There’s Always Someone Better

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The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is. – Philip Brooks

Now that I’ve pretty much maxed out in terms of running distance – I doubt I’ll ever attempt a marathon, and I’m (mostly) OK with that – there’s only one main way to challenge myself in future races: running the same distance faster. So I started looking into how to go fast, picked up some suggested workouts, and drove to the high school track.

I suppose I’m now a passable distance runner. However, since I never ran track as a kid, I had never gotten timed in some of the basic distances that you see in the Olympics or a local track meet. Being a data nerd, I was curious to see how fast slow I really am. With all the miles I’ve done and all my hard work, perhaps I had built up my legs enough that I could be…maybe not fast, but at least respectable at shorter distances, right? So I warmed up and fired off three full-out sprints.

After my 40-yard “dash”, I started laughing and realized that this experiment would not go well. First, I tweaked my left hamstring, which wasn’t used to full sprints. Second, there are two kinds of muscle tissue:

  • Fast-twitch for going really fast over a short distance
  • Slow-twitch for going slower over a long distance

Turns out I’m a little short on fast-twitch muscle fiber.

I had no illusions of becoming Usain Bolt or Michael Johnson, but wow. Here’s a chart of the times for a world-class athlete and for me:

Distance Real Athlete Me Difference
40-yard dash 4.41s, Robert Griffin III 5.97s +35%
100m dash 9.572, Usain Bolt (world record) 15.41s +61%
400m 43.18, Michael Johnson (world record) 1:16.56s +77%

Why am I telling you this? Not self-pity. Not to fish for compliments from my family about how wonderful and fast I am. Not to criticize myself for coming up short. After my first humbling sprint, the 40-yard, I realized how fast the world-class sprinters really are, and it filled me with admiration. Although I felt like I was working extremely hard and felt the wind rushing past me and saw the astroturf blur beside me, compared to a real sprinter, I was a turtle. By the time I finished my 100m dash, Bolt would already be doing his Bolt pose and a victory lap with the Jamaican flag. By the end of my 400m, Michael Johnson would already be sipping champagne in an ice bath after two obligatory interviews and a full stretching routine.

Unless you’re world-class in something and trying to win a championship or gold medal (and let’s be honest – if you are truly that awesome, you’re probably too busy becoming awesome to read my little blog, right?), you probably need a more realistic goal just like me. My goal is simple:

To be myself well

I don’t have to compete against you or anyone else in the things I want to do. Unless my competition is Brenden and Jonathan, I will never win a race outright. I’m not trying to climb the ladder at work or get elected to office. I’m just trying to do my thing, and do it well.

One of the most important things my mom ever told me was to simply do my best with what I have and be happy with the result. If my best was an A or a first-place finish or a green belt, then I should go for that. If my best was a C or an honorable mention, that was always good enough.

I’ve been really successful in some areas and really unsuccessful in others. But in all my pursuits, there’s always someone better – faster, more articulate, better looking, funnier, smarter, stronger, whatever-er. Even if you are the absolute best in the world at something, it’s still only for a time. Your abilities will decline someday and someone else will take over your title. While I greatly admire their achievements, I’m content to just be little old me – faster than some, slower than others, and happy where I am.

Why is My Flight Late?!?

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One day as a teenager, my dad and I were trying to fly home from Calgary after a ski trip. Our flight was delayed, and I didn’t understand why. Dad asked the gate agent, who said that our aircraft was delayed somewhere else and was arriving late into Calgary. As silly as it might seem, that was a big epiphany for me. Apparently, planes didn’t magically appear at our gate for us to board at the scheduled departure time. Hmm.

Now that I actually work for an airline and see the other side of delays, I thought some of you might have the same question: why is my flight late?

Think of an airline as a really big, really expensive bus system. A bus starts the day at one location and goes from place to place for the rest of the day, picking up and dropping off passengers at each stop. Any number of things can go wrong along the way to throw off the schedule – traffic, passenger issues, bad weather, mechanical problems, you name it. An airline works the same way except with many more rules, many more people involved, and many more details to work out. And if one flight is late, all the remaining flights that day for that aircraft are likely to be late as well.

If a flight is late, sometimes the cause is easy to pinpoint. Perhaps an engine won’t start. Perhaps there’s a huge thunderstorm over the airport. Perhaps some yahoo called in a fake bomb threat that the authorities must investigate. But sometimes the cause isn’t so easy to identify. Here are some examples of less obvious causes for a flight delay:

ATC – Air traffic controllers are high-tech traffic cops whose jobs is to ensure that the aircraft don’t fly too closely together. Due to FAA-mandated safety rules and operational considerations, each airport can safely handle only a certain number of airplanes per hour based on the runways in use, weather, and available navigational equipment. A smaller airport like Houston Hobby or Chicago Midway might be able to land 20-30 flights per hour. A huge, well-designed airport like Denver or DFW can handle over 100 arrivals per hour under normal conditions.

Problems occur when the airlines schedule more flights to land somewhere than the airport can accept during a given time. This happens daily for short periods in some airports such as Philadelphia and New York’s LaGuardia and Newark. If demand exceeds capacity for only a short time, air traffic controllers might force some inbound flights to fly in a circle once or twice, a maneuver known as holding. Each “donut” might take 5-10 minutes. If demand is expected to exceed capacity for a longer period of time, perhaps due to bad weather or a runway closure that reduces the amount of traffic an airport can handle, ATC starts delaying flights on the ground at their departure airports. This leads to late flights, frustrated and confused passengers, and lots of phone calls to Dispatch.

This graphic shows traffic in Philadelphia. The horizontal white line shows how many aircraft the airport can handle every 15 minutes. The green bars show the number of aircraft scheduled to arrive. From 1315-1345z, the airport is way overloaded, and many of those flights will spin a bit. That’s why we dispatchers plan extra fuel for PHL flights that arrive during that time.

Weather – Yes, weather in general might be clear as a cause of delays, but what specific aspects of weather actually cause problems? Thunderstorms are a highly visible example. Obviously, it’s not safe to take off or land in a severe thunderstorm. They can also cause problems if a line of storms lies between the two airports. Our planes can fly over a less severe storm, but some thunderstorms can reach 40,000, 50,000, or even 60,000 feet, too high for us to fly over them. In those cases, we must fly around them, which could add hundreds of miles and 30-60 minutes or more to the flight.

Fog is another problem. The FAA issues rules, known an minimums (or minima, if you want to be more grammatically correct), that tell us two important restrictions for when we can land:

  1. The minimum visibility needed to approach the runway
  2. How low the pilots can descend before seeing the runway just before they land

For a good runway, we might need 1/2 mile visibility and 200 foot “decision height”, meaning the bottom of the cloud layer must be 200 feet or higher to allow the pilots to see the runway and decide whether to land or not. If we don’t have enough visibility or high enough clouds, we can’t land, meaning we hold or divert. In order for a flight to depart, we must have reason to believe that the weather will be good enough to land when we get there. Part of the dispatcher’s job is to monitor the current and forecasted weather and ensure that they are good enough to launch the flight. If not, we have to throw the flag and tell the pilots not to leave yet. As you’ve probably guessed, that generates some phone calls to our office as well.

Wind can also play a role. When an airline builds a schedule, the planners estimate how long each flight will take based on the expected route, the airports involved, and historical data on flight time and winds. The upper-level winds where our airplanes fly generally blow from west to east and tend to be stronger in the winter. However, the winds are a little different each day. An unusually strong tailwind helps a flight arrive earlier than scheduled, sometimes 30-45 minutes early. Conversely, an unusually strong headwind can delay the flight by the same amount of time. Dispatchers try to plan our longer flights with more favorable winds, but on some days, there’s just not a viable way to make a flight reach its destination on-time.

Maintenance – If the engine won’t start, that’s a pretty obvious mechanical problem. But not every broken part must automatically delay the flight. Some parts, such as a broken tray table or busted lavatory, don’t inhibit the safe operation of the flight. Other parts are only necessary for certain flights, such as the onboard weather radar for a flight that could encounter thunderstorms or ice removal equipment for a flight into a snowstorm. If something breaks on an aircraft, the captain, dispatcher, and mechanic must decide whether the flight can proceed as planned or whether the part must be fixed prior to departure. Sometimes it can take a while to figure out the best course of action or to actually fix the busted item. We want to operate safely and legally above all, which sometimes means delaying or canceling the flight.

Passenger Issues – Connections generally tend to increase delays. A late inbound flight might have passengers connecting to several other flights. Customer-friendly airlines like Southwest try to hold those departures to ensure the connecting passengers make it on, especially if the delay isn’t too long or it’s the last flight of the day for that market. Sometimes, especially for an airline like Southwest that handles LOTS AND LOTS OF BAGS, it can take extra time to get all the bags on and off, particularly for connecting passengers whose bags need to be retrieved from one plane and transferred to another.

TSA – On rare occasions, the TSA detects a possible security breach and requires all passengers in a terminal to be rescreened. Other times the TSA security line is running extra slow, and many passengers are unable to reach their gates on-time as a result. The airline might delay flights for any of these reasons.

Delays can occur for other reasons such as human error or computer problems, but the causes above are responsible for the vast majority of flight delays. Delays tend to compound over time, so as a general rule, your flight is more likely to be delayed at the end of the day versus the morning. Our office has a special group of people who try to reduce delays by reassigning aircraft from one flight to another, a mixture of art and science known as “swapping”. Our pilots and airport employees also work to mitigate delays where they can by working faster and smarter, focusing on problem flights, asking for shortcuts in the air, and making up time on the ground.

I hope this helps clarify things a bit. If you have any questions, post them in the comments. I love talking about this stuff. =)

Disclaimer: Although I work for Southwest Airlines, all opinions expressed on this website are solely my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer, its leaders, or its board of directors. Yes, they make me say this. 🙂

Random Thoughts 3/9/12

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My brain runs all over the place these days but doesn’t necessarily chew on any one topic for a long time. Here’s a sample:

  • I went flying this week to maintain currency for work and went to Atlanta and back. As expected, the airport was extremely busy and dominated by Delta aircraft. The Delta flight information board takes up an entire wall with 10-12 screens. Amazing.
  • I like Ben and Jerry’s weird concoctions, especially Phish Food, much more than their plain vanilla. For normal flavors, give me Blue Bell above all else. No one does it better.
  • I wonder why abortion opponents focus so much on trying to make abortion illegal again, which is extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve, instead of trying to prevent unwanted pregnancy, which is much easier to achieve.
  • A guy asked me this week about my job and was interested in applying. He asked three or four different questions about how much we earn and one question about what he needed to do for eligibility. Yes, pay is important to nearly every worker, but if that’s all you care about, I don’t think I want you as a coworker.
  • I feel badly for Peyton Manning, but I think the Colts’ management made the right decision in releasing him.
  • I want an iPad 3. With 4G LTE capability. Yes, I am concerned about the treatment of the workers who produce them and feel a bit selfish for wanting to spend that much money on what’s undeniably a toy, but those things are seriously awesome.
  • No matter how smart or tough you think you are, or how many degrees you have, or how successful you are in your chosen field, raising children will humble you.
  • My department’s VP left abruptly to become a senior VP at JetBlue. Southwest execs don’t often leave for other airlines, so this feels odd.
  • Sallie Mae somehow found out that Jenny was back in school and deferred her student loan payments. We hope to pay off her loans in a lump sum within the next year or two anyway, but in the meantime it’s nice to have a little extra cash in the bank.
  • Natalie Merchant is performing with the Fort Worth Symphony in April 2013. If I remember it by then, we might go see her. Interesting idea for a concert.
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“Live” Blog from the Cowtown Half

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I did it! I finished the Cowtown Half Marathon on Sunday morning, scratching off one more item from my bucket list. It was a blast, but I’ll be honest: it was really hard at the end, and I’m still recovering. Despite my training plan, my legs weren’t quite ready for that distance. I might or might not try a half again depending on how my future training goes. But I had a blast and am very glad I did it. Thanks for all your support!

I don’t use Twitter (yet?), but if I did, and Siri could understand more than half what I say, I might have live-blogged the morning something like this:

4:05am: Ugh. I wake up nearly an hour early and toss and turn until my alarm goes off. This is normal for me on the very rare occasion that I have to wake up at a normal hour for some special event. I’m too excited to sleep.

4:55am: Get up, eat, and pull on my sexy-and-I-know-it black compression pants that aren’t spandex tights. It’s frickin’ cold out there. I debate what to wear on top and go with a long-sleeved tech shirt under my official short-sleeved Cowtown t-shirt that I got yesterday.

5:45am: Rolling out. The fam is still asleep. The only people driving around right now are drunks going home and crazy runners going to Cowtown. Plus maybe a few of my coworkers going to/from work. I hope those three groups don’t overlap.

6:10am: Stuck in a half-mile line of cars on I-30 trying to get to the race via Montgomery. Wish I’d left earlier. 8000 people take some time to get situated, Box. Panic a bit until I find a reroute. Thanks again, mighty iPhone, for the Maps app.

6:23am: Parked. Fiddling with my gear. Who knew such a simple activity could require so much stuff? Knee brace, pat strap, water bottle, inhaler, chip timer, bib with pins, gels, baggie for used gel packets, iPhone, earbuds, armband…Maybe I need a murse.

6:30am: Done. Must pee before race. Must pee before race. Don’t be THAT GUY who gets a UIP from Fort Worth’s finest during the race because he can’t wait any longer. My coffee will kick in momentarily. I couldn’t find on the website whether they have port-a-potties on the course. Surely they do…right????

6:50am: Hundreds of people waiting for port-a-potties near the start line. Quick math tells me that the 30 people ahead of me in line for these 2 port-a-potties won’t be done by the starting gun at 7:00. #dontpanicdontpanicdontpanic

6:55am: The bathroom line inside is only for the stalls, not the urinals, some guy says. Several of us sneak in through the bathroom exit and discover he was right. BLAM!

7:02am: Let’s roll! Our corral shuffles toward the finish line like a herd of cows. It is Cowtown, after all. Even though I lined up where the sign for Corral 2 was, the announcer is addressing us as Corral 3. Katy Perry is blaring on the speakers. I groove a bit. Purely to stay warm, of course.

7:05am: GO!

Mile 1: I feel great. After a really light week, my legs feel full of energy. With little effort, I’m going faster than my intended race pace. I want to run-walk to help my knees last longer, alternating 4 minutes running at 8:00/min with 1 minute walking at 12:00-15:00/mile. I should slow down, but meh. I’m having too much fun. The weather is perfect. The sky is lightening to a beautiful pale blue-gray.

I pass through Trinity Park. I spent an afternoon near this park in 1998 with my crazy college roommate, Craig, and two girls from nearby TCU. That was a nice day. I haven’t been here in over a decade. It’s like I’ve run back in time.

Mile 1.5: Yep, the water stations do have port-a-potties, although who wants to waste time on the course in one of those? Starting to see spectators with signs, mostly family members of the runners. Some have signs – encouraging, silly, scriptural, funny. It’s nice to have people come out just to cheer us on. Ten years ago I ran Cowtown for the first time (10k distance). A sweet girl named Jenny Matthews gave up her Saturday morning to ride out with me and meet me at the finish line. Anyone who wakes up early to stand and yell in the cold for average Joes like us is definitely a keeper.

Mile 2: I pass Fellowship Church’s Fort Worth campus. A few volunteers or staff are outside playing really loud hip-hop music, presumably the 2012 version of DC Talk or T-Bone. It hits me that the music sounds like regular hip-hop unless you listen hard to the words. A poster of senior pastor Ed Young stands along the sidewalk. Why do so many churches use their senior pastor as part of their branding?

Mile 3: We pass a graveyard and a funeral home. Did the course designers think some of us weren’t ready for this?

Mile 4: So far so good. My legs, lungs, and everything else feels fine. First gel – vanilla-strawberry e-Gel, 150 calories per packet. Mmm. I actually like this stuff. I preemptively stop and stretch my quads and hamstrings, hoping to keep them from tightening up. I turn away from the oncoming runners so it doesn’t look like I’m mooning them.

Mile 4.5: Getting a bit warm and sweatier than I prefer. I take off my gloves. Then I stop for a wardrobe change. I remove my armband and both shirts, tie the long-sleeved shirt around my waist, put the short-sleeved shirt back on, and rearrange my armband and earbud cord. Total time wasted due to tactical error: 1-2 minutes. But I feel much cooler, so I figure it was worthwhile knowing I still have over an hour left.

Mile 6.2: I cross an electronic mat that supposedly sends an update text to my wife, mom, and sister. We’re running through the Stockyards on a bumpy brick road. Lots of spectators here. Even though I don’t know any of them, it’s nice to have a cheering section. Almost halfway there. Still going strong and right on pace. This time last year, I was already done, and my knee was killing me. Not this year, baby.

Mile 7: After a bit of empirical research, I conclude that female long-distance runners tend to have nice butts.

Mile 8: Gel #2 and a stretch break. The sun is getting higher. Shoulda brought sunglasses. Rookie mistake. Feeling a bit tired now, and I know The Hill is coming soon. Some good spectator signs here: “Where are you people going??” “Run faster, I’m bored!” “My feet hurt from standing here”

Mile 8.5: I see a guy running in a Chick-Fil-A cow suit. The spectators like to give him five and cheer, “Go Cow!”

Mile 8:75: I see another guy running in a tuxedo. He’s wearing an Al’s Formal Wear sign on his back. I hope they dry-clean that thing before they rent it out again.

Mile 9: The Hill, a half-mile climb up Main Street toward downtown and Sundance Square. I remember it from my first Cowtown 10k a decade ago. I trained for this hill. I own this hill. I’m mentally prepared for this hill – power through, use your abs, lift your legs. I pass several people and feel slightly superior. But I’m feeling the many miles I’ve already covered. Finally, I reach the top and head south on Houston. I love this area. Fans are everywhere.

Mile 9.75: Still trailing The Cow slightly. A team of runners is sponsored by America’s Beef Council or something. The team has a fan along the route that has a sign that said, “Powered by BEEF!!” The Cow saw it and was not amused.

Mile 10: Just a 5k to go. Right patellar tendon is getting tight. I am tired. The Hill took more out of me than I expected. My form has declined. We split off from the marathoners and ultramarathoners here and turn west toward Will Rogers and the finish line. I down my final gel and press on.

Mile 11: My phone says I crossed 11 miles about 2-3 minutes ago, but the 11-mile sign and timing mat are here. Hmm. Something is off. But I’m too tired to think about it. After this, I’m in uncharted waters. I’ve never run more than 11 miles before. My right knee hurts, and now my left knee is getting tight. Not unexpected, but not good, either. Two miles left. Come on, Box.

Mile 12: I’m on a very, very, very long bridge. The longest bridge in the world. My phone still says I’m right at my goal pace but starting to creep above it. I give up on the walk breaks to drive my average pace back down. I don’t want to leave anything on the course. By this point I know I’ll finish, so I focus on trying to finish under 9:00/mile rather than trying to save my legs for the end. This is the end. I get passed by The Cow.

Mile 12.85: According to my phone, at my pace, I should be finishing right now. But the finish line isn’t here. My phone has led me astray. Oh well. Just power through. I am exhausted. My legs barely have any strength left. Both knees hurt, and the pain alters my stride. Don’t walk, don’t walk, don’t walk…

Finish: I DID IT. I cross the line, raise my hands, and let out a primal triumphant scream that probably scared some poor little kid in the crowd. I DID IT. An asthmatic with IT band syndrome, who at one point wasn’t sure he would ever be able to run again, ran 13.1 miles. Finish time: 2:00:55 officially. A junior high girl puts a finisher’s medal around my neck. I limp toward an open area to rest and stretch and get a guy to take my picture.

Aftermath: I limp into the exhibit hall to pick up my finisher’s t-shirt and some grub. It’s a nice spread – hot soup, bananas, bagels, yogurt, crackers, and best of all, Blue Bell ice cream. I run into my triathlon buddy Chris from work, the one who introduced me to e-Gel and recommended training for hills. I finally sit down for a few minutes and see the Likes and positive comments that people are sending me. I am a mix of emotions – joy at having finished, satisfaction, relief, a touch of disappointment because it’s over and I’m not registered for anything else right now, concern that my knees are still hurting instead of immediately improving after I stop running, pride, camaraderie, gratitude, wonder.

I drive home, assure my mother that I had indeed survived, take a shower for the sake of all around me, and head to Braum’s. My phone said I’d burned about 1700 calories with that run, so I figure I’d earned a celebratory cheeseburger in my blue finisher’s shirt. I sit alone, quietly enjoying my meal. A guy sits alone a few booths down from me. After a few minutes, he looks at my shirt and says, “Did you run today?”

“Yes, I did,” I replied.

Blogging is Hard

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It’s hard to be a blogger. I’ve done it for several years now and love it, but it’s hard. You’ve probably noticed that I’m not quite as, um, bloggy as I have been in months or years past. There are several reasons that I’ll share in a moment.

However, we did hit a milestone recently: my 1000th post. Does that sound like a lot? It does to me. And that’s just the ones I have on this version of the site, which includes everything since 2006. My old site had additional updates from before 2006, a blog of sorts before I even knew to call it a blog, that I never got around to converting into the new format.

Anyway, I’m still committed to this site, but here are the main reasons I’ve slowed down:

  1. Work – Due to some changes at work, it’s a bit more difficult to find the opportunity to write, find fun pictures, and work on the design. PM me if you want to know more details. (I hear a fairy-sized Deion Sanders yelling at me, “Shame on you for letting The Man keep you down!”)
  2. Ideas – Sometimes I have several good ideas. On occasion I’ll think of a good topic and save it for later, giving me a queue of posts gestating until the opportunity arrives. Other times I hit a dry patch when I’m just living my life and things are good but nothing really seems worth writing about. My muse is fickle. She comes and goes and never leaves a note.
  3. Types of Posts – As you’ve probably seen, I post lots of different stuff here. My favorite ones to write are the really heavy ones that stretch my brain, make me do research or wrestle with an important topic, and leave me feeling like I’ve accomplished something. If I stretch a reader’s brain and maybe even generate a thoughtful comment, that post gets bonus points. However, as you probably figured, those are the hardest ones to write and tend to take the longest, which limits how often I can do them. You guys voted that this type of post isn’t your favorite, either, maybe because some of my views are on the wacky side. That’s why I’ve tried to shift the focus of the blog a bit since the poll to focus a little more on the topics you guys like best: updates on my family, random stuff about me, and humor. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to find anything worth sharing about the dump that Jonathan took in the bathtub (OK, that was a little funny. Two weeks later. Since Jenny kindly cleaned it up.), the nail in our tire on the swagger wagon, or my new carbon-neutral electric weed whacker.
  4. Facebook – Sure, it’s an easy scapegoat for lots of issues, but in the case of my blog slowdown, it does deserve a bit of responsibility. It’s not that I spend too much time on Facebook to blog, although I do spend a lot of time there. It’s that many of the tidbits and links I want to share with the world are very, very easy to share on Facebook and more complex to share on here. If I find an interesting article, hear something amusing, or take a funny picture of the boys, I can post it to my Facebook wall with a couple of clicks and easily add commentary through my phone. So naturally I post more stuff on Facebook. A lot more. And it’s only for the people I actually know (and choose not to block) because some of it is more personal.

So rest assured, I’m not abandoning AndyBox.com, but for the forseeable future, I won’t be posting 20+ times a month like I’ve done at times in the past. As always, I welcome your feedback!

Haiku Tuesday 27 – The Princess Bride

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Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! To celebrate, I dedicate this week’s Haiku Tuesday to one of my all-time favorite movies, The Princess Bride. If you haven’t seen The Princess Bride, you need to fix that as soon as possible.

Liar! Get back, witch!
I’m not a witch, I’m your wife!
Max, he said “true love”!

Mawage is what bwings
Us togethah today. Now
Do you have the wing?

A battle of wits
For the princess? To the death?
I accept. You fool!

Your turn.