I grew up a Reagan Republican. I believe in fiscal conservatism, a balanced budget, and limited government. At one time, I was a coordinating member of the Concord Coalition to reduce our federal debt. I also believe in the Bill of Rights, economic freedom, and moral tolerance. So during the GW Bush years, I lost faith with the party of my youth as I saw huge contradictions in what my party said it was about, and how it acted. Irresponsible tax cuts when facing huge deficits caused by vain, misguided war mongering. Patriot Act laws that cast shame on all the moral principles this country ever said it stood for. Individual privacies…gone. Torture of prisoners. Detention without formal arrest or cause. Fascism started with far less ammunition.

While I’ve never endorsed the Democratic party, I’ve certainly voted for them in the last several elections to try and bring balance back to our country. The social liberal part of my character also embraces the values of providing for the less fortunate, for universal health care, and equity for all regardless of sex, race, religion, or sexual identity, qualities I typically find lacking in Republican talking points.

In the aftermath of the fiscal cliff agreement, I expected to be happy with the outcome. Increased taxes on the wealthy appeals to the social equity vision, but unfortunately, there is nothing, so far, to address the spending side of the equation. It’s not enough to simply increase revenues. If there’s no discipline to also restrain and cutback on spending, taxes will simply be a further drain on long-term economic activity.

And for those clapping your hands that you finally socked-it-to-the-wealthy, you didn’t get away without collateral damage. Neither party was willing to use up negotiating chips defending the expiration of the payroll tax cut, which means you got a 2% tax increase as well. Worse than that, businesses will be encouraged to continue and accelerate plans they’ve been executing for years…to reduce payrolls and use independent contractors that don’t cost them payroll taxes or healthcare benefits. See Igor Greenwald’s Forbes article for more details.

Nobody wants higher taxes for themself. We would only do so to support a higher purpose. So what is the higher purpose now? To pay for our past sins of spending irresponsibly? And will we learn from that, or will we continue to spend recklessly making not only this rise in taxes permanent, but insure a future tax raise as well. Obviously, the cycle can’t continue indefinitely as economic growth disappears.

So we have made one hard choice…seeing the need to raise revenues, we have raised taxes. Now we MUST finish the job and address the spending side of the equation, or it’s cutting off our nose to spite our face. I encourage everyone, elected officials and those who influence them, to keep working until we have equal results on spending.

For years I’ve been tolerant of the people who argue against gun control. I’ve understood the constitutional argument, the argument that only criminals would have guns, the ability to protect yourself. But no longer. We’ve seen too many incidents like Sandy Hook. It’s time to act.

“With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen. It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their ABC’s are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again. For every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns. Today, many of them were five-year olds. President Obama rightly sent his heartfelt condolences to the families in Newtown. But the country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem. Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response. My deepest sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever.”

- Michael Bloomberg, 12/14/12

http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/media-center/pr013-12.shtml

It’s been a long time since I trained for a marathon, but I can’t tell you how beneficial it is to have done it before.  As I’m getting into the swing of things this time (even though just a half marathon) , all those memories flood back of what it was like to train for it, and perhaps more importantly, that it just CAN be done.  When I ran it last time, I trained with the Jeff Galloway program through Run On.  Here are the keys that stick with me 10 years later:

1.  Run a pace you can run forever.  Which means run about 2 min per mile SLOWER than what you’re capable of doing for 1-2 miles.
2.  If you can’t talk while you’re running, you’re going too fast.
3.  For me, if my heart rate climbs too much over 150, I’m going too fast.
4.  All it takes is a little luck (to avoid injury), and commitment.
5.  Do a long run once a week, and increase the distance 2 miles every week or two until you get to longer distances (10+)
5.  And most importantly, the 5-1 rule.  Run for 5 minutes, walk for 1.

I’m terribly out of shape, yet I ran 6 miles today.  A lot of people who train for marathons aren’t in very good shape, yet they finish.  Why?  I can only guess how others have done it, but the 5-1 rule is critical for me.  The 5-1, or 3-1, or even 2-1, is a ratio of how many minutes running before taking 1 minute and walking.  This is huge.  If you’re sitting in your chair reading this today, you might think you could never run for 2 hours or 3 hours or 5 hours.  But anyone can get to the point where they can run for 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes at a time.  You wouldn’t believe the psychology of that.  You’re going, you’re hurting, you’re lungs are puffing and shins are hurting.  Focusing the mind on it will only be another 2 minutes before you can take a break makes all the difference in the world.

Now any distance is just a bunch of manageable segments.  It’s a giant reset button.  Sometimes we find ourselves feeling good and starting to run a pace that’s too fast.  Hitting that 5 minute mark and taking a break helps you reflect during that 1 minute about whether you’re going too fast and lets you start back at a good pace.  Or you’ve just been running up a long hill and thinking you’ll never make it all the way up.  Guess what, you don’t.  You just have to go for 5 minutes and then you can rest a bit.

Perhaps just as important is the break it gives your muscle groups.  Running and walking use different muscle groups.  If you find your muscles tightening up, walking for a bit relaxes those muscles and gives them a chance to recover and increases your chances of moving on through it.  Take advantage of the 1 minute walks to stretch a bit when it will help.  For me that’s usually about 15 minutes in.

So what happens come marathon time (actually I think it happens somewhere around when you can go 10-12 miles) and where are all these people doing 5-1s.  Your fitness level will definitely go up on this plan.  Sooner or later you find you don’t need the forced discipline of the 5-1 (or at least it was true for me).  You may end up doing 10-1s, or you may just find that you take a 1 minute break when you need it, or you take a little break every time you hit a mile marker or water stand.  So yes, a lot of people don’t actually do much walking by the time they get to marathon distance.  They no longer need it.  But a lot of us would never have gotten to that point without the initial training to get the body used to running long distances.

One last thing, I’m not doing it now and it may come back to bite me.  Train with others.  Guaranteed I wouldn’t have taken off 4 days this week if I’d had someone waiting out in the freezing dark to meet me at 5:30am.  My marathon year, I trained with a group of about 6.  Best thing I ever did, and best group selection I could have made.  One girl was my age, and the rest were her mother and mother’s friends.  They were running a pace several minutes slower than I was capable of (for short distance).  Training with them where the pace was easy and manageable made it extremely easy to keep increasing the distance.

Bottom line:  Do you really care if 20 years from now someone says you ran a slow marathon?  Or would you rather say, “I was going to run a marathon, and I could run a 7 minute pace, but I pulled a muscle training. Or, I just couldn’t make it past 8 miles”

Since he made such a big difference for me, I guess I should point you to the source, Run Injury Free with Jeff Galloway.

My daughter, Lauren, has been waiting 7 years to have a little sister.  Now she has the next best thing, a 2nd grade girl living next door,  Megan.  Once they both got over the idea of going over to see each other, this last week has been great for both.  Last night, they had a sleep-over at Megan’s house along with another of Megan’s friends, who we also know through the Lakewood community.

At 7:30 this morning, they all came be-bopping over to come play on the trampoline and snark some chocolate chip muffins, pancakes and bacon.  After breakfast the girls had me play, “momma in the middle”, and I introduced them to “missile launcher” which is where I lay down under the trampoline and as they are bouncing up, I push up on the bottom of the trampoline sending them an extra 2-3 feet up in the air.  We used to do this at the old house, but hadn’t done it in awhile.  Lauren’s gotten so big that if she takes a really good bounce she can certainly reach me unless I’m lying completely flat underneath, (maybe I’ve gotten bigger as well).

I can’t believe I didn’t make it running again after Monday.  We went today, and it was pretty painful.  At least we could do it, that wouldn’t have been the case if we lived back east where friends are getting 24″ of snow and more.  But that’s another 3.5 miles behind me, and I’ll see if I can do the 6 miler tomorrow.  Only 37 more days until the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half.

The last few days we’ve had some nice weather (not today), and the kids and I’ve been playing basketball in the backyard.  With a little two-on-one, I’ve been teaching the kids how to take advantage of their numbers to beat Dad.  Once I taught them what a pick was, they took to it rather enthusiastically.  In fact, part two of the training had to be reinforcement of the stationary pick versus the follow Dad hanging on to his leg pick, which while successful is also highly illegal and somewhat dangerous for all parties.

It’s also been fun teaching Lauren how to back in with your dribble and establish contact so that you can get position and pivot into the basket.  She’s suprisingly good at it, with the exception of only being able to dribble with one hand which kind of limits her pivot to one direction.  Even so, she scores pretty regularly on it.  I guess I’ve only been waiting about 10 years now for my kids to actually want to be taught anything about sports.  Fun times.