Bolder Boulder Race Pictures!

You know what’s a good idea for your blog when you don’t feel like writing? Pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Pictures take up more space than words so they make the post seem fuller. Also, they are colorful and shiny and they distract readers with short attention spans. Should you be offended that I just suggested you have a short attention span? Probab... Look PICTURES!!

That guy in green is waving goodbye to me because that’s the last he’d ever see of me.

Sprinting, yes SPRINTING to the finish!

Congratulating the guy that SPRINTED with me.

Candis sprinting to the finish. (Lowercase ‘sprinting’ because she’s not as fast as I am… or as boastful.)



That guy in orange is directly behind Candis in so very many of Candis’s race pictures. Why I oughta’…

There’s also video of me finishing at this link here (6 seconds in, right side of the screen). It must have been slowed down so runners could pick themselves out because I know I was running faster than that, especially at the end when I was SPRINTING. I think it’s pretty cool that they’re showing that video in slo mo.

Closure

We need to talk. I don’t think this blogger/reader relationship is going to work out. I mean, I do all of the work. You guys do nothing. NOTHING! I’m sorry to be so blunt with you, but I really think we should take a break. As it’s been two and a half months since I last posted I’m going to assume that most of you saw this coming.

I really wanted to contact ESPN and have them put on a one hour special where I talked about the process that I went through to come to this decision, but then I remembered that even I’m not that arrogant.

I’m writing this post because I feel like I owe you all an explanation as to why I’m quitting blogging going on hiatus. First of all, I DON’T owe you an explanation, but you certainly deserve one. I simply haven’t felt like writing lately. It’s a short explanation but it’s all you’re getting. I knew that it was time to call it quits when I was recently offered a free pair of expensive, custom-made running shoes in exchange for a review and I thought to myself “yeah, but that would mean I would have to sit down and write something.” Wait a second... I should have used the time I spent to write this farewell post to write about the free shoes! I can’t believe I missed out on free shoes just because I felt guilted into writing this stupid post for YOU people! You all owe me a free pair of shoes!

In all seriousness, thank you all for taking the time to read and comment on my sarcasm riddled ramblings, I am humbled and flattered that so many of you have enjoyed reading what I have to say. I received a tremendous amount of enjoyment from entertaining you and I want to express my thanks to every single one of you by sending you a $5 gift certificate for the Garmin online store. I can’t afford to express my thanks that way, but I want to. Anyway, I don’t honestly believe that I’ll be able to permanently quit blogging so there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll be back at it again at some point in the future. Whether that means a couple of months or a couple of years is anybody’s guess.

I’ve received several dozen offers (read: one) to do guest posts at other running blogs so I may show up elsewhere from time to time and if I ever make a triumphal return to full time blogging I’ll be sure to announce it here at Half-Fast (in the event that I start a different blog) so go ahead and keep Half-Fast in your reader if you want to find me again. Or you could pay attention to any CNN breaking news updates as my return to the blogiverse is sure to be headline news. Or you could follow me on twitter @IanAHunter. I don’t tweet much because I can’t seem to condense my thoughts to 140 characters. I’m just so complex, you see.

Many, many, many thanks to all of you for reading, I simply cannot express how appreciative I am. (Inability to express oneself is always a winning formula for a blog!)

Oh, one last thing, I promise to put up a post if Candis ever beats me in a footrace, since I know that many of you have just been eagerly awaiting that day.

Ian Hunter (the artist formerly known as Vanilla)

An Open Letter to My Neighbors

Dear Neighbors,

As you are no doubt aware we’ve had some snow lately and I couldn’t help but notice on my drive to work this morning that some of your driveways and sidewalks are still unshoveled. This is quite disconcerting as you know that I’m scheduled to run tonight. (I trust that you all received my running schedule in the mail along with the rotation of whose turn it is to provide refreshments.) The temperatures today will be in the mid 40s and it’s expected to be sunny all day. This means that tonight when I embark on my run your sidewalks could be completely dry if you just get out there and shovel them so that they can benefit from eight hours of sunshine. I in return will take down my Christmas lights, or at the very least I’ll stop turning them on every night. Also while you’re out there shoveling your sidewalks it really wouldn’t be too much to ask for someone to shovel my walk too, would it? It would? Well then don’t worry about my sidewalk. It’s more important that your sidewalks get shoveled since they occur in the middle of my run. Those of you with north facing driveways whose houses thoughtlessly block the sun might want to think about putting down some salt and I don’t want to insist that you hook up your wife’s hairdryer to the extension cord but I think that basic human decency necessitates it. That snow’s not going to melt itself.

I write this congenial letter to appeal to you on the basic tenets of human decency, I know you don’t want to see me slip on your icy sidewalk and you definitely don’t want to receive a letter from my sue-happy attorney. Trust me, you don’t want to be on the defendant’s end of a lawsuit when a greedy fat-cat banker such as myself, teams up with an ambulance chasing lawyer. See? Basic. Human. Decency. I’m an expert at it. Try to emulate me.

Sincerely,

Ian (The guy with the Christmas Lights)

Site News: Please note that I have not posted an apology/excuse for not posting over the last few weeks. That’s not because I’m not sorry, although I’m not sorry, you’re sorry! The reason for the lack of an excuse or apology is because there’s a pretty good chance that posts are going to continue to be sporadic at best and if I have to apologize every time I’m gone for a week or two it’s going to get tiresome for me to type and for you to read, but most importantly for me to type. I think we’ve already established that I don’t care about you people. (Seriously, thanks for coming back and still reading.) Anyway, you’re just going to have to put up with my sporadicity sporadicness sporadicality sporadicism sporadicity as work has been consuming a lot of my time lately (like, easily 30 to 34 hours a week) and I covet the time I get to spend with my family (sometimes I even pause the TV and pay attention to them) so I don’t want to spend that time writing blog posts. Also, I think it’s funny that you would ask me where I’ve been when it’s been quite obvious (I have Google Analytics) that over the past few weeks you yourselves have not been coming here. Where have I been? No, where have YOU been?

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.

Site News

Those of you that actually visit Half-Fast, as opposed to the lazy ones who just view the feed on their reader (totally how I read most of your blogs by the way), may notice some changes. Or you may not, depending on how observant you are, which I would guesstimate to be somewhere between ‘not very’ and ‘huh?’ based on you returning here seemingly oblivious to my continual insults. Anyway, since you are no doubt confused and your head is spinning from having read multi-clause sentences that included parentheticals, I’ll explain. The banner image is different, which is nice because it no longer features a stolen part of someone else’s copyrighted image. Now I can put it on t-shirts and market it without being fearful of a lawsuit and you can all buy the shirts to show your subservience love of this fine site that occasionally, but lovingly, mocks your total ineptitude and complete lack of anything resembling common sense. Emphasis on the word lovingly.

I’ve also made some other changes around here. I tried to make it a little cleaner, to simplify the look a little so that your raisin-sized brains don’t get so easily confused. There are a whole multitude of little changes that you probably won’t even notice, for example I changed the font, I removed a lot of grey (because it was depressing), I changed some borders, and most notably I’ve stopped hiding my contempt for you saps.

If you notice any glitches or errors then please feel free to let me know about them in the comments, but make sure that it’s actually a glitch and not something that you’re doing wrong because that seems much more likely doesn’t it? I mean, I was already wrong once this month so the odds are against it happening again.

P.S. Please come back again tomorrow.

Stretching

I’m just going to come right out and say it: I don’t stretch. Ever. I don’t stretch before my runs, I don’t stretch after my runs, and I most certainly don’t stretch during my runs. OK, occasionally I’ll do this after a long run, but not for a significant amount of time and I’m not sure that it counts as stretching.

I used to stretch all the time before I went running but then I read somewhere that it could be harmful to stretch cold muscles and that was pretty much all the excuse I needed to stop. (Stretching not reading.) I know that I should stretch and sometimes I even tell myself that I’m going to stretch after my run but it never happens. When I run in the morning I find myself with no time to stretch because I have to go to work. When I run in the evening I have no time to stretch because dinner is often ready when I get home (not complaining about that by the way). When I run on the weekend I have no time to stretch because there’s always something more appealing that I need to do when I get home, like poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick.

I guess I find it hard to make the time to stretch because I’ve never experienced any downside to not stretching. Am I the only runner who is like this? Surely there are some of you out there who never stretch, right? Those of you who do stretch with the regularity of a food critic working his way through the Mexican genre are invited to let me know in the comments why I should stretch. Who knows, maybe something you say will cause me to start stretching, and I’m talking about real stretching not the typical stretch and yawn reaction that your comments so often produce.

Don’t forget this is the last day to get a comment in for the Pearl Izumi giveaway. I’ll announce the winner tomorrow!

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

Weekend Splits

Weekend Splits is my recap of things that I found interesting or humorous over the past week. If you have a submission for the weekend splits e-mail me.

I’m going to keep this short like my runs (lately) and your attention spans. It occurred to me recently that I rarely feature any of the blogs that I have listed over there --> in the Half-Fast Recommends section in my Weekend Splits post. I guess that’s because I assume that you all read those blogs anyway, which probably isn’t the case given your short attention spans. Anyway, if I included every good post from each of those blogs, the Weekend Splits would just be overrun by links to Amy Lawson, Viper, Nitmos, J-Money, and the rest of them. Be sure to check them all out regularly, in the meantime check out the links below.

• Reid is hosting a 1 Mile Virtual Race on September 6th. I have another race that day, but I may try and do it anyway. 1 mile couldn’t hurt, right?
  
• Jamoosh gives us his Olympic wrap-up including which sports need to quit the Olympics. Try and guess if the trampoline is one of them.
  
• If you’re missing the Olympics, Steve has some ideas to help you get over them, but you’re going to need a feral cat.
  
• Jeanne writes a letter to running. It sums up how I’ve felt about my runs this past week very nicely.

Comments of the Week

Adam on the Half-Fast Sighting post: I understand if you’re chased by a NASCAR fan you can make a successful escape simply by turning right. It confounds them every time.
RazZDoodle, in reference to the bird porn people: Donald Duck Does Dallas!
Xenia: And the bird porn lady... I think she should be more concerned with squirrel porn. Have you seen the size of their nuts?
Nitmos, in reference to Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney’s duet: I think you have it wrong. I believe MJ said: “McCauley, I think I told you, I’m a lover not a fighter.”

Excellent work all around. You guys crack me up!

Random Non-Running Related Video of the Week
Whenever I don’t know what to post for a video in the Weekend Splits I go rummage through the recent posts over at With Leather. Those guys are always good for a skateboarder doing something stupid that we can all laugh at. This one’s a little different though because the stupidity starts before the guy even gets on his skateboard and ends up preventing him from doing his trick. It’s a shame, because I would have loved to see a skateboarder with his pants on fire skateboarding down a rock of fire... uh-oh. I hope I didn’t just give away what’s going to happen. (Video Contains Strong Language)


Have a great weekend everyone. It’s Labor Day here in the US on Monday so you’ll have to live without my wit and wisdom until Tuesday. It will be tough, but I’m confident most of you will pull through.

Video Friday

I got nothing today. Zip, zero, zilch, nada. I find that the best thing to do when you don’t know what to post on your blog is to steal something from someone else’s blog or find a video to post. Video’s are great because the bright, moving images on the screen distract the gormless readers from the fact that you really haven’t written anything of substance, not that I ever write anything of substance. Today I’m stealing a video from another blog which makes me doubly awesome, and doubly lazy too (it’s a double double). I found the following video posted over at FitnessFixation.com, one of Kelly’s readers sent it to her. Man, it would be nice to have cool readers like that. Maybe if I stopped insulting my readers... nah... that can’t be it.

Anyway, the video goes over the basics of proper running attire and I think we can all learn something from it.



The next video was sent to me by Candis (my ever-supportive wife), who has posting privileges here at Half-Fast so I’m not sure why she didn’t just post the video herself. Seriously honey, I thought we already established that I’m the lazy half of this marital union. Candis, you might remember is training for her first sprint triathlon. I think that she’s trying to scare herself looking at videos like this.



Those of you who can’t view the videos because your workplace doesn’t allow them (ahem), are probably wishing that I was as considerate as Xenia. But I’m not. Have a great weekend everyone.

Site News: Duplicate Posts

For those of you who read Half-Fast via a reader or some version of the feed please pay attention to this special alert. Some of the content for the tabs on Half-Fast has been hosted on another blog and is being moved over to the main blog this weekend. While this content will not show up on the front page due to the magic of back-dating you will probably receive these items in your feed reader.

For those of you who don’t subscribe to the feed (jerks!) you will not notice anything out of the ordinary except for my angry glare through the computer at you, and my withholding of affection. In fact your time spent reading this Site News post is completely wasted. Leave now and don’t come back until you’re ready to show Half-Fast some commitment by way of subscribing to the feed!

The rest of you subscribers are probably going to come into the office on Monday and find some new posts on your reader that are not showing up on the front page of the blog. At first you’ll be confused but then the light will break through the weekend haze and you’ll remember that you read this Site News post about how this might happen. You’ll read the posts anyway and think that they are astoundingly brilliant and delightful if not a little familiar sounding. Of course if you didn’t get to this Site News post until Monday morning after all the duplicate posts, then your quizzical, head-tilting expression will only now be evaporating from your beautiful faces. You look so cute when you’re confused, which is fortunate because it happens ALL THE TIME.