Archive for June, 2009
The Big G
Posted by jim in Monday open discussion, My Bent Brain on June 29, 2009
I kind of like the idea of a god with a dark sense of humor and a keen eye for irony. Like this: All the atheists and agnostics go to the afterlife and the big G says “You know, you guys never found any concrete evidence for the existence of all of this supernatural stuff and I can respect your search for the truth, even though you wound up wrong. For that, I’m going to tell you the secret of the universe and give you everlasting happiness”. To the true believers from whatever religion that wind up in the afterlife he says “You had absolutely no tangible proof whatsoever that any of this existed. You simply nodded your head and followed the other sheep, bleating about ‘faith’. As I gave you a functioning brain and expected you to use it, I simply cannot abide by that sort of mindlessness. Therefore, I will grant you everlasting happiness, but as you don’t seem to value a true search for evidence of the underlying nature of the universe, you don’t get to learn the secret of it all.”
Louis Cartier
Posted by kemibe in Sheer Procrastination on June 26, 2009
In the fall of my sophomore year of high school, a nondescript kid who had dropped out maybe a month earlier showed up one morning with a double-barreled shotgun. That was unheard of in those days. His intended target was a football player who had tormented him for, evidently, years, making fun of his chipmunk cheeks and so on.
Frances Brown is extremely lucky he chose that day to be absent. I was in my first-period English class when the assistant principal came and locked us down in our classroom. None of us had any idea what was happening, but we could see outside and couldn’t help but notice the six or seven Concord Police cars, plus what looked like a SWAT team coming in.
The whole thing didn’t last long. Apparently Louis headed to the third floor first, thinking he’d find Frances there. Soon, Don LeBrun, the football coach, somehow became involved. Louis took a couple of hostages, no one who had done him any harm, I guess, but were just kind of there. There was a standoff in front of the principal’s office, where Coach LeBrun was pleading with Louis to lose the gun. As accounts have it, Louis kept raising the gun, and lowering it. There were CPD officers with guns trained on him, crouched in the stairwell below the lobby. Finally the gun came up one too many times and someone fired a shot. The way the story goes, the bullet bounced off Louis’ belt buckle, which lent sort of a supernatural aspect to the proceedings since he didn’t even budge. Then he turned the shotgun on the cops, while his two hostages fled (I will always remember the sound of the gunfire echoing up the hallway and watching Scot Hayes jump out a window and run over the Phil and Larry’s convenience store).
A cop who was a notorious asshole wound up killing Louis Cartier, and although he was fully justified in doing so, I didn’t lose any sleep over the fact that the cop was sufficiently traumatized to leave the force. The guy was just a real prick.
A few minutes after we heard the shots and saw Scot running across the street, they brought someone outside on a stretcher under a white sheet. Mostly white, anyway–we could see the bloodstains from three stories up. I think they got him in the head.
Louis had been in the class ahead of mine. I didn’t know him to even look at. There were around 450 or 500 kids in a typical class, and he was just someone no one really knew. But apparently Frances knew him well enough to give him grief, and he’s lucky he lived.
That was part of a star-crossed couple of months at CHS. In January, the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into lift-off carrying one of our teachers, sending us home once again for close to a week and rocking the entire community.
How not to act
Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery on June 26, 2009
Not sure why this occurs to me now. Maybe because of a manuscript I’m reading.
I was relatively well-behaved as a high-school kid…well, not. I tried to stay sober my whole senior year, because I had gotten in some trouble as a sophomore. But my friends wouldn’t have it. The day before I ran my fastest time for two miles, I was smoking hash out of an aluminum beer can, inhaling who knows what shit. Then I matched it at the New Englands after being utterly plastered the whole day before, “working” on my friend John’s snowmobile.
When I was in college, I would take stolen Desoxyn (methamphetamine) and other diet drugs like phendimetrazine (Bontril, almost worse than meth) to do all-nighters, sometimes two-nighters. Once I was up for at least two and a half days straight and took maybe one piss the whole time. Kids always had parents with medicine cabinets. I would also do “whippets” (sniffing nitrous oxide) and get others to join in the fun. I dropped acid, ate mushrooms, blew bongs. I was getting a 4.0 as a varsity athlete and being the worst, worst ringleader imaginable. I sort of fucked up the whole UVM track team, and I was miserable. I was not a charming character on these nights, I’m sure, especially while hiding behind various appliances because I was tripping and refused to come out, or too drunk to stand up. I just always had to feel different.
I did what I did to get by. I have some stuff in my background, and I became a high-achieving degenerate. I’ve struggled with alcohol issues since I was in college. It took me out of Bishop Brady coaching, ensured I wouldn’t finish medical school, destroyed relationships with multiple girlfriends, and unquestionably kept me out of the Olympic Marathon Trials. All I can do now is look back and be grateful to be alive and have people who care.
DON’T ACT LIKE I DID. It doesn’t turn out pretty. Don’t get fucked up on drugs and alcohol. Talk to your friends,they’ll be there–and look inside for the real
problem.
Ultra Jazz Bass
Posted by jim in Audio Island, More Art, Then Science, What The Heck Is That Thing? on June 18, 2009
As much as I like my recent vintage Fender American Standard Jazz Bass, I’ve always wanted to get some different tones out of it. The stock pickups are OK but I figured that some after-market units might do the trick. I didn’t want to go through the trouble of adding active pickups, what with the need for batteries and all*, so I picked up a set of DiMarzio Ultra Jazz pickups and set to work modifying the bass.
I’m getting Boulder: Day 2–Bobby McGee
Posted by kemibe in Getting Boulder, We're Doomed on June 16, 2009
Humbled.
That’s been the theme today, and there’s not a damned thing wrong with it. Notice I didn’t say “humiliated”–people tend to use these words interchangeably, if only in their heads. The past 24 hours have introduced a two-pronged eye-opener that already has me far more immersed in this book, this town, and the history of this sport than I ever expected. Read the rest of this entry »
Jehovah’s Witnesses and genial insanity
Posted by kemibe in We're Doomed on June 16, 2009
One thing I forgot to mention about yesterday’s trip: As I was sitting outside the airport waiting for the SkyRide bus from Denver to Boulder to arrive, a guy who had been standing next to me for several minutes turned to me and said, “So, how are you to day?” I immediately knew: evangelical, proselytizer. The only question was which “faith” and since Mormons seem to travel in pairs, I was pretty sure I knew. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m getting Boulder: Day 1–Intro
Posted by kemibe in Getting Boulder on June 16, 2009
My arrival in South Boulder on Monday was preceded by as smooth a 14 1/2 hours of traveling by car, bus, plane, plane, and bus as anyone is entitled to expect: both of my planes landed and took off on time, which in itself constitutes a thrashing of the odds.
I forget important items whenever I travel, no matter how assiduously I prepare and execute checklists. This time I forgot the card reader and USB cable that accompany my camera. This means that any pictures I take will have to sit in the camera’s memory for two weeks. This might be acceptable in Hoboken or Hialeah, but not here, so I’ll be making a trip to Circuit City.
I spend much of the afternoon and early evening being given a tour of the salient points of Boulder proper. The weather was blah (in fact, it poured at times), so I left the camera in my baggage. I contacted Lorraine Moller and will be interviewing her on Thursday morning at a coffee shop. Stops included Whole savings Foods, the Boulder Bookstore (a wonderful place), a music store with a name I forget, and a couple of other places. Tomorrow I interview famed coach Bobby McGee at his office and will have to run to get there. I’m almost certainly going to rent a car.
I should be sleeping, so that’s all for now.
Douche Limbaugh Strikes Again
Posted by jim in Health and Society, The Medical Tent on June 15, 2009
Hey! Do you know what’s REALLY driving up the cost of health care in the USA? Why, according to Douche Limbaugh, it’s people who exercise! Yep. People interested in fitness are responsible for expensive health care. See if you can follow this “logic”
Apparently, Douche can’t tell the difference between the costs of one-time acute injuries such as a sprained ankle and long-term chronic maladies such as heart disease and the complications associated with them. And let’s not even get into the whole quality-of-life thing.
But when you’re a doughy Oxycontin abuser I guess it makes perfect sense. One thing I will say about Douche, he knows his audience. I’m sure there aren’t many “fitness freaks” in that group. And what’s with his not-so-thinly-veiled jealousy that I hear about injuries being a “badge of honor”? I’ve known a great many athletes who have been injured and not a single one of them is in any way proud of their injuries. In fact, injuries do nothing but frustrate the athlete. I’d go so far as to suggest that, at least to many distance runners, “injury” is almost synonymous with “I was stupid”.
I’m in Milwaukee
Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery on June 15, 2009
Not really; I’m in its fuglyish airport. But I have never been to Wisconsin (not that I can count an airport stop), so it seems worth noting. (I have been to 40 or 41 states, I forget which.) The Refuge is on Eastern Time, my watch is on Central Time (I changed it during my flight from Logan to here), and I already set my computer clock to Mountain Time. So I’m all sorts of messed up.
Anyway, I am going to be in Boulder in about six and a half hours, and by way of a mini-journal I am planning to post something here every night, including some pictures. These entries will likely be of more interest to runners than to others, but I’ll try to make them spirited and vulgar enough to keep the rest of you slack-jawed bastards entertained. I have a number of interviews scheduled with former world-class runners and a few coaches too, and ideally I’ll conduct a few of these informally during runs. Some confirmed and likely names: Lorraine Moller (1984 Boston Marathon champ); Steve Jones (former world record holder in the marathon); Benji Durden (1980 Olympic Marathon Team member, didn’t ge to go because of the U.S. boycott).
If you receive a goverment disability check every month…
Posted by kemibe in We're Doomed on June 15, 2009
…so you can sit at home and write ignorant blog posts, you should shut the fuck up about socialism and you should shut the fuck up about how this (or any) administration is wasting money with its policies. And that goes double when Uncle Sam is picking up the tab for your offspring’s exorbitant medical costs.
This kind of ungracious shit from wingnuts is sort of the mirror image of their complaining about tax policies that would actually help them (e.g., raising taxes on the wealthy and giving everyone else a break), but is representative of the same delusional, angry, bumblefuck thinking. For whatever reason, uneducated and shiftless welfare bitches like Gribbit thnk they’re going to be tycoons someday, so they balk at taxes that preferentially ding the rich. The idea that someone whose entire life consists of laying into Obama in a manner that can fairly be described as obsessive (Gribbit has to be on an FBI watch list somewhere; it’s not hard to scour the Web for keywords and see who the most frequent offenders are) in pidgin English is both funny and frightening.
Anyone who needs to tag every damned post with twelve or thirteen different slurs about Obama and liberals isn’t just passionate; he’s on autopilot, with a reptilian core of brain matter doing all his thinking for him. Sniff, snort, react. Nothing but one fucked-up amygdyla/hippocampus/hypothalamus complex. No cerebrum to override gut instincts and infuse the whole freak show with at least a little bit of consciousness or restraint.
New England High School Track & Field Champs: local note
Posted by kemibe in We're Doomed on June 14, 2009
Competing in Burlington, Vermont yesterday, Rachel Schneider of St. Thomas Aquinas here in Dover won both the 1600m (4:51.00) and the 800m (2:11.89). I’m guessing it’s been a while since either a boy or a girl pulled off that double. Schneider also won the 1600 last year, in a time fractions of a second slower than her 2009 effort.
Just an awesomely deranged letter
Posted by kemibe in Sheer Procrastination on June 13, 2009
In the letters section of today’s Concord Monitor:
Wickedness
Well, it looks like our liberal Democratic governor has flushed New Hampshire down the toilet to join the rest of our New England states in the sewer of public sodomy.
One day we will all have to answer to God for this wickedness – those who revel in it and those who stood by and did nothing to prevent it.
America is dying. Doesn’t anybody care?
How many of us have the nerve to fly our U.S. flag upside down? How many know what that means?
JAY GOULD
I wish I could do graphical arts like this
Posted by kemibe in Hootworthy, Sounds Cool on June 12, 2009
Teen, sick 8 years with a “mysterious” ailment, diagnoses self in science class
Posted by kemibe in The Medical Tent on June 12, 2009
That the diagnosis of Crohn’s disease eluded this girl’s doctors for eight years is far more remarkable than her diagnosing herself thanks to histological evidence she uncovered while in Biomedical Problems class (must be nice to have access to such a course as a high-schooler). Still, this is a hell of a story.
For eight years, Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain so horrible, it brought her to her knees. The pain, along with diarrhea, vomiting and fever, made her so sick, she lost weight and often had to miss school.
Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn’t figure out the cause of Jessica’s abdominal distress.
Then one day in January, Terry, 18, figured it out on her own.
In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue — slides her pathologist had said were completely normal — and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn’s disease.
You can watch her talk about her experiences in this video.
Facebook poll: same-sex marriage
Posted by kemibe in We're Doomed on June 11, 2009
This just underscores what America is going to be like in the decades to come. Facebook users are mostly younger people. 62 percent to 38 percent in a survey with almost a quarter of a million people is an absolute rout.
You shouldn’t drink Coca-Cola
Posted by kemibe in We're Doomed on June 11, 2009
Not because it will rot your teeth or make you fat, but because of this disconcerting arrangement:
When you visit Noah’s Cafe you will notice that our deck is adorned with colorful bright red umbrellas courtesy of our Coke corporate partners.
The Creation Museum and Coke have been partners officially since April even though Coke has been on site for years.
Bunch of fucking whores. I can’t blame corporations for following the money, especially in this economy, but I didn’t have to like or personally support it.
Interestingly, I was thinking about this earlier today when I was on my way to the store for something calorie-free and fizzy (I have something of an addiction to carbonated drinks), and when I reached the convenience store I saw a Pepsi sedan in the parking lot. When I went inside and started perusing the limited selection of two-liters piled up on a series of plastic pallets in typical mini-market fashion), I saw lots of Diet Coke, but no Diet Pepsi. “Screw it, one last time,” I muttered, and started reaching for a bottle on the second pallet from the top. As I tried to extract it, the Pepsi guy materialized and said, in a friendly way, “Hey, there’s actually some Diet Coke on top, on the other side.” After a pause, he grinned and said, “Of course, you could always get Pepsi instead.” He then pointed at a bunch of two-liters I hadn’t seen in the next aisle.
I then thanked him and told him I had valid reasons for choosing Pepsi products over Coke products from that day forward, and told him about the Creation Museum-Coke arrangement. For all I know he was a creatonist, but that’s not likely around here, and e probably had no idea what “Creation Museum” even implied.
I was tempted to chalk this exchange up to happenstance–after all, there are soda reps in convenience stores as often as not–but then I had to admit that Satan must have put the Pepsi guy there when he did just to ensure I didn’t cave and support Bible-based bullshit, however indirectly.
Coca-Cola makes a formidable array of products. You can peruse the list in the drop-down menu here.
The “tipping point” model as an explanation for the maintenance of homosexuality
Posted by kemibe in Brains and Behavior, The Evolving World on June 11, 2009
This is interesting and suggests that there may be a definitive answer to the long-standing question, “Is there an evolutionarily based explanation for homosexuality?”
Overly simplified, this “tipping-point” model (originally introduced by G. E. Hutchinson in 1959, and then later popularized by Jim McKnight in 1997 and Edward Miller in 2000) posits that genes associated with homosexuality confer fitness benefits in their heterosexual carriers. If only a few of these alleles are inherited, a males’ reproductive success is enhanced via the expression of attractive, albeit feminine traits, such as kindness, sensitivity, empathy, and tenderness. However, if many of these alleles are inherited, a “tipping point” is reached at which even mate preferences become “feminized,” meaning males are attracted to other males. In explaining this model, Miller asked readers to imagine a genetic system in which there are five different genes that place an individual along a masculine-feminine continuum. Each of the five genes has two alleles, one that pulls the individual to the masculine side and one that pulls to the feminine side. If a man inherited all of the feminine-pulling alleles (of which he has a 3.125% chance: .55), he will become homosexual. If he inherited less than all five of the feminine-pulling alleles, however, he would not be homosexual. Although originally proposed in simple form in 1959, this model was finally empirically tested in 2008 and 2009.
Behavioral geneticists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research lead by Brendan Zietsch (joined by sexual orientation expert Michael Bailey and evolutionary geneticist Matthew Keller) found that psychological femininity in heterosexual men elevated the number of opposite-sex sexual partners, suggesting that their femininity was often attractive to women (think Johnny Depp). In addition, these researchers and those at Abo Akedemi University in Finland (lead by Pekka Santtila) independently predicted that if the “tipping point” model was correct, then heterosexual men with a homosexual twin should have more of the attractive feminine-pulling alleles and thus more opposite-sex sexual partners than members of heterosexual twin pairs. The Finnish group also measured the number of children and age at first intercourse between heterosexual men with a homosexual twin brother and heterosexual men with heterosexual twin brothers. While the findings did not reach statistical significance, data suggested that heterosexuals with a homosexual twin had slightly more opposite-sex sexual partners, slightly more children, and were a bit younger at the age of first intercourse than heterosexual twin pairs.
In other words, a certain amount of “femininity” makes straight men more appealing to women and increases the chances that they’ll pass along more of their genes. Too much and then men are simply gay, but the fact that they don’t reproduce is mitigated by the face that their close cousins–comparatively “woman-like” straight men–are busy passing along a slew of the same genes that apparently contribute to homosexuality. (Obviously this description is fraught with hazards. “Woman-like” as I’m using it here implies not a queeny bearing, but greater tendencies toward kindness, empathy, and other positive traits that can be found in men who present as perfectly “masculine.”)
It’s an intriguing idea, anyway, not that the homobigots–usually people whose comprehension of simple genetics is zero–will either understand or accept it if it ever comes to prominence.
A rant you won’t possibly read
Posted by kemibe in The Running Ape on June 11, 2009
This comment was left under a post about the state of American distance running at the old Refuge, something that will continue to happen what with the popularity of human comment spam. It would be unreadable even without the all caps.
I NEED TO GET IN ON THIS ISSUE SINCE I SHARE THE SAME CONCERNS. THE USA
HAS THE LARGEST GENE POOL & THIS CLEARLY SHOWS IN SPRINTING EVENTS,
EVEN THOUGH THE REST OF THE WORLD IS CATCHING UP. WE SHOULD STILL WIN
HALF OF THOSE AVAILABLE MEDALS. AMERICAN DISTANCE RUNNING TIMES HAVE
COME BUT AS POINTED OUT ABOVE IT IS TRUE–AS LONG AS COACHES KEEP
RECRUITING FOREIGN ATHLETES, CHANCES ARE MOST OF THOSE WILL RETURN TO
COMPETE FOR THEIR HOME COUNTRY. THEREFORE THAT FAULT CLEARLY LIES WITH
THE GLORY-SEEKING AMERICAN COACHES. NEXT, OUR CULTURAL SPORTS MEDIA
WILL STILL FAVOR OUR 4 TEAM SPORTS. ITS ABOUT ENTERTAINMENT. AFTER THAT
FACTOR I SEE A PROBLEM WITH ACCESSIBILITY TO THE SPORT BY TODAY’S YOUTH
BASICALLY BECAUSE RUNNING HAS BECOME AN EXPENSIVE SPORT TO OUTFIT &
PARENTS JUST DON’T HAVE THE MINDSET TO BUY THEIR KID SEVERAL PAIRS OF
SHOES & RUNNING APPAREL. THERE IS NO REASON FOR A RUNNING SHOE TO COST
$200 & THAT IS WHERE NIKE IS HEADED SO THAT IS A GREED PROBLEM. THE
MORE THEY APPROACH $200, THE LESS YOUTH ARE GOING TO SHOW UP IN THE
FUTURE. NIKE COULD DO AMERICAN TRACK & FIELD A GREAT FAVOR BY MAKING
SHOES FINANCIALLY ACCESSIBLE GIVEN THAT THEY ARE ALL MADE IN CHINA FOR
PEANUTS. THE NEXT OBSTACLE I SEE IS ALWAYS THE TIMING OF OLYMPIC
TRIALS. THE USATF WILL NEVER WAKE UP. THE TRIALS ARE TOO CLOSE TO THE
OLYMPICS. THEY, THE GURUS OF THE SPORT, CAN’T SEEM TO PEAK THESE
DISTANCE RUNNERS CORRECTLY AS MOST OF THEM ARE SPENT JUST GETTING IN.
HOW ABOUT WE MAKE THE TRIALS 3 MONTHS OUT. NEXT THING IS ADDRESSING THE
YOUTH LEVEL. OK WE KNOW ABOUT HERSHEY. BUT WHAT ABOUT LITTLE LEAGURE
XC/T&F MEETS? I MEAN WE HAVE YOUTH BASEBALL, FOOTBALL, SOCCER. YMCAs
HAVE THEIR SWIM CLUBS, BUT YOUTH TOWN RUNNING IS RELATIVELY UNCOMMON
EXCEPT IN SAY A FEW PLACES. NEXT LET ME ADDRESS THE BURNOUT FACTOR. IT
SEEMS THAT AMERICANS OVERRACE ON THE ROADS & IN EUROPE BECAUSE OF ALL
THESE MONEY-DRAWING GRAND PRIX CIRCUITS. THE LURE IS FOR MONEY & THAT
DOES NOT NECESSARILY TRANSLATE INTO OLYMPIC GOLD. FROM THERE WE HAVE
OVERTRAINING FROM TOO MANY MILES & TOO MUCH SPEEDWORK. THAT LEADS TO
BURNOUT OR VERY FRUSTRATING INJURIES. SHOULD THE GOAL NOT BE TO HAVE AN
ATHLETE ADAPT A LIFELONG ROUTINE OF FITNESS. THERE IS NOTHING FUN ABOUT
LOOKING TO RUN 70 MILES A WEEK IN A NEW ENGLAND SUMMER. WHEN YOUR LEGS
ARE TIRED, IT BECOMES VERY TAXING & MENTALLY TRYING TO FINISH THOSE 10.
MOST KIDS TODAY JUST DON’T HAVE THAT KIND OF DESIRE. BACK IN MY HIGH
SCHOOL DAYS, I WAS THE EXCEPTION TO THE THAT RULE, BUT NOW YOU COULD
NOT PAY ME TO LOOK FORWARD TO 10 EVERY DAY. IT’S NOT ONLY PHYSICALLY
DRAINING, IT IS MONOTONOUS, & IT IS NOT FUN WHEN YOUR LEGS FEEL LIKE
CEMENT. BUT IS EASIER TO GEAR ONESELF UP FOR SAY A 10K RUN. INCIDENTLY,
EVEN THOUGH SHOEWEAR HAS GOTTEN IMMENSELY BETTER, TOO MANY MILES
INEVITABLY LEAD TO INJURY & THERE IS NOTHING MORE FRUSTRATING THAN
WAITING FOR TISSUE TO HEAL BECAUSE YOU LOSE SOME OF YOUR HARD-EARNED
FITNESS. MUCH IS NOW BEING SAID ABOUT EMPHASIS ON MORE QUALITY RUNS-GET
THE ATHLETE TO RUN LESS MILEAGE WITH MORE EFFORT. AS LONG AS ONE CAN
TRACK DISTANCE RUN, RECOVERY INTERVAL, PACE, & # OF REPS CAREFULLY THIS
MAY HAVE TO BE THE APPROACH. BUT STILL LOTS OF SPEEDWORK LEADS TO
CHOPPED UP ACHILLES & STALENESS. AND TOO, TO BE REALLY COMFORTABLE AT
SPEEDWORK, YOU REALLY MUST HAVE FAST-TWITCH FIBER TO RUN THE REPS. I
WAS A 5:20 MILER & MY TRACK TRAINING CENERED ON DIVIDING THE RACE UP
INTO QUARTERS TO BE RUN AROUND 80 SEC OR SO. NORMALLY WHEN I HAD MY
SPEEDWORK BASE SET, I WOULD TOUCH OFF THE MILE IN 79 SEC. WHAT IS
MEANINGFUL ABOUT THAT IS MY BEST ALL-OUT QUARTER WAS AT BEST A 68. THAT
SHOWS YOU I AM NOT TOO FAR OFF MY ANAEROBIC THRESHOLD. NOW COMPARE THAT
WITH A MILER WHO HAS A GOOD AMOUNT OF FAST-TWITCH FIBER, EVEN SAY A
QUARTER MILER MOVING UP. IF A HIGH SCHOOL GIRL CAN RUN A 59 SEC.
QUARTER, THEN RACING 20 SEC. OVER THAT MUST FEEL PRETTY DARN
COMFORTABLE. THAT SETS UP HER 5:20 AS A MODERATE EFFORT WALK IN THE
PARK. OF COURSE IF WE COULD GET HER THEN TO TRAIN FOR SAY 72 SEC/400,
WE COULD SET HER UP FOR 4:48. I THINK PART OF THE EFFORT TO AT LEAST
MAKE US MORE COMPETITIVE–I.E. GET ATHLETES INTO THE FINAL–HAS TO BE A
MODIFICATION OF SOMETHING. SEEMS TO ME COLLEGIATE XC/T&F HAS BECOME TOO
PROFESSIONAL. ITS NO LONGER ABOUT FUN. ITS A FULLTIME JOB. EVEN I, A
FORMER STATE CHAMPION WOULD NOT MAKE TRAVELING SQUAD. COLLEGIATE TRACK
HAS BECOME MORE ABOUT WINNING CHAMPIONSHIPS THAN DEVELOPING SKILL
LEVELS. MOST OF THESE COLLEGIATE COACHES I DON’T THINK COULD EVER BE
SUITED TO THE HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL OR YOUTH LEVEL. THEY HAVE MADE TRACK
INTO AN ALL-WORK, NO FUN ROUTINE. FINAL REMARK. XC WAS MY FAVORITE
SPECIALTY & THE ONE I WAS MOST GOOD AT. BUT WHEN I COACHED I COULD
NEVER RECOMMEND ANY OF MY DISTANCE RUNNERS CONSIDER XC IN COLLEGE. WHY?
ITS THE RACING DISTANCES DUMMY? A 10K XC RACE HAS NO PLACE THERE. DON’T
FORGET THESE ARE STILL YOUNG ADULTS. DON’T FORGET THEY HAVE A FULL
COURSE LOAD & SUCH TAXING WORKOUTS TO MAKE THAT 10K SEEM POSSIBLE
COMPETES FOR THE TIME ALLOCATED TO SLEEP & REST. A 10K MAKES A GOOD
ROAD RACE BUT XC REALLY SHOULD JUST BE A NON-BORING REASONABLE
“DISTANCE RACE” HOPEFULLY OVER SOME SOFT SURFACES OR IN A PARK. A 10K
RACE IS NOT GOING TO ATTRACT THE PUBLIC, NOR IS IT GOING TO ENERGIZE
KIDS. A 10K TAKES EXORBITANT PREPARATION & THE USTFA SHOULD KNOW THAT.
CONSIDER THAT TO RUN A COMPETITIVE 5K RACE ON THE HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL AT
A RESPECTABLE TIME & TO BE REASONABLY COMFORTABLE, ONE HAS TO TRAIN 3X
THAT DISTANCE. NOW PUT THE 10K UP FRONT & GUESS WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING
AT. WHEN YOU TOTAL UP THAT MILEAGE, THEN IT SHOULD BE NO WONDER THAT
THE COLLEGE GRADUATE WILL NOT WANT TO LOOK AT A RUNNING SHOE AT AGE 30.
KIM LIBERA
Wipeouts and worse
Posted by kemibe in Hootworthy on June 10, 2009
ABC has a new show called Wipeout. Rather than explain, I’ll just suggest you watch this clip. It’s sheer hilarity. I’m amaze people don’t get seriously hurt (or maybe they do and the producers elect not to include those clips).
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- Doc Bushwell is a biochemist and a medical writer who serves as a slavering minion of the dark lords of Big and Little Pharma; Jim is an engineering professor with a fondness for running shoes and drumsticks; and Kevin Beck is a self-exiled member of the clan who refuses to stay gone.
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