  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Week of January 27, 2004 - February 2, 2004 Getting
Warmer... Apparently nothing actually happened in the city over the weekend, so the Times had to waste 600 words on the fact that the temperature got about 35°F yesterday. And just what did New Yorkers do to celebrate this ever-so-slight thaw? According to the paper of record, "Runners re-emerged on the sidewalks, sidestepping puddles and newly melted slush." Re-emerged? Doesn't that imply that runners had disappeared from the streets in the cold? Who are these people who let a little cold weather scare them off? They're certainly not any runners we know. Me and
My Shadow In other weather-related news, famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow for the fifth year in a row, predicting six more weeks of winter. Phil's seen his shadow 94 times since 1887 (though that's probably not the same Phil over the whole time span), and forecast an early spring just 14 times (for you math people, yes, there are a few years with no records). Of course, early is a rather subjective concept, as is what constitutes spring-like weather, so any sense of Phil's accuracy is hard to guage. Plus, anyone who keeps track of how accurate a rodent is at predicting long-term weather trends is probably too embarassed to admit it. Super,
Thanks for Asking A Super Bowl that's actually exciting (at least some of the time)? What's the catch? Apparently we have to sacrifice any good advertisements, and suffer through the worst announcing team in history. Phil Simms and Greg Gumbel routinely got the players' names wrong, confused the offensive and the defense, and offered generally some of the most moronic analysis we've ever heard. Their dumbest line? Saying that the Patriots' plan in the fourth quarter was to "put the ball in Tom Brady's hands." Um, isn't Tom Brady the quarterback, and doesn't that mean that every play starts with the ball in his hands? And for those of you who missed the halftime show, Janet Jackson tried to distract us from her brother's legal trouble and succeeded. Amazingly there are actually debates out there as to whether Ms. Jackson's extra display of flesh was planned or not. Doesn't the fact that she didn't beat Justin Timberlake to a bloody pulp for removing her clothes make it pretty clear she knew what was coming? Plus the various apologies released by CBS, MTV, Janet, Justin, etc., all sound like they were written well before the event took place. Sadly, nobody apologized for the tacky pre-game spectacle of an astronaut planting a flag on an inflatable version of the moon. Dressed
to Kill We crashed the Flyers annual bash over the weekend. We're a little sketchy on exactly what transpired that evening (we feel it's our duty to take full advantage of any open bar we come across), but we do recall that almost everyone was dressed to the nines. (A memo to those who weren't: "Black tie optional" means it is acceptable — though just barely — to wear a suit instead of a tux. A tie and jacket is not enough. If you show up in khakis and a sweater you shouldn't even be let in.) The Webmistress was looking particularly fine (and we'd say that even if she weren't the only person there who reads this page on a regular basis), but we're not ready to accept her claim that the Flyers "may not be the fastest team, but without a doubt we're the most elegant." Sounds like a challenge for Club Night! First
of the Month It's February 1, which means new web access statistics and an updated booklist. Track
& Field Talk The Next Big Thing on WNYC this morning aired the following story:
Click here to listen. (Requires Real Audio player.) They also aired a story about the Idiotarod, a four-mile race from DUMBO to Union Square, in which teams of 4 people pulled a shopping cart with one rider. Listen here, or check out on All Things Considered for an interview with one competitor (you need to allow pop-up windows for this one). You can also see some photos from the event here and here. Keep an eye out for CPTC members in the photos. We haven't found them yet, but we know that some of our members were on the second place team (they would have won if they'd known that a certain amount of cheating is allowed). Thursday
Night Races Not only did Alston Brown run the 800; he unofficially broke the world record for the indoor 800 meters for the 55-59 age-group by more than two seconds with his 2:06 (after a first 400 of about 1:00.00), but since the meet wasn't electronically timed and there weren't three official watches on him, it won't go in the books. His response afterward? "No problem — I'll run faster next time; I'm going to go out in 28!" Attention Sidney Howard: can you please talk him into trying an even-paced race just once? Speaking of Mr. Howard — Sid, who is 64.9 years old, missed the 65-69 age-group record for the mile (5:26) by one second with his 5:27. He said he was "just getting a feel for it." Look for him to break some records when he advances to his new age group on February 26. The Broad
Street Run Philadelphia’s Broad Street Run (Sunday, May 2 @ 8:30 AM) is CPTC’s target race for May for short- and mid-distance runners. This 10-mile, point-to-point course (named one of the fastest 10-mile courses in the country by Runner’s World) presents an excellent opportunity for PRs. Simon Wangai ran the fastest time ever recorded for 10 miles in the U.S. here in 2002. With 11 water stations, digital clocks at every mile, and USATF certification, the Broad Street run fits every definition of world class. Individuals competing as teams (5 per team with 3 scoring) must register together ahead of time. If you’d like to run Broad Street — and we hope you do! — please DO NOT register as an individual. Please DO contact Stacy Creamer at screamer@randomhouse.com or 212-782-8218 (work) or 212-749-8145 (home). I’m handling CPTC team entries. (N.B: Please don’t think you’re “too slow” or “not competitive enough.” We’d like to put everyone who’s running this race on a team. If you register as an individual, you may deprive someone else of the chance to race for CPTC.) Also feel free to contact Stacy if you have any questions about the race. The Broad Street website has a wealth of information, but remember to leave the registering to Stacy! New Arena Financier Carl Icahn is donating $10 million toward a new track and field stadium at Randalls Island Park. The $40 million project is also financed by $20 million in public funds and $10 million in other private donations. It is expected to be complete in the fall of this year. Finally we get some new atheletic facilities in this city. And we don't even have to wait for the 2012 Olympics! Race Results Once again we have Thursday night race results posted before New York Road Runners does. Many thanks to Ian Brooks for letting us look at the results sheets at Coogan's. In order not to inconvenience him too much, we tried to be as quick as possible, causing us to miss some results. Complete results will be posted on the Road Runners website — and then here — on Tuesday. Cherry
Blossom 10-Miler If you are running the Cherry Blossom 10-miler on April 4th and would be willing to share a hotel room please email Sue Pearsall at sue_pearsall@mcgraw-hill.com. Nominations,
Part 2 Whoops! We overlooked Bob Holliday (M50-54) and Sylvie Kimche (F55-59) on our list of Club Night nominees. Tuesday
Night Armory Workout Report Sid's back! And he's giving out calendars! That was the most important event at last night's workout. Yes, there were 18 people there, but most of them were just doing a very light workout to prepare for tomorrow's track race. Basically we all spent 45 minutes changing, warming up, stretching, doing strides, cooling down, stretching some more and changing again, just so we could run a three minute workout. At this point we've spent longer typing this report than we did running, and if we write anything more, you'll spend more time reading it than we did running. There was a later workout too, let by Stuart Calderwood, but we didn't stay around for that. We thought about if for a second, but decided we rather have a drink or six in honor of Jerome O'Shaugnessy's farwell to New York. For those who haven't been paying attention, Jerome's moving back to London in about a week, and is trying to have as many farewell parties as possible before he goes. This one was at Coogan's, which was the site of Charlotte Cutler's farwell party, before she, too, moved to London. (At this rate the Queen's Auxillary Central Park Track Club will soon rival the New York branch in size.) Some of you may still be waiting for your orders from that party. The service was a bit quicker this time, but still nothing great. The food is still bar food. And drinks are always good on a cold, snowy night. Alas, there was no karaoke at the bar this time, so maybe the next party will have to be held somewhere else to ensure that our members get more opportunity to make fools of themselves. Award
Nominations In more important nomination news, several of our members have been nominated for awards at Club Night: Alayne Adams (F40-44), Peter Allen (M40-44), Margaret Angell (F20-29), Stuart Calderwood (F45-49), Alan Ruben (M45-49), and Catherine Stone-Borkowski (F45-49). Congratulations to all of them. I'd Like
To Thank the Academy... We didn't watch the Golden Globes last weekend, because (1) we didn't really care who won and (2) even if we did care, we were in Vegas, and had much better things to do with our time. Alas, movie awards season rolls on, with the big Academy Awards nominations announced yesterday (we won't watch that either, and we've only seen about four of the nominated movies, anyway). More importantly, the Golden Raspberry nominations were announced the day before. Our money's on Gigli to take home worst picture, worst actor (Ben Affleck), worst actress (J. Lo), worst screen couple and maybe every other award it's nominated for. If only they would televise that ceremony! Back in
the New York Groove We're back! We'd report on our weekend, but, you know, "what happens in Vegas stays there." Along with quite a lot of our money. (A little of that we lost at the tables, the rest we're still not sure where it went.) So, did you miss us? The evidence suggests not. Below are the web stats for the last three weekends, defined here as Friday through Tuesday, the period without updates last weekend.
Not a major dip, which implies that you're all just as happy with the existing content here as you are when we have new journal entries and race results. Well, see if we do any regular updates in the future! Week of January 20, 2004 - January 26, 2004 No Updates We're off to Vegas for the weekend. It's unlikely we'll have access to a computer to do any updates. It's even more unlikely that we'll have the time or the inclination to do any updates. That means you're on your own until Tuesday evening, when we're back at the computer. Unless we win really big, in which case we're flying straight to Hawaii or some other tropical locale. Or, if we lose big, we may be forced into some sort of indentured servitude there, which may extend our absence a bit. Race Report Sid Howard sent the following report from Bermuda: "This year's 10k had the worst conditions in my 25 years of running this race. Winds were as high as 50 knots and there was intermittent pouring rain. Out of 202 finishers only 19 runners came in under 40 mins." Sid himself finished in 43:07, 33rd overall and first in his age group. NYRR Club
Night On Saturday,
February 28th the NYRR is holding their annual awards dinner and
dance. This is always a high quality event and our 2003 team performances
in the NYRR championships of Women's Open (2nd place), Men's Open
(3rd place), Women's Masters (1st place) and Men's Masters (2nd
place) will be recognized. 33rd Annual
Metropolitan 50-Miler and Kurt Steiner 50K The Broadway Ultra Society and The Metropolitan Athletics Congress are proud to sponsor the 33rd Annual Metropolitan 50-Miler and the Kurt Steiner 50K in Central Park.
We're
Still Writing Year of the Ram on Our Checks Happy Lunar New Year (4701, the Year of the Monkey) to all who celebrate it. Next Goal
Race for Long-Distance Runners For those members with a spring marathon or another long distance race in sight, our next Goal Race is the Cherry Tree 10-Mile Race on Saturday, February 21st in Prospect Park. We will be distributing race applications at the Armory Track workouts on Tuesdays and at the road workouts on Thursdays, beginning next week. You can also download a printable race application or register online by logging on to the Prospect Park Track Club website. Another
Farewell It seems like just yesterday we were welcoming Jerome O'Shaughnessy to our Club and now we are saying so long. Jerome is relocating to London in February. We will be getting together for drinks at Coogan's, 4015 Broadway (corner of 169th Street), after the track workout next Tuesday, January 27th. Please stop by and help us bid Jerome a fond farewell. Too Old
for Baseball, Too Young to Star for CPTC After 25 years, Jesse Orosco is retiring from baseball. The 46-year-old reliever holds the record for career pitching appearances (1,252), and has pitched for the Mets, Dodgers, Indians, Brewers, Orioles, Cardinals, Padres, Yankees and Twins. Perhaps his most memorable moment was on October 27, 1986, when he struck out the side to end Game 7 of the World Series. Orosco jubilantly threw his glove in the air, and was immediately tackled by the rest of the Mets. To this day, no one has seen where — or even if — the glove landed. Perhaps we should send Alexandra Horowitz over to Shea Stadium to look for it. Traci
Lord's Prayer Rabbi Shlomo Eliahu has come up with the following prayer, to be recited before going on line and looking and pornographic websites: "Please, God, help me cleanse the computer of viruses and evil photographs which disturb and ruin my work ... so that I shall be able to cleanse myself [of sin]." Not that we think our readers are a bunch of perverts who spend all their free time checking out internet porn (although that does describe most of our staff...), but this sounds like a useful prayer for those who just spend too much of their free time surfing the web (a category that includes the rest of our staff). Triathlon
Seminar Now Free You may have heard that JackRabbit Sports in Brooklyn is hosting Joe Friel on Saturday, Jan 24th. In order to make Joe more accessible to the triathlon community, we have decided to change the format and make this a free event. We hope you'll take advantage of this unique opportunity to meet one of the most respected triathlon coaches in the country. Joe is going to offer a 3 hour program at 9am and again at 1pm on Saturday, Jan 24th. The event will be held at JackRabbit Sports in Park Slope, and will cover the physiology of training, how to determine your specific limiters, and developing a training program for peak performance on race day. Joe will also be signing copies of the Triathlete's Training Bible and his new book, Going Long. Due to the necessary change in venue and anticipated interest in the event, we will require a reservation and offer the program to a limited number of participants. The earlier you call the more likely you will be able to attend. When calling (718) 636-9000 please specify whether you would like to attend the morning or afternoon session.
JackRabbit Sports is located at 151 7th Ave in Brooklyn, NY, near Garfield Street. Closest subway stops are the Q train at 7th ave, the F train at 7th ave, the 2/3 trains at Grand Army Plaza, or the N/R trains at Union St. There is on-street parking readily available, at least by NYC standards.
Cooking
Classes I have received
many requests for cooking classes since our opening two years ago.
So, here they are; first round of classes at SOY will begin this
February. First series will be these basic classes. Course fee will
include all the materials and tasting, so come hungry! Since our
kitchen is small, each class is limited to 7 people. Register early
to take advantage of discounts too. ***Basic
Japanese Home Cooking*** Learn basics of Japanese home cooking, such as how to cook rice, making dashi (soup stock) and miso soup, about seasonings and handling of common Japanese food products. We’ll prepare a simple but savory traditional style meal with fish and vegetables. ***SOY Cooking
for Clueless***
Cooking with soy food can be absolutely effortless. We’ll teach you basics about soy food products, and show you tricks & shortcuts, so you can enjoy easy soy and tofu dishes.
***Sushi
Master***
Learn how to cook sushi rice, make rolls, and other home style mixed sushi dishes. We'll also show you how to prepare for your sushi hand roll party.
If you have any questions, feel free to call us!
Tuesday
Night Armory Workouts Report Another Tuesday, another two workouts. We'll start with the middle distance group, because (1) they run first and (2) they're more important. Twenty-three of them showed up this time, including Jessica Reifer, who was back from a weekend soccer tournament in Florida, and showing off her freshly-tanned legs. Well, mostly tan, but black and blue in various spots. She explained: "That's where the ball hit me. Those are cleat marks, but I yelled in pain so the girl who did it got a yellow card. That one I can't remember. Those are more cleat marks..." Then she announced her retirement from soccer to focus on safer sports, like running, but nobody believed her. Kim Mannen McConville was there, although she arrived too late to lead her proposed group stretching session. She was forgiven because she finally got Mr. McConville to show up with her. Fire Chief John brought two new recruits with him. Odd how he's always inviting people to workouts, but has zero recruitment points for the last three years. There was some running, of course. The workout involved 600m and 200m intervals, with a different the number of intervals and goal pace for the different groups of runners (800m, mile or 3k racers). You don't see that kind of differentiation with the distance group! You also don't see the mass confusion caused by the three separate workouts, but that's a different matter. You do sometimes see runners collapsing by the side of the track from sheer exhaustion at the end of the workout, although perhaps not as many as last night. Since we were one of those exhausted runners we missed the beginning of the late workout, with the announcements and such. We'll just assume that nothing important was said, other than an explanation of the 4x400m, 1 mile, 4x400m workout. This group has 27 runners, plus Michael Rosenthal who was resting a sore hamstring so he timed instead of running (joined by ourself and the coach). Usually little of note happens during the intervals, but last night we did have one runner — who has been attending these workouts regularly — ask where the 400m interval ends. Um, maybe at the line where all the intervals always end? Just a guess... As if Margaret Angell isn't famous enough in her own right, one teammate asked if she was related to some Angell who has a track named after him. Turns out she's not, but she did confirm that famed New Yorker author/editor Roger Angell is her uncle. This made little impression on Coach Tony until it was pointed out that Roger cowrote A Pitcher's Story with then-Yankees (and ex-Mets, Royals, Blue Jays and Red Sox) pitcher David Cone. At that point Tony remembered the name, and Roger's dozens of other baseball books and articles, and became very interested in the conversation. Alas, by then it was time to take the A train home. We've met a few interesting people on the subway over the years, but usually we just end up talking to crackpots. Last night a young man joined our conversation on the proposed new lunar base (we were all generally supportive, so long as we got to chose who gets sent there and whether or not they get to return), and steered it to a general indictment of the world's governments. They spend money on things like the space program, he asserted, because otherwise they will have to spend that money eradicating hunger and disease in the third world, which would lead to rampant overpopulation. Leaving aside the rampant cynicism of this argument (the more likely reasons that governments don't focus enough energy on foreign poverty because most politicians are too short-sighted to worry about the consequences and also because there are few votes to be gained from dealing with the problem), there are at least two major flaws in it. First of all, the idea that the only way governments can avoid spending money on the poor is by wasting it on various boondoggles is patently ridiculous. There are plenty of other ways for states to spend their money, and if they ever run out of ideas they could simply cut back on their revenues. And should the United States government ever run out of worthy domestic projects to fund, and pay off all its debts, and eradicate hunger and disease and want in the rest of the world, we don't think it's too much to ask that the initial tax cuts all be designed to help us. Second, and more directly relating to the issue at hand, overpopulation just isn't a major worry among the halls of state. It's not even a major worry in the ivory towers of academia. True, in the two centuries since Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population, there has been no shortage of doomsayers warning about the imminent food shortages that would result from overpopulation. And every one of those pessimists has been wrong. The population boom Malthus predicted didn't really get started until well into the 20th Century. And while the Earth's population has increased roughly six-fold since Malthus' 1798 warning, agricultural productivity has increased at an even faster rate. Yes, the planet still has finite resources, and no matter how much productivity increases there is still some limit to many people we can feed. But we're not there yet, and we won't be there soon. In fact, feeding the world's poor would tend to alleviate the population crunch. A simplistic model of population growth goes like this: People living in a dangerous, pre-industrial world have numerous children. Most of these offspring succumb to disease, hunger, war or any of the other conditions that make life so nasty, brutish and short. The kids who survive are put to work on the farm. Those that make it to adulthood still have a short life expectancy, helping to keep the population down. Along comes progress, increasing the food supply, ending diseases, slashing infant mortality, etc. Suddenly, parents used to producing five or six offspring in the hopes that two might survive find that most or all of their children live into adulthood, and live longer lives. The population explodes. As agriculture gets more efficient there are no farm jobs for minors. Children lose any economic benefit they had and instead become a burden demanding food, clothing, medical care and expensive education for roughly 20 years, and then continue to mooch off their parents for another decade before they finally move out of the house. New generations adjust, and the average number of children per family drops down towards 2, or even lower, leading to a population stabilization. This is what has happened in the West — the population of Western Europe is actually declining, and the United States depends on immigration for it's growth — and it's happening in the developing world, too. Even in the poorest parts of the world life spans are increasing and infant mortality rates are dropping. The culture hasn't caught up yet, so birth rates are still higher than in Europe, but they are decreasing. Fertility rates in China and India are dropping sharply, and Brazil's birth rate is nearly as low as the United States'. It will probably take about another century for the world's population to peak, but even then it's unlikely that we'll be straining the food supply. And if we are, we can just grow more food in our Martian colonies. Thursday
Night Race Results Results from last Thursday's track meet are now up. NYRR didn't list any team affiliations this time, and they misspelled some names, so we may have missed some members' results. If you catch somebody that we overlooked, please email us. Too
Much of a Good Thing is Wonderful Just when we thought ESPN.com's Page 2 wasn't taking up enough of our time, they debut the new Page 3! The inaugural edition include a list of the top 100 sports moments on The Simpsons and an interview with Ashton Kutcher. We never know how to answer that "which three people, living or dead, would you invite to dinner" question, but Walter Payton, Demi Moore (included because Kutcher is dating her) and Leonardo da Vinci is a pretty good list. %*$! You! Our e-mail program of choice, Eudora, now comes with a built-in offensiveness analyzer. A few words in a recent e-mail brought up this alert: "Your message is the sort of thing that might get your keyboard washed out with soap, if you get my drift. You might consider toning it down." This is what happens when programmers try to be funny. A toned-down letter led to "Your message is likely to offend the average reader." Clearly their views on what is offensive and who is average are based on some 1950s standard. Not that it matters much. The most offensive aspect of our emails is always the message itself, not the language we use to convey it. Around
the World Update #13 Dear all, We're back with some more South-East Asian adventures... LAOS: Four Thousand Islands Located
at the border between Cambodia and Laos, this remote place is on
the Lao Mekong "delta", where the river widens to 14 km
and reveals, during the dry season, thousands of small islands.
The biggest islands are emerged year-round, some of then are inhabited.
We first stayed on a tiny one, Don Det island, and rented a wood
& bamboo bungalow on the Mekong (for $1). There was no running
water on the island, no electricity, no phone, no roads. There was
no cultural or natural tourist attractions either. But this is one
of the most peaceful and harmonious places we have found so far. We then travelled up the Mekong and stopped for a couple of days on the "big island" Don Khong. We explored both islands on a bicycle. The trails run between the ricefields. The villages are just a handful of houses on stilts and a small wat (Buddhist temple). There are pigs, chickens, ducks and geese wandering everywhere. There is no need to park them, they can't go far away. Everywhere, young children were waving at us, yelling "sabai-dee"(hello) with a huge smile on their face. In the rice fields, women would stop their work to say hi. Once, we've even been invited to get closer, and Olivier was lectured on how to pick up the rice plant from the soil (a very useful skill around here). We left Laos knowing that we would miss those friendly faces and laid-back atmosphere. VIETNAM We only stayed
10 days in Vietnam while our original plan was to stay much longer.
It is a beautiful country but we just did not manage to get used
to the combination of bad weather and disappointing relationship
with the locals. VIET-No VIET-scAM We, tourists, have our share of responsability. Some of us really show a complete lack of respect to the locals, behaving in an arrogant fashion. Others accept to pay any price even for disastrous service, leading the locals to think that we are just stupid. Also, the cultural differences are much bigger here than in other countries, and the lack of mutual understanding leads to clashes. It is important to mention that people who do not usually deal with the tourists, like the ambulant baguette saleswoman, are as kind and smiling as in any other Asian country. The Trip
in Itself Vietnam is over, hello Cambodia ! We arrived a few hours ago in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Hope everybody is in good health for the beginning of the year,
Week of January 13, 2004 - January 19, 2004 Football We were a little perturbed that our weekend obligations would keep up from watching the Colts-Patriots game. As it turned out, we were glad to miss it. What happened???? Guess the new knock on Peyton Manning will be either that he can't produce in Foxboro or that he can't play in a blizzard. We get a break next weekend, and then it's the less-than-Super Bowl, featuring the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers. We'll still watch, but more for the commercials and to see if we win the office pool than out of any great interest in who wins. Celebrity
Poker Nicole Sullivan, who we'd never heard of before - probably because she is one of the stars of The King of Queens, which we've never watched - won the first Celebrity Poker Showdown tournament last week. Paul Rudd, playing for Project A.L.S., finished third. Despite a lot of poor play and even poorer commentary, the show was successful enough that a new tournament is planned for later this year. We don't know which minor celebrities they'll get for the next round, but a coworker had this suggestion today: "My friend's cousin is a producer for Celebrity Poker Showdown. I'm going to see if I can get you on the show." That still only makes us three degrees removed from the show, which isn't much better than the six degrees we might expect (although the study that established the "six degrees of separation" theory is not very reliable). But even if we knew the producer personally, we can think of several good reasons why we won't be on the show. First, as popular as this site is, we still don't really qualify as a celebrity. Second, as bad as some of the celebrities were, there were some players who would clearly talented enough to beat everyone in our biweekly game. And finally, we are one of the few Americans left who has no desire to be on TV. Still, if we can have CPTC be our charity, we'll consider it. Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy For those who do want to be on TV, here's the latest casting call we received:
Although, if South Park is to be believed, the "Fab Five" are crab people who are "trying to systematically make men into wusses so they can take over the world." And they might object to orange singlets. You have been warned. Frank
Handelman Frank Handelman's father passed away last week. Friends are welcome to stop by Frank's home, 35 West 92nd Street, 3C (between Columbus and Central Park West), on Monday after 3:00 pm. His phone number is 212-222-7774. Triathlon
Training Seminar JackRabbit
Sports, in Park Slope, is hosting a traithlon training seminar next
Saturday. He has offered a 10% discount if 5 or more CPTC members
sign up. See the deails below.
New
Running Site Toby Tanser writes:
Out
of Town We're off to the boonies for a family obligation this weekend. We definitely won't have access to a computer. We're not even sure we'll have access to a phone. This means you're all on your own for at least one day, and maybe two (it's not yet clear how late we'll get back on Sunday). The Greatest Because you can never have enough lists, ESPN is ranking the top 25 athletes of the last 25 years. The 35 nominees seem a little restrictive (Michael Johnson, Roy Jones, Jr., Brett Favre and Greg Maddux are among the Americans missing from the list, and Martina Navratilova is the only nominee not from North America), but if you're interested, you can vote here. Life on
Mars Not that we'd ever actually place one of these bets, but William Hill bookmakers will pay 50 to 1 if any human walks on Mars before the end of 2030, and 10 to 1 if we make it back to the moon by December 31, 2015. You may recall that William Hill offered 100-to-1 against intelligent extraterrestrial life being discovered this year, which means the likelihood of us making it to Mars is only twice as good as the chance of Martians making it here. (Although they also give Hilary Clinton at 9-to-1 chance to be our next president, despite the fact that she's not running, so all these odds may be a bit suspect.) This whole new
plan for NASA seems like a waste of money to us (or would, if we
thought any significant money would actually go towards it), but
this may answer the question of how best to fund it. The other option
we've come up with is to make this into a reality show, where we
all get to vote on which washed-up celebrity gets sent to the moon
and NASA gets all the ad revenue and other profits. Also, they could
charge the ex-celebs big bucks for the right to return from the
new moon base. In
Memoriam We are saddened to report the death of Frank Handelman's father, Samuel, on Wednesday at age 96. Born in 1907 in Glasgow, Scotland, Samuel grew up in Cleveland and began practicing law there in 1930. A lifelong labor and civil rights attorney — and the longest standing member of the Ohio bar — he represented striking workers at Republic Steel in the late 1930s, and a decade later represented Ohio electrical workers, helping both groups win the right to unionize. Active in progressive causes both locally and globally, he met his wife, Sally, while they were both working to raise money for the Republican Government during the Spanish Civil War. Samuel's father attended the First Zionist Congress, his son is a founding member of the Central Park Track Club, and he himself was a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild. In an interview last year he claimed "I'm a person with no great distinction or associations, but I have done some good work in my life." He did a little more than that, and did it right to the end, maintaining an active law practice up until his last day. Orange We've noticed that Howard Dean's volunteers in Iowa are all wearing bright orange hats. It this a not-so-subtle attempt to win the coveted endorsement of the Central Park Track Club six weeks before the New York Primary? Sorry, but it'll take more than that. At the very least, we expect the candidate we endorse to support banning cars in Central Park. Yes, we know the federal government doesn't usually concern itself with such issues, but we've just about given up on ever getting the city to do anything about it. No
Glove Lost It seems there will always be those who try to elude the Global Surveillance System. Most try it with obscure out of town races, but occasionally a member will try to hide in plain sight, as it were. Do they truly think we will fail to find their local race results, photographs or articles? Do they hope that because we, like most subscribers, are a few weeks (or months) behind in reading The New Yorker, that we don't at least glance through it when it arrives - for the cartoons, if nothing else? Perhaps they hope that as we flip the pages we will simply skip over familiar names, or that we'll just assume that the cognitive scientist described as "tall and skinny and thirty-four years old" whose work "involves studying the behavior of animals and making inferences about their minds" is not the identically-named tall, skinny, thirty-four-year-old cognitive scientist on our team who studies animal behavior. We're referring, of course, to Alexandra Horowitz, whose year-long habit of collecting lost gloves on the street is profiled in this week's Talk of the Town section. The middle distance star has so far collected about 120 gloves and mittens, with right-hand gloves leading left-handed ones by about 3 to 1. Interestingly, the article makes no mention of any running gloves that Ms. Horowitz may have found. Perhaps she leaves those out of her collection and simply uses them herself for winter runs. Far
East Report Our Hong Kong correspondent writes: My heart bleeds for my NYC teammates when I read that the coach wants to check out the weather before deciding on whether there will be a road workout on Thursday. Here in Hong Kong we just had the coldest day of the winter season, in which the temperature plummeted to ... 56 degrees fahrenheit. That is why I can completely empathize with your feelings (or lack of feeling in your hands and feet). I opened up the South China Morning Post and there is a feature article on someone named David Gibson. There is a photo of him now running along Lugard Road near the Peak overlooking the harbor. This photo was taken this week, and it showed him running in winter gear, which is a singlet and shorts here. In 1969, Gibson arrived in Hong Kong as a member of the Royal Engineers and he promptly went ahead to win just about every race that he entered until he was 35 years old. He still holds Hong Kong's 1500m record of 3:55.6. So what? What do I care and what do you care? Here is the paragraph that is of interest to the Central Park Track Club — Gibson maintains that some of his success can be attributed to the fact that he belonged to an athletic club and trained with other determined athletes. "I was fortunate to have very good training companions, many of whom were of British international standard," he said. Tuesday
Night Armory Workout Report We expected a low turnout last night, as many of our members are resting up for the big Thursday Night at the Races. Still, 20 runners showed up, including the wandering coach, who returned from parts unknown. When asked about her trip she replied "I can't say anything right now because the webmaster is here and everything I say will end up on the website." Sorry, but you must have us confused with the ancien régime. We are happy to keep things in confidence, especially when well compensated for our troubles. We will report that while we all stretched we overheard Frank Handelman say "Hey, yours is bigger than mine!" Alas, it was not as interesting as we first thought, since he was merely remarking on the relative size of teammate's foam roller. Kim Mannen McConville suggested that we have a group stretch before the workouts. Sounds good to us, as long as somebody else organizes it. And then the workout. While the racers did a light workout, there were still seven runners in need of a full workout. Coach Devon suggested 5x800, but was convinced to make the first and last intervals only 600 meters. A kinder, gentler coach, or just too jetlagged to argue? Only time will tell. We couldn't stay for the late workout this week, but we did hang around long enough to see that 34 runners showed up, including Henrietta, who we're putting on the homepage in a shameless effort to get her to join the team. That, and we have no photos from last weekend's race. Jamie
Metzl for Congress We try to avoid anything political on this page (not always successfully), but we gladly broke that rule in response to this request from our friend Jordan Metzl: "My younger brother, Jamie Metzl, is running for Congress in Kansas City, MO, on the Democratic ticket. Could you please post a link on the famous CPTC website so that all the world can see it?" How could we resist, especially after we read in the "About Jamie" section of the site that "Jamie has run 20 marathons and completed three Ironman triathlons." Best
of New York We have no idea how to mention most of the questions in New York Magazine's Best of New York poll — How can we vote for best haircut under $50 when we've never paid more than $15 for one? There's probably a best place to buy vinatge t-shirts, but who's out there buying them? — but we were intrigued by question 8:
Well, they're all fine, we suppose. The East River Bikeway is a little dull (we spent about six years running there, and finally moved out of the East Village so we could run someplace better). The West Side Greenway is very nice in some parts and still under construction in others; it's a little odd to count it all as one place. But why only the reservoir in Central Park? Have the staff at New York never noticed that most people run on the roads, with many others on the bridle path? Sorry, we forgot that they never actually visit any of the parks, since the higher-ups spend all their time at expensive stores and trendy clubs, while the rest of the staff members are chained to their desks for 18 hours each day. In case you're wondering, no, we're not just bitter that we weren't nominated for Best New York Blog. This isn't really a blog, and we don't necessarily concern ourself with NYC topics, so we didn't expect to be in the running. We do read four of the ten nominees on a regular basis. They have some good content, but spend an awful lot of time just linking to each other's stories. And they all have yet to suggest one good place to run in the city. The
Medium Is the Message A new poll shows that Americans are starting to favor non-traditional sources for their campaign news. Newspapers and network and local TV news have lost favor, while cable news, the internet, and comedy TV shows (e.g. The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live) have gained in popularity. We're not particularly surprised by this, since mainstream coverage of the campaigns is often a meaningless collection of soundbites and polling data. If a candidate's policy views are ever mentioned, it is usually as part of another candidate's attack. "Balanced" reporting means mentioning both a candidate's proposal and an opponent's attack, without ever checking to see if which (if either) has the facts on its side. Instead of watching that nonsense, check out the lengthy articles in online magazines like Slate or Salon which actually analyze the proposals and explain why they are, or are not, likely to be effective. Then flip on The Daily Show to see Jon Stewart mock the regular press. Armory
Rules Now that the indoor track season is in full swing, we thought it would be a good time to remind our runners to be mindful of track etiquette. The Armory Track & Field Center web site has posted the following rules: ARMORY TRACK AND FIELD CENTER RULES
THE ARMORY TRACK AND FIELD CENTER RESERVES THE RIGHT TO RESCIND ALL PRIVILEGES FROM THOSE NOT ABIDING BY THE ABOVE RULES OF GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP CPTC would like to add the following advice:
Week of January 6, 2004 - January 12, 2004 Running
Partner Wanted We received the following email from a British woman seeking running partners for the end of the month:
Anyone interested should email Janine Francis at Janine.Francis@doh.gsi.gov.uk. Sent Packing We don't believe in destiny or curses. Especially not when it comes to professional sports. (We're a little less agnostic when it comes to people, since we've had a few roommates who seemed to suffer from some form of bad luck or karma. This has inclined us to agree with Hamlet's statement that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," which puts us in the somewhat awkward position of believing in things we don't believe in.) Of course a belief in outside intervention can affect the outcome of a game. A team that feels cursed - or that believes its opponent to be blessed - may simply not try as hard as a certain level of fatalism sets in. A team that feels destined to win may play with more confidence, and overcome more talented opponents. Or they may feel they can do no wrong, and make foolish mistakes. That probably explains the Packers' loss yesterday. What else can explain Brett Favre's decision, early in overtime, to just launch the ball into the air without even looking downfield? Did he expect the invisible hand of destiny to guide it safely into the hands of someone in a yellow jersey? If so, he was sorely mistaken. It was Brian Dawkins, in Eagles' green, who caught the ball, and ran it back 35 yards to set up an easy game-winning field goal for Philadelphia. But maybe it wasn't that. Maybe there are football gods overseeing the game, and they decided to turn on the cheeseheads. But why? Maybe it was punishment for punting on fourth and inches late in the fourth quarter. That might explain St. Louis' loss Saturday night, as well, when they passed up a chance at a touchdown, opting instead to run out the clock and tie the game with a field goal. They were probably being additionally punished for allowing Carolina to score a touchdown on a fumble recovery in the second quarter. The Carolina Panthers went on to win that game in double overtime, also thanks to an interception. At least there was some good football, specifically the Indianapolis-Kansas City game. This was football the way is was meant to be played, with not a single punt from either team. The New England Patriots are still the favorite to win the Super Bowl, but it's hard to see how anyone is going to stop Payton Manning and the Colts from putting up the scores more appropriate to a basketball game. Millrose
Games With the elimination
of the Masters' relays, CPTC won't be competing at the Millrose
Games this year. There are still good reasons to attend, though,
including Marion Jones' return to competition. Jones will
compete in the 60-meter dash, her first race after a 17-month absence
during which she gave birth to her first child. Let Them
Eat Cake Thanks to everyone who contributed to CPTC's gift to the Armory staff. Noah Perlis resisted the temptation to keep the money for himself and flee to Mexico. Instead, he writes, "we collectively sent them gourmet cakes to start the year off on a sweet note (chocolate truffle, carrot, and red velvet cakes). It was warmly appreciated, and was not a crumb-y gift." Though he insists that he doesn't desrve it, Noah gets a lot credit, both for organizing this gift for the second year, and for that horrible pun. Coffee
Walk On his own website, Roland wonders why Starbucks and Barnes & Noble "think that they need an establishment on every other block in the city." We can't answer for the bookstore, but we recall an article in The Times ("Monday Veni, Venti, Grande; Starbucks Strikes Deep in a Wary Land of Pushcarts and Delis," April 29, 2002, Page B1, Column 3, if you care to look it up) in which the some Starbucks regional executive said that the company had to open so many outlets (including three in Cooper Square alone) because most New Yorkers, given the choice between a Starbucks across the street and a less preferred store in front of them, won't cross the street to get to the Starbucks. Because
It's There For all those who feel that running a marathon at, or close to, sea level just isn't challenging enough we share the following invitation:
Baby,
It's Cold Outside At least, that's what we hear. We made it as far as the lobby to pick up our copy of The Times, and that was cold enough to convince us to adjust our schedule and make today an off day. If this keeps up we may have to give in and start running on the treadmill again. Thursday
Night Workout Report A few years back, a friend of ours got very into triathlons. As the trigeeks who read this page can attest, this usually involves many hours of training each week. Many, many hours. Enough that at one point our friend's boss said to her "I think your job in interfering with your training." And our friend replied "Yes! You understand!" Of course, that wasn't the answer the boss was looking for, and our friend eventually found a balance between work and working out. We mention this story becuase we want to assure you all that we would never let our job interfere with our training. (In rough order of importance: Family, friends, training, chores, reruns of The Simpsons, job.) But that just applies to our regular job. When we got the chance to be an assistant coach with a running group in Brooklyn, we didn't let the fact that it meets on Thursdays nights dissuade us. As a result, we missed last Thursday's workout, and will miss most Thursday workouts for the next three months. Workout reports, therfore, will be dependent on someone else stepping up and writing them. New Members Welcome aboard Shane Clarke, Neil Denney, Kevin Farley, Joanne Galinak, Kate Irvin and Shafik Quoraishee. First recruitment points of the year go to Sean Fitzpatrick, Laura Ford, Sid Howard, Chris Solarz and Catherine Stone-Borkowski. Last year we accepted 48 new members. The coaches and Executive Committee members topped the recruitment scorecard in 2003 (Devon Martin -10, Stacy Creamer - 6, Sid Howard - 6, Tony Ruiz - 4). Sorry guys - no prizes for you, so the winner of the 2003 recruitment contest - and free 2004 membership - is Yves-Marc Courtines with 3 points. Surely one of you can top that this year! Liquid
Diet We're not sure which is scarier: that Jones Soda produced Turkey & Gravy soda, or that it sold out quickly. TV Or
Not TV? From the January 7 Fond du Loch (WI) Reporter:
We'd like to blame our local cable company for making us watch too much TV, but they have the air-tight defense that they never show anything worth watching. Still, best of luck, Mr. Dumouchel. Sure, this is another one of those frivolous lawsuit that makes us question the entire judicial system, but part of us is rooting for you. If you think TV made your family fat and lazy, wait until you see what unlimited internet access will do to them! Tuesday
Night Armory Workouts Report First workout of the year, and all the usual suspects were back at the track. Well, almost all. Coach Devon was nowhere to be seen, again. Rumors that she's is lying on a beach being fed grapes by a cabana boy could not be confirmed at press time, but we're printing them anyway. (Luckily her firm doesn't specialize in bringing libel cases.) We tried to get a count of the runners, but they quickly split into two groups (milers and half-milers) starting their workouts at opposite ends of the track. We can barely count when everybody is in one place, so we didn't even make an attempt this time, and just focused on the workout instead — 2x400, 1x600, 1x800, 2x400 for the milers, 2x300, 1x400, 1x600, 2x300 for the half-milers. We wanted to rush over to the late workout in time to hear Coach Tony's announcements, but got diverted listening to Jessica Reifer and Frank Handelman take advantage of the coach's absence to plot various ways of breaking training. The distance crew (about 35 runners) ran 12x400, with a bunch of middle distancers (Jim Aneshansley, John Gleason, Sid Howard and ourself) as timers. Most of the team ran consistent intervals, even when 12-year-old Henrietta started passing whole groups. Some one get her an application for the team! Her dad, too. Busted Towards the end of Bananas (which Red thinks is Woody Allen's funniest movie but which we think ranks just behind Take the Money and Run and Sleeper), Allen's character, Fielding Mellish, is put on trial for some vaguely defined crime (either subversive acts or improper use of Howard Cosell). As the trial opens he objects to the judge "This trial is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham." We can only imagine what Mellish would make of Major League Baseball's drug policy, especially now that Anaheim Angels pitcher Derrick Turnbow has been banned from international competition for two years after testing positive for androstenedione. Of course, he faces no punishment from Major League Baseball, which doesn't include andro in their joke of an anti-drug policy, and the international ban is irrelevant since the U.S. baseball team failed to qualify for the Olypmics. Angel's manager Mike Scioscia said he felt steroids could definitely help a pitcher throw harder, and General Manager Bill Stoneman said the team would step up efforts to keep the team's players from using andro. And then they both said that the positive drug test would have no impact on whether or not Turnbow makes the team next year. Turnbow's saga was mostly eclipsed by by the return of Pete Rose, who has finally 'fessed up to gambling on baseball. In his new book, My Prison Without Bars, he even offers something close to an apology:
Sure, Pete. You broke the rules, lied about it for a decade and a half, and now wrote a book where you blame everyone else for your problems. Then you released that book at the same time that the Hall of Fame inductees were announced (Dennis Eckersley and Paul Molitor), and now claim that you didn't mean to overshadow them (not like you already have a credibility issue or anything). But hey, with such an eloquent, heartfelt plea how can we not forgive you? It's not like you're still gambling all the time. What? You are? Well, surely we can trust you not to gamble on baseball if you're reinstated. After all, you've never lied to us before. Sorry. The glare off Rose's hair left us momentarily hypnotized. Word is that commissioner Bud Selig is leaning towards making Rose eligible for the Hall of Fame but keeping him out of any baseball related job. That sounds like a good decision. The Hall of Fame should only be concerned with Rose's stats as a player. If they were seriously concerned with legality and morality they'd have to toss out some of the players already in there. But there is no way that Rose should be let anywhere near a baseball team again until he shows some contrition and proves he's ready to follow the rules. We gave up on that a long time ago, so, like Rose said, let's move on. On a sadder note, famed Mets and Phllies reliever Tug McGraw died on Monday of brain cancer at age 59. McGraw is best remembered in New York for his rallying cry "You Gotta Believe" in the 1973 playoffs (around the same time he also said "I'm a flake, not a screwball") and in Philadelphia for getting the final out of the Phillies only World Series win. We like to remember his explanation of how he would spend his World Series bonus: "Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish whiskey. The other 10 percent I'll probably waste." Apartment
Wanted John Affleck and his wife and hunting for a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side or Morningside Heights area; 90th up through Columbia University, basically. If you've got any leads, please e-mail him at mcflick@att.net or just chat with him at practice. Beers and eternal gratitude if it leads to them finding a new place. If
You've Got It, Milk It For All It's Worth The Producers, which started as a Gene Wilder-Zero Mostel movie before becoming a Broadway musical, will be made into a new movie starring Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. Mel Brooks won't be directing this time, probably because he's too busy rolling around on the huge piles of money he's making off of all this. Request Vram
Malek is trying to get in touch with Julio
Rodriguez. If you have his email or telephone number,
please foward it to vmalek@dbarch.net Everything's
Bigger in Texas... Men's Fitness has released their new rankings for America's Fattest Cities, and five of the top ten are in Texas — Houston (2), Dallas (3), San Antonio (4), Forth Worth (6) and Arlington (8). Houston was number one last year, but lost out to Detroit this time (no doubt much of that weight gain came as Motown residents stuffed their faces to forget about their dismal sports teams). The fittest city this year — and last — is Honolulu. New York is the 21st fattest, 6 spots healthier than last year, although somehow fatter than Milwaukee and Charlotte, NC. Charlotte improved its ranking by 19 places in the last year, probably as a result of the Fit City Challenge, a "community level initiative to encourage and empower program participants to increase their level of physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption." Philadelphia (4th fattest in 2003, 7th fattest now) had a similar program two years ago, and Borough President Marty Markowitz has his Lighten Up Brooklyn campaign. Let those serve as examples to every politicain who wrings his hands and says there's no way to fight obesity. Relay
Race Apparently the biggest sporting event in Japan is the Hakone Ekiden, a 134-mile relay race from Tokoy to the foot of Mt. Fuji and back. The Times reports that over 30% of TV viewers in Japan watch part of the race. Wonder what kind of ratings Reach the Beach would get... Speech!
Speech! Louis Menand remarks in this week's New Yorker that "a good top-ten list should convey authority. Not quite Olympian authority, maybe; readers should be able to argue with it, to dissent a bit at the margins. But, ideally, the list should suggest a finality of judgment: life is short; your time is precious; spend it on these." He was referring to lists made by critics, not those voted on by the public, which may explain why the list of best movie speeches that resulted from a Blockbuster poll in the U.K. is so disappointing. Of course popular elections always favor the recent and the middlebrow, but that still doesn't explain this list:
Jack's over-the-top rant from A Few Good Men is number 2??? The voice-over opening to Trainspotting is considered great????? We're not sure the Dirty Harry quote even qualifies as a speech, and only the last line of Peter Finch's rant is memorable. We do like the speech from Whitnail and I (although we know nothing about the movie), but that's probably because it's stolen from Act II, Scene 2 of Hamlet. What's missing here? How about Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca (even if Ingrid Bergman interrupts him a few times)? Where's Susan Sarandon on the Church of Baseball, or Kevin Costner on what he believes in (Bull Durham)? Does no one remember Burt Lancaster's testimony in Judgment at Nuremberg? And yet we'd forgive all these oversights if the voters had just included the best movie speech ever. We're refering, of course, to George C. Scott's opening remarks in Patton:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
