Everyone Wants to Beah Blogger

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:

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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!!”).

This is what the nice man at the Footprint told me. Though the entire store is stocked with “comfort” shoes, he was quite upfront about the tradeoff between style and foot health. Well, after being told by the foot whisperer at MetroSport that I would probably need foot and/or knee surgery in a few years if I didn’t stop wearing flip flops and Tom’s everyday, I decided to invest in some ugly shoes. So I invested in a pair of these hotties:

Expect to see me strutting around the cubes in these come Monday. I guess we can’t all keep our feet looking as cute and stylish as Albert’s.

Why am I blogging about this? Mostly because it is likely to make my mom happy.

Over the past year, I’ve been wrestling with a strong desire to get a dog. I don’t even know if my apartment would allow it and, regardless, my live/work situation is not really conducive to responsible dog ownership. I leave my city apartment at 7:30am and don’t return until 7pm at earliest — that’s a lot of time for a dog to spend indoors. And while I could take a dog to work with me, it would require retooling my transportation routine, which I don’t want to do. Nonetheless, I might be able to make this work for a Chiuaua or some other dinky lap dog, but I don’t want a dinky, yappy little ankle-biting dog; I want a big, smart, energetic dog — I want a Border Collie.

My ever benevolent parents gave me a Border Collie for my 7th birthday; I named him Odie. Excepting two random weaknesses (car sickness and chronic fear of thunder), Odie was pretty much the perfect dog. He was loyal, fun, and smart… really smart. Smart enough to consistantly beat me and hide-and-go-seek (Matthew thinks that my childhood was spent socializing with my various pets in the absense of real live human friends or siblings — so I guess he’s sort of right).

Odie is no longer with us (RIP, Odie), but recently I’ve had some run-ins with other Border Collies, in the park, around the office etc… Each run-in further confirms my hypothesis that Border Collies are basically the genetic spawn of Michael Phelps and Gandhi. And don’t tell me that’s offensive because I probably loved Odie more than you love Gandhi or Michael Phelps. Plus, looks like I’m not the only one who feels this way. This guy really thinks that Border Collies are “the bomb”:

After watching that video, I think we can all agree that “The smart, slender, and beauty of the breed is too insane.”

I’ve always liked the song but I wouldn’t have guessed it was Obama’s number one. And McCain’s top song? “Dancing Queen.” I don’t exactly know why, but that’s kind of messed up. In any case, congrats to both of them for sharing their Top Ten lists with the world; that’s kind of fun. You can see the complete lists here.

Also, it’s sort of annoying to navigate (you have to flip through photos, one by one — with no index) but spinner.com offers a photo tour of which candidate various musicians have supported (including candidates who have since dropped out of the race). Mostly predictable but a few notable surprises. For instance, who would have guessed that 50 cent was pulling for Hillary Clinton? Not I.

pro: a short driving distance from my job and my very special coworkers

con: far away from all other good things in this world