Yesterday my running buds and I set off on a 3-mile interval session on a very congested Kezar Track. There must have been over 100 newbies running around, who didn't understand that when someone yells "TRACK" it means to move your butt out of lane 1. We managed just fine though, hitting all of our times in style or better, usually better due to my lack of pacing after 200 meters. We ran three mile sets. Our first two sets in the form of 400-800-400 and our last mile being just that, I came across the tape in 6:46-painful but not too bad, with my buds running record miles for the year. This was another day that championed the essentialness of training partners, I really was adamant in stopping after two miles -tough workout the night before, but they kept me up and I managed to run my last mile just fine. Mind over Matter. but in reality MindS over Matter can be so much more effective!
Now, I am paying for it; my legs feel like 80-pounds of lead. But well worth it!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Favorite run of the year
Saturday set the mark for my favorite run of 2008 so far. A 3-4 miler along Salt Creek Beach with my Dad. We glided down the big hill right when the sun was brilliantly blazing a red sunset, big and round over the horizon. We ran down to the beach front, right along the waters edge where the sand is hard and firm and easy on the knees. Did about 2 miles along the sand. Perfect temperature, nice breeze, good company. Not just my Dad, but a small pod of 5 dolphins that swam along at the same speed we were running. It may sound cliche, but it was magical, everything coming together, running, being home, feeling good, the breeze and 5 dolphins frolicking along side of us for a good 15 minutes made it surreal and incredible. One of the younger dolphins caught a few ways, two of them jumped out of the water, they were just playing while we ran along. One of those moments you won't forget for a very long time!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Health Care Crisis
Health Care can be dwindled down into 3 basic parts: Cost, Quality, and Access. It is almost impossible to improve all three parts at the same time.
So far the media has focused on Cost and Access. Republicans yell about cost, Democrats rant about access. I think they are both important to the average American. My question is, what can we do now to improve our health care system for the long term? So we can improve all 3 aspects over time?
It's a tough question, no easy answers. Can focusing on quality and access to care lead to reduced costs in the long term? Will focusing on cost and quality lead to improved access in the end? How will technology play a factor in this triangle? Right now most assume that technology is increasing costs, but what if our innovations in the future lead to reduced costs? We have MRIs now, like the mega-computers of the 80s. Who is to say we won't have improved imaging technology in 15 years at much lower costs? This I believe, we are destined for. So, with this belief in mind, that technology will lead to lower costs of care in the future, I saw we don't worry about increased costs for now. I say that all these projections of the Health Care Sector taking up 40% of the GDP are wrong. Yes we do have some startling problems with an aging population and a fattening population, but I am seeing technology being the key to this, reducing physician visits, ER visits, making care accessible and affordable.
With this in mind, the government should own up, and take more of the costs off American's back. But we shouldn't worry about cost in the big scheme of things. Right now we need to focus on improving quality of care and access to quality of care first and foremost. This means we need a larger physician and health care provider pool and we need to really tackle quality. I don't have the time to go into quality of care right now. But lets just say that continuity of care would make for so much less duplicate and extra care that I think that would be a good place to start.
So far the media has focused on Cost and Access. Republicans yell about cost, Democrats rant about access. I think they are both important to the average American. My question is, what can we do now to improve our health care system for the long term? So we can improve all 3 aspects over time?
It's a tough question, no easy answers. Can focusing on quality and access to care lead to reduced costs in the long term? Will focusing on cost and quality lead to improved access in the end? How will technology play a factor in this triangle? Right now most assume that technology is increasing costs, but what if our innovations in the future lead to reduced costs? We have MRIs now, like the mega-computers of the 80s. Who is to say we won't have improved imaging technology in 15 years at much lower costs? This I believe, we are destined for. So, with this belief in mind, that technology will lead to lower costs of care in the future, I saw we don't worry about increased costs for now. I say that all these projections of the Health Care Sector taking up 40% of the GDP are wrong. Yes we do have some startling problems with an aging population and a fattening population, but I am seeing technology being the key to this, reducing physician visits, ER visits, making care accessible and affordable.
With this in mind, the government should own up, and take more of the costs off American's back. But we shouldn't worry about cost in the big scheme of things. Right now we need to focus on improving quality of care and access to quality of care first and foremost. This means we need a larger physician and health care provider pool and we need to really tackle quality. I don't have the time to go into quality of care right now. But lets just say that continuity of care would make for so much less duplicate and extra care that I think that would be a good place to start.
Friday, April 18, 2008
LA Homicide Report
I read an article today about the LA Homicide Report. It's a blog of all the victims of killings in LA over the past year written by an LA Times reporter. There have been over 800 murders in the past year in LA, in streets, homes, stores, driveways, alleys, cars, and parks. I know there are a lot of people in LA, 9.9 million according to the 2006 CA consensus. Oakland CA, a large city also prone to gangs, guns, and violence, had 115 homicides in 2007 with a population of 1.2 million....598 homicides Chicago with a population of 9.7 million...
I'm not putting in the effort to do a thorough examination of these numbers or the variables that contribute to them, it would be very interesting to look into this further. My main point is there are too many homicides! Just from scrolling through the LA blog, I would guess that majority of these homicides are from gunshots. To me, this is a serious problem, it is wrong to let this continue. But then again, it's not something I think about every day, personally, I've never known someone who was murdered, and to my knowledge I've never known a murderer. I don't know anything about the culture within these killings occur, I don't know the circumstances, the outcomes, or the reason for killing this people. What I do know is that if we could have better control of the use of arms in this country, we could dramatically reduce the number of people who die from them. Given the complexity of understanding why these homicides continue, why don't we just put a plug in the bottleneck? I understand the perverse cyclical thinking some people have, "If I can't get a gun I can't protect myself from those that do not give their guns in".
This is true, and this is why America and other developed countries with soft gun restrictions are in a predictament. But I really think it's the only way.
I'm not putting in the effort to do a thorough examination of these numbers or the variables that contribute to them, it would be very interesting to look into this further. My main point is there are too many homicides! Just from scrolling through the LA blog, I would guess that majority of these homicides are from gunshots. To me, this is a serious problem, it is wrong to let this continue. But then again, it's not something I think about every day, personally, I've never known someone who was murdered, and to my knowledge I've never known a murderer. I don't know anything about the culture within these killings occur, I don't know the circumstances, the outcomes, or the reason for killing this people. What I do know is that if we could have better control of the use of arms in this country, we could dramatically reduce the number of people who die from them. Given the complexity of understanding why these homicides continue, why don't we just put a plug in the bottleneck? I understand the perverse cyclical thinking some people have, "If I can't get a gun I can't protect myself from those that do not give their guns in".
This is true, and this is why America and other developed countries with soft gun restrictions are in a predictament. But I really think it's the only way.
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