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Sunday, Sep 11th, 2011 ↓9/11/01
On Friday, September 7, 2001, I flew from NY to Boston for business meetings and flew back the same day. What I remember about that trip was how unusually clear and blue the skies were. Approaching NYC, you could see the whole expanse of the LI shore, the city skyline including the WTC, and all the way up to CT. The weather on 9/11 was almost identical.
My 9/11 memories have a lot in common with those of fellow New Yorkers of that time. I narrowly missed being present in my Twin Towers office because our young children had just started school, so my wife and I lingered with them in the schoolyard. Arrived at Chambers Street in time to see the gaping holes in the buildings and the ghastly, tragic site of the jumpers. Saw the south tower, including my office, fall while walking homeward on the Brooklyn Bridge. The ash cloud went directly through our downtown Brooklyn neighborhood: for days, we picked up singed papers that had blown across NY harbor from the towers. The flyers for missing people (almost of whom had died) on every street corner. The constant drone of helicopters and military flights for several months afterward; the constricted chest and feelings of grief every time we passed the debris pile (which continued to smolder for months) at Ground Zero.
We think of 9/11 now and again, especially on occasions like this 10th anniversary, but not very often. Life has moved on: our kids are nearly grown, the city is a different place. But when I do think of it, my mind sometimes reaches back to that Friday before 9/11 and what strikes me is, what a very different, nearly unimaginable world we lived in that day.
Jose Reyes, Brooklyn Cyclones by AshMarshall on Flickr.
Great evening for NYC sports yesterday with the Jets, Giants, Mets and US Open all in action on a beautiful, cool late-summer evening. Opening Day at US Open was the headline event with Federer and Venus Williams leading off. The NFL is so big that even a preseason matchup between the two area teams attracted a giant share of local attention. But for my money, the best event of the evening was the Mets sweeping a DH from the Florida Marlins. The first game included a sparkling performance by R.A. Dickey, the Mets’ folksy knuckleballer. He has pitched well all-season, but has received terrible run support. That didn’t change yesterday, but even a 9th inning home-run given up by the bullpen couldn’t obliterate the 2-0 lead he left. The second game brought the return of Jose Reyes from his latest stint on the DL. There’s a lot of angst among Met fans about whether he will remain a Met; and whether or not the team should offer him the kind of money the MLB free agent system will dictate. Indisputably, he is one of the most charismatic athletes around and his team is much more entertaining with him on the field.
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You can maintain your cardiovascular capacity by cross-training, but it is extremely difficult to maintain your performance when you rely on cross-training,” Dr. Tanaka said. “This is because you are violating the principle of the specificity of training.”
Anyone who has been injured and forced to do an alternate sport knows this already. If you cannot run and end up substituting workouts on a bicycle for running, almost invariably you will end up losing running speed and endurance.
But if an alternate sport doesn’t help endurance athletes, resistance training might. It’s a bit counterintuitive — if you are training for an endurance sport like running, your workouts increase your ability to perform the same motion over and over again but do not markedly increase your muscle strength. Lifting weights is just the opposite — you do a few repetitions with the goal of increasing muscle strength and size. Yet in a review of published studies, Dr. Tanaka found that resistance training improved endurance in running and cycling. The effect occurred both in experienced athletes and in novices.
A more recent study of experienced runners by a group of Norwegian researchers confirmed that weight lifting could increase performance. One group did half squats with heavy weights three times a week while continuing a running program. The other group just ran. Those who did the squats improved their running efficiency and improved the length of time they could run before exhaustion set in.
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Things for which I am grateful:
the view of the Manhattan Bridge walking into DUMBO office.
Spent this morning, July 4, on the beach at Jacob Riis/Fort Tilden. It was foggy and breezy when I arrived. The sun burned through the gray and by noon the crowds were arriving. I hope this shot captures the unhurried atmosphere this Independence Day morning.
Beauty can be found at unexpected moments: I am always surprised at the prospect of Newark Airport at night. Planes’ landing lights, seemingly motionless, are lined up into the horizon. Refineries looking like moored starships stand to the west of the turnpike. And to the east, great bridges are visible. I know that when I cross the first of those bridges, I will be in New York, almost home.
