Last Minute Halloween Costumes for Runners

Tomorrow is Halloween and if you’re like me you’ve waited until the last minute to think about what kind of costume you’re going to wear and now it’s too late to make that awesome Geico pile of money costume. Of course if you were really like me then you’d have some wicked good dancing skills and a Gorilla Ice costume to fall back on, but since you have two left feet and a dearth of gorilla suits lying around I’m going to help you out with a last minute Halloween costume suggestion for runners. Was that not clear from the title?

Are you ready for this? Go dressed as... a runner. I can already hear you saying “But I am a runner, so why is that a good costume?” It’s a good costume because many of the people at your Halloween party probably don’t know that you are a runner or may have never seen you running. It’s like when I go dressed as a banker, talk about a funny costume! I get all the laughs, especially when I do my dancing banker bit. Plus, this is a last minute idea so while dressing as a giant iPhone may sound like a good idea you probably don’t have a spare flatscreen lying around that you can use, but if you do then send it my way.

Here’s what you’ll need: running shoes, short shorts, a singlet with an old race bib pinned to it, Band-Aids for your nipples (or red food dye on the singlet), a watch and a headband. The headband is necessary for selling your costume as an obsessed runner, but what is really going to sell this is not what you wear but how you act. You should be in a hurry wherever you go. Grab people’s drinks out of their hand like they were a race volunteer and chug them as you run off, better yet splash them all over your face and toss the cup to the side. People won’t ever get tired of your drink-stealing antics and hey, free drinks for you all night!

If you don’t think you can get away with stealing drinks wear your fuel belt and fill up your 6oz flasks with your beverage of choice. Not only do you have a rockin’ costume but you can also have your hands free all night and you won’t forget where you left your drink. (Note: If you do forget where you left your drink, it’s on your hip and you are way too drunk. Go home now before you make a fool of yourself.)

You’re also going to want to stretch a lot. Don’t be afraid to bend over and touch your toes right in front of people or to just cop a squat wherever you are to do some stretches. Wear a watch with a stopwatch so that you can annoyingly time everything that anyone does.
Friend: “I’ll be right back, I’m going to the bathroom.”
You: “OK, I’ll time you. Ready... Set... GO!”
*When they return*
You: “3 minutes and 22 point 47 seconds! That’s a new personal worst! What on earth were you doing in there?”

Don’t you go looking for a bathroom though, just go pee by the side of the road as you would in a race. Blow snot rockets and wipe the debris on the bottom of your shirt. Wear an old race medal because when are you ever going to have another chance to wear it and not feel like an attention seeking showoff. Wearing your medal also gives people who may not know that you are a runner the opportunity to ask you where you got it, which gives you an opening to be an attention seeking showoff and tell them all about the marathon you ran while allowing you to stay in character as an obsessive runner.

If you don’t like my suggestion then you could always go as balloon boy or Kate Gosselin, but you know that everyone is going to be doing that. Be original. Be a runner.

Who’s Up for a Challenge?

A little over a year and a half ago I wrote a post about two women who were helping orphans in Africa, of course you probably don’t remember that post because a year and a half ago I had a smaller audience than a Jessica Simpson movie, but I still take credit for helping publicize their cause. Hope Runs is the name of the organization. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Claire Williams, co-founder of Hope Runs, asking me if I would be willing to put a post up on Half-Fast because they need your help. After several attempts to hustle her for advertising dollars I resigned myself to the fact that maybe they really didn’t have the budget to pay my exorbitant rates and I agreed to put her post up here at Half-Fast, but you’d better believe that I’m writing this off as a humongous charitable donation.

Unfortunately for Hope Runs they have not made any stupid business decisions or participated in any reckless, irresponsible spending so they do not qualify for the freight-sized helpings of bailout money that your financial institutions are pissing away even as we speak. Therefore, I encourage you to help out in any way that you can. The least you can do is read the guest post below and then head on over to their website to offer your support, actually that’s not true, the least you could do would be to just skip the rest of this post and go on about your day, you heartless jerks!

Apply for the Hope Runs 777 Challenge!

What is the Hope Runs 777 Challenge?
In 2010, Hope Runs will be leading a Guinness World Record-breaking endeavor to complete 7 marathons on 7 continents in only 7 weeks. With a team of dedicated runners, we are committed to breaking some fantastic Guinness World Records (yes - there are some left to be broken in the area!). We are also proud to be running a green event through carbon-emissions-offset sponsoring.

The Hope Runs 777 Challenge will help bring the issues facing the 14.5 million AIDS orphans in Africa alone to the forefront of the world’s consciousness. By pushing ourselves to the limit, our team will raise awareness for the issues facing orphaned and vulnerable children (OVCs) all over the world, mobilizing people everywhere to become more involved. With each member of the team covering his or her own costs and committing to raise thousands more toward the cause, this effort will help to make a lasting impact in places that need it most.

How Can I Join the Team?
We've lost a couple members of our team and are looking for replacements! We are looking for dedicated runners, marathoners, doctors or nurses, and physical trainers who would be committed to spending six weeks of 2010 working toward this record-breaking goal. If you do not fall into one of these categories, but feel you have what it takes, please send us an application.

The team will also be required to do extensive fundraising (team members are currently fundraising $26,200 plus the cost of their trip), both to pay for their own trips and to meet a minimum fundraising goal set for each member. We will be happy to help with fundraising strategies and ideas, but each member will be trusted to earn enough to make this challenge a highly successful fundraising effort.
If you want to apply, send an email to info@hoperuns.org!

How to Annoy Other Runners

Towards the end of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon, I sure noticed a lot of annoying runners. Now I’m willing to concede that perhaps I was a little cranky from being so tired, sore and chafed and you probably don’t make the best assessments of others at mile 23 of a 26.2 mile race. Nevertheless there are some things that other runners do that just flat out annoy me. Since I assume that no one wants to intentionally annoy me, I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a list of the things that you all probably do that just annoy the crap out of me. Please try to work on improving yourself for my benefit.

Let’s start with the worst offenders:
Runners who run 4 wide across the street and then all hold hands to finish together. Forget the fact that they’re blocking my way, the blatant lack of competitive spirit in these folks (“Hey, let’s all hold hands and tie!”) is just un-American and borders on being downright French in nature. If you do this, you disgust me. Man, quit being such a sissy!
Runners who are in dire need of medical assistance. These people make me feel guilty, like I’m a bad person for not stopping to help, and I don’t think people should make me feel that way. It’s not very considerate of them. At least I took the extra effort to hurdle you instead of just stepping on you. Man, quit being so needy!
Runners who are faster than me. Annoying! Especially those runners who wait until we’re 20+ miles into the race and then go breezing by at a 7 minute pace. That’s just baffling. If you can run that fast at mile 20 then how is it that you’re only now just passing me 3 hours into this race? Man, quit being so fast!
Runners that swerve a lot. Have you ever run behind someone who does this? It wears me out just watching them meander back and forth across the street, not to mention how difficult it is to pass them. If you ever see anyone doing this, you have my permission to punch them in the back of the head, tell them karma sent you.
Runners that throw their empty Gatorade cups into my path. I swear if you get any of that pink juice on my nice new running shoes I will lose it. Man, quit tossing that crap at my feet!
Runners who are slower than me that take the inside turn on a corner directly in front of me. This is annoying to say the least, and infuriating to say a little bit more. It’s the kind of thing that makes a grown man want to kick a llama in the head. (Come on, someone had to pick up the llama hating torch and run with it, no?) Man, quit getting in my way!
Runners that seem like they want to run with me but insist on being a half step ahead of me. I totally called dibs on this annoying practice. Man, quit stealing my bit!

Though I’m sure there are heaps more annoying things that you all do, I don’t want to overburden you, so just work on these things for now. For my part I will try to be a little more tolerant and I’ll work on some of the things that I do that you might consider annoying: Wearing a disturbingly bright shirt, spitting straight up in the air, running with my arms straight out, making it look easy, and no-look snot rockets.

Nike Responds

I just received an e-mail from Jacie Prieto, media relations manager for Nike, indicating that Arien O’Connell is going to be recognized as a winner of the Nike Women’s Marathon. Moreover, Nike is learning from their mistakes and will be eliminating the elite running group at next year’s Nike Women’s Marathon.

I think the most important thing to notice here is that Nike’s media relations manager sent me an e-mail. This is probably due to the fact that the massive sportswear corporation was terrified of drawing the ire of Half-Fast. Ignore for a second that the e-mail was recalled shortly after it was sent, and that I was BCC’d on the e-mail which means it probably went out to hundreds of other bloggers too, what’s important is that I single-handedly brought the sporting giant to its knees. I was the David to their Goliath, the kryptonite to their Superman, the 1980 US hockey team to their corporate, commie USSR hockey team, the Betamax to their VHS... wait... I think my analogy is breaking down. Breaking down like Nike, on their knees, begging for my forgiveness. (Analogy back on track!) It’s OK Nike, don’t cry. I could never stay mad at you. Now, how about some free dry-fit gear?

The following is Nike’s official statement:

Nike is announcing today that it recognizes Arien O'Connell as a winner in last weekend's Nike Women's Marathon completing the full race in 2:55:11. She shattered her previous time and achieved an amazing accomplishment.

Arien will receive the same recognition and prize, including a Tiffany & Co. trophy, the full marathon elite group winner received. Arien was unfortunately not immediately recognized as a race winner because she did not start the race with the elite running group, which is required by USATF standards. Because of their earlier start time, the runners in the elite group had no knowledge of the outstanding race Arien was running and could not adjust their strategies accordingly.

Learning from the unique experience in this year's race, Nike has decided today to eliminate the elite running group from future Nike Women's Marathons. Next year, all runners will run in the same group and all will be eligible to win.

Nike has a proven track record of supporting athletes and we're proud to be able to honor Arien and other athletes who surpass their goals and achieve great accomplishments.

The Denver Gorilla Run

Ever since my wife signed me up for the Denver Gorilla Run I’ve been getting e-mails about the plight of gorillas and the things that I can do to help. Isn’t it enough that I dropped 150 bones to run in a gorilla costume and that I’m drawing attention to it by blogging about it? I sure hope so because that’s pretty much all the kind-heartedness that a self-absorbed humanitarian like me can muster. Why can’t it be enough for me to just draw attention to the problems and then hope that others will step up and deal with them? Consider yourselves officially ‘put on notice’ that there are only 723 Mountain Gorillas alive today, now go do something about it. You can start by visiting my donation page and making a donation to save the gorillas. Not only is it tax deductible, but you’d also be helping me out because the person who raises the most money wins a prize, and me winning a prize is the real cause to rally around here.

In these trying times when the value of your home is plummeting and the price of gas is so high it has the munchies, just try to remember that there are gorillas who are less fortunate than you. Sure they don’t have gas to buy, or a mortgage to pay but they’re more endangered than your 401K, although if we’re honest that’s getting closer to being a toss-up. But just think, if every one of my readers gave a dollar then we’d be able to see how many readers I have and find out just how accurate SiteMeter is, and if you don’t want to support the gorillas or help me win the highest fundraiser prize then do it so that we can figure out how accurate SiteMeter is.

Finally, if you can’t afford to donate or just don’t feel like it (you cold, heartless git) then you can help me win the prize for most creative gorilla costume by leaving your suggestions in the comments. Right now, the leader in the clubhouse is “Gorilla Ice” meaning that I would dress up like Vanilla Ice and then do a lot of 90s dance moves, which could be detrimental to my marathon training and possibly devastating to my street cred. It’s your chance to suggest ways for me to further humiliate myself, I expect full participation in the comments.

Friday Inspiration

I received an e-mail a few days ago from Kate who is trying to raise awareness for some volcano race (Mt. Cameroon Race for Hope), and she asked if I’d consider posting about it. Well let me tell you that I was flattered to be considered worthy of such a request, and then I noticed that 21st Century Mom had already posted about it. That means that Kate had e-mailed her about it too, and if she e-mailed 21st Century Mom then she probably e-mailed a lot of running bloggers (show of hands in the comments). I’m not going to lie to you. I was a little hurt. But me being the nice guy that I am, I decided to post about it anyway.

I watched the YouTube, read the article, visited the website and then realized that it was extremely inspirational stuff, the kind of stuff that really doesn’t belong at Half-Fast at all. Normally I like to whine about things, complain about shoes, or generally make fun of people and circumstances, but there will be none of that today. OK, I’m sure there will be some of that, but there will also be a little inspiration mixed in. First, check out the video.



Crazy stuff huh? 50 degree temperature swings, 10,000 foot vertical ascent and descent, loose volcanic rock, and the winners take home the equivalent of 4 years salary. Granted the average salary in Cameroon is probably like $37 but still, it makes your complaining about the conditions that you run in seem a little inconsequential, no? Anyway, you should go and check out the website at http://www.volcanicsprint.com/ and if you want to see the full movie, which is no doubt ten times more motivational than the trailer, then you can buy a copy of the DVD on the site. In fact you should buy a copy of the DVD, if you’re into that kind of motivational, inspirational stuff, which I’m not. I much prefer to sit down and watch a movie that doesn’t make me want to go achieve something great, that doesn’t make me want to get out and run 20 miles. But I imagine some of you might be into something like that.

Me, I prefer to watch your standard Hollywood movie that begins with our hero being the victim of some unnecessary gratuitous violence – it’s what made him the hero that he is today. Then he finds love in the arms of a beautiful woman only to have some romantic misunderstanding that neither of them bothers to even bring up with the other, until disaster strikes! Why, the same villain/evil circumstance that started the movie is now threatening to take away our hero’s true love. Will he be able to overcome the painful childhood memories and save his true love? Or will he run with his tail between his legs? You’ll never guess what happens, so I’ll just tell you. He overcomes! He overcomes! He conquers! And just when he turns to walk away his true love confesses her true love for him! The romantic misunderstanding is solved, and just when you think it couldn’t be any more perfect they cut to the wedding scene or the scene of our hero reading a book to the pregnant belly of his true love.

Or I could watch something original, something true... hmm... tough decision.

Advice for a New Runner

So you’re a beginning runner looking for some sage advice, you’re searching for some tips or guidelines. It’s hardly surprising that your pursuit has led you to Half-Fast as it is widely considered the definitive runner’s how-to. Bookmark the site now as your source for advice, motivation, and training techniques all spilled forth in an honest forthright manner.

Perhaps taking up running was one of your resolutions and you have some questions about races, or training, or running shoes, or how many miles to run, or how many days to run. But stop right there. You're already getting ahead of yourself, let me first give you one universal piece of advice that should be heeded by all new runners: Quit.

That’s right, just quit. Seriously. Just stop before you get addicted. Leave now while you still can. It’s too late for me, heck it’s too late for most of the regulars who read and comment here at Half-Fast, but it’s not too late for you rookie runner with the brand spankin’ new shoes. Save yourself while you still can. You’ll save yourself hundreds of dollars in race fees, technical running gear, cold weather gear, hot weather gear, reflective gear, rain gear not to mention the amount of money you’ll end up spending replacing your running shoes every 400 - 500 miles.

You’ll feel guilty when you skip a run. Your toenails will turn black and fall off, and what’s even worse is that you’ll be happy about it as though it was some sick rite of passage. Your grocery budget will be consumed by gels and Gatorade. You’ll get so obsessive about your mileage, your pace, and your heart rate that you’ll spend hours pouring over your training log. You’ll need to purchase a Garmin (another couple hundred dollars at least) to keep better track of your training runs and to analyze your running in greater depth. People will look at you like you’re crazy because you ARE crazy for thinking about taking up running.

You’ll start reading running blogs, then you’ll start commenting on running blogs, and before you know it you’ll start your own running blog. Your chief worry will be what you’re going to blog about if you don’t run, and you’re going to have to be consistent with your blogging in order to make “blogging running friends.” These folks will be important to you when you keep blowing off your other friends’ invitations to go out for drinks because you have a run scheduled and you’re abstaining from alcohol until after your next race. Oh yeah, and then there’s that whole abstaining from alcohol prior to a race idiocy. Don’t even get me started on that.

You’re thinking “no, it won’t happen to me. I can quit whenever I want to, I won’t fall that deeply into it.” You fool. It already has happened to you. You’re already past the point of no return. Need further proof? You’re still here reading this post aren’t you? Wouldn’t a sensible person have left long ago, somewhere around the missing toenails and the abstaining from alcohol?

Welcome to the club... sucker. Now go start a blog already.

I’m sure that the regulars here can also provide some additional “advice” for you in the comments.

Vote Early Vote Often

One of my very best cyber-friends, Amy Lawson has been nominated for the 2007 Weblog Awards in the category of Funniest Blog. If you've never read Amy's blog then you should go do that, but not until after you've voted. Amy is very funny and as if that wasn't enough she's also a runner. A very fast one. So let's all come together as a running community and help out a fellow runner.

My initial thought when I read about the nomination on her blog was to chuckle and think of creative ways that I could call her a geek. Then I realized that the only thing geekier than pimping your own blog for the Weblog Awards is pimping your cyber-friend's blog for a Weblog Award.

Am I a geek? I guess you could argue that I am, but my devastating good looks and charming wit blow an ozone sized hole in your argument. To vote, simply go to the Weblog Awards Funniest Blog page and scroll down until you see The Lawson's do Dallas in the comments, then click the plus sign in the bottom right hand corner of the comment. You don't have to fill out any personal information and it seriously takes 5 seconds to vote. I know you've got some time to kill because otherwise you wouldn't be here. As an added benefit you can try to guilt Amy into making you a magnet as thanks for your vote.

This is great because it gives me an opportunity to use my 'helping others' tag which makes me feel charitable and not so self-centered. Tomorrow, we'll resume with your normal programming of me talking about me, and my upcoming race, and my training.

Missing Blogger Alert!

On the left side of the Complete Running Network homepage there is a link to a random running blog and I have often suspected that someone actually goes through and picks the 'random' blog to link to. I was recently proved wrong when they linked to a blog ironically named Race to the Finish.

The URL is willifinish.blogspot.com and the author goes only by the name 'Will I Make It?' the answer to both questions would appear to be - NO.

The blog consists of one post that was left back in November of '06 claiming that the author was going to run a marathon and wondering if she could do it. In the single, lonely entry the author asks for YOUR stories, YOUR workouts and YOUR inspirational moments which means that YOU, the running blog readers have failed this poor woman. If in fact she did not achieve her goal then it is YOUR fault dear reader. YOU should be ashamed of yourself!

I wonder whatever happened to this poor young runner? It's like a crossword puzzle that I can't quite figure out, only this time I can't flip to the back and nonchalantly read the upside down answers. I MUST know what happened! If you have any knowledge as to the whereabouts of 'Will I Make it' please post it in the comments. Did she run the marathon? Did she die trying? Did she get up the next day and decide to abandon the blog and the marathon training? Did she enter the witness protection program? Is there something out there that is abducting unsuspecting bloggers? Should I be worried? Will you come back to Half-Fast someday only to find it... abandoned? *shudder*

I would hereby like to officially support Race to the Finish and encourage all my readers to go and leave an encouraging comment on the blog, or even spam the comments with an advertisement as that appears to be OK too.