Everyone Wants to Beah Blogger

Check out my hot new favicon — it’s Burger Time! Nelson both created the file and told me how to get it on my site. He sure loves favicons.

A couple of weeks ago I packed up and left the hussle and bustle of the city and relocated to quiet Mountain View, California, a convenient 6 minute drive from my place of employment. So what do I think? In the spirit of my previous San Francisco v. Philadelphia proc/con series (short-lived), I will share some initial Mountain View impressions in pro/con form.

PROS:

- extremely close to work

- my apartment is quiet and dark at night, which makes sleeping a lot easier

- I can adopt a dog and give it the attention and excercise that it needs (would have been tough in the city; especially with the commute

- if I want to hang out with my co-worker (who double as my friends, even though most of them are from California), I don’t have to drive 45 minutes down 101

- I save $300 on rent

- I look at my window and see living, green things

- I can ride my bike or go for a jog without having to confront a zillion stoplights and a zillion California-drivers

CONS:

- Range (the restaurant) is not in walking distance

- Arizmendi is not within biking distance

- Dan has to commute to the city every day

You know what, forget “con” #1 — Range isn’t an everyday type place; it’s a place you go for special dinners out, which is easily worth the 35 minute drive. And, now that I think of it, let’s drop “con” #2 as well; it was a crappy bikeride and one we were rarely willing to make. Hm… and, looking at “con” #3, I realize that this isn’t really my problem. Good luck, Dan! Yeah, I guess life in Mountain View is pretty sweet.

I’d like to call your attention to the most recent comment on my blog, authored by none other than mrfunkypants, about whom I wrote a blog post in September. While this post was not intended as an attack on mrfunkypants’ character (more of a celebration of his contribution to the internet, really) I did mention that he appeared to be “be a bit of a violence-prone misogynist.” In the spirit of editorialism, I feel compelled to surface his somewhat corrective comment, in which he actually promises that he is not violent. Consequently, I’d like to ammend my description of mrfunkypants; he simply seems to be a bit of a misogynist.

Thanks for speaking up, mrfunkypants!

There’s truly no explanation for why I’m posting these Big Sur Half Marathon photos more than 3 weeks after the race. But I’m pretty sure that Libby and Buzz will enjoy them, so my other readers (Nelson, Wysz? Angry guy from Santa Barbara?) will just have to hold tight. I promise my next post will be substantially more exciting. Possibly even puppyrific. Or doggietacular.

All photos courtesy of Natasha.

Official results just in: I finished the Big Sur Half Marathon in 2:29:53. This may sound like an excruciatingly slow time to some of you. You might be saying to yourself, “don’t olympic runners complete FULL marathons in a significantly less time than that?” or “Are not there 80 year old men who can speed walk a half marathon is less time?” The answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes. However, I was quite pleased as my finish time was precisely 7 second under my stretch goal or 2.5 hours.

I trained and premised my race strategy almost entirely on Jeff Galloway’s fantastic book, “Galloway’s Book on Running.” Because I have become a full-blown devotee of his running philosophy and his pacing rules, I forced restraint for the first 10 miles, keeping an even 12 min pace. But after mile 10 Dan, Jenn, and I were able to pick up the pace by a full 3 minutes — finishing at a 9 minute pace. It felt good to turn up the heat at that point. I’m fairly sure that not a single person passed us in those last 3 miles.

I could have shaved at least 2 minutes off that time (which would have REALLY made me a contender) if I had not needed to stop around mile 3 to fish something sharp out of my left shoe. I never found the offending object. Good thing I’m phenomenally tough.

Within our group of approximately 12 runners, David Fischer posted the fastest time and Chade took the glory in the women’s division. I can only assume that my targeted cheering and high fives as they passed me on their way back substantially contributed to their success.

My legs are a touch sore, but I don’t actually feel that bad — thanks, Jeff Galloway!

Basically I discovered that it’s much easier to steal Wysz’s content than to generate my own. Also, Wysz hates politics so I’d feel civic-ly (not sure how to make an adverb out of “civic”) degenerate if I didn’t have some sort of elections content.

I’ve actually been a little surprised how difficult it is to get voting updates online today. I remember in previous elections watching television in the afternoon and hearing early projections based on exit polls — or at least I thought so. And I’m on Pacific time now so I thought we would have some news by 1pm. Where you at, exit polls?

So if you’re looking for someone to make an early call on this election, I’ll offer mine (based on complicating culturally sensitive algorithms that I can’t even begin to explain): Obama wins it, with John McCain coming in a close second.

What have I done?

Reid once tweeted (that means he wrote it on twitter, mom) that I should blog more about my experience training for the Big Sur half marathon. Usually I disregard blog advice from people who write blogs that have been described as “one of those boring diary blogs” but, seeing as I have nothing else interesting to write about, I’m going to give Reid’s suggestion a whirl.

I used to think that running was dumb. It seemed both boring and physically torturous — an unfortunate combination. But then I watched the entirety of the men’s marathon at the Beijing Olympics and was emotionally manipulated into thinking that those guys must feel great about themselves. In truth, they probably felt like throwing up all over themselves, but from the comfort of my couch it seemed pretty cool.

A couple days later I got an email from my friend and co-worker, Dee, asking if I might join her and others in training for a half marathon in November. For some reason, it seemed like a good idea — I told her I’d do it.

So here I am, a month a half later, nursing myself after an 11 mile run. Prior to my “training,” I don’t believe I had ever run more than 4 miles at a time. Possibly fewer. So 11 is…. soooorrta a big deal. Here’s our route:

View Larger Map

Like so many losers who go through a quarter-life crisis fitness phase, I purchased and run with a gps device — however, I haven’t figured out how to export usable images from it so you’re seeing the sketched out Google Maps version.

Running 10-15 miles per week has been pretty transformative for me; it went from a stupid idea, to a hobby, to a fixation in only 6 weeks. For those of you who haven’t seen me in a while, I basically look like this now: 

I can’t believe I haven’t seen this yet:

A heartwarming story of a rag-tag team turned heros set in pre-Comcast Tower Philadelphia?! Yes please.

This is sort of old news by now, but a couple of weeks ago — when I was feeling sick — Nelson served me (and Wysz) what he described as a miracle drink, to cure our colds. Upon smelling the drink, I quickly identified it as tea and hot orange juice; this disappointed Nelson, who was banking on the mystery element to promote his new drink. In any case, I immediately turned to Google for some advice, using the query: “is it OK to drink hot orange juice.” Wysz did the same, but used the query: “is Nelson trying to poison me.”

My favorite result had to be this page from yahoo answers. While it wasn’t particularly informational, I found the response from “Mrfunkypants” pretty entertaining. While all other answeres (inluding a food scientist) unequivocally agreed that one should never drink heated orange juice that’s been lying around for a couple of days for fear of ingesting dangerous bacteria, Mrfunkypants had the sort of contrarian advice that makes the internet so much fun: “i would just taste it. usually it wouldn’t go bad - unless theres bacteriums in it. good luck!!”

I would have been skeptical, but Mrfunkypants did cite a “source,” so I figured I better check it out before dismissing his advice. The source appears to be his blog, harayz.com, which — while probably not a reliable database for food science information — was worth a read. If you’re looking for a good place to start, try his wishlist.

Despite the fact that Mrfunkypants appears to be a bit of a violence-prone misogynist [from his wishlist: "spit someone in the face or smash a beer mug to his (has be be a dude) head"], I respect his fearless web presence and good natured tone, even when recommending that individuals try dangerous foods as a means fo determining how dangerous they are (”good luck!!”).