The Curious Case of Cyclists

I’m back from my two week blog sabbatical and today I want to try to formulate my opinion on those spandex-loving, pedal pushers that we call cyclists. You know what they say about opinions; they’re like A-holes, everyone has one but mine’s the only one that doesn’t stink. Coincidentally cyclists are sometimes like A-holes too. Sometimes. When I started running I was one of those annoying people who waved at everyone else on the path; runners, cyclists, rollerbladers, dog walkers, squirrels and speed-walkers. If you were out there exercising then we were kindred spirits and I figured the decent human thing to do was to acknowledge each other. Can you guess which of the aforementioned groups proved to be least likely to return my smiling head nod? If you answered ‘squirrels’ you’re absolutely right, but cyclists were only slightly behind them, scientifically proving that cyclists are only slightly smarter than squirrels.

Now I’m pretty sure that I have some cyclists that read Half-Fast (at least I did until I wrote that first paragraph) and I know I have some triathletes who visit, my wife for one, so please hear me out before you go getting all offended or leaving me nasty comments or putting my pillow and some blankets on the couch. This past week I had the misfortune of being accused by a cyclist of being a ‘douchebag’ and showing signs of ‘douchetardation’ in my very own comments section, which is annoying because I thought ‘douchetardation’ was pretty funny. Anyway, I’m probably projecting my displeasure at that one cyclist onto all cyclists which is a lot of fun for me, but completely unfair to cyclists in general. I hear that painting people with a broad brush and creating stereotypes is not a nice thing to do and can apparently be quite insulting, not to mention that it could lead to me being wrong about something which would be a travesty. Just as there are a few runners who are idiots (I can think of at least three), I’m sure that there are only a few cyclists who are idiots and the rest are probably nice people. For example, I bet all of you reading this are of the nice variety (read: please don’t be mean in the comments, I’m a crier).

Still, there’s a part of me (the part of me that sucks at cycling) that wonders if there really are nice cyclists out there. Take the Fat Cyclist for instance, on the one hand he is a cyclist and a law-breaker. On the other hand he has a blog that’s well worth reading, a writing style that I find quite similar to my own (i.e. plenty of baseless braggadocio and sarcasm except immeasurably better all-around) and he has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity which would indicate that he’s a nice person. It’s so confusing. Could it be that cyclists are people too? Can it be that they deserve equal rights, even equal access to the roads? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they do because I’m a forward thinker like that. Cyclists, you’re OK in my book. I can imagine what a sense of relief you’re feeling knowing that you have my approval, but there’s no need to thank me.

So go ahead fellow runners, add a cyclist to your reader. You’ll feel good about having some diversity in your reader and you’ll realize that there’s more to life than running.

Liv Tyler is Running

I love it when I get to post pictures of hot, relevant celebrities out running, but since there haven’t been any lately, I’m going to do a post about Liv Tyler running. Get it? I’m implying that she’s not hot or relevant! Ooooh, I hope she doesn’t read Half-Fast because that one’s going to STING for a little while! That’s Liv Tyler pictured over there on the right, looking sexy and not running because looking sexy while running is a feat that only a few of us can pull off, (see image below for further evidence). Also, looking sexy for Liv Tyler is a relative term because you need to take into consideration that she got a little less than half of her genes from this guy.

The image below is Liv out running in Brentwood, CA with her personal trainer. I seem to remember that she was recently divorced or separated from her husband, and if I wasn’t so lazy did any research for my posts at this site at all I could probably tell you for certain. My point though, is that she’s no longer with her husband and here she is out jogging with some guy who’s a personal trainer (is that what we’re calling them these days?). In Hollywood I’m pretty sure that this means they’re sleeping together so I’ll bet that those are the current rumors making the rounds. If those rumors weren’t already out there, then they probably are now thanks to my irresponsible assumptions.

As always you can click on the images to enlarge the pictures. From what I can tell Liv is running in a cotton shirt that could double as a motorcycle cover for my Harley. I don’t actually have a Harley because they are dangerous and they scare me, but the joke doesn’t work if I take the time to explain all of that to you... oh... right... I see what I did wrong there.

Didn’t her ears used to be more pointy or something?

[Source: The Skinny Website]