Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

One astute reader asked why I was monitoring the NY City Marathon from home when my own father was running in it. Simple answer to a simple question: my left leg was rather swollen and purple, providing a reasonable facsimile of Barney (tm) from the knee down to anyone who spied my feet under my desk. Playing a friendly game of pond hockey on Saturday resulted in a broken ankle from a freakishly simple but simply painful twist and shout. I fell over on my ankle, doing nothing more than chatting with another hockey dad, giving myself a classic "ski boot" injury. The most amazing thing to me is that I've sufferred an alpine injury without having put on skis.

Not to be content with simple fractures, I separated my ankle, requiring a titanium plate installation. This procedure is only slightly more messy and complicated than replacing the hard drive in a laptop; 90 minutes of surgery later and I was the proud owner of a left ankle zipper, one 10 pound fiberglass cast, and a set of crutches. The things you'd expect in a setup of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". My main concern right now is that the titanium plate not create multi-path interference, further crippling my wireless reception.

Life has a way of pairing beginnings and endings. My hockey season is effectively over before it's begun; the Chiefs have two games left in the fall season for which I'm going to eat the ice time cost; my Friday night club won't ever see the second half of my money; and my Hockey North America Ice Dragons teammates are down one left wing for the duration. Such is the ugly ending.

The ugly beginning was 28 years ago. I fell down a hill wearing figure skates, splaying myself on the ice of Lake Topanemus (Lenne Lenape for "place of spastic futility"). My resulting broken wrist took me out of gym, clarinet lessons, and almost crimped my science fair expectations (this was 8th grade, people). Sometime during that recovery I bought my vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon".

The ignominy of landing a triple klutz jump in figure skates effectively started my interest in hockey. It would be another four years until the Miracle on Ice in 1980 when that interest increased intensity by an order of magnitude, and nine months after that for the desire to gestate into my first pair of hockey skates. A delayed teenage rebellion.

My initial recovery from surgery involved a fair dose of Percocet. Not only did it help me sleep, it greatly improved my comprehension of Floyd lyrics. And it also germinated a great idea for a publicity stunt: sign my cast electronically! I have no shame in stealing an idea from MaryMary. Circa 1976, anyone with a Magic Marker could leave their mark on my arm, but inputs were limited to my immediate geography. I'd like to leverage a wider array of pigmenting technologies and geographic bridges -- get me a signature in any format (a .sig file, a PDF of a signature, an MD5 hash) and the most creative answer wins a prize: a copy of "Blueprints for High Availability" (2nd edition) with my own signature in it, personalized to your tastes. Entries must be submitted via email (figuring it out is the price of admission, to eliminate 'bots and spammers).

Today was the 35th New York City Marathon. Nearly 35,000 people lined up in Staten Island to visit all five New York City boroughs. Running over the world's longest single span suspension bridge (the Verrazano Narrows) into Brooklyn, the westernmost tip of Long Island, they defined a more pedestrian version of "island hopping". The journey of 26.2 miles begins with a single step, and for many runners, many single steps while the crowd in front you disperses. If the Boston Marathon represents the official beginning of the spring season (and the Red Sox home season), then the New York City Marathon is the end of seasonal weather. The races effectively bookend outdoor activity for everyone who doesn't play in the NFL.

The marathon redefines "sneaker network". Every runner had a sensor chip tied to his or her shoes (or wheelchair). When running over mats placed at various checkpoints, the runner's time was noted, posted to the marathon race tracking website, and if desired, an email was sent to anyone the runner had registered on an interest list. For some runners, just crossing the starting line took nearly 10 minutes, a time bias that was netted out at the finish time to provide actual course times.

The entry field represents approximately the population of our town. Whether you sort on age, gender, race, or occupation, you get a fairly accurate sampling of your neighbors, modulo a few elite runners and overall physical fitness. Every runner has a goal: to set a personal best, to qualify for the Boston Marathon, to finish the race. Two million people - approximately the population of a major American city - line the course to cheer on family members, pace fellow running club entrants, or watch the cross-section of life go by.

My job for this perfect Sunday was simple: track a runner via the web and email, all the while extrapolating from 10 kilometer and half-marathon time and distance to the corner of 72nd street and 1st avenue. The sneaker sensors generated an SMS message (sent via a bulk emailer) to my cell phone, arriving only 2-3 minutes after our marathon man cross the checkpoint. MM's sometimes trainer and full-time cheerleader joined him at mile 17, and according to cell phone reports from the field, he looked dehydrated and tired. Of course, I'd look worse if I had just run up and over the 59th street bridge into Manhattan, fuggedabout the more than 16 miles of coursework beforehand. There's no "Feeling Groovy" at this point. MM sometimes slowed to a walk, but gradually got his rhythm back, and picked up the pace again as he crossed into the Bronx and came into full view of Yankee Stadium. This year, the winners were on the outside of famed facade.

The spectacle of a marathon produces Olympian efforts. By mile 20, my back of the take-out menu calculations placed MM finishing around five and a half hours, just 30 minutes over his goal -- and only a 10% variation if you're a stat-head. At this point, many runners hit a wall and cannot finish. Even though the finish line is a 3/4-circumnavigation of Central Park away, it's still more than six miles by land. And this is where the generalizations and statistical comparisons melt away. Every runner has an intense -- and personal -- motivation to finish. Our MM simply asked "Is there anyone behind me? I don't want to be last". Pace runner confirmed people as far as the eye could see, in either direction, much like summer traffic on the Garden State Parkway (but moving at a better clip).

A little over one hour later, I got the final text synopsis of the day -- runner #21120 had crossed the finish line in 5:40, time adjusted to 5:34, making him just about the 30,000th person to complete the race today. He's been training for several years for this. He's fought off stress fractures, shin splints, and gnarly neighborhood dogs to get to that finish line. His pace runner and trainer -- my sister -- is thrilled. From waving a sign at 72nd Street to crossing the sea of people in Central Park, my mom was there for support. I, of course, could not be more proud, for the man with the finisher's medal is my father. Is there anyone behind you? You bet. All of us -- every day.