Very Expensive Shoes

Normally I'm a real cheapskate when it comes to buying running shoes. Normally I won't pay more than $60-$70, and chortle at the suckers who pay hundreds of dollars for fancy designer brands. But I figure that running a marathon is far from normal, so I strode into Athlete's Foot the other day, looking to splash out on a high quality pair. I was further encouraged by my brother-in-law David who's trained for and run in 2 marathons (London and Paris) in the same pair of £100 runners.

15 mins later and $199 poorer I left the shop with a very comfy pair of size 13 running shoes. a) Ouch! b) Huge! Not sure I've ever owned shoes so big before. The lady in the shop reckoned a better fit would have been 12.5,  but seeing as half sizes are hard to find at the flipper end of the spectrum, I went 13 instead of 12. My previous experience of walking very long distances in hiking boots has taught me to always err on the side of too big than 'just right'.

If this bloke can do it

Fauja Singh has just run his last long-distance race, a 10km event in Hong Kong.

This is a guy who ran his first marathon (the London Marathon) in 2000 at the age of 89 - more than twice my own.

'Oldest marathon man' Fauja Singh runs last 10km race

If he can do it, what's my excuse not to?!?

Medical Bills are Killing the US

When we read news articles like this one (below) from Time Magazine, it makes us so grateful that we're not seriously ill and living in the USA, and reminds us that things haven't changed (and have almost certainly got worse) since Michael Moore's movie Sicko came out in 2007:

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills as Killing Us (Feb 20th 2013)

Some excerpts from the above article:

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Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit [who has just been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma] — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.
About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent.

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The hospital’s hard-nosed approach pays off. Although it is officially a nonprofit unit of the University of Texas, MD Anderson has revenue that exceeds the cost of the world-class care it provides by so much that its operating profit for the fiscal year 2010, the most recent annual report it filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was $531 million. That’s a profit margin of 26% on revenue of $2.05 billion, an astounding result for such a service-intensive enterprise.

The president of MD Anderson is paid like someone running a prosperous business. Ronald DePinho’s total compensation last year was $1,845,000. That does not count outside earnings derived from a much publicized waiver he received from the university that, according to the Houston Chronicle, allows him to maintain unspecified “financial ties with his three principal pharmaceutical companies.”

DePinho’s salary is nearly triple the $674,350 paid to William Powers Jr., the president of the entire University of Texas system, of which MD Anderson is a part. This pay structure is emblematic of American medical economics and is reflected on campuses across the U.S., where the president of a hospital or hospital system associated with a university — whether it’s Texas, Stanford, Duke or Yale — is invariably paid much more than the person in charge of the university.

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And in our largest cities, the system offers lavish paychecks even to midlevel hospital managers, like the 14 administrators at New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who are paid over $500,000 a year, including six who make over $1 million.

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...we [the USA] spend more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. We may be shocked at the $60 billion price tag for cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy. We spent almost that much last week on health care. We spend more every year on artificial knees and hips than what Hollywood collects at the box office. We spend two or three times that much on durable medical devices like canes and wheelchairs, in part because a heavily lobbied Congress forces Medicare to pay 25% to 75% more for this equipment than it would cost at Walmart.

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...the pharmaceutical and health-care-product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.

Unbelievable! Being sick is hard enough, but having it wipe out your life savings too (even assuming you had any in the first place) is just adding insult and probably poverty to injury. Something's gotta give in the US, I reckon.

Nickname

I just had an acid flashback to my youth, growing up with my Big Brother Toby. For reasons best known to Toby (actually, I don't think he has any idea himself!), one of his many nicknames for me was Boris. Go figure.

Introducing Boris

... and here are photos of the little man in question. Introducing Boris!

Confession

Here's the thing... I'm targeting the Sydney Marathon in September 2013, but applications don't open until mid-March. I know that some marathons are over-subscribed many times (London, for example) and I've no idea whether or not this is typically the case for Sydney. So I guess we'll just have to get in there early and cross fingers and toes. If I don't get in, I'll go for the Melbourne Marathon on October 13th 2013. Failing that... there's always the extremely appropriately named Ross Marathon in Tasmania on Sept 1st 2013!

One way or another... I'm running a marathon.

Motivation

I've been thinking about running a marathon for some time now - at least 10 years if the truth be told. You know, one of those bucket list sort of things. So why now?

Earlier this week my wife and I were channel surfing, and we flicked onto a tv documentary about the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) for sick kids. As extremely fortunate parents of 4 healthy young kids, we're particularly susceptible to blubbing when we see children who are suffering. We managed to hold it together when viewing a segment of the documentary on some parents discussing treatment options for their child. But we had to change channels when their beautiful young daughter was being hooked up to chemo.

The nephew of one of my co-workers (and friend) at Itomic was recently born with cancer. Yes, born with it. The type of cancer he has is called Neuroblastoma, which is a malignant tumour that develops from nerve tissue. It is an aggressive disease and is the leading cause of cancer deaths in children under 5. He's only a few months old, and he's also being treated by the fabulous people at GOSH. His name is Boris - just like the current Mayor of London.

Boris is my motivation. He's a tiny little baby with huge challenges. He's innocent. For him, hospitals and suffering are normal. He hardly knows any other reality. I'm running for Boris, because whatever pain he's been going through, and has yet to go through, will be so many times more than mine.