I had a great time at the Pegasus half-marathon, except for the freezing hundred minutes stuck at the starting point on one side of the bridge before the race started, when I had to escape the cold and the wind by staying between two edges! Great start over this historical (if since rebuilt) bridge (much shorter than the Golden Gate bridge!) accompanied by bagpipes, if not from a large band!, not too many runners to pass over the first kilometre thanks to the division into several waves, even though I was not strategically located close enough to the starting line, and quickly falling into a sub-4 pace that I kept for most of the race. Great that my family was there at the arrival line. Despite the proximity to the Channel and the lack of protection through the half-grown wheat fields, the wind was not too much of an hindrance and the 110m overall climb was dispersed enough over most of the race hence never impacting my pace for long. A major plus, the final 5k’s were mostly downhill which helped a lot with this usually challenging part (even though I do not look particularly serene on the pics)! I essentially stayed with the same runners over the second half of the race, only for a few young ‘uns passing me in the last 300m within the stadium (which sits next to my high school, Lycée Malherbe). I was thus more than happy with my time (and with my higher volume training in the prior month, with a week at 100km), a minute faster than planned and two minutes earlier than in Boulogne, but did not expect any podium position in such a large and competitive race and only checked my ranking after getting home (my mother’s home) and showering, sort of “too late” for attending the award ceremony but I do not think I would have gone anyway. Next half planned in Argentan, end of September, where else?!
Archive for Caen
D Day Pegasus bridge half-marathon [1:23:42, 90th / 4883, 1st over 55, 13⁰, 117+m]
Posted in Kids, pictures, Running, Travel with tags Caen, Courir en Normandie, D Day, glider, Les Courants de la Liberté, M5M, Malherbe, Normandie, Normandy, Pegasus bridge, road race on June 4, 2024 by xi'an[½] marathon de la Liberté
Posted in Kids, Running, Travel with tags Caen, Courir en Normandie, D-Day beaches, half-marathon, Juno Beach, La Rochambelle, Les Courants de la Liberté, Marathon de la Liberté, Memorial for Peace, Normandie Course à Pied, Normandie fort et vert, Normandy, Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, paragliding, Pegasus bridge on June 2, 2024 by xi'an
½
a journal of the plague, sword, and famine year
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags BD, black tea, book review, books, Caen, COVID-19, curry, Daniel Defoe, dosa, fantasy, film review, flight, galette, garam masala, Iceland, Icelandic horses, India, Ivan Vautier, Journal of the Plague Year, Kenneth Branagh, kindle, korean TV series, Mongolia, Northern Ireland, pandemics, Russian invasion, Silk Road, soju, The Guar, the Troubles, Ukraine, Vercors on February 11, 2023 by xi'an
Read over the last week of 2022 and in the plane to India, three books by Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor and both volumes of The Cemeteries of Amalo. While the steampunk side is very light, the universe is rather well-conceived and the stories compelling, esp. the duology that follows a priest able to connect with recently deceased people, towards seeking murderers or scone recipes. Too much introspection and self-pity, too many descriptions of itineraries in an imaginary city, unnecessarily complicated names, but pleasant nonetheless, with a fascination with (imaginary) teas and tea-houses. I also read All the Horses of Iceland, which turned out to be an historical novel on an early Icelander’s trip to Mongolia and his bringing home the ancestors of the famed horses of Iceland. Very well-written and full of historical tidbits.
While visiting Ivan Vautier’s restaurant in Caen with a scallop menu was a continuation of a family (almost) tradition, I cooked very little over the period except for making my own garam masala from spices I bought in India. Put to use in weekly fish curries. I also tried to bake dosa (ದೋಸೆ), this very thin rice-flour crêpe ubiquitous in South India, but it ended up closer to a galette!
Watched most of The Good Detective, a rather conventional Korean TV series (meaning the same police stations, endless shots of police stations from outside, post-work dinner parties, intricate blackmail situations, widespread corruption, massive conflicts of interest, as in series earlier watched). But enough originality to keep me interested. And second-watched Belfast in the plane to India, a black-and-white film by Kenneth Branagh, focusing on a Protestant family during “The Troubles” and sounding (!) rather engaging, if possibly soppy (as sound was off).
quick(er) calculations [book review]
Posted in Statistics with tags addition, book review, Caen, calculation, Catholic University of America, CHANCE, Guesstimation, π, OUP, Oxford University Press, slide rule, subtraction, Vatican on July 5, 2021 by xi'an
Upon my request, Oxford University Press sent me this book for review in CHANCE. With the extended title How to add, subtract, multiply, divide, square, and square root more swiftly. This short (173 pages) book is written by Trevor Davis Lipscombe, currently Director of the Catholic University of America Press (which are apparently not suited for his books, since his former Physics of Rugby got published by Nottingham University Press). The concept of the book is to list tricks and shortcuts to handle seemingly tough operations on a list of numbers. Illustrated by short anecdotes mostly related to religion, sports (including the Vatican cricket team!), and history, albeit not necessarily related with the computation at hand and not providing an in-depth coverage of calculation across the ages and the cultures. While the topic is rather dry, as illustrated by the section titles, e.g., “Multiply two numbers that differ by 2, 4, 6, or 20” or “Multiply or divide by 66 or 67, 666 or 667” (!), the exposition is somewhat facilitated by the (classics) culture of the author. (I have to confess I got lost by the date chapter, i.e., finding which day of the week was December 18, 1981, for instance. Especially by the concept of Doomsday which I thought was a special day of the year in the UK. Or in the USA.) Still, while recognising some simple decompositions I also used for additions and subtractions, and acknowledging the validity of the many tricks I had never though of, I wonder at the relevance of learning those dozens of approaches beyond maintaining a particular type of mental agility… Or preparing for party show-time. Especially for the operations that do not enjoy exact solutions, like dividing by √3 or multiplying by π… The book reminded me of a physics professor in Caen, Henri Eyraud, who used to approximate powers and roots faster than it took us to get a slide rule out of our bags! But Guesstimation, which I reviewed several years ago, seemed more far-reaching that Quick(er) calculations, in that I had tried to teach my kids (with limited success) how to reach the right order of magnitude of a quantity, but never insisted [beyond primary school] on quick mental calculations. (The Interlude V chapter connects with this idea.)
[Disclaimer about potential self-plagiarism: this post or an edited version should eventually appear in my Books Review section in CHANCE.]
le joli mois de mai [10/05/1981]
Posted in Statistics with tags 10 mai 1981, Caen, death penalty, first vote, François Mitterrand, France, French 5th Republic, French politics, legalisation of abortion, political poster, presidential elections, Union de la Gauche, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing on May 10, 2021 by xi'an
