Weekend Splits - Michael Phelps Edition!

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.

You might think it’s weird that Paraguayan Olympic Javelinist, Leryn Franco graces this edition of the Michael Phelps Weekend Splits instead of a picture of Michael Phelps. If it’s a picture of Michael Phelps that you’re after then perhaps you could visit, oh I don’t know, one of the thousand or so running blogs written by women this past week that featured pictures of him low-ridin’ his $750 speedos. I’m just trying to level the playing field and give the ladies equal time by posting some pictures of our female Olympians. I’m nothing if I’m not about women’s rights and equality. Half-Fast is proud to be an EEO (Equal Opportunity Oggler). On to the links, there are 8 of them, one for each gold medal that Mighty Michael Phelps will drape from his alabaster neck.

1. I had a post go up at CRN about the latest new craze in Beverly Hills; running tours aimed at seeing celebrities.
2. Chuckie V gives you the Top 7 Reasons to Watch the Olympics. Hint: More pictures of hot Olympic athletes.
3. An article went up this week on the Phat Phree that gives a guys perspective on Hot Yoga (Bikram?). It was doubtful that I was ever going to do hot yoga before I read the article, but now I’m never going to do it.
4. In the spirit of the original Olympians competing naked, FitnessFixation.com lists the 5 best and 5 worst sports to compete in while wearing your birthday suit.
5. According to RW Daily, Mighty Michael Phelps is competing in another event before the end of the Olympics.
6. Cranky Runner gives us a behind the scenes look at NBC’s coverage of Mighty Michael Phelps. NBC: All Phelps, all the time.
7. Kristina gives us 8 ways to run greener, presumably as an honor to Mighty Michael Phelps' 8 gold medals.
8. Kyle takes a look at the Mighty Michael Phelps goggle incident. Personally I think it was a cunning assault on democracy, planned by Red China to take down Mighty Michael Phelps. This is nothing less than an ACT OF WAR!!!!!!!

Random Non-Running Related Video of the Week
What Phelps has done over the last week has been simply incredible, superhuman even. The most exciting race was the 4x100m Freestyle relay, and you’ve probably seen it a hundred times but it’s worth another look. YouTube videos of the Olympics have been disappearing faster than mob informants but this one is hosted elsewhere so I’m hoping it sticks around.

The worst part about that video is that it’s not the whole race and it doesn’t do justice to the faces of the French team after they realized they’d lost. Suck it France!

Video and images of Leryn Franco from With Leather.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Off Track: It's Fantasy Football Time!

Every now and then I get the urge to post something that isn’t running related whatsoever and I always usually just trash it because this is a running blog. However, I’ve decided that it’s my blog and if I want to write about something that’s not running related then that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll be using the new Off Track tag for these kind of posts. Get it? Off Track can mean not pertaining to the usual subject matter or it can mean not on the track, as in track and field. It’s a really funny pun! You might even say that it’s punny. (Punny! Ha! Another one, I am just on fi-yah with the jokes today!) These Off Track posts won’t happen very often, but today I’m going to talk about fantasy football.

I love fantasy football. Does that make me a geek? Perhaps, but no more than having a blog does so I’m OK with it. At the very least, I don’t cry myself to sleep about it anymore. Anyway, I decided to give you all a chance to get beaten by me in Fantasy Football and have started a league that you’re all invited to be a part of. Candis is also in the league which means there are 10 open spots left. Details below:

Who can join? Anyone. Lurkers, regular readers, first time visitors, non-runners, fantasy football virgins, seriously anyone, I don’t care.
How much does it cost? It’s free, hosted by CBS Sports.
How do I sign up? Click this sign up link and then enter the password. If that doesn’t work search for the Half-Fast Fantasy Football private league on CBS Sports.
What’s the password? bloody nippl (I was going for ‘bloody nipples’ but it cut off the ‘es’ just to be difficult.)
When is the draft? The live online draft will be held Thursday, August 28th at 9:15PM Eastern Time.

I have no idea how quickly this league will fill up or if it will even fill up at all, if it doesn’t fill up then I’ll try to open it up to the general public so that we have enough teams and then resume crying myself to sleep at night. There are no prizes for first place except the pride that will swell up in your loins which may or may not make you a faster runner (the safe money's on not).

I’m so excited for football season to start and for my productivity at the office to take a nose dive. Let me give you a little peek at what consumes my days during football season, or more specifically, fantasy football season.

- Monday is for checking the scores from the weekend’s games and figuring out what needs to happen in the Monday Night Football game. I need 4 TDs from Colts’ tight end Dallas Clark, but I need someone other than Peyton Manning to throw them to him. This can happen right?
- Tuesday is for checking out which free agents are available and submitting waiver claims for them. Kicker Rob Bironas kicked 8 field goals in one game? I must have him, he’s going to do that every week, no?
- Wednesday is for discovering which players I received from the waiver wire and checking out which players other teams dropped.
- Thursday is when I begin checking my player’s match-ups to see who’s playing a tough defense and who’s playing the Lions. Thursday is also the day that teams release their official injury lists. Tom Brady is listed as ‘probable’ oh no! Is that Belichick being disingenuous or am I really stuck starting Kyle Orton this week?
- Friday is when I set my lineup for the coming weekend’s games. Friday is also a good day for reading the fantasy analysis websites and articles and second guessing myself into losses.

As you can see, it is a time consuming endeavor, especially when you add in all of the running and blogging that I’ll be doing as well. My boss is going to have to ease up on the workload over the next 5 months if we’re going to make this whole employer/employee relationship work.

Battle

At 6:45am I boarded the big yellow school bus that would shuttle me to the start of the race, and took the first open seat I saw. I knew that the bus would fill up and was expecting to be joined on the brown, vinyl seat by a fellow runner, I did not expect the battle of wits that was about to catch me unawares. She sat down next to me and offered a smile. I returned the gesture and then out of a habit formed in high school resumed my empty gaze at the back of the seat in front of me.

Once all of the runners had streamed onto the bus the doors closed and we were off, driving up the road that we would all shortly be running back down. I imagined that the driver was wondering why he was driving us 13.1 miles away from our cars so that we could run back to them, he must have felt the same way the pilot of a plane full of skydivers does. As we headed up the hill the woman next to me smiled at me again and took a deep breath as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.

Sitting there in awkward silence, it occurred to me that she was trying to be polite and start a conversation, maybe even hoping that I would start the conversation. She was a fellow runner and I didn’t want to appear rude so I began racking my brain for something to say to her. The longer we stewed in our unwieldy silence, the cleverer my comment would have to be. I didn’t want to be cliché and talk about the weather, I wanted to say something intelligent and obviously she did too. We sat there casting sideways glances at each other trying to come up with something to say, both of us wanting to be the first to break the silence and not the dimwit who couldn’t think of anything good to say.

It was as though we were locked in a battle of wits, a mortal struggle between intelligence and idiocy and I was slipping ever closer to idiocy. If I didn’t say something right quick I’d wind up a full blown idiot like Nitmos*. Say something! Anything! But before I could come up with the words she turned and looked at me smugly, I knew that she’d won. “Have you ever run this race before?” Wow. She was good. It was relevant, it was topical and it was obviously common ground for both of us. I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Surely someone clever enough to beat me in this battle of wits was not just asking this as a simple question, but what was the hidden meaning? What was she getting at? It was driving me nuts and I needed more time to figure out how to respond.
“Hmm?” I said raising my eyebrows as though I hadn’t heard her. I immediately regretted it for the lack of intelligence it showed, but this woman was impossible to get a handle on.
“This race, have you ever run it before?” She had changed the structure of the question, putting the direct object at the beginning. Very crafty.
I was flustered and in my haste to appear smart, I blurted out as many sesquipedalian words as I could, “No I haven’t, but it’s not because I have triskaidekaphobia or anything. It’s because I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of an antidisestablishmentarian.” I wasn’t sure what the last word meant but I said it with an English accent, because that always makes you sound cleverer. Then I deftly turned the tables back on her, “This race, have YOU ever run it before?”

Our conversation parried delicately back and forth, a whirling intellectual dogfight taking place up in the skies, high above the IQ of the average Joes on the back of the bus. When the dust settled I was too confused to know whether I’d won or lost the quest to appear more intelligent. It was after a several minutes of silence that she turned and looked at me again and said “So, did you run this race last year?” At first I thought that she hadn’t been paying attention to my answers, or that she had been too confused by my magniloquent stylings, but I’d already established that she was sitting on a supernumerary IQ. I had already determined that she was dealing from a fuller deck than I was, perhaps even playing with two or three decks like a Vegas blackjack table. Clearly this time there was a hidden meaning to the question because I thought I'd already answered it, at least as I understood it. Instead the question just hung out there in the open, unanswered, poking my pudgy IQ in the belly and mocking my ineptitude. I had no response and she had won.

*You didn’t think I was going to leave this completely unprovoked attack unanswered did you?

Post Race Thoughts

First of all let me once again offer my congratulations to Viper on winning our challenge. He offered a virtual handshake in his post yesterday and I wish to be a good sport and return the sentiment. As much as I’d love to continue verbally assaulting him I’m going to stay classy and take the high road, mostly because I have no ammo left now that he possesses all the PRs and I’d just be reduced to spreading ugly rumors like a catty, middle school girl. Speaking of ugly rumors, I heard a rumor the other day that Viper is hideously ugly. Now I don’t believe it because I’m taking the high road, but has anyone ever seen a picture of Viper? Why do you think that is? I’m just sayin’.

Official race pictures have yet to become available to me but you can see what I looked like 15 yards before the finish line. It’s not pretty, so I guess you can file this under H for hypocrisy because mine knows no bounds.

It Hurts! It Hurts!
Check out the guy and his daughter behind me who are giving me the ol’ hairy eyeball. I was in a pretty comatose state so I don’t remember what I did to deserve that. It could have been any one of the following: farting, cursing, farting while cursing, shouting, spitting, snot-rocketing (it can be a verb), or just generally smelling like a locker room. Whatever it was, I hope that he will accept my apologies for doing it in front of his daughter. If it helps, my kids were watching from the other side of the street so they saw whatever it was too.

Notice the return of the cowbells. Every time we get ready to go to a race, the boys lament that they’ve ‘lost’ their cowbells and then they somehow make an appearance right before we’re ready to leave. Mysteriously, they always disappear again when we get home from races.

History In The Making?

History is written by the winners. You don’t often hear about guys who issued a challenge and then failed to live up to it, but that just makes this post unique. What I’m trying to tell you here is that I’m not the winner. I’m the loser. While I did set a new PR this past weekend at the Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon, I failed to best Viper’s time of 1:54:49. It was the most disappointing PR I’ve ever set.

I needed to average an 8:46 pace to beat Viper’s PR and what’s really frustrating is that I was on pace to do it for a while. Here’s a fun little game that you can all play at home: I’ve listed my splits below, see if you can figure out when my quads decided to lock up tighter than Fort Knox.

Mile 1 - 8:52
Mile 2 - 8:43
Mile 3 - 8:31
Mile 4 - 8:22
Mile 5 - 8:45
Mile 6 - 8:23
Mile 7 - 8:33
Mile 8 - 8:54
Mile 9 - 8:53
Mile 10 - 8:50
Mile 11 - 9:34
Mile 12 - 9:33
Mile 13 - 9:30

If you said mile 11, you win! Give yourself a pat on the back. At the end of mile 10 I was starting to slow a little but was still averaging an 8:41 overall pace and feeling like I’d be able to push myself in the final miles. Shortly after the water stop at mile 10 my quads just ceased up. I tried pushing through it, I tried changing my stride, I even stopped and tried to stretch for a few seconds. Nothing worked. My pace dropped to 9:30 in the final 3 miles and I couldn’t find speed anywhere within myself. I crossed the finish line in 1:56:45 (8:55 pace), a PR by over 3 minutes. Not nearly enough of an improvement considering that it’s been almost a year since my last half marathon.

I offer no excuses for my suckitude, and I’ll gladly take my lumps in the comments. I opened the trash talking last week and came up short, I guess I know how the French 4x100m Freestyle Relay Team feels.

Congrats to Viper who smashed my 10K PR with a blistering 50:48. I’m actually glad that he beat me because if we’d have both failed it would have just been pathetic. Despite my vows in the final 3 miles to give up running forever, I find myself resolving to train faster and longer in the upcoming months in that never-ending quest for self improvement - it’s one of the reasons that I really hate running. Running, I wish I could quit you.

Race Preparations

In case you hadn’t heard, I have a big showdown with Viper tomorrow. The kind of showdown where one of you gets carried off the dueling grounds in a pine box. The kind of showdown that only two over-inflated male egos could possibly think that anyone cared about. The kind of showdown that makes the O.K. Corral look like a neighborhood game of freeze-tag. Unfortunately it’s also the kind of showdown that we could both win, subjecting all of you to even more gloating and posturing in the coming week. You really should just be rooting for both of us to fail, I know I am. No. Wait, not both of us, just Viper.

On the eve of this epic battle I will be preparing in the tried and tested manner that I use to prepare for all of my races. For the very first time I am making it public so that you can copy my preparations and be as successful as I am.

The Night Before
- Lay out clothes I’ll be racing in, which tomorrow will include my lucky blue race shirt. (As seen here and here.)
- Try on race clothes.
- Look in mirror, practice winking while giving the double guns. “Who loves ya’ baby?”
- Stop before I get myself too excited.
- Check the weather.
- Drink some water.
- Put Garmin somewhere I won’t lose it so I don’t freak out.
- Print directions to race.
- Re-check starting time.
- Freak Out! “Where the hell is my Garmin?”
- Move Garmin to more conspicuous location.
- Drink some water.
- Debate whether to wear my Red Sox hat.
- Change mind 7 times.
- Debate which sunglasses to wear.
- Change mind 9 times.
- Re-check weather.
- Calculate drive time and when we need to leave.
- Re-calculate because it can’t be that early!
- Change mind one more time on Red Sox hat.
- Drink some water.
- Realize Garmin needs to be charged and plug it in.
- Look at course map and elevation.
- Plan breakfast.
- Calculate necessary pace/mile.
- Set alarm clock.
- Change alarm to later time, promise to eat breakfast in car.
- Verbalize above list to Candis ad nauseam.
- Lights out. I’m not a big believer in the whole no-boom-boom-before-big-race theory, but my wife is still sick (because she’s weak), which means that I’ll probably spend a good 15 minutes trying to convince her that the trusty old saying goes; “starve a fever, have sex with a cold.”

Race Morning
- Snooze button.
- Snooze button.
- Snoo... “Holy Crap! Look at the time, we’re going to be late!”
- PeeBrushTeethPutOnClothesDrinkWaterRunOutDoorBackCarOutOfGarage!
- Stop.
- Run back in and grab Garmin from charger.
- Pray for no speed traps on way to race.
- Be thankful of previous night’s pedantic antics.

And that, is how you prepare for a successful race. Let me know in the comments if I’m missing any preparations, because I could really use some more items to fret over tonight.

Best of luck, Viper.

A Day at the Track

This past Monday I hit the local high school track for some intervals with a friend (for the purposes of this post we’ll call him Carl - not his real name). My training schedule called for some 4 x 400m speed sessions which may not seem like very much but that’s because I have the Georgetown Half coming up on Saturday and my training is a little less intense this week so that I can be well rested. My goal pace for the 400m intervals was a 7:25 minute/mile pace, and I really tried to hold myself to that pace but I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know if it was the fact that we were only doing 4 x 400s or if it was because Carl was there running with me, but I ran my 400s a lot faster than normal. I discovered when I got home that during those 400m intervals I averaged a 6:50 minute/mile pace. Thanks Carl! Oh, and sorry about calling you Carl in this post (I think he hates that, but that’s just the kind of friend I am).

Also of note at the track on Monday I got my first ever bloody nipple (pictured right). It’s not nearly as rewarding as I thought it would be. Normally I wear Under Armour compression shirts when I run to combat nipple chafing but I didn’t on Monday because it was just a short workout. The high school football field was being watered on Monday night while we were there and an errant sprinkler soaked Carl and I on almost every lap. I guess it was like the perfect storm of conditions to give me a bloody nipple. Hopefully it is fully healed by Saturday because it’s really detracting from sexytime with my wife.

If any of you have any other suggestions for preventing chafed nipples I welcome them in the comments as long as you don’t say Band-Aids. The last time I tried Band-Aids they fell off as soon as I started to sweat.

Responding to Your Comments
Nikki asked in the comments of yesterday’s post how I managed to be so consistent with my pace on my long runs. I actually use the digital training partner on my Garmin and set him to a pace just faster than what I want. I play a game where I let him get out ahead of me over the first few miles which helps me to start slower. During the middle miles I try to remain the same distance behind him and over the last 3-4 miles I try to catch him. Truth be told I didn’t pass him on any of my long runs last month, but I have been running negative splits, ending somewhere around an 8:50 minute/mile pace.

Viper’s comment on yesterday’s post has me in quite a state of confusion. At first I thought it was sarcasm, but it really didn’t have that kind of tone to it. Could it be that Viper was simply being encouraging? Of course not! Obviously he was trying to jinx me by saying that I was going to break his PR! Well it won’t work, because I don’t believe in jinxes either!

Personal Running Log - July 2008

It’s that time of the month again where I pretend that you’re all deeply interested in my running log. I know that a great many of you will just skip right past this post and that’s OK because I do the same thing with a great many of your blog posts. But this is my blog and if I want to drive readers away in droves by posting my boring running log, then that’s exactly what I’ll do thankyouverymuch.

For those of you who have made it this far and are still reading (bored at work today?) allow me to allay your fears about me kicking my karma in the junk in yesterday’s post. It’s OK because I don’t believe in karma. If karma were real then good things wouldn’t keep happening to people like me. Karma is a just big bag of propaganda that ‘they’ use to keep you in line. Karma is henceforth invited to kiss my sweaty, dimpled, derriere. How do you like me now, karma?

I think I’ve said enough for today, but be sure to check back tomorrow to see if that imaginary leprechaun we call karma had the stones to respond to my taunts. I’m shaking in my running shoes... shaking it like a Polaroid picture! Hey Ya!

Date	Route	Type	Distance	Time	Pace
7/29/2008	4 Miles Out & Back	Intervals (3x800)	4 Mi	34:50	8:43
7/26/2008	12 Mile Loop	Long	12 Mi	1:51:23	9:17
7/23/2008	Misc Route	Tempo	9.25 Mi	1:22:10	8:53
7/21/2008	6 Mile Loop Long Hill	Intervals (4x1600)	6 Mi	51:01	8:31
7/19/2008	11 Mile Loop	Long	11 Mi	1:41:02	9:12
7/16/2008	Misc Route	Tempo	8 Mi	1:12:26	8:59
7/14/2008	Track	Intervals (6x400)	4 Mi	33:56	8:29
7/12/2008	10 Mile Lake	Long	10 Mi	1:32:30	9:15
7/10/2008	8 Miles Out & Back	Easy	8 Mi	1:19:40	9:58
7/8/2008	4 Miles Out & Back	Intervals (4x800)	4 Mi	33:20	8:20
7/5/2008	6 Mile Loop Short Hill	Long	6 Mi	55:25	9:15
7/2/2008	6 Mile Loop Short Hill	Tempo	6 Mi	52:48	8:48
Totals:Distance: 88.25 miles Total Time: 13:20:31

You’re Sick Because You’re Weak!

My whole family has been sick this past weekend, coughing and wheezing with a little puking thrown in just for good measure. My wife and both boys have been feeling absolutely miserable and have been popping Dayquil and Nyquil caplets like a young Brett Favre, as if you hadn’t heard enough about that guy already. Anyway, they were a pretty sad bunch, and I’m still kind of mad at them for ruining my weekend. Why can’t they get sick during the work week when I’m not around to put up with it? So inconsiderate.

Nevertheless, I shrugged off my annoyance at their illness and played the role of supportive husband. Mostly that consisted of me strutting around, displaying my good health and telling them that they were sick because they weren’t mentally strong enough to fight it off. I almost never get sick, which is why it annoys me so much when others are ill, I suppose. If you didn’t want to be sick, then you wouldn’t be sick, it’s just that simple.

When they first started coming down with sore throats and wet, hacking coughs I was a little worried that I would catch it right before my half marathon this Saturday. However, I’ve since decided that I don’t think I’ll allow myself to get sick this week. I’m going to take a rain check on whatever it is that my family has been infected with. And if by some twist of fate I do get sick this week, I don’t anticipate it preventing me from beating Viper’s PR in the half marathon because the list of ways that he is superior to me is shorter than Tom Cruise and just as phony.

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.

Kara Goucher (pictured above) is a US medal hopeful in the 5,000 meters and the 10,000 meters at the upcoming Olympics. Also, she’s kinda’ hot. Thus concludes the Half-Fast Olympics Preview.

• For similar previews of the Olympics check out the AOL Fanhouse Attractive Olympians series of posts.
• Speaking of attractive, I would be remiss if I didn’t link you to my post over at CRN from this past week: Running is Cheap.
• April and Amy over at Twenty Six Point Two just celebrated their 1 year blogiversary. Paper is the traditional 1 year anniversary gift, but you’ll have to make do with a link in the Weekend Splits because I’m cheap. Look at that, it fits you both perfectly! Check out their best and worst 5 running moments (Amy’s and April’s) and congratulate them while you’re there.
• Viper responded to my challenge with baseless insults like calling me half-smart, but I would expect no less from that besotted lout.

Comments of the Week
From chia on the Plans for a PR post:

If Vanilla wins, I'm seriously cutting my mileage in half because it would be
the ultimate testament to the fact that not running is the antidote to
slow-assery.

Random Non-Running Related Video of the Week
The honor this week goes to a bench-clearing brawl at a Japanese baseball game. I hope that it is fake but if it’s not, the Japanese obsession with quirky game shows is starting to make sense.

Have a great weekend everyone!