More Podcast Goodness

The latest issue of Banned on the Run is ready for your ears to consume, unfortunately your ears are probably not ready for the latest installment of Banned on the Run.

In this episode we discuss a lot of things that are not even remotely related to running, so basically it’s just like every other episode. However, the short amount of time that we do spend talking about running is actually very beneficial as we discuss the variables of VO2 max, the ramifications of over pronation versus supination, and how to apply the Pythagorean Theorem to running. And if you believe all that then I’ve got some ocean front property here in Colorado that I’d like to sell you.

You can always find a link to the latest episode in the sidebar to your right. *Makes flight attendant motion to right.* We know that there are many different podcasts out there that you can choose from and we thank you for selecting Banned on the Run for your listening enjoyment. Your Captain today is Raz (blame him for any editing mistakes) and he is joined by me and Amy. Nitmos was unable to be with us on this podcast and his peculiar brand of humor was greatly missed. Don’t let that stop you from downloading the podcast though because we made up for it by repeatedly taking cheap shots at him and I was lying about his humor being missed. It was kind of like that whole idea of addition by subtraction which, I think, is what the Pythagorean Theorem is all about.

Have a great weekend everyone.

The Podcasts Just Keep On Coming

Good news for all you aficionados of stilted conversation and awkward silences, the latest Banned on the Run podcast is up. Actually, I think we’ve found the secret to making the podcast funny, informative and useful. We just invite someone funny, informative and useful to be on the podcast with us. Ta-da! Quality podcasting ensues. In this most recent podcast we spoke with Kristina, the über-talented writer from Marathon Mama, about her recent run-about in Australia. We even accomplished the entire podcast without any of us attempting a cheesy Australian accent or a lame “throw another shrimp on the barbie” quote which shows remarkable restraint on our part. During the podcast we ask Kristina a few of the questions that you probably wanted answered as well as a lot of the ones that you didn’t really care about. We’re good interviewers!

I’m joined by these three bloggers as we discuss some things that are only loosely tied to running, because if we didn’t it wouldn’t be a Banned on the Run podcast. Anyway, you should go download it right now because Kristina was funny, informative and useful despite our attempts to interrupt and talk over her. Also you should give it a 5 star rating before you listen to it, because you certainly aren’t going to rate it that highly if you listen to it first.

The New Podcast is Up

Which is to say that it is available for download and has been posted at our podcast site. I should probably have a permanent link to the podcast site somewhere on the right side of this blog and get into the whole spirit of promoting it. I’ll eventually get around to that and maybe I’ll even take the time to figure out the embeddable player. The thing that I don’t get about the embeddable player is how it... THEY’RE NOT CARGO SHORTS!!!!!! I’m sorry for that outburst, I just can’t go on pretending that things are OK between us after your mockery of my race wardrobe yesterday. You all owe me an apology and a hug. I don’t wear cargo shorts when I run. I make fun of people who wear cargo shorts when they run (see here). These are the same shorts I’m wearing in this picture, which no one had a problem with at the time... in fact... that’s the same shirt and hat too, even though that was taken almost 2 years ago... hmmm... could it be that it’s time to update my wardrobe? No, the hat stays but maybe I should update the lucky blue race shirt (which has clearly lost its mojo) and the shorts (but not because they’re cargo shorts just because they’re old).

Where was I? Oh yes, the podcast. One of the searches that led to Half-Fast this past week was ‘half fast podcast’ but let me be clear that it’s not the Half-Fast podcast. (I know this because there is no Half-Fast podcast.) It’s merely the podcast that I, the author of Half-Fast, participate in. Sure, I may be the most blindingly attractive of the participants (it used to be Amy, but she went and got knocked up and fat and stuff) but it’s not my podcast and the other members of the team deserve equal recognition, actually probably more recognition. So once again thank you to Amy, Nitmos, and Raz who did their best to make me sound funny and whom I feel weird about referring to by their screen names since we all call each other by our given names when we do the ‘cast.

This week on the Banned on the Run we interview John from Hella Sound about the running music that he records. John has been kind enough to supply us with some original music for the podcast intro and outro (is that a word) which means we don’t have to steal stuff or resort to music that is so crappy that no one wants to copyright it. Thanks John! Anyway, if you don’t want to listen to the podcast I strongly encourage you to go check out John’s site at www.hellasound.com. John records original music for runners, synced to your individual pace to help you through your run, and if you’re like me, you can use all help you can get.

Enjoy the weekend everyone!

You know what your long run needs?

You know what would make the miles just melt away on your long run this weekend? A hilarious running podcast to listen to, but in the event that you can’t find one you could always listen to the latest episode of Banned on the Run. It’s full of awkward silences that will make you think that your iPod battery has died and will also totally throw off your pace. You don’t have to thank us, we do it for the joy we get out of it.

From your comments on yesterday’s post I gather that no one wants to listen to me whine and complain about running in the heat, and if that’s the case then you’re not going to like what’s coming. I went out yesterday for a 6 miler in the devastating heat (read: 82 degrees with very little humidity) and I was sweating like a pig in a synagogue. It was almost hot enough to make me long for the snow and wind that I complained bitterly about during the winter months. Almost. I managed to stick to a route that is mostly in the shade but it was easily 70 degrees in the shade and that slight breeze in my face wasn’t helping my pace. I tell you guys, it’s hard running here in Colorado in the summer months; I could barely even see the mountains with the glare from the sun in my face! But I struggled through it because I know that some of you look to me for inspiration. So next time you think that you’ve got it rough or that the conditions won’t permit you to run I want you to think back to me running 6 (six!) miles on a shady path, with mountain views and little to no humidity. Perhaps you’ll be able to turn those feelings of envy and hatred into determination and go run in any conditions.

Guess Who’s Back

As part of my constant striving to improve the Half-Fast brand and my dedication to bringing my inanity to a wider audience I am pleased to announce that the Podcast is BACK!

... back again,
Podcast’s back, tell a friend,
Guess who’s back guess who’s back
Guess who’s back guess who’s back...

Yes, it went away for a little while and I think there may still be a few bootleg copies of the last podcast floating around the internet but it’s back! Not only is it back but it has its own blog and a new name: Banned on the Run. Head on over and check it out. You can subscribe to the RSS feed, listen to the podcast on the site or download it to iTunes.

The first episode is mostly the 4 of us (Amy, Raz, Nitmos and myself) catching up and discussing our running as of late. We also manage to cover the appropriate way to volunteer for a race, Valerie Bertinelli, and pregnant running since Amy is pregnant (congrats to Amy by the way). Also you get to witness a few mood swings during the podcast but we’ve asked Nitmos to try to avoid that on future episodes.

Please note: The views and opinions expressed within the podcast do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of this blog, even when it sounds like it was me that was expressing them. Any complaints regarding the podcast should be directed at Amy since it was probably her fault, technical questions should be directed to Raz, snubs and shunning should be directed at Nitmos and any praise, adulation, reverence and exaltation should be directed at me.

Streak Update
I’m 22 for 22 as of last night, but I can’t wait for this month to be over. My groin injury has been giving me problems on and off during the month and I really think it could use a day or two off and probably some RCE (that’s R.I.C.E without the I, you keep that ice pack away from my groin). I originally mentioned that I wanted to see how fast I could run a mile and I still do, but thus far I haven’t gone all out on any of my 1 mile days. I’ve taken them pretty easy because they are supposed to be rest days and my legs have been feeling pretty hammered. Remind me again why I’m doing this?

Built for Speed

Lately, I am obsessed with the McMillan Running Calculator. Not with the video that auto-plays when you go there, don’t they realize that I’m at work and their loud video gives away the fact that I’m not working? Why not just send an e-mail to my boss of my daily internet history and instructions on the best way to fire someone. It’s a good thing companies can’t really track internet usage among employees, right? Right?

If you’re not familiar with the McMillan Running Calculator, it is a tool that allows you to plug in a recent race time and then tells you what your training pace should be for your long runs, tempo runs, intervals etc. But the really cool thing about it is that it also estimates what your race times should be at other distances. This is the part that I’m obsessed with. I like to go over there, plug in my PRs and compare how they stack up against each other. In my case, the shorter distances (5K, 10K) always project out to faster finishing times than I’ve been capable of at the longer distances (13.1, 26.2). Granted this could be a glitch in the formula that McMillan uses but I prefer to think that it means I’m built for speed.

If any of you use McMillan, I’d be interested to find out if your results skew towards the shorter distances or if I am (as I suspect) just a speedy guy over shorter distances. If you are looking to waste some time in the office today or if you are looking for a way to delay your run and procrastinate you should totally head over to McMillan. Of course the number one recommended way to waste time in the office today is to watch the NCAA tourney online, I heard they were streaming the games free today.

The one thing that has always bothered me about my predicted race times from McMillan was that it claimed that my time for the 100 meter dash would be 20 - 21 seconds. That was way too slow for my liking, but it’s been pretty close on predicting my other times so I just figured I was slower than I thought. However, earlier this week I was back at the track for my weekly abuse and after I was done with my intervals (or after Intervals was done with me) I decided to run a 100m sprint, just to see how I fared. 15.7 seconds! Suck it McMillan! Plus, this was after I had finished my intervals so my legs weren’t entirely fresh. I figure if I did the 100m with fresh legs I could shave off another 5 - 6 seconds. Yeah, 9.7 sounds about right.

For the record, a 15 second 100m time in McMillan translates to a 2:51:56 marathon time. Wow, I really underperformed in the Arizona Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon (4:31:06).

I’m off to watch some free online basketball. (Update: Free on NCAA.com. You’re welcome!)

Podcast
Be sure to check out the new Laugh Tracks podcast featuring me, Amy, Nitmos, Raz, and guest starring the ridiculously talented J-Money. Apparently, we ruffled some feathers with this one, and when I say ‘we’ I mean Amy. Nice going Amy.

You’ve Got Questions...

... We’ve got answers. We are going to be recording another edition of the Laugh Tracks podcast for Runners’ Lounge on Monday evening. We’ve been tinkering with the format of the podcast, which is to say that going forward we hope that the podcast will follow some kind of format, and one of the sections that we hope to feature on a regular basis is a section where we answer your questions. So if you have any running related questions or if you have any questions about anything at all then please leave them in the comments at one of our blogs and we’ll try to answer some of them on the podcast. We’ll even try to pimp your blog if we answer your question so you might get an extra hit or two over the course of the week.

Nitmos, who is on sabbatical from blogging, has even said that he might try to make an appearance on the podcast so I apologize for that in advance. Amy, Razz, and I will round out the panel of experts that will be answering your questions and we guarantee that we cannot be stumped and nothing is off limits. I’m totally making this all up as I type this post but I’m sure those guys will back me up on these guarantees.

Free Giveaway!
Be sure to come back to Half-Fast on Monday as I’ll be hosting another free giveaway that’s open to anyone and everyone! You may have noticed that I don’t often do giveaways and when I do hold a giveaway, they’re not the cheap, crappy giveaways that you see on some blogs; offering you a chance to win a bottle of water or a set of 4 safety pins for your next race. (Disclaimer: I’m not thinking of any blogs specifically with this statement, if you recently gave away a set of 4 safety pins or a bottle of water on your blog I thought it was totally cool and I was super bummed that I didn’t win!) I’m not going to tell you what I’m giving away on Monday because I get off on being withholding, but I will say that the dollar value of the prize is probably somewhere in the region of $120, and no it’s not a vial of sweet Vanilla sweat. That retails way north of $300.

Leave a question in the comments or else I won’t be sharing my Valentines conversation hearts with you, not even the yucky wintergreen ones.

Battle of the Sexes

The latest Runners’ Lounge podcast has been released featuring yours truly, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it’s the best one that I’ve been a part of. The podcast features Amy Lawson, Razz, myself, and guest stars Marcy and Xenia joined us this week too. Nitmos was nowhere to be seen heard because he “forgot” that we were recording a podcast that night, but I think we all know that he just couldn’t bear the thought of missing The Hills. We managed just fine without him and while I don’t want to say that he’s completely useless, I will tell you that we’ve all nicknamed him ‘T-Rex Forearms’ behind his back. Many thanks go out to Amy and Tom at Runner’s Lounge for continuing to host the podcast and also to Razz, who has to edit out all of the dead air and then append disclaimers for Amy’s foul language, which is more colorful than Craig Sager’s wardrobe.

As indicated by the title of the post, this week’s Podcast was a Battle of the Sexes quiz in which the ladies asked the guys questions and vice versa. There was a lot of confusion surrounding the scorekeeping *cough - Amy cheats - cough* but I won’t ruin it for you by telling you which side wins. Initially I thought it was going to be a Battle of the Sexiness, but that didn’t make sense since I’d have won that without breaking a sweat. *flexes at monitor*

Anyway, if you’re looking for something motivating that you can listen to while you’re running, well perhaps you should check out Phedippidations, but if you just want to listen to a bunch of immature runners laugh hysterically at grade school level humor then this is the podcast for you! Be sure to leave comments letting us know what you like, what you’d like to see in the future and even what you dislike (leave the dislike comments over at Razz’s blog though, because I don’t like your negative attitude).

Runner’s Loungecast - Show Notes

Download Podcast: Laugh Tracks - Game On!

You can also find the podcast on iTunes.

Fashion Statement

Despite what you witnessed in the previous post, Vanilla is the height of all fashion. The image you see above is a trendy boutique near the Spanish Steps in Rome, not the Rome in Georgia, the one in Italy. It makes me wonder what the Spanish Steps are doing in Italy, do the Spanish people know that their steps are in Rome? And is Spanish similar enough to Italian for the steps to even understand the people there? Are the steps bilingual? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. No doubt these are questions that philosophers have pondered ad infinitum (Latin!) over the centuries. These pictures come from Xenia the Warrior Princess who, rumor has it, pondered the answers to the above questions while running the Spanish Steps in Rocky-esque fashion. From the horse’s mouth (though I’m sure Xenia’s mouth looks nothing like a horse’s):

I was wandering around Rome yesterday and came across your eponymous shop near the Spanish Steps.

Is this where you're marketing your new line of sexy shorts? ;)

Eponymous: adjective - A name, as of a people, country, and the like, derived from that of an individual.

If I had to go look it up then I think we can all agree that you guys were going to have to go look it up too. Man, I hate people that are smarter than me and try to prove it by using sesquipedalian words.

Podcast
Amy, Nitmos, Raz and I are going to be recording another Podcast sometime over the coming week and being that we’re a group of unimaginative mouth-breathers (speaking primarily for Nitmos and Raz here) we’d like to ask for your input. If you have any topics you’d like to hear us discuss, or if you have any questions that you’d like us to answer for you then please leave them in the comments or e-mail them to me and I’ll pass them on to the others. Please don’t be offended if we don’t select your question to answer, it’s not necessarily because your question sucked, it may just be because you’re fat and ugly and don’t deserve to have your question addressed by 3 beautiful people and an idiot on a podcast. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out who the idiot is, but I think it’s obvious.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was going to use today’s post to list things that I’m thankful for like friends, family and blog readers, but that’s not funny. It’s not funny at all. Also I’m not about to give thanks for a bunch of readers have taken it upon themselves to place bets in my comments section on what my knee injury is. Jerkfaces! Then I thought that I could make a sarcastic list of things that I was thankful for, but I did that last year so this year I’m just going to remind you that when you post your list of things that you’re thankful for, you had better include Half-Fast on your list. I tirelessly work my fingers to the bone for you people and you never remember to thank me for it! Would it kill you to tell me those 3 little words I’ve been longing to hear? Does it even occur to you that maybe I need to hear you say it every once and a while?

While you’re busy thanking me, don’t forget to also thank Amy, Nitmos, RazZDoodle, and the Runners’ Lounge for putting together a quality podcast for you to listen to over Thanksgiving. Seriously, download it today and then tomorrow when you think you can’t take one more story about how advanced your cousin’s illegitimate 7 month old is, just pop in your headphones and listen to the podcast. It will be 45 minutes of bliss compared to your family get togethers. Actually, I should mention that throughout the call there was this intermittent screeching noise in the background. I thought that Raz would remove it in editing, but it turns out that the annoying screeching noise was actually Nitmos talking. Even taking into account the cacophony that is Nitmos voice, it’s still going to be better than spending time with your family and having to explain to your mother why you just couldn’t make it work with that nice young lawyer even though he was cheating on you with a 17 year old and had no discernable soul.

We had a lot of fun recording the podcast, and I hope that you’ll have just as much fun listening to it. You can read the show notes and download the episode at Runners’ Lounge or at Running Off at the Mind.

Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!
-Oh and by the way, I’m totally kidding about that betting on my injury thing. Get your guess in before Monday and we’ll see who’s the closest.

Download Podcast

Monday Miscellany

Knee Problems Persist It turns out that my knee issue wasn’t just a one time, random occurrence as I had hoped. My long run on Saturday was abruptly ended at 14 miles when the pain in my knee became debilitating. Candis doesn’t think that I should run until the pain reaches the point where I would describe it as ‘debilitating’ but what would she know. On the plus side I made it 9 miles further this week before crashing to the ground in crippling pain. If that trend continues I’ll be able to run 23 miles next weekend before the pain kicks in. On the minus side, the pain was a lot worse this time and lasted a lot longer despite breaking open the Advil Liqui-Gels and mainlining that stuff right into my bloodstream.

I could really use some good advice here, and who better to turn to for advice than a group of pseudonymed commenters who seem to enjoy juvenile humor and sarcasm on a running blog. I’m toying with the idea of taking 2 weeks off from running to try and recover fully and then resuming my training. I have only 7 weeks left before the marathon so that would leave me 3 weeks to get ready for it and 2 weeks to taper. I’m really not ready to give up on it yet, but that won’t matter if my knee doesn’t heal up. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll let you know tomorrow who was closest to what a real doctor says, since I have an appointment with one this afternoon. Yeah, that’s how bad it is, I actually made an appointment to go see a doctor.

Podcasting You are probably already aware that the Runner’s Lounge has been putting together some really good podcasts lately. What you might not be aware of is that I was involved in one that was recorded last week. Amy Lawson, Nitmos and I joined RazZDoodle to record our first podcast. Well, it was a first for all of us except Raz, but he certainly performed as though it was his first. The podcast will be available on Wednesday and I’ll no doubt provide a link to it when it’s up, but let’s face it, the title Half-Fast doesn’t just apply to my running but also to my expediency in getting posts up at this wonderful little blog. If you’re really desperate to get your hands on the podcast the second it goes live then you’re better off checking Runner’s Lounge or Running Off at the Mind (Raz’s blog). Whatever you do, don’t miss it because we tackled many of the hard hitting issues that runners face, things like llamas, Fergie, and how to best let your coworkers know that you’re a runner. A couple of days after we recorded the podcast I found the following video at EverymanTri which is another funny way to let your coworkers know that you’re a runner, but not quite as funny or as good as our suggestions in the podcast. Enjoy.

“Think like an athlete...”