I find all digits except “6″, “7″, and “9″. Ump. another trip. Some street numbers have a “N/S/E/W” after them, but it just looks like the normal letters at 1/3 size.

The digits are very dull — just a conventional san-serif digit set. They don’t really match.

Are there any other accented letters in town? I don’t recall any. I’m alert now as I ride around, but I don’t see any others. Spanish can use an acute accent on any vowel and an umlaut on u. So where are they on our streets? I find another Ñ (Niños, down by the zoo), but that seems to be it.

Then there are the letters in “RD”, “DR”, “ST”, etc. The letters in these are exactly 1/3 the size of the letters in the main part of the sign. The digits for street numbers seem to match this size too. And there’s a rather odd sign for where some of the letters are 2/3s size. Hmm. There’s a sign for State St. where all the letters except the initial are also 2/3s. Sounds like a case of small caps.

In the Santa Barbara St sign at the top of the page I see that the letters aren’t aligned on the same baseline, they bounce around a bit. Never noticed that before. I wonder if that’s sloppiness or intentional? Hmm. The other signs all seem properly aligned, so that one is just sloppy. Then the “L” in the Tallant sign is different from the “L” in Baldwin (the base horizontal stems are of different lengths). It does appear that some of the signs use a more condensed variant of the font than others.

I have become attentive to street signs now. Mostly the use of this font stops at the city limits, but not always. On Coast Village Rd in Montecito many (but not all) of the signs use the font, and the same is true for Coronado Dr in Ellwood and Puente Dr just beyond the edge of town. And one intersection near the top of Painted Cave. And the MTD uses the font on some of their bus stands. The MTD includes a period at the end of “St.” whereas the City does not. So now I have a period — but like the digits it is very dull and doesn’t really match the rest of the font.

Oh dear. At the Coast Village roundabout there are actually two variants of the font in use.

I’ve scaled the two signs so that the text “Coast Village” is the same width in each, but the cap-height for letters in the bottom sign is 89% of the cap-height of the top sign. There are other differences too, the “C”, “A” and “G” are more erect below, the top stem of the “T” slants differently, etc. The bottom sign appears embossed, while the top is just painted.

Well I shall ignore the inconsistencies, and just pick some letters and get to work.

It didn’t take long to digitize my 26 (27 with “Ñ”) letters and 10 digits and period. Unfortunately the different signs seemed not use the same “point-size” of the font — so even after I’d made all the signs the same size internally I still had to adjust the letters. And then the “Q” in San Roque was much blacker than the “O” on San Onfre (or any other letter). Arg. So ignoring inconsistencies isn’t a completely valid option; I futzed with them to enforce consistency.

Then I decided I wanted to add a matching lower case alphabet. This is just fun. You look at the upper case and see how they make the shapes and then try to reproduce that in the lower case. And those digits are just too dull. I’m going to have to redo them. This proves harder than the lower case alphabet. I assume that since the digit shapes evolved independently of the alphabet shapes it’s more difficult to figure out how to make them consistent.

OK, now to fill in a few standard non-alphabetics. Oh, and space. And then… Hunh. Well, I guess I’m done for now.

Available at: http://openfontlibrary.org/font/santa-barbara-streets

The beginning of Women’s Racing in Santa Barbara

In the early modern Olympics games there were no foot races for women. In 1928¹ they added races up to 800m, but when the event actually happened, it was a hot day and several athletes “collapsed in exhaustion”. This led to (or reinforced) the belief that women were not capable of running middle to long distances. After that the longest woman’s race at the Olympics was 200m. Not until 1960 was the 800m finally reintroduced (but nothing longer).²

In the first half of the last century, the AAU, was the national group in charge of foot races; the way the USATF is today. In 1950s and 60s it was still felt that women were not able to run long distances and in 1961 the AAU officially banned women from running in road races, or any race longer than a mile and a half.²

Finally in 1972 the AAU relaxed its ban and women were allowed to run even marathons — provided they didn’t try to compete with the men and had a separate start. Which lead to an amusing incident at the 1972 New York marathon: The gun for the women’s start went off 10 minutes before the men’s — but the women (all 6 official entrants) sat down and did not move until the men’s gun went, then they raced with the men.³ And the AAU gave up on enforcing separate starts.

Title IX also passed in 1972. It was an important year.

So how did this affect Santa Barbara? Well, there aren’t many data, as I haven’t found many races from that long ago. John Brennand (race director then and still running now) tells me in the 60s there were only 4 post-collegiate races a year: Semana Nautica 15K, the national One Hour run championship, the SB marathon and a cross-country race out at UCSB. Until recently I only had Semana Nautica and a scattering of other results from that period.

Now in Semana Nautica the first female runner appeared in 1971 — a year before the AAU relaxed its ban. So, I guessed, that by then it was clear that change was coming at the national level and SB just moved a little early. I asked John if there was any great decision in the club to allow women to race and he answered “No, the women took things into their own hands.”

And then John found more results for the marathon. The first woman finisher in the marathon was in 1966. The comments section of the race results reads:

An unofficial starter, Lyn Carman, 29 was not expected to withstand the travail involved in negotiating over twenty-six miles in this hilly course, but to the astonishment of every male competitor, Lyn finished strongly breaking 4 hours. The wife of the 12th place finisher, Bob Carman, Lyn trains with her husband once a day running from 30 to 60 miles weekly, with 1 to 2 days on the road, and the remainder on track or grass. A mother of four children, with her youngest being 13 months old, she shyly accepted the acclaim, bereft of an appropriate award for such a feat. Splits: 42:32 at 5 miles, 1:45:39 at 11 miles and 3:57:50.9 at the finish.

Another young lady, Mrs. Roberta Gibb Bingay, completed the Boston Marathon, 4-19-66 to place 124th in the unofficial time of around 3:21:25. Such precedents inevitably will remove the barrier that discourages official competition for women in distances over 1½ miles.

Judging by his surprise it looks as though people really did believe that running long distances would be almost impossible for women.

As far as I know this was the first time a (post-collegiate) woman raced in SB.

In the 1969 and 1970 marathons there were two women runners each year, and in 1971 there were 5.⁴ In ’66, ’69 and ’70 the women are said to have run “unofficially”. I asked John if that meant they ran without bibs. “No,” he replied, “they had bibs, we just had to hide them from the AAU.” In 1966 Lyn does not appear in the results themselves, only the comments, but in 1969 she and the other woman do appear in the results as “L. Carmen” and “I. Gorman” respectively, while in 1970 she has her full name.  I guess Santa Barbara was a bit calmer than Boston when it came to women runners,⁵ none of the drama of a race official trying to tear the bib off a runner.

And no separate start for women either.

But this still leaves me confused, as there were again “official” woman runners in 1971, before the AAU lifted its ban. When I asked John about it he told me that no one really objected to women running by then, and the main argument of the day was how first world “amateur” runners could complete with second world state-supported runners at the Olympics. I’m not sure I entirely believe that, but perhaps that was the case on the west coast.

In the 60s and 70s most races were team races. The first women claiming to be on a team are in the 1971 marathon where two of the five women are on teams. One of those teams is SB City College, the other is the Rialto Road Runners. Neither of these was part of the AAU club system (remember in ’71 the AAU had not lifted its ban on women road racers yet). The road runner clubs were a national organization that put on “non-competitive” fun runs. Because they were “non-competitive” women were allowed to run in them.⁶ The first woman racing for the SBAA team was in the 1972 AAU National One Hour Run, so once the ban was lifted they must have been allowed into the club.

I have fewer results for the One Hour run (a pooled event held at many tracks all over the country. One of those tracks was in SB, and usually the one with the biggest field). In 1968 and 1970 there were no obvious women’s names in the results, and only one runner with just initials. In 1972 there were some women (12 out of 440 or 2.7%). I don’t have the results for 1971, but I suspect — since this was the AAU national championship race — I suspect that even in SB women were not entered in the results (officially).

Percentage of women running in Semana Nautica 15K over the years

Percentage of women running in the Resolution Runs (5K is green, 10K blue). Resolution Runs started in 1981.

Percentage of women racing the SB Marathon and Half Marathon in their various incarnations (marathon green, half blue)

Finally the percentage of women racing in any race for which I have data (this includes the National One Hour Runs which drew from all over the country 68~81, and a few races in Lompoc).

So currently in SB slightly more than 50% of our runners are women. Last year almost 70% of the runners in the half marathon were women, while only 50% in the marathon were (and the half has always drawn a greater percentage women than the full — except when there was no half). As early as 1982 exactly half (108 of 216) of the finishers of the Resolution 5K were women, but only a quarter of the 10K finishers were.

From 1978 to 1992 there was a woman’s only 10K race (from 1988 until 1992 there was an attached woman’s only 5K). The race was quite popular in the early 80s but declined dramatically; towards the end the race director felt that the race was not attracting enough runners, so in 1992 they experimented with adding men’s only races (WO 5K, MO 5K, WO 10K, MO 10K), and in 1993 the races both became mixed sex. Then in 2012 we had the “She is Beautiful” 5 & 10K which again used the woman’s only format.

Total finishers for woman’s only 10K & 5K (10K in green, 5K blue)
Missing data for 1979 and 1990 (no race 1993-2011)

Passports to the past (time lapse photography)

I was rummaging around looking for my current passport and stumbled on a couple of old ones. So I stopped and looked at them. Here were little records of my past…

When I first went abroad I and my siblings were all listed on my mother’s passport. We set sail from Fort Lauderdale, landing briefly in Bermuda and finished in Southhampton. We lived in London for 5~6 months and flew to the Netherlands where we rented a canal boat and traveled the canals.

We next traveled in 1970, again I shared the passport with my siblings (but not my mother). I was probably 10 when the picture was taken (8, and 7 for my siblings). In those days passports were only good for 5 years. This time we set sail from New York and stopped briefly in Cork (Ireland) before landing in Southampton. This time we stayed about a year in London. We went to Wales (in those days you didn’t need a passport to go to Wales from England), traveled the canals around Oxford (one family in a boat, to say nothing of the dog), followed Hadrian’s Wall, and made several trips to France (I was sick at the bayeux tapestrey). We went home via the Mediterranean, a visit which is not reflected in passport stamps. I don’t know why. I went to sleep on the train in Victoria Station and woke up crossing the French countryside on the way to Paris — before the chunnel. Stopping in Venice, Athens, Naples, Lisbon then across the Atlantic to Halifax (as it then was) and finally New York.

In 1977 I got my own passport for the first time. We all went to England together (by airplane this time), but I only stayed a month and came back to the US for my first year of college. I went back for Christmas Hols, but missed the family trip to the south of France where they sailed the Canal du Midi near the Pyrenees.

I must have renewed that passport and made some later trips to visit my parents in London in the 1980s.

My passport from 1986-1996 was my first Earthwatch passport. On it I went to Brazil, Belize, Thailand, Madagascar (several times), Bolivia. And, of course, England and France, Germany, Belgium. In 1987 the US had managed to annoy the French and I actually needed to go down to the consulate in Los Angeles and wait in line to get a visa. I only had one page left for new visas when the passport was finished.

England and France got bored with stamping my passport I don’t see any marks from them, but I went there frequently. Madagascar took up a whole page with each visa, and then another page the one time I extended my visa there. I made many trips to Madagascar and again I wondered if I’d run out of visa room. I didn’t, not quite. Also Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Mauritius, and Réunion. Technically Réunion is a part of France (the way Hawaii is part of the US) but they were not bored with stamping my passport and the stamp says “Réunion” not France. I made a trip to Brest to talk about fonts (but the French were still bored with me and it doesn’t show), and another to Xathi in Greece. I was also taking bicycling trips with my parents (and siblings) through the French countryside.

My current passport. From 2006 to the present. It only has one stamp, and that to Canada.

Maybe I should go somewhere…

Why…?

I was telling Rusty that I’d found Nash‘s name in an old race. He asked me how Nash had done, and I didn’t remember. Then he asked me why I was collecting old race results if I weren’t interested in them.

I hadn’t thought of it in that light. Clearly I wasn’t interested in how Nash (or anyone else in that race) had done, but just as clearly I was working hard to preserve those very data I didn’t care about.

Well I was raised in a family of librarians and historians. The act of preserving data is a desideratum all by itself to a librarian. Finding old data is what historians do. To me it just seemed natural to track these down and preserve them. Especially now, before the people who might have collected these data die off.

I started collecting when I realized that many people I knew had been running in SB in the 90s and the online results only went back to the start of the website in about 2002 (which was when I started running here; at first that was all I cared about). So I thought it would be a good idea to find results from the 90s so that my friends would have more complete access to their old data.

I also had the vague intention that I could keep track of course records of races and things like that which might be useful to race directors.

Then when John handed me all the Semena Nautica results back to 1955 suddenly I saw more possibilities. In the microcosm of that one race I could watch how the sport of running had changed over the decades. In the 50s the race only had about 10 finishers but it drew runners from all over southern california, all young and fast. In the 60s it gradually grew, attracting masters runners too. In the early 70s women first appeared, and in the late 70s I could see the first running boom happen, while in the 80s the race unboomed and shrank to less than half its peak (though still twice the size it was in 1970). Since then the percentage of women has risen, the percentage of out of town contestants had declined, and the “quality” of the race (as determined by the average age graded percentage) has declined.

Now I want to get my hands on the early days of the SB Marathon, or the AAU One Hour run, or some other race that goes back to the 60s so I can see how those changes might have affected them too.

In 1965 John started the SB Marathon and there were 17 finishers; in 1984 John stopped the SB Marathon because there wasn’t enough interest in it. Yet there were 114 finishers that year. What had changed?

I have become fascinated by these changes though I wasn’t initially looking for them. By accumulating data, trends become apparent which would otherwise be hidden. This is the job of any researcher in any serious field.

Now. Back to work. I’m transcribing the 1980 Jim Ryun runs.

Christmas Run

Every Christmas, for the last decade or so, I have gone for a run on Christmas morning. It used to be that I would start at my house (which was near Hendry’s Beach) and run along the beach to More Mesa, then along the bluffs, then along the bike path, through UCSB to Devreau Slough, around that and out to Elwood to check on the butterflies, and then back. Roughly 25 miles.

But now I’ve moved. I now need to run 2 miles down Los Positas just to get to the beach. Ah well. The tide had been pretty high on the solstice when I went down to the beach to watch the sun rise, so I figured that four days later it would be pretty low.

I was wrong. It was higher. But I looked at it, and there was still a sliver of beach, so I thought I would risk it.

That was at Hendry’s.

I couldn’t see all the way to More Mesa, and the tide was still coming in. After going for about half a mile the sliver of beach turned into a jumble of cobbles lying between the cliff and the water’s edge. I don’t like running on wet cobbles, I tend to slip and to lose my balance. So I slowed to a walk and picked my way through the slippery stones for a bit, until the beach came back.

Santa Barbara beaches have a strange habit of getting washed away in the winter storms (and coming back later), this leaves little sand cliffs at the high water mark of the last storm:

The birds seem to like it.

A little further on the beach disappeared entirely and I had to clamber up and over a large rock with its feet in the water. When I got to the other side I found the water had hollowed out a clear channel underneath another rock leaving a bridge.

The beach came back again, and I found a small patch of red sand verbena growing in a sheltered nook. I’ve never seen sand-verbenas in the wild before (just the patches around the UCSB lagoon and the Plover Sanctuary where the dunes have been restored), but here they were, apparently growing wild again. I’m pretty sure they weren’t here last year…

Um. What are cattails doing at the beach? And not even in an obvious damp spot, just a pile of rocky scree? I dunno. But here they are.

The beach narrows down to cobbles and then there’s another rock to scramble over and on the far side of it there is just the sea cliff and the ocean. No beach (except briefly between waves). I take of my shoes, try to time it right, and sprint around the next bend where (Yay!) there is beach again. I don’t get very wet.

From here I can see Hope Ranch beach, and beyond that the cliffs of More Mesa. There’s beach the whole way now.

After another mile or so I climb up to the mesa and run along the bluffs. Last year the Grassland tarweed was blooming here at this time, but today it is not. This has been a hard summer. (I came up here a week or two ago to check on it, but when I got close I saw a young man down on his knee to a young lady near where the tarweed grew and figured I’d give them some privacy and not look at my plant that day).

Then down to the bike path. There’s another tarplant that grows along the slough here, and again it was blooming on last year’s Christmas run. But again it is not blooming this year. Grump. It’s more fun to see flowers.

Past Goleta Beach, and UCSB. I run around the edge of the lagoon. Three weeks ago the sea-marsh dodder was in bloom here, but it has also stopped. I can’t even find the plants. I go back and forth looking for it, but it’s gone.

But when I come out onto some restored dunes I find that a couple of bushes of mock heather are still blooming. Oh, and some golden bushes too, but that’s expected.

I try to ignore Isla Vista as I run through. But there are workmen, at work, on an apartment building. On Christmas morning. Poor guys.

Down to the Plover Sanctuary where not much is happening, and then up to Ellwood.

At the far end of Ellwood I turn back, head inland and go toward the monarch grove. It’s a chilly grey day. The monarch’s aren’t doing much, just huddling in their clumps. But they are there. Nice to see them.

As I charge up from the Devereux Slough, I see a blue heron standing on a fence. I watch him for a bit…