Saturday, December 20, 2008

two more days, 12 mile run and kathy adams

i had a nice 12 mile run today all by myself and on the trail and through the streets with lots of hills. not bad as it went and i could have kept going as i had lots of energy at least though the right quad was still hurting. it will be this way forever to some degree i am guessing. did a lot of stretching afterwards and somehow i need to find a way of getting rid of the tight hip sensors and scar tissued from an old bike torn muscle quad. then spent the rest of the day shopping and out to eat dinner- should add that we went to one of our two favorite restaurants and it was shut down and for sale..... what a shame---

and on that shame note i move on to kathy adams- a 49 year old breast cancer survivor who was not hired by the state dept. foreign service after finishing 7th out of 200 candidates on their consular test. fighting for five years to get hired against some hiring discrimination because she could not get regular follow-up treatments and exams. and the state dept should be not be proud of their actions. as the courts said-..."both callous and unreasonable". AARP and the American Cancer society are now joining in to fight this bias ..."due to irrational fears and sterotypes." the article did point out that she found out she had the cancer after she was in the process of trying to be hired. clearly qualified she should be hired! and with a woman in charge of state dept- right...

i add here that i flew home every 3 months for a few days from the UK to have my four cancer followups. it would not be impossible for kathy to do this, but i have a hard time believing that state dept foreign service employees do not have or cannot get access to medical treatment if they need it. in all of their history does no-one ever get sick on duty? right...... i worked in civil rights and human resources and i have had cancer and also investigated other discrimination complaints, so i have my biases- men won't listen to women, won't take orders from women, they have babies, they miss a lot of work, etc etc- ..... will keep an eye on this case...

end of small voice rant- the world would be a much better place if people would just try a little harder to see the other side --- like take the time to say if this happened what would the consequences be?

and so with 53 miles of running and about 150 on the indoor bike it was an ok week of training. need to adjust the schedule and i have started on that. need to make some decisions and i am still a little stuck between short and faster or long and slower. long is more fun and short is more challenging. in the end the golf will lose out and frankly it is less fun all of the time.

cold rain due in the morning- should be fun running. 11 minutes from the first day of winter---and longer days too. can you hear the sound of baseballs in the air? listen harder!

1 comment:

goooooood girl said...

your blog is so good......