WEEK OF MARCH 25, 2003 - MARCH 31, 2003

• SIX NATIONS [3/31/2003]  Complaint Department: "England just beat Ireland convincingly by 42-6 to win the Six Nations tournament, but I didn't see any mention on your website.  You wouldn't be prejudiced against England, would you?"
   
  Answer: "Prejudiced?  Moi?  Is the Pope Catholic?  But England winning Six Nations is just like ... let us think of an analogy ... ah, just like being the winning team at the Central Park Track Club Relays!  A 'championship' is meaningless unless you face up to the All-Blacks marching up to you and doing the haka war dance.  If you beat them, you may then claim to be the true champions ... P.S.  Never seen the haka?  Here are a few downloadable AVI/MPG film clips.  By the way, Scott Willett can do a mean haka ..."

  "We are the All Blacks, of the New Zealand people.
  Here we are to face you.
  We will do you the honor of playing to the limits
  that our hearts and sinews impose upon us.
  We will be very hard to beat.
  Whiti te ra! Hi!"

  From Jerome O'Shaughnessy:

OK, this time you got me, you have now brought that finest of games, Rugby Union to the web site and I feel I must respond to the write up.  

First and foremost thank you for acknowledging 'the great game' and the Six nations rugby championship which drew to a close in Dublin last Sunday with England defeating Ireland. I do however have a complaint about your response to the original complaint...are you biased against the English...

Your response was most interesting especially the following statement... "But England winning Six Nations is just like ... let us think of an analogy ... ah, just like being the winning team at the Central Park Track Club Relays!"  Not so, it is true England have won for the last two years but they by no means dominate the championships like you suggest. Indeed, had they lost to Ireland on Sunday, Ireland would have won the Championship because, like England, going into Sundays match Ireland were unbeaten.  The question now is, are you biased in favour of the English?  

The other comment I found interesting was...  A 'championship' is meaningless unless you face up to the All-Blacks marching up to you and doing the haka war dance. If you beat them, you may then claim to be the true champions... The 6 Nations is exactly that, a tournament between 6 countries, a European Northern Hemisphere tournament. It does not exclude the All Blacks for any other reason than geographical.  Of course in October /November this year the Rugby World Cup will be contested in Australia where England, Ireland, New Zealand and all other Rugby playing nations who qualified will be represented and will play each other. Your disparaging comment particularly surprises me given that your own 'World series' is nothing more than a National tournament given a grandiose title which it neither warrants nor deserves. The words glass houses and stones come to mind.

Our comments:  Good, we finally found one person who is passionately interested in rugby, the sport of real men ...

• SELECTION BIASES [3/31/2003]  Two days ago, we told you that we had just assembled a new photo collage (see journal entry of 3/29/2003 further down this page).  How did we pick those particular photos?  Let us tell you how we did it.  The previous collage was made more than a year ago, so we looked at the photos that we took since.  In particular, we started from the most recent photo album, selected the ones with good quality and we kept working backwards until we reach our quota of 20 individual photos.  
   
  We might say therefore that the process was random, but that would be an obvious lie.  There are some obvious selection biases.  First of all, the twenty people are split 50/50 by gender. Since the club has more males than females, this obviously reflects the preference of the (male) selector.  Secondly, among these 20 people, 17 have run track races but only 13 have run road races.  Since the club has more roadies than trackies, this does not reflect the preference of the (roadie) selector  but it does reflect that our photographers took more photos at track meets recently than on the road.  Thirdly, all 20 people are seen wearing Central Park Track Club uniforms of some sort.  This may reflect the bias of the selector against people who wear white long-sleeved shirts, but then the photographers always have trouble spotting her.
   
  Of course, we can go on forever with this (where is the geriatric set?  is there too much snow in the background?  are there too many relay batons? etc).  But you are probably every bit as good as we are ...

• ARAKAWA SHIMIN MARATHON [3/31/2003]  From Charles Allard Jr.:

On Sunday I subject myself to my yearly torture. I ran the Arakawa Shimin Marathon. The whole thing, start to finish. OK, I walked at 35k but only because they were giving out sherbet and I did not want to spill mine. The course is like Rotterdam, flat, no wind and at a pleasant time of the year. So no excuses not to finish and finish well. 

The fact that the winner finishes in a not so fast 2:30 does not detract from the enjoyment of 17,000 other runners some of whom finish in 3:04:15 and others who come in just under the 7:00 limit. This is really a race for locals a "citizen's marathon". I did so well up until about 33 k (1k=4:20, 4 :03, 4:04, 4:09, 4:10, blah blah blah to 33k and a 4:31! then a 4:40 help I am slowing down, a 5:13 I am doomed then pretty much 5:00s until the end).  I really tried the 10-10-10 method and the first 10-10 was fine, negative splits. Just the last 10 kind of fell apart.  Any answers?

• NYRR 8000 NEWS [3/31/2003]  From Mary Wittenberg (NYRR): "First, we hope to see lots of you out running and cheering next Saturday, April 5 during out NYRR 8000 featuring the USA Men's 8K championships. Allowing the Club Team runners to run with the USA Men's Championships contenders, was one of the primary reasons we decided to run all the men together this year. Wanted to call to your attention an opportunity your team members may be interested in - Meb Keflezighi and Tim Broe will be conducting a free clinic in our building on next Thursday night April 3, from 6-7 p.m. See our home page and then the NYRR 8000 site for more info (note space is limited so arrive early)."

• NYRR JOB OPENING [3/31/2003]  As of today, a full time position selling merchandise in the Running Gallery is available and hopefully filled quickly.  Hours are 12-8 Monday-Friday.  $9 an hour.  Anyone interested, please contact Beth Creighton at bethc@nyrrc.org with resume and statement of interest.

• USATF NATIONAL MASTERS INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS WRAP-UP REPORT [3/30/2003]  
   
  In our preliminary report early in the afternoon, we reported two items:

Frank Handelman won the M55-59 race in a time of 2:13.87 with splits of 32.99, 32.90, 33.28, 34.70.  Three weeks ago, when he won the MAC 800m title in 2:14:40, he said, "This was my best race since turning 40.  It is true that I ran 2:13 when I was 47, but it was not as pleasing as this one."  Well, it looks like he has gotten an even better one.
Question:  If the results are not posted yet, where does Frank's time and splits come from?
Answer: Blackberry!
 
One week ago at the Front Runners' Meet, our men got the world best time of 8:16.7 for the 4x800m M30-39 relay.  On Saturday, a team from the Running Company in Princeton shaved that time down by less than a second to 8:16.95.  Our team was not there at this meet, so it will be the proverbial "Wait 'til next year" for us.

The full results have now been posted, so we know a few more things.

Our 4x400m women's relay team of Catherine Stone-Borkowski, Stacy Creamer, Sylvie Kimché and Darlene Miloski now owns the American/world W35-39 record at 4:38.92.  Our team consisted of one W55-59, two W40-44 and one W35-39, so that the team classification is the age of the youngest runner.  According to National Masters News, the previous record was a very soft 6:21.80.
 
Our 4x400m men's relay team of Chris Potter, John Affleck, Frank Handelman and Paul Groce now owns the American M35-39 record at 3:50.72.  National Masters News does not even have a listing for any previous record.
 
The overall medal count is as follows:
Three golds: Catherine Stone-Borkowski 800m, Frank Handelman 800m, Sylvie Kimché mile
Six silvers: Darlene Miloski 800m, Sylvie Kimché 800m, Catherine Stone-Borkowski mile, Darlene Miloski mile, Sid Howard mile, Stacy Creamer 3000m
Three bronzes: Sid Howard 800m, Ana Echeverri mile, Ana Echeverri 3000m, Mary Diver 3000m

There were a few lifetime and season bests.  The most remarkable ones are Jerome O'Shaughnessy bringing his mile time by 8 seconds to 5:24.25 and Darlene Miloski bringing her mile time by 9 seconds to 5:34.59.

Stacy Creamer's highlight moment: "The most thrilling moment of the weekend was definitely Frank Handelman's big move in the third lap of his 800. Wow!"

This has been a long indoor season with many noteworthy accomplishments.  Although we would like to say that this wraps up our season, this is not true because the most important meet of the season will take place on Tuesday --- the world-famous Central Park Track Club Relays!

• NEW PHOTO PAGE PANEL [3/29/2003]  We finally got around to getting a new collage panel for our photo page.

Top row: Amerigo Rossi, Zeb Nelessen, Clinton Bell, Armando Oliveira, Naomi Reynolds, Bill Haskins, Alayne Adams, Stacy Creamer, Catherine Stone-Borkowski, Alan Ruben
Bottom row: Andrea Ostrowski, Jessica Reifer, Ken Shatzer, Margaret Angell, Chris Potter, Lee Shearer, Victor Osayi, Isaya Okwiya, Laura Lee Kozusko, Devon Martin

• 20th ANNIVERSARY SLIDE SHOW [3/29/2003]  In 1992, when we held the 20th anniversay party, we had a slide show that was assembled from photographs contributed by various team members.  Today, this is still a source of bitterness since some of the borrowed photographs have not been returned to their owners yet.  In any case, Noel Comess has kindly converted all the slides into computer-reader format for your memories.

• INTRASQUAD RELAY [3/28/2003]  Spring is here, spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer ...  Yes, as our runners who enjoyed the pleasant temperature outside last night (or endured the not-so-pleasant temperature inside on Tuesday) can attest, spring is – finally! – here.  That means it's only a matter of time before we move back outside to the 6th Street track (first we'll make sure Mother Nature is serious about this new weather).  With only a few workouts left indoors, then, it's time for the ever-popular Central Park Track Club Intra-Squad Relay!
  
  For our new members (and those who have blocked out memories of last year's race), this is our annual event in which the track runners and road runners get to compete together.  It's pretty simple.  We all gather next Tuesday (April 1) at 7:00 pm.  Members are randomly distributed into teams of five with descriptive names like "Team A" or "Team 1."  The teams organize themselves however they see fit, and then run a 200m-400m-800m-1200m-1600m relay.  Team members and spectators cheer them on.  A great time is had by all.  Check out some photos of last year's relay to see for yourself.

• PRAGUE SPRING WATER [3/28/2003]  Stuart Alexander adds some more thoughts on the Prague Marathon:  "It was not a cold day.  At the first water stop I was handed a cup of brown liquid.  Conscious of the Czech reputation for fine brewing, I anticipated a delightful sports drink concocted from local hops.  I took a healthy mouthful and nearly gagged, spitting most of it on the ground.  It was ordinary hot tea!  Afterward I stuck with the voda, and that is not a misspelling of vodka."
  
  The word vodka is, in fact, derived from the word voda, Russian (and Czech, we suppose) for water.  In much the same way, whiskey derives from the Gaelic uisge beatha, meaning "water of life" (the French schnapps known as eau de vie has the same meaning).  This may be why we often drink some of these beverages as if they were water.

• THURSDAY NIGHT ROAD WORKOUT REPORT [3/27/2003]  Finally, a much warmer day without a cloud in the skies.  This workout was enough to draw 51 people out.  By comparison, Laura Lee Kozusko reported a count of 15 for last week's rainy workout.  She also reported that people were running a lot faster than they ought to last week, because everyone wanted to get out of the rain as quickly as possible.  
   
  Tonight's workout was not designed for the numerically challenged.  Going out involved running lampost pickups of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 with equal recovery.  Coming back involved running lamppost pickups of 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 with 1/2 recovery.  The first challenge was not even numerical in nature, because it was observed that every pickup seemed to be uphill.  The first major numerical challenge cam at the 102nd Street transverese.  So there you are, counting from one up according to the lampposts on the right hand side of West Drive going up north.  When you make that right turn into the transverse,  you suddenly realize ... all the lampposts are on the left hand side.  So you are either going to have one very long one-lamppost pickup or one very long one-lamppost recover.  Or you can be a switch hitter and start counting on the left instead.  And you will not have Paul Bendich to help you on this night.
   
  Buried in this road running workout report is an item that we would like to put to a vote --- Should we carry bike race results on this website?  Case in point: The Columbia University Grant's Tomb Criterium this past weekend, with Paul Carbonara and Alison Rosenthal (can this be true?).  So, please speak your piece or forever hold your peace.

• STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN [3/26/2003]  Jonathan Cane: "This weekend I took my insanity to new heights (pun intended) by doing a three hour stair climb race in San Diego.  The race was held in a 32 story building - we ran up and took the elevator down.  I came in 3^rd place with 25 trips for a total of 800 flights.  The winner set the new course record and completed 28 trips.  In case you're wondering, my handy-dandy altimeter tells me that I climbed 9060 feet, average HR was 163 bpm, average time per climb 6:03, average elevator time (including waiting) 1:09.  I have a vicious case of jet lag, sore legs and blisters on my hands to show for it."

• MARATHON REVIEW [3/26/2003]  We are being invited to join the New York Flyers to attend this play on April 2nd.  Details are provided in the journal item at the beginning of this week further down the page.  Alan Ruben has already seen this play, and writes: "I saw this play last week and was expecting something pretty silly.  In fact it was surprisingly good.  Definitely worth nine bucks of anyone's money."

• USATF NATIONAL MASTERS INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS  [3/26/2003]  The meet site has published the final list of 756 entrants.  The following twenty of our people will be there:
  John Affleck, 800m/mile
  Anthony Baker, 800m
  Alston Brown, 200m/400m/800m
  Stuart Calderwood, mile/3000m
  Stacy Creamer, 800m/mile/3000m
  Mary Diver, 800m/mile/3000m
  Ana Echeverri, 800m/mile/3000m
  Paul Groce, 800m
  Frank Handelman, 800m
  Bob Holliday, 3000m
  Sid Howard, 800m/mile
  Sylvie Kimché, 800m/mile
  Marty Levine, 800m/mile
  Devon Martin, 800m/mile/3000m
  Darlene Miloski, 800m/mile
  Jerome O'Shaughnessy, mile
  Noah Perlis, 200m/400m
  Craig Plummer, 400m/800m/mile
  Chris Potter, 800m
  Catherine Stone-Borkowski, 800m/mile
   
  Technical notes:  There are entries, but we expect to see a few scratches (e.g. not all those women will run all three races).  We would also like to field a men's and a women's 4x400m relay team, provided that we have enough healthy bodies around then.

• TUESDAY NIGHT TRACK WORKOUT REPORT [3/26/2003]  

  In "times like these," nothing screams louder than silence. When a once voluble (loudmouthed, even) source clams up, willing to say nothing of consequence whatsoever on the burning issue of the day, then we know that all has gone wrong. But of course we don't want to abuse our post. Lord knows Paul Bendich may have an opinion (any guesses?), but this reporter chooses not to offend with directness. Instead, he will take refuge in his beloved obscurantism, and offer the following rumination on "issues of consequence." It may be relevant, but only from the side, from a very acute angle. Note the myriad subjects that might play the role, surely against their will, of young Martin below:

  "At such times the thought of death , the thought that sometime, maybe soon, he would be compelled to surrender and go through what billions and trillions of humans had gone through before him-this thought of an inevitable death troubled him but slightly. It gained strength only toward evening, and with the coming of night would sometimes swell to monstrous dimensions. The custom of performing executions at dawn seemed charitable to Martin: may the Lord permit it to happen in the morning when a man has control over himself-clears his throat, smiles, then stands straight, spreading his arms."      -V. V. N. "Glory"

  Given that the rest of this report feels a bit "trivial," to use a buzzword that has an entirely different meaning among pompous mathematicians, we shall lard it with a bit of "trivia." Look out for the questions, there's money involved!

  The workout started at 8:17. Only 22 people were present this time, as the season draws to a close. Next week, according to Coach Ruiz, is the famous intrasquad relay. Many club triumphs were announced: Margaret Angell "jogged" to another victory, Fred Trilli ran yet another PR, and Zebulon Nelessen took second place (in what? a trivia question. We will provide one (1) dollar for the proper answer. You may not ask Zeb.  Cast a wide net in your thinking).

  The workout consisted of 4 1000's, followed by three 300's. While these were meant to be run at 5K pace, Joe Tumbarello complained loud and long that Alan Ruben was doing them far too leisurely.  He was still talking about it on the train ride home. Two-time quality of life offender James Siegel (another trivia question! one dollar. No asking the man himself) made his triumphant return to the B group.

  Earlier, it was alleged by Lauren Eckhart that she has always had blue eyes. Why was she compelled to say this at that particular moment? Another trivia question, one dollar.

  Finally, as promised, we shall refrain from mentioning Joseph Kozusko's name in this report.

• LOATHSOME PEOPLE [3/26/2003]  Given our loathsome reputation for publishing inaccurate information, we were seriously concerned that we would be voted in to the New York Press' 50 Most Loathsome People.  Alas, this was not to be.  Reading through the winners and their qualifications, it looks like we would need to sharpen our greed and meanness in order to have any chance.

• PRAGUE SPRING [3/25/2003]  Stuart Alexander: "I ran in the Prague Half Marathon March 22nd.  It is a pretty flat course along the river starting on the Charles Bridge.  This was my first time racing a half marathon.  Official time was 1:33:04 and a PR by definition.  There was no chip time but it would have been about 17 seconds faster.  Overall place was 440th and age group 45-49 was 46th.  Upon finishing, I immediately started sneezing like mad and have been sick ever since with a terrible cold."
   
  Hmmm ... we remember our Czech member Karel Matousek telling us that this is the race in which people handed out drinks that were ... hmmm ... real drinks, as in vodka.  A vodka (or two) would have helped to ward off a cold (or two) ...

• VOR DEM GESETZ [3/25/2003]  Speaking of Prague, we know that there is one ubiquitous cultural icon, whose melancholy portrait is inescapable, adorning T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, shopping bags, puppets and above all, graffiti.  We quote the impossible-to-miss style:

Vor dem Gesetz steht ein Türhüter. Zu diesem Türhüter kommt ein Mann vom Lande und bittet um Eintritt in das Gesetz. Aber der Türhüter sagt, daß er ihm jetzt den Eintritt nicht gewähren könne. Der Mann überlegt und fragt dann, ob er also später werde eintreten dürfen.

«Es ist möglich», sagt der Türhüter, «jetzt aber nicht.»

Da das Tor zum Gesetz offensteht wie immer und der Türhüter beiseite tritt, bückt sich der Mann, um durch das Tor in das Innere zu sehn. Als der Türhüter das merkt, lacht er und sagt:

«Wenn es dich so lockt, versuche es doch, trotz meines Verbotes hineinzugehn. Merke aber: Ich bin mächtig. Und ich bin nur der unterste Türhüter. Von Saal zu Saal stehn aber Türhüter, einer mächtiger als der andere. Schon den Anblick des dritten kam nicht einmal ich mehr ertragen.»

Solche Schwierigkeiten hat der Mann vom Lande nicht erwartet; das Gesetz soll doch jedem und immer zugänglich sein, denkt er, aber als er jetzt den Türhüter in seinem Pelzmantel genauer ansieht, seine große Spitznase, den langen, dünnen, schwarzen tatarischen Bart, entschließt er sich, doch lieber zu warten, bis er die Erlaubnis zum Eintritt bekommt. Der Türhüter gibt ihm einen Schemel und läßt ihn seitwärts von der Tür sich niedersetzen.

Dort sitzt er Tage und Jahre. Er macht viele Versuche, eingelassen zu werden, und ermüdet den Türhüter durch seine Bitten.

Now why would we give you an extended quotation in German here?  How many of you can read this?  Well, we do know that there is at least one person amongst us who can read Kafka in the original German ...

• NEXT UP [3/25/2003]  Last year, we followed the soccer world up on this website.  This year, we followed the cricket world cup on this website.  You will be happy to hear that those two events will not be back for a few years.  But what next?  This is not an all-sports-all-the-time website, and we will only cover those sports in which we have domain knowledge.  Our number one sport is soccer, our number two sport is cricket, and our number three sport is ... God help you! ... rugby league!  However, you will be very happy to learn that the next Rugby League World Cup will not occur until the year 2005.  Meanwhile, if you beg us long and hard enough, we just might do this year's Tour de France.  What's your best offer ... ?

• THE PLAY'S THE THING [3/25/2003]  Our friends at the New York Flyers sent us the following invitation:

  On Wednesday, April 2nd, at 8:00 p.m., there will be a special showing of the off-Broadway show MARATHON for the New York Flyers.  The play is showing at the Producers Club, located at 358 West 44th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.  We would like to invite members of CPTC to join us.  The show runs for 70 minutes and involves two actors who run on stage throughout the play as two men training for the New York City Marathon.  Their conversation explores friendship and self-awareness with a surprise twist at the end.  Tickets are being offered to the New York Flyers and their CPTC friends at a discounted rate of $9.00.  Promotional items from Asics will be given out to the first 40 runners who arrive at the theater.  Tickets may be purchased at the door the evening of the performance. If you are interested in attending, please send an RSVP as soon as possible to Fran Obeid, the member at large of the New York Flyers, at mal@nyflyers.org.  Be sure to indicate the word "MARATHON" in the subject header of the email.

WEEK OF MARCH 18, 2003 - MARCH 24, 2003

• DUES/VOTES [3/24/2003]  We begin by repeating the standard message:  "By now, the members of the Central Park Track Club all should have received a mailing containing two forms - one to submit your 2003 dues payment ($75) and the other to vote in the elections for the CPTC Executive Board.  It will help us enormously if you adhere to the March 31st, 2003 date for the return of these forms to Central Park Track Club, c/o Richard Kixmiller, 14 East 96th St, New York, NY 10128.  If you have not received these forms please contact Alan Ruben at alan@montran.com."
   
  If you have not done that yet, we'll tell you that it is worth finding that letter just to read the candidates' biographies.  We liked Audrey Kingsley's bio so much that we have posted it on the Famous Sayings page.  But we will print here just so we can make some comments:

  "I began running competitively (or so I thought) in January 1997, but didn't really compete until I joined CPTC later that year.  I now race distances from the 5K to the marathon, and the running joke is --- no pun intended --- all at the same speed.  I have served on the Executive Board as the Women's open rep since 1999 and have seen the caliber of the women's team escalate since then.  I am also responsible for maintaining our ever-changing membership roster, which is no small feat since you all seem to move more than the average New Yorker.  It would be an honor for me to continue to serve CPTC in both capacities, as it would give me the opportunity to give to something that has given so much to me."

  Correction #1: Audrey races distances from the '2 mile' to the marathon all at the same speed, having completed two indoor two-milers this season.  She also 'competes' in the 800m against David Pullman during our track workout sessions, which she does at a faster speed since she is really motivated.

  Correction #2:  The problem has less to do with the frequency of moving than your belief that Audrey is supposed to divine whether you have moved to.  PLEASE!  Mind reading is not a job requirement for the membership secretary!  You are supposed to let her know!

• YEAR-TO-DATE ROAD WINS [3/24/2003]  This is the list so far:
  1. Stacia Schlosser, ERC New Year's Day 5 Miler, Presque Isle State Park, Erie, PA, January 1
  2. Alan Ruben, Frostbite 10M, Central Park, NYC, January 18
  3. Margaret Angell, Al Gordon 15K, Central Park, NYC, February 1
  4. Toby Tanser, Thomson's Valentine Twosome Two Miler, February 9
  5. Ana Echeverri, NWFTC Kiss 'M To The Finish 8K, Destin, FL, February 15
  6. Margaret Angell, Snowflake 4M, Central Park, NYC, February 22
  7. Margaret Angell, Brooklyn Half Marathon, Central Park, NYC, March 8
  8. Margaret Angell, NYRR 20M Run, Central Park, NYC, March 23
  9. Catherine Stone-Borkowski, Equinox 20K Championship, Piscataway, NJ, March 23
   
  In years past, we are actually not a good first-quarter team (with the exception of the Toby Tanser).  Our strength and depth are at their best when triathlon season comes around.  Two weeks ago at the Thursday workout, we overheard our favorite triathlete (note:  don't even try to guess who that is, because all triathletes are our favorites!) say: "This is my first road workout this year.  I have not swim this year either.  And I have completely fallen off the wagon on the cycling bit."  Well, just today, we went out during lunch and saw people in t-shirts eating lunch in the sidewalk cafes.  So this is the time to get back on the wagon ... and rack up those triathlon wins!
   
  Rules reminder:  Road wins refer to wins in races off running tracks that involve some degree of running.  Therefore, all road and cross-country running races are included.  So too are duathlons, biathlons, triathlons, ironmans, double ironmans, triple ironmans, cyclocross, adventure races, etc.  Pure bike races are not admissible, neither are rollerblade races, baseball/softball games, basketball games, etc.  There are no prizes or awards, and the only pleasure is that we get to type up this list periodically and write some gloating article.  The all-time annual high number is 50 wins in one year, most of which are by someone named Toby Tanser.

• RUNES [3/24/2003]  Several people have told us some of the splits for the 4x800m relays do not add up correctly.  One person suggested that we can ask Paul Bendich to check our math.  Well, the problem has less to do with needing a mentally sound professional mathematician.  Our problem requires someone who can decipher the handwriting on the slips of paper that were handed to us after the track meet.  We didn't think that those chicken scratch marks were numbers.  We brought in our Chinese-language expert but he swears that it was not any Indo-European/Asian languages.  Any rune readers out there?
   
  But of course we can take the easy way out.  We may not know any rune reader, but we happen to have a professional statistician on staff.  We have asked him to look into the problem, and he said, "No problem.  I can run a splineless interpolation on those numbers."  Hmmm ... we think this means that he is going to 'cook the books.'  See, we are the 'can-do' guys around here ...
   
  Question: "What is a splineless interpolation?"
  Answer: "We were just trying to be cute by combining 'spineless' with 'spline interpolation.'  As to what the latter is, here is a java demo.

• OUT OF TOWNER [3/24/2003]  As our membership secretary says, you people move far too often.  Sometimes people move to faraway places, and you would think that they would forget about them and vice versa.  Well, neither usually happens.  On one hand, there is that Chinese saying, "Once you have been a deep, wide ocean, you can never be a little puddle of water again."  Indeed, we find our alumni dispersed all over the world still competing under the Central Park Track Club brand name.  Below, we have a photo of Isaya Okwiya running in CPTC colors at the Back Bay Snowflake Sprint 5K in Morgantown, West Virginia last December.
   
  
   
  On the other hand, we don't forget about them either.  How else did you think we found Isaya's race result?  You didn't think he would tell us, do you?  

• RUNNING THE SIDEWALKS [3/24/2003]  The organizers of the Washington Marathon canceled the race last week, but that didn't stop 500 runners from showing up anyway to run the course on the sidewalks.  Co-winners Paul Rades and Kevin Kozlowki reached the finish together in 2:55:50, a time that included stops for red lights.

• LOST AND RECOVERED [3/23/2003]  On Saturday, Stacy Creamer went to the Front Runners Track Meet owning a world record in the W35-39 4x800m relay that she set with her teammates in late February.   In this meet, Stacy lost that record when a team of four other Central Park Track Club runners took that record further down.  But in the time of exactly 14.8 seconds, Stacy's new W40-49 team finished in world record time in that same race.  What an exciting moment it must have been for Stacy's son Kieran Calderwood!

• ANOTHER ANOTHER WIN [3/23/2003]  Chalk up another win for Catherine Stone-Borkowski.  On Saturday, she was the anchor leg of the world record 4x800m W40-49 team.  On Sunday, she won the Equinox 20K Championship in 1:16:53 (6:11 min/mile), which is the opener for the USATF-NJ road championship series.  The next woman was about 1:45 behind. She powered through the first 9 miles in 54:44 and then pushed through to the finish.  We even found some photos of her in that race.
   
  

• ANOTHER WIN [3/23/2003]  Chalk up another win for Margaret Angell, this time at the 20 miler in Central Park.  4-0 so far this year, two training runs and two scoring races.

• AUSTRALIA RULES [3/23/2003]  The anticlimactic climax came and went as Australia wins the Cricket World Cup today.  Indian captain Sourav Ganguly will be second-guessed to death by arm-chair cricketers for his decision to send Australia to bat first on a lively pitch.  The open pair of Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden brought up almost a century.  The captain Rick Ponting and Damien Martyn went the rest of the way to bring the total to 359-2, the highest ever in a world cup final.  The latter overs were especially rough on the Indians --- Ponting reached 50 in 64 balls and his next 90 runs came in only 57 balls.  In reply, India got off to a bad start when their man-of-the-tournament Sachin Tendulkar was dismissed for only four runs.  In total, India was all out for 234 runs.  Not a bad total, but it was a large losing margin.
   
  We called this an 'anticlimactic climax' because the atmosphere was listless.  It is true that the large Indian population showed up to watch this match at Johannesburg's Wanderers grounds, and there were chants of 'Australia, Australia, Australia ... oi, oi, oi.'  But outside the grounds, there were also protest chants of 'Howard is a coward' in reference to John Howard's decision to send Australian troops to Iraq, in spite of the fact that the Australia people's sentiments were against that.
   
  This type of ambivalence is in fact embodied in the definition of the Australian person.  Most commonly, the colloquial term for Australians is 'diggers.'  Where did that come from?  Our well-thumbed copy of the Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms has five definitions:
  (1) An Australian gold-miner of the 1850s and later.  That is to say, they 'dig' for gold.
  (2) An Australian soldier in World War I, especially an infantry man; an Australian soldier in any later war.
  (3) A private soldier, as distinct from one with any rank.
  (4) An Australian who is not a soldier: used as a mode of address like 'mate'.  Example: "What's up, digger?"
  (5) Anyone thought of as showing typically Australian characteristics.  What does that mean?  What are the typically Australian characteristics?  The dictionary offers this: "The Diggers: anti-English, anti-establishment, anti-everything except amber fluid."  We must be looking at a mirror ...

• FRONT RUNNERS TRACK MEET WRAP-UP REPORT [3/23/2003]  We have finished posting the results and the photos, and now we get to write the report.  This was the last local indoor meet of the season, where many unfinished businesses were taken care of.  Going into this meet, we had four major individual/team goals and we were successful in all of them.  Below, we have the individual reports.
   
  W55-59 800m  In this event, Sylvie Kimché ran 2:37.5 to establish the new American record.  She just fell short of the world record of 2:36.75, which means that Sylvie's business is still not finished.  She has one more shot at the National Masters Indoor Championships next week.  This has been a long long journey for Sylvie.  In her youth, she was a competitive skier.  Running came to her much later in life.  In her first years as a masters runner, she was dominant in the local scene with a range that goes from track sprints to the marathon.  Then came the years when she had physical problems and gave up running.  Instead, she moved to Columbus, Ohio and took up golf.  In the last couple of years, she was able to run a bit and then some more and then some more even faster.  In 2002, she was the NYRR W55-59 Runner of the Year, wining 15 out of 16 local road races (note: the lone loss was to an out-of-town runner).  This indoor season was her first serious comeback on the track.  After finding that she could run 2:41 for 800m at the MAC Indoor Championships, she made a dedicated effort to go for the record this time.  Yes, happiness can come again and again in our lives ...
   
  W35-39 4x800m relay  At the last Thursday Night At The Races meet in February, 2003, the team of Kim Mannen, Darlene Miloski, Sue Pearsall and Stacy Creamer set the world best time of 10:23.3.  Today's meet was the last chance to improve on that record.  For this race, Stacy Creamer joined the W40-49 team and Devon Martin took her place as the anchor leg runner.  

On the first leg, Kim Mannen followed the lead of teammate Jessica Reifer and came through with a personal best of 2:22.  That time would move her up to 8th all-time best in club history.  More importantly, it was a 5 second improvement in time over that previous race.  

On the second leg last time, Darlene Miloski surprised us with a 5 second improvement on her season best.  In this race, Darlene once again had an improvement of ... 5 seconds to 2:29.  Question:  Can we find yet another race for her?  But we wouldn't be surprised anymore, would we?

On the third leg, Sue Pearsall held the same 2:43 pace as in the previous race.

When Devon Martin took over, there was already 10 seconds on hand.  In the previous race, Devon was held out for the distance medley relay team at the USATF National Indoor Championships.  Today, Devon improved on Stacy's time by 12 seconds by running 2:26.  There was no suspense in this race, except whether they may come under 10 minutes.  Their final time was 10:01.9, a new world best.

W40-39 4x800m relay  Our original plan included only two 35-39 teams.  At the MAC Indoor Championships, Catherine Stone-Borkowski indicated to us that she wanted to join our club.  Since she had won the 800m race easily in 2:21, this led to look us at the possibility of forming a W40-49 team for record purposes.  The American/world record was 10:26.5 or 2:37 per person.  For our previous personnel, this was not impossible but we would have to twist a few arms for a quixotic project.  With the arrival of a 2:21 runner, this became quite feasible.  

On the first leg, we had a total rookie in Alayne Adams, who has no previous 800m/mile times in her long illustrious career.  But if she runs 17:XX for 5,000m road races, how slow can she be?  She did have a 400m time of 70.5 at the 2003 Millrose Games.  On that basis, we had projected that she would run in the low 2:30's.  But we were wrong!  That 400m time was run when she was running a 101.5 degree fever, after which she came down with strep throat and bronchitis.  Today, Alayne's time was 2:28.08, nearly ready to move into the top 10 best in our history!  

On the second leg, Stacy Creamer transferred from the W35-39 team (note: an older runner can run for a younger team, which is classified according to the age of its youngest runner).  But it was a risky affair today, as she pulled a calf muscle more than a week ago.  At the Tuesday practice, she was unable to do the baton passes.  Her preparation for this race consisted of NOT running at all for the last four days.  She was just going to warm up and see how she felt, with Sylvie Kimché ready to step in if needed.  She was good enough to go, and her time of 2:37 today was even one second faster than that previous race.

On the third leg, Sue Krogstad-Hill had one of those races after which she asked us to destroy her splits.  Unfortunately for her, we won't do that.  Not because of any journalistic ethics, but because somewhere we have to take revenge for the many years that she tortured us on the road and track while wearing the colors of that other team in town.  Kidding aside (because we really like her), her time was 2:44 at the MAC Indoor Championships so her 2:50 today was somehow slower.  But not that slow.
 
The average pace for the first three legs was 2:39, slower than the 2:37 needed.  If we had Sylvie Kimché on the anchor leg, we would probably fall seconds short.  We don't know what Yumi Ogita or Kellie Quinones might have done instead.  But no matter, for on this day we had the MAC champion to run the anchor leg.  Catherine Stone-Borkowski ran steady splits of 33.06. 34.49, 36.90 and 36.17 for 2:20.62, which puts her in 6th all-time best 800m in club history in her first ever race.  The final time for the team was 10:16.7, a new world best.

We believe that the business for this team is not finished yet.  The first three legs can each be substantially faster and, if they stay together, they will probably break 10 minutes next year.

M35-39 4x800m relay  When our men set the American record at the last Thursday Night At The Races meet, they were probably aghast afterwards when they read their splits.  56 seconds for the first half and 68 seconds for the second half is no way to run a race.  All of them knew that they could pace themselves better.  Today, they went in with the same line-up.  Things also got a bit interesting because there was some competition from one other team.

On the first leg, Paul Groce went out in 57 and came back in 63 for 2:00, which was a 3 second improvement over his previous race.  Actually, he looked a lot more smoother too.  The competition was nowhere in sight.

On the second leg, Chris Potter went out in 61 and came back in 63 for 2:04, which was a 4 second improvement over his previous race.  The competition still has not appeared yet.

On the third leg, Glen Carnes went out in 66 and came back in 63 for 2:10, which was a 1 second improvement over his previous race.  Also, this was the first leg in which anyone ran negative splits.  This was motivated by the runner on the other team making up a huge gap although once he caught up, he could not pull away.  The negative split was achieved by Glen through battling back and forth with the other runner.

On the fourth leg, Armando Oliveira stayed right behind the other runner for two laps.  At 500m, he probed by making a move to pass.  When there was no response, he put in a sustained drive in the last 300m.  As seen in this photo, the margin of victory was in fact quite large.  Armando's splits were 62 going out and 60 coming back for 2:02, which was a 4 second improvement over his previous race.  The final time was 8:17.6, a new American record, which was an 11 second improvement.  It was a happy way to close the books for the year.

Other events  There were many other events today.  Our best performances came in the 49.0 400m and 22.4 200m by Evan Zeisel, which was characterized as "When I see Evan run, it just inspires me ..."  Meanwhile, this was the first time that we met the Jessica Reifer in person.  Although we went to the MAC Indoor Championships with the hope of seeing her, she was busy that weekend being a soccer tournament MVP elsewhere.  Prior to seeing her race, we had received contradictory reviews.  One version says that she is an absolute novice in running, but with unbounded enthusiasm (such as doing hurdles after the workout).  The other version says that she ran a 5:15 mile as a teenager in high school.  What one is right?  Today, in the 400m race, she was about 5 meters behind after 200m, but she had the courage to fight her way back on the third turn to go even up and when she got a slight lead at the last turn, she looked confident that nobody would ever run her down.  Her time of 1:00.5 puts her into third all-time best in club history.  Jessica is important to this website because she says, "My mom reads the website every day."  Jessica also begs us not to post any photos of her, but then her mom would be quite disappointed, wouldn't she?  
 

 

• BRAZILIAN FOOTBALL FANS [3/22/2003]  We get these occasional rude comments, "What do you know about other sports?  How dare you write about the World Cup soccer!?"  Well, in that specific case, the fact was that we were able to obtain substantial help on a daily basis from a self-anointed expert with a record of publication (see link).  In fact, we know quite a few self-anointed experts in various other areas too.  A partial list of the credentials of our panel of experts can be found here.

• ROOM FOR RENT [3/21/2003]  Jesse Lansner has a room for rent in his new apartment, available April 1.  The room is 12' x 9' with a large closet in a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment in Kensington, Brooklyn (Ocean Parkway and Caton Avenue).  The apartment is fully furnished, and has a dishwasher, washer/dryer, terrace, large living room, lots of light and central air conditioning.  It's 3 blocks from Prospect Park (Great for running & cycling!) and 2 blocks from the F Train (Ft. Hamilton Parkway station).  10 minutes to Park Slope, 30 minutes to downtown, 45 minutes to midtown.  The rent is $850/month (includes gas and electric). Contact Jesse Lansner at lansnerj@yahoo.com.

• NATIONAL MASTERS CHAMPIONSHIP ENTRANTS [3/21/2003]  There are still more than four days before the Boston meet and registration closes on 3/24.  As of 3/20, there are 712 entrants, including these 16 Central Park Track Club members: John Affleck, Anthony Baker, Stuart Calderwood, Stacy Creamer, Mary Diver, Ana Echeverri, Paul Groce, Frank Handelman, Robert Holliday, Sid Howard, Sylvie Kimché, Marty Levine, Devon Martin, Craig Plummer, Noah Perlis and Catherine Stone-Borkowski.

• WASHINGTON DC MARATHON CANCELLED [3/21/2003]  Due to security concerns during a time of war, this Sunday's race has been cancelled.  The entry fee ($65 to $95) will not be refunded and will be deferred to next year's race instead.  6,801 people had entered this race.  This race is staged by a private company, H20 Entertainment and we will observe that these folks were one of the few national races that sent this website constant requests for publicity.  Great selling job, lousy customer service.
   
  As a friendly gesture, the Marine Corp Marathon (October 26, 2003, Washington DC) will guarantee entry to 1,000 runners registered for the Washington DC Marathon.  Nobody is happy, for many reasons --- the entry fees, the booked airplane tickets and hotels for out-of-towners, the expenses already incurred by the operator, the weeks of training without yielding any result, the apparent victory of terrorism over normality, elite runners losing their paychecks, etc.
   
  Update message: "Not only did they cancel it without consulting any government agencies, they have shut down their website (washingtondcmarathon.com).  However, web hunters have found it relocated to www.miami-marathon.com instead.  Meanwhile, their only listed phone number plays a recorded message.  Some runners might want to run this marathon next year, but many others can't or simply wouldn't want to.  If road race events are now a business, those businesses must accept the risks associated with their enterprise, including the advance 'costs.'  They should also accept the consequences of their own business decisions."
   
  Could this happen elsewhere?  We suspect that it could have been handled better.  Much better, in fact.  Our hometown New York City Marathon is a non-profit organization which has built a race that is an integral part of the city, a focal point of civic pride and a proven source of revenue from the runners and tourists.  If there were security issues, we are sure that the city government will do everything possible to allay those concerns.  If the security issues were insurmountable, we are sure that all the runners and visitors will be treated gracefully and fairly.  Short-term losses are not the issue because the long-term reputation of this city and its race is what matters.  Boston Marathon is just like the New York City Marathon.  The Boston Marathon is Boston, and they would never let this happen.  In the case of London and Chicago, those races have big sponsors (Flora and LaSalle Bank) and there is no way that those sponsors would have permitted the disgraceful actions that are being seen now in Washington DC.  The Washington DC Marathon is a for-profit commercial enterprise, with no roots in the community.  In time, they could have become more involved in the community but they might have burnt the bridges this time.  Last year, in the inaugural race, H20 Entertainment scheduled the race on Palm Sunday, drew protests from local religious leaders but steamrolled ahead anyway.  As a commercial enterprise, their only calculation is the bottom line and everything else be damned.  So is there anyone who still thinks totally de-regulated free enterprise capitalism is the way to go?  Mind you, H20 will probably slink away but another fly-by-night operator will come into town when this blows over ... 
   
  P.S.  We read through the list of tri-state entries and we didn't anyone from our team.
   
  Update message: "I think that the no refund policy is outrageous. I don't know how the entry fees were paid, but if anyone used a credit card, they should dispute the charge and it should be refunded. Unless the fine print in the entry specifically mentions that there are no refunds for a cancelled race, then the merchant is obligated to refund the money, and even if they don't, the credit card company MUST give the cardholder a credit on his bill." 
   
  There are apparently two paths to obtain a refund.  First, through the credit card company for an undelivered service.  Second, through active.com which processed the entry.  Please note that the registration page on the re-located www.miami-marathon.com says, "Registrations are non-refundable, non-transferable and non-deferrable with no exceptions."  On the printed registration form, there is a fine print clause: "H20 Entertainment Group, Inc. reserves the right to reject any entry, and further reserves the right to change the details of the Marathon without prior notice.  I understand that my entry fee is nonrefundable and my registration is nontransferrable."  However, it is difficult to construe that this includes the cancellation of the entire event without refund --- just imagine that you sign a contract to purchase an automobile and the seller decides that they can't deliver your car now but they will hold on to your payment and deliver some other car to you next year; furthermore, they did it to all their customers.

• MASTERS TRACK RECORDS [3/20/2003]  With respect to our listing of masters world track records, let us explain our sources of information.  Where would anyone start?  Go to USATF.org, the official organization for track & field in the USA.  Among the various menu items on the home page, one directed us to Masters.  On the menu items on that page, we see Records.  Unfortunately, there are no entries for indoor or outdoor track & field.  The menu directs us to a possible alternate (but unofficial) source: the venerable National Masters News.  That site contains pages linked to the USA outdoor Records (as of 11/2001), the USA indoor records (as of 11/2001), world indoor records (as of 9/15/2002) and American/world indoor relay records (as of 12/2002).  Are these records up to date?  Obviously not, as some of them are more than a year old.  Are these records accurate?  We don't know unless we want to make it our job.  And it isn't our job.  
   
  Is there a more up-to-date and accurate source out there?  We looked.  The premier US masters website Masterstrack.com leads us right back to National Masters News adding the qualifier '(Note: Some superior elite marks are not listed).'  Thanks, guys.  Another potential source is the World Masters Athletics site.  There, the indoor records are listed as of September 24, 2002.  However, those items that we were interested in appear to be the same as the National Masters News records.  In a bit of sniping, Masterstrack.com describes WMA as 'beset by problems.'  If you have the stomach to follow a detailed dismemberment of the WMA world best lists, you can read this blog.  
   
  If anyone out there knows of a better source, please let us know.  If you think that our reports are erroneous, please let us know so that we can verify and correct them.  More importantly, please let the people at the principal resources (USATF, National Masters News, MastersTrack.com, World Masters Athletics) know too so that the correct information is shared by everyone.  Furthermore, the current situation is that USATF does not collect and maintain such information sytematically, leaving it up to ad hoc efforts by volunteers.  If you believe such information is valuable, please urge the USATF to get its act together.

• FINALLY, A BIKE DATE [3/20/2003]  Hurrah!  After weeks of snow, cold and rain, we have a bike training date for this Saturday.  From Ross Galitsky and Olivier Baillet: "Weather permitting (there might be some rain), we will be riding on Saturday (10am, Engineer's Gate at 5th Avenue and 90th Street). As for some of us it will be the first or second time on the bike outside in months, we will content ourselves with going to Nyack the usual and easy way (maybe through Riverroad if it's dry)."

• THURSDAY NIGHT ROAD WORKOUT NON-REPORT [3/20/2003]  Finally, we got an evening without snow on the ground.  Unfortunately, it was raining buckets outside.  We tried our best not to go out to the workout, and we succeeded.  Therefore, there is nothing from the regular workout reporter.  But if some of you fools would care to inform us about who you and the other fools are, just let us know ...

• RELAY TEAM ROSTERS [3/20/2003]  At the Front Runners' Meet on Saturday, three Central Park Track Club relay teams will be going after American/world records in the 4x800m relay event.  The rosters are:
   
  M35-39: Paul Groce to Chris Potter to Glen Carnes to Armando Oliveira 
  W35-39: Kim Mannen to Darlene Miloski to Sue Pearsall to Devon Martin 
  W40-49: Alayne Adams to Stacy Creamer to Sue Krogstad-Hill to Catherine Stone
   
  The M35-39 team has the identical line-up as their American record run on February 27th.  This time, they will have the benefit of that previous experience, which was their first time together as a team.  Their target is their own time of 8:28.3, or 2:07 per person.  Please, fellas, hold back on your youthful exuberance on the first lap!
   
  The W35-39 team has one change in the line-up in their American/world record run on February 27th.  They lose Stacy Creamer (2:38.3) and gain Devon Martin.  Last time, Devon was part of the open women's distance medley relay team at the USATF National Indoor Championships that weekend.  Devon has no 800m time this season, but she has two miles: 5:12.6 and 5:16.9, which translated to ~2:36 and ~2:38 at the halfway mark of those races.  So the prospects for breaking the record are good.
   
  The W40-49 has just been assembled this week.  The new name to the team here is Catherine Stone, who has just joined the Central Park Track Club.  Her presence enabled this team to be formed to go after the American/world record of 10:26.5, which is 2:36 per person.  What are the prospects?  We can look at their individual records this season.  

First, Alayne Adams does not have an 800m time in her Central Park Track Club career.  She does not have a mile time, either.  She was drafted (dragged?) into the Millrose Games, where she ran a 70.2 400m relay leg on the small track in Madison Square Garden.  She was a nominee for the 2002 NYRR W40-44 award.  When Devon Martin asked our club historian about her times while trying to form the Millrose Games teams, the response was: "No known track times.  What is known that she runs those 5x800m track intervals under 2:40 while carrying on a conversation."  Our projected time for her is in the low 2:30's.

Second, Stacy Creamer was part of the W35-39 team last time, with a time of 2:38.3.  Under USATF rules, an older runner is permitted to be part of a younger relay team which is classified according to the age of the youngest runner.  Now she gets to move back to her own age group.  

Third, Sue Krogstad-Hill ran 2:44.22 at the MAC Indoor Championships two weeks ago.  We expect her to get stronger over the season.

Fourth, Catherine Stone's time at the MAC Indoor Championships was 2:21.10, which was the winning time for the masters division by a wide margin.  She also won the 1500m easily in that same meet.  Catherine is a well-known local racing figure, and was also a nominee for the 2002 NYRR W40-44 award.  Catherine will be at the National Masters Championships next weekend, where she will run the individual 800m and mile.  She has a listed time of 4:55.97 for the mile, compared against the American record of 4:59.9 by Madelyn Noe-Schlentz and the world record of 4:57.71.  Wouldn't that be exciting!?  Her listed time of 2:21.10 for the 800m may not have been a full effort, so she has an outside chance at the American record of 2:16.01.  But the world 800m record is a seemingly unreachable 1:58.37 by Helena Fuchsova (CZE).  How impossible is that?  Maria Mutola won the 2003 World indoor 800m championship last weekend in 1:58.94.  [Technical note:  Our research department points out this discrepancy:  National Masters News lists Fuchsova as being in the W40-44 group for that time of 1:58.37 in 2001, but the IAAF gives her birthday as 3-6-1965, which would put her in the W35-39 group instead]

So the prospects for breaking the 4x800m record are also good for this team.
 
And we won't let them run alone.  So let us show up in force on Saturday to support them!  And don't forget that before the relay events, Sylvie Kimché will be going for  the individual 800m American record of 2:39.54.

• WORLD CUP FINALISTS [3/20/2003]  Everything has worked out according to our script so far.  Today, India handily defeated Kenya and set up the final on Sunday against Australia.  The India star was captain Sourav Ganguly who slogged a century.  Australia and India have met in the first round, whence Australia won by a landslide margin of 9 wickets.  After that match, Sourav Ganguly was burnt in effigy back home.  That was then, but now India has gotten into form.  Our full script predicted that these two nations will meet in the final, after which Australia will hoist the cup.  If this second part does not work out, we happen to live in a high building and so it will be quick and easy to step out the window ...

• ANOTHER 10,000 [3/20/2003]  Remember that we hit the 400,000 home page visitor mark on March 1, 2003?  It took just twenty days to get the next 10,000.  And we love you too ...

• CHINAMAN [3/20/2003]  In one of our discussions of cricket terminology, we said that a left-handed googly is known as a chinaman, because the pitch was first thrown by a person of Chinese descent in the West Indies.  This led a thoughtful readers to write in: "Reading your latest journal entry on cricket (which, for the most part, still remains beyond me), I was reminded of an uncomfortable moment during ESPN2's coverage of the World Indoor Track & Field Championships in Birmingham over the weekend.  In remarking upon  Liu Xiang's third place showing the men's 60 meter hurdles, one of the commentators informed viewers that this was the first time a "Chinaman" had medaled in the history of the indoor world championships.  I was pretty shocked to hear such an archaic-and I thought, pejorative-term used with apparent impunity.   While you're edifying us culturally, would you mind putting on Randy Cohen's ethicist hat and let us know how radioactive (if at all) the ESPN2's commentator's word choice was?"
   
  Whew, where do we even begin to talk about several hundred years of solitude?  Without getting into the etymology and evolution of the term Chinaman, we will lead you to a short and readable essay.  Appropriately for our thoughtful reader, this was linked from the English 450b class at Yale University in 1998: 

  Someone once asked me about the difference between a chink and a Chinaman. "I know the word chink is offensive," he said. "But what's wrong with calling someone a Chinaman?" To illustrate the difference between the two, I decided to tell him a story:

  There was once a superhero named Chinaman, like there once was a superhero named Superman. Superman could lift cars and fly and run real fast, while Chinaman did nothing cool at all. He only built miles and miles of endless railroad tracks, like his ancestors who once built miles and miles of endless stone walls. Back home in China he pulled rickshaws for miles and miles as extremely fat men sat in the back and yelled at him to go faster. When he moved here he slaved away on sugar plantations in Hawaii, fishing canneries in Alaska, gold mines in California, and hand laundries everywhere for half a penny an hour. This meant it took him two hours to make any real money. And while Superman didn't have to take shit from anybody, Chinaman took shit from everybody, kind of like Jew Man. Chinaman was thrown down wells, deported about fifty million times, excluded from America for sixty years, beat up for his money everyday, and taxed for all the gold he ever found in the lonely Californian hills. And if Superman and Chinaman ever got into a fight, Superman would win because he can punch Chinaman all the way to the moon while Chinaman can barely dent the Man of Steel. So how can Chinaman even be considered a superhero if he was such a loser? Superman would have done everything a zillion times faster and better than Chinaman, right? I'll let you think about this one.

  And just like Superman had an arch-nemesis in Lex Luther, Chinaman had an arch-nemesis in a villain known as the Chink. Everybody hated the Chink. The Chink would take away jobs from another superhero called White Man by flooding the whole country with his evil yellow brothers. The Chink would marry White Man's sisters and make evil little half-Chinks. The Chink would open opium dens, gambling parlors, and whorehouses, and the innocent youth of America would go to these places and be corrupted. The Chink also ate rats and dogs and anything else that crawled because he was not human. Chinaman, however, had a hard time fighting the Chink. This was because the Chink was a part of Chinaman, just like Mr. Hyde was a part of Dr. Jekyll and the Nigger was a part of the Negro. What made it worse was that Chinaman could turn into the Chink at any time. Someone only had to call the Chink's name, or get angry at Chinaman, and the Chink would magically appear. Pretty soon Chinaman became inseparable from the Chink, and their names became interchangeable. Realizing that he would never win the war against the Chink or the people who could summon his enemy, Chinaman retreated to his Chinatown base. He hid there in fear of himself and other people.

  Chinaman passed away many years ago. Nobody killed him; he just grew old like acid-washed jeans and went the way of Negro and Red Indian (You'll have to ask someone else about these two other superheroes). Chinaman's children are still around, but are no longer referred to by their father's name because it was so synonymous with the Chink. Many of them also moved out of Chinatown, living wherever they want. But the Chink never died. He's a part of Chinaman's children, and if you want to see him you simply have to say or think Chinaman or Chink. Instantly the Chink will appear to you, one billion strong, ready to take over your world and your jobs, eat your dogs, breed you out of existence, drive in the wrong lane, take a zillion pictures of the same thing, and do better than you on the hardest of math and science tests. That's what the Chink means to you. And that's why he still exists.

  We can also share some of our personal thoughts.  For a moment, we will shift to the first personal singular: I am 100% Chinese.  My maternal grandmother was born in Sacramento, California in 1889; I was born in Shanghai, China; and I have lived for many years in Hong Kong, Australia and New York City (USA).  All of these biographical details are relevant to this discussion.  The first point is that this unusual mix means that my personal response below is probably atypical.  Under contemporary standards, I would say that the term 'Chinaman' is pejorative, evoking the image of the 'number one' Chinese cook Hop Sing in the old television western series Bonanza.  However, the reaction to an ethnic slur should be considered in light of the intent --- Is it social custom?  out of ignorance?  or out of malice?
   
  Social customs  It is possible that an apparently pejorative term is extensively used by everyone because it is the social custom.  This does not apply to the word Chinaman in this age because everyone should know better.  Here, the example that I can think of is the word Kwei-Lo that is used to refer to white people by the Hong Kong locals.  The word Kwei-Lo literally means 'foreign devil' (or ghoul) and cannot possibly be considered complimentary.  Nevertheless, its pervasiveness has meant that it is neutralized to the point where even the white people in Hong Kong referred to themselves as such.  Among the Chinese people themselves, there are lots of pejorative terms.  The local Hong Kong people have a whole slew of slurs aimed at Chinese people from other areas, including referring to everyone else as 'Shanghainese', which is pejorative because it evokes the image of brash and uncultured nouveau riche.  All of you will almost certainly know a whole bunch of unfavorable terms that unfairly bracket entire groups of people (e.g. referring to cyclists as gearheads, triathletes as trigeeks, runners as joggers, etc).  The force of ethnic slurs is also different by locale.  A newcomer to Australia might be appalled at the stream of venom that comes from the typical Australian, when this is in fact the land of equal opportunity --- nobody is superior because everyone falls into one or more brackets.  The book on Australian slang is phenomenally thick (here's one word that you're not like to know: boong, which rhymes with my last name and therefore I have had to endure many times).  That being the case, you might as well as lighten up and play the game.  Conversely, you may wish to study up (e.g. this guideline from my alma mater) and be studiously correct all the time.
   
  Ignorance  The case of the ESPN2 commentator must almost surely be a matter of ignorance about the contemporary usage of the term.  I do not believe that there should be a single style of response to this type of situation.  Some may prefer vociferous protests, while others may prefer sarcasm.  Generally, my feeling is that I don't have anything to lose, and it is the speaker who is diminished.  I know that I will react to the use of the word Oriental.  The word itself is not necessarily virulent, but it is pejorative courtesy of the deconstruction conducted by Edward Said.  But I react because I consider the standard repartee to be absolutely brilliant: "I am not an Oriental!  I am an Asian!  An Oriental is a rug, and an Asian is a person!"
   
  Malice  Again, there are different styles of response.  There will be situations in which vociferous protests are essential; after all, it is a pleasure to see politician-types squirm their ways out of their slips.  But there are other times when it is even more effective to let someone alone.  Consider the case of Pauline Hanson and the One Nation political movement in Australia, with a white Australian slant.  The movement itself is a minor force that gets a very small percentage of the popular vote, but it is treated as leprosy by everyone else.  After all, Australia as a country relies heavily on trade with its neighbors Indonesia, Malaysia, China, India, etc. and every time that Hanson woman opens her mouth, the government has to prove otherwise to the world, in words and by deeds.  

  This item arose from a discussion of cricket terminology.  While we may have positioned cricket as a gentleman's sport, we cannot pretend that cricketers live in glass houses.  During the current World Cup, there were two major racial slur incidents.  Case #1:  Australian Darren Lehmann was run out (i.e. "stranded between the bases") in a One Day International match against Sri Lanka just before the World Cup tournament began.  After Lehmann got back into the dressing room, he was cursing aloud.  Unfortunately, the walls of the room were so thin that the Sri Lankans heard him.  We will not print the words he used (but you can read them here and follow a discussion).  Lehmann received a five-game ban that included some of the earlier World Cup matches, reduced from the maximum eight with some character testimony from the Sri Lankans.  Case #2:  In the match against Pakistan, Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist charged that Rashid Latif used a racial slur (you can read the words here, which were Lehmann's words in reverse color).  Latif was exonerated in a board hearing, with the incident being attributed to a misunderstanding.  It has since been speculated that the incident would later motivate Gilchrist to take that famous walk two days ago after being given not out.

• ANOTHER RECORD ATTEMPT [3/19/2003]  We have told you previously that at the Front Runners' Meet on Saturday (March 22nd) at the Armory, three of our relay teams will be going for American/World records: the M35-39, W35-39 and W40-49 teams.  It has come to our attention that we also have an individual 800m runner who has a good opportunity to break a record: Sylvie Kimché.  At the moment, the current American indoor record for W55-59 is 2:39.54 and the current World indoor record is 2:36.75.  At the MAC Indoor Championships on March 8, 2003 Sylvie ran 2:41.40.  So with some cheering, it would seem that the American record should be within her reach.  We hope people will come to cheer Sylvie on!  Historical note:  Sylvie is number 10 on the all-time best 800m CPTC list at 2:26.73, dating back to 1991.  Between then and now, she had some injury issues, moved to Ohio and played golf.  She was the 2002 NYRR W55-59 Runner Of The Year.

• ROOM FOR RENT [3/19/2003]  Laura Ford writes:  I'll have a room available for rent May 1.  It's a beautiful, newly renovated two bedroom apartment with lots of light.  Located in a great, safe neighborhood close to the 77th St and 86th subway stops.  Pretty close to Central Park and the East River.  One room is larger than the other, and the new roommate could pay extra for that room, bringing the rent to about $1000 a month, or we could switch rooms every six months (as I've done before) for $930 a month.  I'd prefer to have a fairly neat female roommate, and unfortunately no pets are allowed in my building.  Please email me at lford@randomhouse.com.

• TRACK AND FIELD [3/19/2003]  Correction:  Craig Plummer's field workouts will be held right after the sprint workouts and before the distance workouts.

• DOG RUN [3/19/2003]  The Houston Humane Society has asked us to mention their "K-9 Fun Run."  It will be held on Saturday, May 17, 2003 at 8:30 am, in Houston, TX at Sam Houston Park.  For more information, see www.houstonhumane.org.  For those of you who are wondering, yes, K-9 Fun Run means you run with your dog.  We would compete, but our dog is too lazy.

• TO THE FINLAND STATION [3/19/2003]  Yes, we are talking about Edmund Wilson's classical book on the coming of the Russian Revolution.  Yes, it is the novelized history about Lenin whom Vladimir Nabokov described as 'a pail of milk of human kindness with a dead rat at the bottom' after reading Wilson's book.  The link goes to a review of the book that was published in The New Yorker, many years after the original publication of the book.  We quote:

When you undertake historical research, two truths that sounded banal come to seem profound. The first is that your knowledge of the past-apart from, occasionally, a limited visual record and the odd unreliable survivor-comes entirely from written documents. You are almost completely cut off, by a wall of print, from the life you have set out to represent. You can't observe historical events; you can't question historical actors; you can't even know most of what has not been written about. What has been written about therefore takes on an importance that may be spurious. A few lines in a memoir, a snatch of recorded conversation, a letter fortuitously preserved, an event noted in a diary: all become luminous with significance-even though they are merely the bits that have floated to the surface. The historian clings to them, while, somewhere below, the huge submerged wreck of the past sinks silently out of sight.

The second realization that strikes you is, in a way, the opposite of the first: the more material you dredge up, the more elusive the subject becomes. In the case of a historical figure, there is usually a standard biographical interpretation, constructed around a small number of details: diary entries, letters, anecdotes, passages in the published work that everyone has decided must be autobiographical. Out of these details a profile is constructed, which, in the circular process that characterizes most biographical enterprise, is then used to interpret the details. Yet it is almost always possible to find details that are inconsistent with the standard interpretation, or that seem to point to a different interpretation, or that don't support any coherent interpretation. Usually, there's a level of detail below that, and on and on. One instinct you need in doing historical research is knowing when to keep dredging stuff up; another is knowing when to stop.

You stop when you feel that you've got it. The test for a successful history is the same as the test for any successful narrative: integrity in motion. It's not the facts, snapshots of the past, that make a history; it's the story, the facts run by the eye at the correct speed. Novelists sometimes say that they invent a character, put the character into a situation, and then wait to see what the character will do. The historian's character has to do what the real person has done, but there is an uncanny way in which this can seem to happen almost spontaneously. The "Marx" that the historian has imagined keeps behaving, in every new set of conditions, like Marx. This gives the description of the conditions a plausibility as well. The person fits the time; the world turns beneath the character's marching feet. The past reveals itself to have a plot.

This may seem a fanciful account of the way history is written. It is not a fanciful account of the way history is read, though. Readers expect an illusion of continuity, and once the illusion locks in, they credit the historian with having brought the past to life. Nothing else matters as much, and it is hard to see how the reader could have this experience if the historian had not had it first. The intuition of the whole precedes the accumulation of the parts. There is no other way, really, for the mind to work.

This is why historical research is an empirical enterprise and history writing an imaginative one. We read histories for information, but what is it that we want the information for? The answer is a little paradoxical: we want the information in order to acquire the ability to understand the information. At some point, we need the shell of facts to burst, and to feel that we are inside the moment. "Tell me about yourself," says a stranger at a party. You can recite your résumé, but what you really want to express, and what the stranger (assuming her interest is genuine) really wants to know, is what it is like to be you. You wish (assuming that your interest is genuine) that you could just open up your mind and let her look in. Information alone doesn't do it. A single intuition of what it was like to be Marx, or Proust, or Gertrude Stein, or the ordinary man on the late-modern street, how they thought and how the world looked to them, is worth a thousand facts, for when we are equipped with the intuition every fact becomes sensible. A residual positivism makes fact and intuition seem to be antithetical terms: hard knowledge versus subjective empathy. This has the priorities backward. Intuitive knowledge-the sense of what life was like when we were not there to experience it-is precisely the knowledge we seek. It is the true positive of historical work.

Why are we giving you this long quotation?  Especially given that most of you don't intend to write history.  Well, the longtime fan of this website will undoubtedly have seen that this quotation is all about the Central Park Track Club.  With this in mind, you can go back and re-read the long quotation, inserting the new context.  So ...  "When you think about the Central Park Track Club, two truths that sounded banal come to seem profound. The first is that your knowledge of the past-apart from, occasionally, a limited visual record and the odd unreliable survivor-comes entirely from written documents preserved on the website ..." and so on.
 
A proper, definitive history of the Central Park Track Club has not yet been written.  Perhaps someday it will show up when Stuart Calderwood's legendary novel-in-progress is completed.  But we prefer to think that there is no single unique, true or even privileged history of the club as such.  Rather, it will be up to each of you to contemplate and construct your own version of this history.  And it will be a worthwhile permanent project-in-progress, because you will have that intuitive insight to appreciate that experience ever so much more.

• TUESDAY TRACK WORKOUT REPORT [3/19/2003]  
   
  Countdown to next workout report:  7 days
   
  We debated for a long time as to the content of this report.  You see, in times of war, the press (of which we are certainly a vital part) bears an awesome burden:  while giving at least a glancing nod to Little Miss Truth, we must, above all, do nothing to jeopardize the security or morale of our troops, our nation, and our club.  And so, following the lead of FoxNews and our other media peers, we shall report only on the positive aspects of the Tuesday Night workout, leaving out anything that might smack of negativity, criticism, or even analysis, choosing instead to feature short burbles of warm fuzzy-wuzzy, mediated every now and then with stern frowny-faces when we say the word 'security.'  For this is certainly no time for intelligent or rational thought.  Thus:

  • The Central Park Track Club is great!  As is our nation!  There may be flies on the other guys (Warren Street, the world), but there ain't no flies on us!

  • The workout was fantastic.  The public should rest assured that said workout consisted of several intervals, the details of which we cannot reveal at this time.  Security reasons, you understand :( .  But everyone ran supersuperfast!

  • Jesse Lansner's socks were in perfect color harmony with the rest of his outfit!  That's the truth, Ruth!

  • [the reporter frowns] There was an undisclosed amount of people at the workout, which commenced at an as yet unreleased time.  We can't really report on club members' movements, except to say that they were generally traveling counterclockwise.

  • [the reporter frowns further] There was one lone protester:  Joseph "not with the program" Kozusko.  Charged with the responsibility of leading out the C- minus group at 42 second laps, a task vital to the security of the runners and thus the world, Mr. Kozusko instead practiced delaying tactics, making the forces of good behind him slow their course and miss their intended target.  He later tried appeasement, claiming, more or less, that "I was running 42.5's.  You guys jumped the gun!"  Whatever.  This reporter refuses to negotiate with terrorists.

  Oh yes, we almost forgot, many of the brave runners last night were guided by their faith.  Had to get that one in before commercial . . . buy buy!

• DUES/ELECTION [3/18/2003]  Yes, have you mailed in your CTPC dues/election form yet?  Actually, the biographies of the election slate make for interesting reading material.  Here is the wonderful Men's Open Rep Craig Chilton: "I have been a member of CPTC since 1998 (I think) and have been on the Executive Committee for the last couple of years.  My illustrious running career began whilst training for a marathon as a means of quitting smoking.  An unimpressive and uncomfortable 3:56 put an end to my debut until I move to NYC.  Since joining CPTC, my PR's have improved as my training went from lackadaisical to methodical.  I also started racing distances at the opposite extreme from the marathon on, and I now wonder whether I am actually a trackie, not a roadie."
   
  From our Research Department:  While Craig Chilton may not have his individual memory of exact dates, this website does maintain the organizational memory.  Craig joined the Central Park Track Club a couple of months after running the Chicago Marathon in October 1998 and ran his first CPTC race in January 1999.  His time in the Chicago Marathon was 2:51:01, and he recalled passing a woman in that last mile.  That woman turned out to be his future teammate, Rae Baymiller whose 2:51:12 was a world marathon record for women 55-59 and in fact considered one of the greatest age-group accomplishments ever.

• AN AUSSIE TAKES A WALK [3/18/2003]  No, we are not talking about the ritual taken by 16-year-old male Aborigines before they become adults, best known through the 1970 movie Walkabout directed by Nicholas Roeg.  In the first semi-final game of the Cricket World Cup, Australia batted first and scored 212 runs for 7 wickets.  In reply, Sri Lanka scored only 123 runs for 7 wickets.  Therefore, Australia wins by 48 runs.  Now, if you are good at math, you will note that 212 - 123 = 89 runs, so where did that 48 run margin come from?  This is because Sri Lanka batted for only 38.1 overs instead of the full 50 overs when the rains came and caused the match to be abandoned.  According to the Duckworth-Lewis formula, the run rate of 123-7 over 38.1 overs was deemed to be equivalent to 164 runs and hence the winning margin of 212 - 164 = 48 runs.  This was a comfortable win, but not exactly an Aussie walkover.  The best moment: Brett Lee bowling an unstoppable yorker at 161.1 kph = 99.49 mph.
   
  As we have preached to you many times before here, cricket is a gentleman's sport.   Australian opening batsman Adam Gilchrist attempted a sweep shot, but merely deflected the ball upwards to off his pad and glove to the wicketkeeper.  The Sri Lankans appealed to the umpire, who shook his head to indicated 'not out.'  But Gilchrist knew that he was fairly caught, so he started walking towards the pavilion when he could have stayed.  This is pretty sporting when you consider that this is the semi-final of the most important cricket tournament in the world.  In cricket, we do not have the bratty histrionics of tennis, the brutal thuggishness of ice hockey, the clownish showboating in baseball or the taunting in basketball.
   
  Australia will meet the winner of the India-Kenya match to be played later.  India is heavily favored, and if they advance, the final will feature the two teams with the best form so far in the tournament.

• NATIONAL MASTERS CHAMPIONSHIP ENTRANTS [3/18/2003]  There are still more than ten days before the Boston meet and registration can be made as late as March 24th.  As of 3/16, there are 522 'early bird' entrants with these Central Park Track Club names: John Affleck, Mary Diver, Paul Groce, Frank Handelman, Sid Howard, Marty Levine and Craig Plummer.  We expect to have more names.  The article in RunnersWorld Online today cites a figure of nearly 1,000 participants, including well-known names such as Bill Rodgers, Joan Samuelson, Willy Gault, Larry Colbert, Barbara Jordan, Val McGann, Billy "White Shoes" Johnson, Catherine Stone-Borkowski and Roger Pierce. 

• WE'RE TICKLED [3/18/2003]  Every weekend, some people come to this website with trepidation because they live with the perpetual fear that their photo may appear on the home page.  Then there are others who wish that they could appear there.  Of course, everything depends on the quality of the photo at issue.  This week's photo is that of Kieran Calderwood and Stacy Creamer, who wrote: "Thanks so much for putting the photo of me and Kieran on the website home page! We were both very tickled to discover it early this morning. Actually, I was tickled so I tickled him. But even so, the photo had us both smiling!"
   
  

WEEK OF MARCH 11, 2003 - MARCH 17, 2003

• THE GOOGLY [3/17/2003]  A slew of wonderment and advice flowed into the website due to the number of web links that we recently published.  There is apparently a complete book of Google Hacks that can improve the efficacy of information gathering through Google.com.  Frankly, our interest at the moment is not about Google; rather it is about the googly.  
   
  What is a googly?  Well, a cricket aficionado knows that the googly is a pitch which is thrown with baseball's "screwball" grip but reverse finger spin... to look like a leg-break that should move across and AWAY from the batter, but actually moves in the OPPOSITE direction, i.e. INTO the batter like an off-break after it bounces.  Appropriately enough for us, when a left-hander throws a googly that looks as if it could break INTO a right-handed batter on the bounce but breaks AWAY instead, that pitch is called a chinaman because the first person to have delivered such a pitch was of Chinese extraction, in the West Indies.  This has been a cultural lesson from your favorite website. 

• THE BOSTONIANS [3/17/2003]  If today is St. Patrick's Day, then the Boston Marathon must not be far off.  A check of the entrants' database revealed the following people: Peter Allen, Bethany Aquilina, Kevin Booth, Jay Borok, Roland Breitenberger, Patrick Cowden, Anna Fydodorova, Bill Haskins, Robert Jamieson, Laurie Jones, Jesse Lansner, Chele Modica, Anthony Munk, David Newcomb, Adam Newman, Matt Newman, Kellie Quinones, Seth Rosenthal, Erik Schmitz, Gabe Sherman, Peter Smith, Fred Trilli and Brad Weiss.  Not of all them will be at the starting line, but this is the list at the moment.  Oh, of course, we must never forget the Alan Ruben.
   
  If you are curious as to how we did it, brute force is the name of the game.  The entrants' database does not list team affiliation, so we listed all the names in New York City and scanned them for our people.  This is a test of how many names we remember.  And then we have to round up the usual suspects who live outside of New York City (e.g. Peter Allen and Matt Newman).

• FOOL BRITANNIA [3/17/2003]  We received the following e-mail, entitled "True Story" (which is usually a good sign that it's made up) relating to today's excuse for getting wildly drunk (St. Patrick's Day, not Purim):

  An Irish Smile for Your Day.
  
  This is the transcript of the ACTUAL radio conversation of a British Naval ship and the Irish, off the coast of Kerry, in October 1995.  Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.
  
  IRISH:  Please divert your course 15 degrees to the South, to avoid a collision.
  
  BRITISH:  Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the North, to avoid a collision.
  
  IRISH:  Negative.  You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
  
  BRITISH:  This is the Captain of a British navy ship.  I say again, divert YOUR course.
  
  IRISH:  Negative.  I say again, You will have to divert your course.
  
  BRITISH:  THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER HMS BRITANNIA, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE BRITISH ATLANTIC FLEET.  WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS, AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS.  I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH, I SAY AGAIN, THAT IS 15 DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTERMEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.
  
  IRISH:  We are a lighthouse.  Your call.

  If this story sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen the story before, although with an American aircraft carrier (usually the USS Enterprise, the USS Abraham Lincoln or the USS Coral Sea) and generally off the coast of either Newfoundland or Maine (other than that the jokes match up word for word).  It is also, of course, completely made up.  The Urban Legends References Page has the complete story on this joke, which was first published in 1987, and probably dates back at least two decades before that.  (As a general rule we recommend checking out stories before forwarding them along.  We've always been amazed at people we know who are convinced that everything in the newspaper is a lie, but who will believe any unattributed e-mail they receive.)
  
  Of course this particular story was never all that believable (ignoring GPS systems, radar and the fact that all U.S. lighthouses have been automated since the mid 1980s, it's hard to believe that nobody on the dozen or so ships in this task force had a map of the coastline), but it is funny, and probably worth passing on as a joke.  Still, having seen it several times over the past few years, we probably would have paid no attention to the latest version were it not for the fact that the American aircraft carrier had suddenly become British.
  
  Of course jokes are modified all the time; in the last week alone we heard a new joke three times, with the protagonists changing from Mexican to Jewish to Jamaican, but the punch line remaining identical.  But we got the feeling that whoever turned the Enterprise into the Britannia did so not to make the joke more relevant to residents of the British Isles, but rather to ridicule the English.  In his anti-Anglican zeal, he failed to do his homework.  The British have three aircraft carriers:  HMS Invincible, HMS Illustrious and HMS Ark Royal.  While the Royal Navy has had numerous ships named Britannia over the years, between 1953 and 1997 that name belonged to the royal yacht.
  
  This site has never shied away from reporting news that might embarrass our English cousins (witness our detailed coverage of The Ashes and the World Cup over the last few months).  Still, we've never understood why some people feel the need to take a silly joke and infuse it with a (rather sophomoric) political slant.  Which reminds us – did you hear the one about George W. and ...

• CRICKET LAWS [3/16/2003]  Most of you would not realized just how much cricket has influenced this website since our inception.  For example, if you go to our Photo page, you will find two columns – one for race photos and the other one is titled 'Sundries.'  Any cricketer would recognize immediately that 'sundries' is the term for extra runs coming from byes, leg byes, wides and no-balls.  Howzat!?
   
  Cricket is a highly technical game.  For example, here is the definition of a fair delivery: "A ball is fairly delivered in respect of the arm if, once the bowler's arm has reached the level of the shoulder in the delivery swing, the elbow joint is not straightened partially or completely from that point until the ball has left the hand. This definition shall not debar a bowler from flexing or rotating the wrist in the delivery swing."  
   
  But cricket is also unusual in that that it owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game.  The Spirit of the Game involves RESPECT for: your opponents, your own captain and team and the umpires.  It is against the Spirit of the Game to dispute an umpire's decision by word, action or gesture, or to direct abusive language towards an opponent or umpire, or to indulge in cheating or any sharp practice, for instance: a) to appeal knowing that the batsman is not out b) to advance towards an umpire in an aggressive manner when appealing c) to seek to distract an opponent either verbally or by harassment with persistent clapping or unnecessary noise under the guise of enthusiasm and motivation of one's own side.  In the event of a player failing to comply with instructions by an umpire, or criticising by word or action the decisions of an umpire, or showing dissent, or generally behaving in a manner which might bring the game into disrepute, the umpire concerned shall in the first place report the matter to the other umpire and to the player's captain, and instruct the latter to take action.  The captains are responsible at all times for ensuring that play is conducted within the Spirit of the Game as well as within the Laws.
   
  When the Cricket World Cup moves to the West Indies next time, some games may be scheduled to be played in Florida (USA).  Obviously, the cricket governning body sees some marketing potential in the USA.  Well, we could save them the trouble because cricket will never work here.  The Spirit of the Game will never be accepted.  This is the original home of bad behavior – it is the sacred duty of college coaches to beat NCAA rules; ice hockey fans are shocked when a hockey game breaks out in the middle of the fights; no fouls (except maybe for capital murder) is called during the last two minutes of basketball games; tennis players scream obscenties at umpires routinely; there is more action among soccer parents on the sidelines than their kids on the field; and everyone is supposed to be be 'working the refs' all the time.  Can you imagine?

• TRIAL BALLOON [3/16/2003]  At the bulletin board of the Mathematics department of Grinnell College, if you use your Finger, you can read Paul Bendich's plan.  At the bottom of this page, we saw the grand design of the plan is ...
   
   
   
  It is true that we have no children of our own.  But sometimes we feel as if we have a couple of hundred of brats to worry about ...
   
  Reaction: "A BRAT?  Why, that's simply the wurst thing we've ever been called.  Took you long enough, what kind of Total Information Awareness project are you running here, Roland? I mean, come on, we've come to expect real-time surveillance.  More in disappointment than in anger."
  Comment: At first, they need your attention.  When you show your attention, then they throw a fit ...  What are you going to do?

• OUR DOUGHNUT QUEEN [3/15/2003]
   
  The Event: The First Annual Krispy Kreme Eat-Off Competition, UVA
  Objective: Eat as many Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts in three and a half minutes as possible
  Materials: 900 doughnuts donated by Krispy Kreme
  Additional materials: Each contestant was supplied with a glass for water and a "doughnut spotter" who tabulated the number of doughnuts eaten.
  Competition Rules: (1) no interfering with the person on your left or right; (2) no vomiting on anyone other than yourself, and (3) no destroying your box of donuts in some way other than eating them.
  Field: 38 competitors
   
  Results:
  Doughnut King: Subject to dispute, as one contender had ingested 13 and another had 14-1/2 but spit out the last three and a half doughnuts after the buzzer ("The rule is if your mouth is closed at the buzzer, whatever's in there counts").  
  Doughnut Queen: Undisputed winner, and current member of the Central Park Track Club.  She said, "It feels great."
   
  Outcome: $130 raised for volunteer programs

• FINAL FOUR [3/15/2003]  The Final Four is set, but we are not referring to March Madness.  At the cricket world cup, #1 Australia will play #4 Sri Lanka, and #2 India will play #3 Kenya in the semi-finals.  The winners will proceed to the final, when Australia will hoist the cup.  
   
  In today's meaningless match, Australia played Kenya with the only excitement being the hat trick by Brett Lee in the second over.  The usual deal here --- a bouncing ball hit one batter in the elbow, a tentative edge and then that patented yorker.  In the other match that meant something, Sri Lanka beat Zimbabwe easily to advance.   

• 4x800m RELAY RACE [3/14/2003]  At the Front Runner's Meet at the Armory next Saturday, March 22, 2003, there will be an 4x800m relay event.  In late January, our men's 35-39 team set the American record of 8:28.3 and our women 35-39 team set the World (and American) record of 10:23.3.  At the time, we noted that there was a high degree of youthful exuberance on the part of those team members for they may have all gone out too fast and suffered at the end.  With that experience, these two teams are now prepared to come back and lower those records.  They are highly likely to do that as they will pace themselves better this time and they should be sharper now with more training.  
   
  In the same race, we will be fielding a women's 40-49 team.  The current World/American record is 10:26.5, which is 2:37 per 800m pace.  We will field a team that can run considerably faster than that.  In fact, they may even give their younger teammates a run for the record.
   
  We will announce the rosters of the three teams when we approach the date.  Our team depth is such that we have options about the personnel.
   
  In English football, the Liverpool fans sing the song You'll Never Walk Alone.  For this relay, we want to make sure that our runners do not run alone.  For anyone else, if you would like to run on a 4 x 800m relay for fun on Saturday, March 22, at the Front Runner's meet at the Armory, please contact Devon Martin and she will assemble teams.  The relay will go off around 2:30pm.  This promises to be one of the most exhilirating moments in our team history, and especially for those twelve runners.  So even if you don't want to race that day, please come down to cheer and be a witness.

• FRENCH TASTE [3/14/2003]  Olivier Baillet writes to us in defense of his homeland:

  A couple of comments on the "French issue":
  
  The French Toast is not an invention of an American.  It is a dish that has been served in France for centuries, and it is known there as "Pain perdu", which can be translated as "Lost Bread".  It is prepared with bread leftovers, and is, indeed, not a delicacy.  It is funny (actually, I should say it is a pity) that it is served in the "best" NY brunch places for $15, a price for which you could get a REAL meal in France.  The only food that the Americans really invented is the fast food, now known in France as "malbouffe", a new word invented by Jose Bove (who destroyed McDonald's facilities and got famous for that), and which can be translated as "badgrub" (NB:  I don't approve of the guy, nor do the majority of Frenchmen, but I would NEVER, EVER eat in a Fast-Food).
  
  As for the boycott of French stuff, Americans are right.  Among other things, I think they should stop practicing French kissing.  It is antipatriotic and not hygienic, especially with French people, who never wash their teeth, as we all know.
  
  Sans rancune...
  
  Olivier

  So, is French Toast really French, or did Joseph French just neglect to put in the apostrophe when he cooked up a new dish in 18th Century Albany?  Frankly, we don't really care (although our guess would be that Mr. French was simply unaware that the actual French had already come up with the radical idea of frying old bread in milk and eggs).  What offends us more, though, is the claim that Americans have no culinary claim to fame other than fast food.  Perhaps Monsieur Baillet has limited his dining in America to only French restaurants, and has missed out on such American fare as New England clam bakes, Maryland crabcakes and Chicago deep-dish pizza, to say nothing of Soul food, Cajun food, Southwestern cuisine...  Frankly we're getting too hungry to continue this.
  
  We'll just presume that Olivier meant to criticize British food (anyone who wants to defend British cuisine is more than welcome to try), and did not mean to ignore the many contributions the United States has made to global cuisine (fast food not being one of the better ones, but then the concept of fast food is older than this nation; Americans merely perfected it).  As far as the $15 price tag on French Toast goes, we can offer no defense of that.  We suggest that the complainant look to more reasonably priced dining establishments.  For our own part, we cannot recall ever paying more than $8 for French Toast, and that came with juice, coffee, bacon and two eggs on the side.  Just the thing to negate all the health benefits of the morning's run.
   
  From our research department: Our original credit of French toast is based upon the following information, which we believe is being promulgated by IHOP:

  First made at a roadside tavern not far from the city of Albany in 1724, there are few dishes more truly American than the breakfast favorite known as "French toast". So American is the dish that very few can understand why it is not called "American toast", "Albany Toast" or even "New York State toast".

  The confusion comes about because the owner of the tavern at which the dish was invented had a very poor knowledge of grammar. When Joseph French decided to name the dish after himself he should have written his invention as "French's toast" (that is to say, the toast of French). Because he did not know how to use the possessive apostrophe, however, the dish appeared on his menu simply as "French toast". In short, the dish has nothing whatever to do with French culinary history but in the two hundred and seventy years that have intervened, no one has taken the time to correct the grammatical error.

  French's Toast

  6 eggs
  6 Tbsp. milk
  1/2 tsp. salt
  pepper to taste
  several drops vanilla
  12 slices white bread, with crusts
  butter for cooking

  In a mixing bowl combine the eggs, milk, salt, pepper and vanilla with 3 Tbsp. water and beat lightly. Dip the bread slices into this mixture, one at a time, making sure both sides are well coated. Let the excess drip off.

  In a heavy skillet with an generous amount of very hot melted butter brown the toast well on both sides. Serve hot with maple syrup, honey, sugar, jam or dessert sauces. (Serves 6).

  Further research uncovered earlier appearances of French bread:

  Bartolomeo de Sacchi di Piadena, known as 'Platina' (15th century) wrote 'De honesta voluptate', which contained his views on food, spices, etc., discussing both culinary and medicinal uses . (Many of the recipes in the second part of his book are from an earlier work by Martino.) In this book, Platina describes a dish of bread soaked in egg batter and fried.

  A recipe is also given in 'The Accomplisht Cook' by R. May (1660) for "French Toasts. Cut French Bread, and toast it in pretty thick toasts on a clean gridiron, and serve them steeped in claret, sack, or any wine, with sugar and juice of orange."

  Called 'poor knights pudding' or 'poor knights of Windsor' in England and 'pain perdu' (lost bread) in French, originally it was most likely a way to make use of crusts and stale bread.

  We suggest that this is seriously not worth fighting over the credit of invention.  Or, to turn the phrase 'Ça ne vaut pas le peine' upside down, we say, 'Ça ne vaut pas le pain' ...

• DEADLINE TODAY [3/14/2003]  The Entry Form deadline for USATF Indoor Masters/Submasters Nationals is TODAY.  Must be postmarked by TODAY or else there's a steep late fee.
  
  USATF Indoor Masters/Submasters Nationals
  Reggie Lewis Track – Boston
  March 28-30
  
  For more info, see the USATF website.
  
  Please let Devon Martin know what event(s) you're running and how you are planning to get there (train, bus, plane, car).  Sid Howard will take a van up on Friday morning and Paul Groce has room in his car for 1 person on Saturday morning.  Alternatlively, Noah Perlis can get 50% off on the Train, but it must be booked a week before.  The train stops right at the Westin Hotel – the Back Bay Station.

• ROCKET SCIENCE [3/13/2003]  The Safe Explosives Act embedded inside the Homeland Security Act imposed new restrictions that affect amateur high-powered model rocketry.  This may just put an end to Graydon Pihlaja's Sentinal rocket, which has risen to an altitude of 3500' (see photo).  Graydon is an active member of CTRA/NARCON, a local model rocket club encompassing members from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and throughout New England.  Does this mean that he'll have nothing left to do ... except running?
   
  

• THURSDAY NIGHT WORKOUT REPORT [3/13/2003]  The weather forecast called for rain in the morning, turning to snow in the evening as the temperature plunges.  The pre-workout email notice was: "Once again I will have to decide on a work out as the day progresses.  There is a snow forecast, if so, we will probably do the same as last week, (4-5 miles) except in a different direction.  That's the best I could do at this point.  Please be careful if you decide to run on your own, there is plenty of good running weather coming our way. "
   
  As it turned out, we woke up to a beautiful sunny morning.  The clouds came around noon, and it began to shower sporadically during the afternoon.  As we headed to the Daniel Webster statue at 7pm, we were glad to be wearing a hooded jacket because our ears would have hurt from the icy particles tumbling down.  But by the time the thirty people started running, the precipitation had stopped and it became just another cool, humid night.  
   
  The real workout consisted of the following:  Head east across 72nd Street and turn north to Cleopatra's Needle.  Then we pick up for 1.5 mile north to the other side of 102nd Street.  Recovery is to West 97th Street and back to West 102nd Street.  Next pick-up is the 1.5 miles in reverse.  Recover is to East 72nd Street.  Last pick-up is the Stuart mile around the south side of the park to the S letter just short of Tavern On The Green.  The total distance is 6.2 miles.  All three pick-ups are to be done at 10K race pace.  Running 4 miles at 10K pace is not trivial.  The essence of this workout is to be able to run all three pick-ups at the same 10K race pace.  Avoid running that first downhill too fast, or else you will not be able to come back.  Running 10K pace on the average (the first one too fast and the second one too slow) is not good enough.
   
  As we stood around to wait for the workout to start, we can hear the lovely soft French language spoken by a couple of our runners.  After we got started, we swung around the corner and then we were overwhelmed by the smell of French fries emanating from the Loeb Boathouse restaurant.  On the way back to the statue, we also stopped to exchange greetings from that friendly Frenchman wearing the other team's colors.  It seems that everywhere we look, we see French themes.
   
  Why all the interest in things with supposedly French themes?  That was in fact much of the talk at the workout.  As of yesterday, the US Congress will now serve 'freedom fries' instead of French fries and 'freedom toast' instead of 'French toast' in their cafeterias.  Well, we are unlikely to dine on Capitol Hill, so it does not matter to us.  We don't know if McDonald's want to follow suit, but we don't patronize them here.  We do know that at the McDonald's in the Vogelweh military base in Kaiserslautern, Germany, we were perplexed that we had to ask for 'pomme frites' instead of 'French fries' but a Big Mac was not a grosse Mac or grande Mac.  In any case, we can continue to eat our favorite fish & chips, since it is never known as fish & French fries.  French toast got a raw deal here, since this is not a Gallic delicacy; rather, French toast was invented by an upper New York state restaurateur named Joseph French, whose place can no longer lay claim to being the original home of the French toast.  If anything, the French are probably miffed about being associated with the ghastly French toast.  We are glad that we can now rightfully boycott other unfriendly products such as German measles, Russian roulette, Mexican standoffs, etc.  But we have to warn everyone that skipping French letters can be extremely hazardous to your health.

• PERSONAL BESTS [3/13/2003]  We were asked how people get the letters PR listed next to the race results.  In most cases, you have to write in and tell us.  The exception is that we have known you so well by now that we would actually know (e.g. we know that Margaret Angell's 1:18:57 at the Brooklyn Half Marathon was her PR and the second best time in team history, because we were aware of how she just fell short of breaking 1:20 previously).  The biggest difficulty here is that while we may have a detailed history of your performances as a member of the Central Park Track Club, you may have a previous life with faster times.  In fact, one of these days we ought to publish a list of top times by Central Park Track Club members while they were NOT members of the club and we know that would be real eye-opener (e.g. Brian Denman with a 44.7 in the 400m ).

• HISTORICAL PHOTO [3/12/2003]  In this photo, Stacy Creamer is just crossing the line at the end of the world-record-setting 4x800m W35-30 relay.  We document the fact that the three required timers were present at that moment.  This photo is even more 'memorable' for the large number of spectactors that can be seen --- where you there?

• FIELD EVENTS [3/12/2003]  Craig Plummer: "We'll be putting together maybe a team, or just people who are interested in the field events, who want to learn the hurdles, shot put, javelin, pole vault, long jump, etc, and who want to learn these events safely. If interested (and this is an open invitation), contact Craig Plummer at Bodycraig@msn.com .  The focus will be the summer field events: shot put, discus, long jump, javelin, high jump, pole vault, hurdles with emphasis on prehabilitation and drills.  Safety will be the cornerstone of the workout.  These workouts will be conducted at 8pm after the sprint and distance workout."

• LOCAL AREA 10K RACES [3/12/2003]  
   
  After a 25 year history, the Tappan Zee Sports Run will have its last edition run on March 30, 2003 in Orangeburg, NY.  You can register online at www.active.com.  Entry fee is $15 bfore March 28th, and $20 on race day.  Awards are given out for 5 year age groups, with special awards for law enforcement, firefighter, lawyer, doctor, veteran, allied health, educator and Clydesdales.
   
  The Ashbury Park 10K returns on June 28, 2003, sponsored by the City of Ashbury Park and staged by the New Jersey Road Runner Club.  There is a bit of controversy about whether this is really a return of this event.  But there is little doubt that everyone will be glad to see once again what was a premier event on the race calendar.

• MVP [3/12/2003]
   
  Question: Which female CPTC member was seen at the workout Tuesday sporting a new blue Adidas jacket with the inscription from a weekend Connecticut soccer tournament and the letters "MVP" on it? 
   
  Hint: She played 6 games and scored 18 goals, including the winning goal against her alma mater.  But she is sad because she did not get to race in the MAC meet.
   
  Answer

• 2003 CPTC DUES AND ELECTION FORMS [3/12/2003]  By now, the members of the Central Park Track Club all should have received a mailing containing two forms - one to submit your 2003 dues payment ($75)and the other to vote in the elections for the CPTC Executive Board. It will help us enormously if you adhere to the March 31st, 2003 date for the return of these forms to Central Park Track Club, c/o Richard Kixmiller, 14 East 96th St, New York, NY 10128 . If you have not received these forms please contact Alan Ruben at alan@montran.com.

• DIAMOND STATE GAMES [3/12/2003]  From Marshall Manlove: "Please accept my invitation to attend Diamond State Games II in Wilmington, DE on June 21 and 22 of this coming summer.  The Track and Field competition of the Diamond State Games is a USATF sanctioned event and will be held at Baynard Stadium in Wilmington, the finest public facility in the state.  The Diamond State Games is open to athletes of all ages without a residency requirement. Last year, we attracted 2000 athletes from 15 states and four countries in just our first year of operation.  The youth competition (high school and under) will be held on Saturday and our adult and masters competition will be on Sunday.   
  For any further details, including online registration, please see delawaresports.com or drop a line back to us at DESports@aol.com ."

• QUICK WORLD CUP NOTE [3/12/2003]  All hail to Isaya Okwiya's Kenya team, which advanced to the semi-final by beating Zimbabwe today.  They have one more game left in the Super Six round, this one against juggernaut Australia.  But no matter what, it has already been an overachievement by a team listed among the 'minnows' of cricket nations.

• DO YOU KNOW THE SCORE? [3/12/2003]  The New York Road Runners Club has clarified the points race schedule.  The NYRR 8K on Saturday, April 5 and the Tom LaBreque 4 Miler on Sunday, April 27 will both be scoring races for men and women.  We hope this will be the last change to the schedule.

• FAILING THE TEST [3/12/2003]  Last year former baseball players Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti alleged that as many as 85% of Major Leaguers used steroids or other illegal performance-enhancing drugs.  Since baseball, unlike the NFL or the Olympics, had no drug testing policy, there was pressure on the owners and players to adopt a firm new plan when they negotiated a new contract last summer.  In a rare display of labor-management unity, the two sides hunkered down and drew up the most ludicrous, ineffective policy one can imagine.  Under the new policy all players on the teams' 40-man rosters (which include some minor leaguers) will be subject to anonymous "survey testing" this spring.  If more than 5% of the players test positive, then actual testing, in which players would be disciplined after a second positive test, will start next year.  (Minor league players are already tested, but they are no punishments if they fail a test.)
  
  The flaws in this plan were obvious.  Although the actual dates of the tests were not announced, players knew last August that they would be tested once – and only once – this March.  There is nothing to prevent a player from using steroids during the off-season, stopping just long enough to pass a drug test in March, and going right back on the juice the next day.  Then, when all the testing is done, 60 players – enough to fill two and a half major league teams – have to test positive before any serious testing would be done.  (If the Olympics adopted the same 5% standard, 500 athletes would have to be caught doping before any action would be taken).  It is entirely possible that at the end of the month baseball officials will announce that 59 unnamed players are using steroids so regularly that they failed a test they had known about six months in advance, and that this proves that there is no serious doping, and no need for further tests.
  
  Both players and owners have their reasons for not wanting testing.  More steroids equals stronger players, which leads to more home runs.  More home runs supposedly leads to higher salaries for the players, and higher ticket sales for the owners.  (Although it's more likely that salaries would stabilize if everybody hit 50 home runs a year, with a player hitting 40-home runs making the same salary as today's 20-homer player.  Meanwhile, the idea that home runs lead to more tickets is contradicted by the continuing decline in per game attendance).
  
  A few players, however, recognized this system for the farce it is.  Sixteen players on the Chicago White Sox had planned to skip their drug tests yesterday.  Under the rules of the testing plan a refusal to submit to a test counts as a positive result, so the action of these 16 players would have put baseball over a quarter of the way towards the 60 positives needs for real testing.  When word of this plan got out, the union blocked it, saying that it was inconsistent with the collective bargaining agreement, and would not have been fair to the other teams.  White Sox catcher Sandy Alomar, Jr. was even more critical of the idea, and blamed it on some veteran players coercing younger players to skip the test, saying "The young guys do what they are told.  They want to support the veteran guys.  If you think 5 percent is what you want, if you want mandatory testing, stand for that.  But don't implicate the young players."
  
  The union is right on one point:  skipping the test is inconsistent with the contract, and that is exactly why the players planned to take that step.  Steroid use, both real and perceived, is a serious problem in baseball, and the current testing policy is a sham.  The 16 White Sox took a stand to get real testing in the only way that the current system allows.  For players like Alomar to accuse them of being duped by veterans is shameful.  For the union to claim that their action is unfair to other players is ridiculous.  Doping is unfair.  Working for real testing to ensure that no players are cheating is not only fair, but is also supposed to be the union's goal.
  
  We have long wondered what it would take to get a real anti-drug policy in baseball.  Scandal didn't do it, since Caminiti's admission that he used steroids during his MVP-season only got us the current plan.  Shame didn't do it, since the players and owners don't seem to have any.  Even self-interest has had no effect, as union head Donald Fehr continues to back the current approach despite any negative effects it may have on his chances at moving up in the US Olympic Committee, which takes doping far more seriously than baseball does.  The only thing we could think of that might move baseball forward was the death of a player.
  
  On February 16, Steve Belcher, a 23-yeard old pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, showed up for the morning workout, took three Xenadrine RFA-1 tablets, collapsed of heatstroke two hours later, and died the next day.  While Belcher suffered from several health problems, a medical examiner concluded that a major factor in Belcher's death was his use of the tablets, which contained the stimulant ephedra.  (The coroner's office is expected to release a full report tomorrow.)  The response of baseball so far:  the commissioner has banned use of ephedra in the minor leagues (where, presumably, use of it will carry the same penalties that steroid use does, which is none), and the union has distributed a memo to players warning them to "be extremely reluctant to use any products containing ephedra."
  
  Reaction from players make it doubtful that this approach will have any effect.  Pirates outfielder Craig Wilson said, "My personal feeling is if it's a legal supplement then I don't see why it should be banned.  If you can go into a health food store or a vitamin center or whatever then how can you say it's illegal?  You're taking it at your own risk."  Of course the NFL, NCAA and the Olympics have all banned ephedra – and plenty of other legal substances – for being too dangerous or for giving users an unfair advantage.  The fact that the FDA has not gotten around to banning ephedra does not mean it is safe.  Indeed, the FDA's regulation of the entire supplement industry has been woefully inadequate.
  
  Certain athletes will always be willing to use illegal substances and abuse legal ones.  Some do it to win at any cost.  Some do it because they feel they can't otherwise compete in a culture where they think 'everybody's doing it.'  Some do it because they don't know the dangers.  No governing body can ever catch all the cheats, or save all athletes from their own poor decisions, but they all have a responsibility to do the maximum that they can.  Baseball, unfortunately, is still content to do the minimum.  We don't need to wait until the end of the month for the results of the drug tests; baseball has already failed.

• HIGH ROCK ADVENTURES [3/11/2003]  On April 26, the New York Adventure Racing Association is holding two adventure races in Staten Island, the two-person High Rock Adventure Challenge and the solo High Rock 10K.  These races are held in memory of a fallen NYPD officer John Kelly.
   
  The High Rock 10K Adventure Challenge is a 10 kilometer endurance adventure run in the Greenbelt Trail System in Staten Island, New York. Teams consisting of 2 members must run while staying together at all times. Teams will compete in 5 mystery events that are located throughout the course. The mystery events as well as the race course will remain a secret until the start of the race. No special gear is necessary to compete. Mystery events are designed to challenge teamwork, not physical strength.

  The High Rock 10K Trail Run travels the same course as the HRC, but you run alone and do not participate in mystery events.
   

• INDOOR BEAUTY [3/11/2003]  This winter has been long and difficult, as those who run outdoors would know.  We are fortunate that we were able to run indoors at that marvelous Armory facility, both for workouts and the numerous track meets.  Craig Chilton reminds us about how fortunate we are with this story from Ottawa.  

• WORLD CUP UPDATE [3/11/2003]  The lone game was the trans-Tasman Sea rivalry between Australia and New Zealand.  Australia batted first and found themselves in deep trouble at a measly 7-84 by the 26th over.  Once again, that superior batting depth came to the rescue, with the pair of Michael Bevan (56) and Andy Bichel (64) coming up a 97 run partnership.  Even the last batter Brett Lee managed to slog sixes off the last 2 balls of the innings.  The total of 208-9 was modest, even soft.  In reply, New Zealand found themselves in a deep hole at 3-33 against the bowling of Glenn McGarth.  When they limped to the century mark, the other pace bowler Brett Lee came on with a burst of inspired bowling, grabbing the last 5 wickets in 15 balls, for 112 all out in 31 overs.
   
  Although England is out of the World Cup now, cricket stories abound.  With the resignation of Nasser Hussain as the ODI captain, speculations swirl about replacement candidates.  Opening batsman Marcus Trescothick's non-campaigning speech says that, after playing cricket overseas for six months, he wants "to get cricket out of my system, eat and drink so much I turn into a fat bastard - and sleep for a year."  Ah, yes, thanks for the rah-rah gung-ho inspirational speech!

• TOP SELLER [3/11/2003]  In the history of our Amazon.com affiliate program, the top selling book is Mafalda by Quino.  Over the years, we have sold eleven copies of this Spanish-language comic book from Argentina, including one just yesterday.  This is not a trivial sales total since the book is priced at a whopping US$50, which is a lot for a bunch of comic strips that appeared in various newspapers once upon a time and with no additions since 1973.  Our sales is driven by this page, which has been seen by several hundred thousand people over the years, whreupon the conversion rate of 11 sales out of that many visitors is actually not all that remarkable.
   
  Even that one single panel of Mafalda in that linked page should reveal the power of this comic strip.  It is about a genuine personality with a series of memorable quirks.  In that sense, it is only appropriate that this book should be the bestseller on a website that has a genuine personality with a series of memorable quirks ...

• ANCIENT ORANGE [3/11/200]  Down in Florida, 40-year old pitcher David Cone has thrown three perfect innings in his first two spring training appearances.  Cone is hoping to be the Mets fifth starter after not playing last year.  Some commentators have been surprised to see a New Yorker in his 40s, wearing orange, dominating competitors half his age.  Of course, we're used to it.
   
  

WEEK OF MARCH 4, 2003 - MARCH 10, 2003

• GO, MARGE [3/10/2003]  Here's someone whom we haven't seen in a long time --- Marge Demarrais wins a Roxbury Series race.

• SELLING THROUGH [3/10/2003]  Traditional advertising used to be a mass media affair with a single message delivered to everyone through television or radio.  The advent of the Internet meant that it is now possible to customize the advertising messages by individual person.  Here at the website, we try to sell our club to inquirers everyday.  We gleam as much as information about them as we could, and we customize our reply to ingratiate ourselves to close the deal.  Don't laugh at this crass but very honest language --- we all try to sell ourselves every day, one way or the other.
    
  The first type of inquiry carries a tone of serious competitiveness.  How good are you guys?  Can you really help me?  In that case, we would do a brief introduction of our magnificent history and then we would get into our current achievements, such as the fact that we are leading in three of the six divisions of the NYRR championship series right now.  And having those recent world and American records on the track helps too.  What better demonstration of our competitiveness can there be than a public record of solid achievements?
    
  The second type of inquiry carries a tone of wariness.  Do we have minimum standards?  Are we going to make them do a minimum number of races around the year?  Is the workout intended to beat people into the ground?  Is this all work and no play?  Do we know how to smile?  For these people, we simply point to our website and indicate that even a cursory examination of the website should reveal a team personality that is relaxed, caring, humorous, intelligent, witty, socially responsible, and so on.
    
  These two approaches are not mutually exclusive.  Just because we are serious competitors does not mean that we have to be glum and joyless.  Just because we are having a lot of fun does not mean that we are losers.  This is the legacy of our late founder Jack Brennan --- strive for excellence, fierce competitiveness, absence of vanity and a sense of humor.
   
• MINEFIELD MARATHON [3/10/2003]  It was announced today that Afghanistan has just begun to use the internet domain .af.  How soon will we get our first visitor from there?  This is not as unlikely as you think.  After all, last month we registered 62 user sessions from Saudi Arabia and 52 user sessions from the United Arab Emirate.  Are there runners in Afghanistan?  Yes, see the 2002 Minefield Marathon in Bagram.
   
  
   
• THE PHOTOGRAPHERS' DIARY [3/10/2003]  Many funny things happen on the way to the finish line.
   
  At the Brooklyn Half Marathon, Shula Sarner waved frantically to catch our attention.  What is the emergency?  Is she in physical distress?  Is she lost?  Did she lose the lap count?  Is there an equipment problem?  But no, she tells us, "Look out!  Audrey is dressed in white!"  This is important information since we are accustomed to using orange as our primary visual cue.  Unfortunately, Audrey Kingsley, wearing her favorite white shirt, was nested among four burly guys and we did not get her photo.  But we did yell at her, "What do you think you are doing!?"
   
  Meanwhile, at the last Thursday Night At The Races, we had this photo with the caption "Brian Barry far behind Marty Levine."  Then at the MAC Indoor Championships, we had this photo with the caption, "Marty Levine ahead of Brian Barry."  These captions are objectively correct in the sense that they are consistent with what can be seen in the respective photographs.  Therefore, any 'liberal bias' that might be imputed is purely the invention of the reader.
   

• HOT SPRING RACES [3/9/2003]  If this winter has been getting you down, then Toby Tanser is already previewing a number of spring races for you at MetroSportsNY.

• Q&A [3/9/2003]  Concerning our rhetorical question, "How can we explain that this 200-member club gets 450+ plus visitors per day to its website?" an enquiring mind wants to know, "Are these UNIQUE visitors? If not, then they may include many like myself who will visit the website five or more times a day to see if there are new mundane postings since there is not a predictable (or any) schedule to your updates. This is somehow related to diversions from other activities of real worth, but better I suppose than surfing for games, travel, or other running/porn websites." 
   
  The concept of unique visitors is oversold.  Speaking for ourselves, we use proxy services to disguise our IP address, we refuse to accept cookies and we flush out our caches after each session.  How is anyone going to know if we have been there before?  This leads to the more interesting question, "Are we paranoid?"  We answer by asking you, "Do you trust DoubleClick and/or The Government?"  DoubleClick says, "We're tracking your activities in order to ensure that we serve ads that are of interest to you."  Thanks, but no thanks.  Our interest is served by not seeing any ads.  The Government says, "We are here to protect you against your enemies."  Thanks, but no thanks.  We know who our enemies are ...
   
  As for the update schedule, it is obvious that our updates occur at the office when our bosses go out for lunch.  Unfortunately, our bosses keep very irregular schedules.
   
  The attempt to make running and porno equivalent is a novel idea that merits further digestion ... (Reader feedback: "VERY very funny - I don't usually laugh but this got one out of me - thanks, I really needed it!!!")

• WORLD CUP UPDATE [3/9/2003]  In the ODIs (One Day Internationals), each team gets a limited number of overs to score as many runs as possible.  The situation is asymmetrical.  The team that bats first will try to score as many as possible without losing too many wickets.  The team that bats last is given a total to chase and knows that they have to maintain a certain run rate.  The most glorious moments of ODIs occur near the end of the first innings, when the batting team recognizes that this was the moment to throw all caution to the wind and grab as many as runs as possible.
   
  In the New Zealand-Zimbabwe match yesterday, Zimbabwe plodded along to 190-7 after 47 overs.  Led by a batsman aptly named Heath Streak, they erupted with 22 runs in the 48th over, 13th in the 49th over and 26 in the 50th overall.  It was the proverbial home-run derby.  In reply, New Zealand won the match by 6 wickets. 
   
  The format of this World Cup has been criticised.  To some people, international cricket has ten top teams with the rest of the world are known simply as 'minnows' (including Canada and USA).  In the World Cup, the top ten teams were there, plus six 'minnows.'  Through a series of upsets and rainouts, the Super Six consisted of the top teams of Australia, India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, and two 'minnows': Kenya and Zimbabwe.  Missing are top teams such as England, Pakistan, West Indies and the host South Africa.  We say, "Too bad!  A top team is supposed to win its matches, n'est-pas?  So don't blame the schedule!  Eh?"

• MAC OPEN/MASTERS INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS WRAP-UP REPORT [3/9/2003]  The good news is that this meet was limited to persons age eighteen or over.  The absence of the hordes of kids meant that there was an outside chance that the meet would progress more or less in a timely fashion.  Actually, we wouldn't know because there are no event time schedules anyway, understandably so because any number of people may or may show up for each event.
   
  The best achievement of the day was the 2:14.40 by Frank Handelman in the M55-59 800m.  This was his best result since he ran 2:13 when he was 47 years old.  On an age-graded basis, this time is equivalent to 1:50.46.  Frank reflected, "I love the Central Park Track Club.  It gets me to do the things that old farts like me can still do.  Without it, I would be home watching television news right now, which is a very depressing activity these days ...."  The second best achievement of the day goes to Noah Perlis, whose 26.65 200m was his fastest time in 10 years.
   
  The best non-achievement of the day was Vram Malek's 21.78 200m, which was flashed on the scoreboard immediately.  While Vram may have been confident that he could do that, he was less sure that the rest of the runners in his heat all ran in the 22 second range.  The time was corrected momentarily, but Vram really enjoyed those few seconds (less than 21.78) when the time was up there.
   
  P.S.  Sue Pearsall says that she was not there today, in spite of all the photos of her.
   
  P.P.S.  Since this is a MAC meet, the race results must be compiled on a self-help basis.  Our reporter copied down as much as he could, but there are still some results missing.  For example, we know that Evan Zeisel had a sub-50-second 400m.

• BROOKLYN HALF MARATHON WRAP-UP REPORT [3/9/2003]  It was a busy Saturday for the website, as we covered the half marathon in the morning and then immediately went up to the MAC meet at the Armory afterwards.  So there were hundreds of photos to process for the rest of the evening.  In the Brooklyn Half, our teams finished 3rd open men, 1st masters men, 1st open women and 1st masters women.  This was an exact repeat of the Snowflake Run results.
   
  Individually, Margaret Angell won her third scoring race in a row, in a PR of 1:18:57.  She rocks!  When we first saw her inside Prospect Park, a head count showed that she may be heading for our fifth overall scorer, male or female!  Our observer reports that the best thing was that she had a big smile.  Yes, life is good ...  This leads us to conduct a small test on the question, "But does the Intrepid Reporter of Tanser.org read the Central Park Track Club Journal?"  On Tanser.org, we read that the 2003 ranking of local runners is Ludmilla Kremylova, Gordon Bakoulis and Alayne Adams.  Shall we suggest that Margaret Angell, being the winner of the last three scoring races (Joe Kleinerman 10K, Snowflake Run and Brooklyn Half Marathon) plus the Al Gordon 15K on a training run deserves a mention somewhere?  Hello, is anybody out there reading this?  [Correction:  We actually misread the ranking --- for the year 2002, the top three were Gordon Bakoulis, Carol Howe and Alayne Adams; for January 2003, only one runner was listed: Ludmilla Kremylova.  As a general rule, rankings are subjective; even computerised rankings are based upon subjective choices of formulae and everyone is entitled to their own opinions.]. 
   
  For the year 2002, our teams finished as 3rd open men, 1st masters men, 1st open women and 4th masters women.  Therefore, the biggest difference has been with the 'old ladies.'  Actually, we were able to foresee this development by September of last year.  Hitherto, we knew that we always had Alayne Adams amongst the top (open and masters), but there was no consistent supporting cast.  We would do well in some races and then we don't even have quorum in others.  Then late last year, Alayne was winning the open scoring races, Stacy Creamer came back from maternity leave and Yumi Ogita jumped back into the competitive mode.  And we could count on Kellie Quinones too.  On this day, our 'old ladies' were 1-3-6-11 and won by a wide margin.  Just as importantly, we learned from last year's experience when we dropped out of the podium position in the very last race of the season because we did not have a third runner (Alayne and Yumi were 1-3 in that race).  This year, it will be all about organization and communication.  After two races, we are guardedly optimistic that they may actually win the scoring title this year.  Now on paper, WS has a better masters women team of Ludmilla Kremyleva, Kim Griffin, Jean Chodnicki-Stemm and Jeanne Pare.  But the issue is, as we found out last year ourselves, can they field a team of three for 12 races?
   
  For the open men, we are presently not able to challenge the top two teams, WSX and WS.  We do have some very fast middle-distance track runners, but it does not behoove us to cajole them into running half marathons.
   
  For the open women, we were missing two of our top half-marathoners from last year, Stephanie Gould and Ali Rosenthal.  But we still comfortably won the division today with a 1-4-10-14 = 29 finish.  This year, the number of open women scorers was increased from three to four.  We speculated that this should work in favor of us because of our depth.  Our top ten runners today were 1-4-10-14-23-31-48-56-60-74.  The second place team today had 8-32-33-39 =112 points, so we would still be ahead even if we skipped our fourth through ninth runners (1-4-10-74 = 89).  So the message is that we want to see lots of you are there in the future.
   
  For the masters men, we had the second and fourth place masters (Alan Ruben and Peter Allen), and then a group of four in Adam Newman, Patrick Cowden, Bob Holliday and Victor Osayi.  This was more than good enough today.  Somewhere, we are aware that we can always call on Tom Phillips, Stuart Calderwood, Hank Berkowitz and even Tony Ruiz.  And Frank McConville is waiting for his birthday.  So it is difficult to see how we won't win this thing five years in a row.
   
  And to the two people who had to drop out due to stomach cramps, there will be another nice race for you in the future ... we promise you ...

• AUDIENCE OVERLAP [3/8/2003]  Just today, someone in the office nailed us down long enough to give them an explanation of the Sainsbury method of estimating intermedia duplicated audiences.  But that is not what we are talking about here.  Besides, the Sainsbury method is extremely flawed anyway.
   
  The starting point of this journal entry is a note to Tanser.org from Simon Baker: "Does the man who writes the CPTC website read your website, or is New York City full of Intrepid Reporters?"  Having re-printed that quote here, it should be clear that the answer to the first part is in the affirmative, but we would amend the statement as follows: "Yes, the people who write the CPTC website do read Tanser.org."  We needed to change 'the man' to 'the people' for reasons that reflect reality but are too complicated to get into here (P.S.  No sex change is involved here).  The second part of the question is probably false as written because there are not eight million Intrepid Reporters in this city.  If there were, worker productivity would have fallen through the floor.  But we will agree with the modified statement, "New York City has at least two Intrepid Reporters."  While more is better, the People's Liberation Army found out that more was not enough when they employed human wave assaults against defenders with superior firepower during the Korean War.  It would be a waste of everybody's time if these Intrepid Reporters merely crib off each other.  This leads us to the overlap question.
   
  A careful reading of these two websites would show that there is little overlap in content.  That does not mean the two websites are oblivious of each other; sometimes their connection is much deeper than thought possible (see example).  From the viewpoint of the Central Park Track Club website, the Weltanschauung is based upon three concentric circles: the Central Park Track Club is at the center of the universe (ah, you can see that one coming!), surrounded by a larger ring that is the community of the runners and then the real world outside.  
   
  The content of this website is primarily in circle 1 and circle 3.  From circle 1, you will find more details about Central Park Track Club people than you or the people themselves care for.  However, their moms really love that information, for how else can we explain that this 200-member club gets 450+ plus visitors per day to its website?  
   
  From circle 3, you will also find an odd assortment of unpredictable topics on this website: world cup soccer, world cup cricket, hermeneutics, restaurants that you will never visit, European literature, Latin American socio-cultural behavior, Far East travel, Australian chauvinism, German lieder, etc.  Although much of it may seem useless, you are guaranteed new and surprising information and always good for a few laughs.  
   
  This website addresses very few issues in circle 2.  It is perhaps maddening that, in a big local race, the reader will find out all about the first Central Park Track Club finisher who was in 28th place overall and get no clue as to who the first 27 finishers were.  De facto, circle 2 is ceded to be the domain of Tanser.org.  Does that mean that this website has no visitors outside of the Central Park Track Club circle?  Maddeningly, this website also carries more than 9,000 photos.  Almost all of them are focused on our own team members, but occasionally other people are not cropped out of those photos.  Therefore, after every race, we will get more than 10 times the number of our racers of people who would look at those photos, hoping against hope to find themselves.
   
  The ecology of blogging is such that there is no theoretical limit on the number of website that can be sustained in a niche environment.  At this moment, in New York City, there are a number of running-related websites, ranging from clubs to magazines.  This website and Tanser.org stand out in terms of quantity (that is, audience size) and quality (that is, interesting 'must read' content), but there is ample room for many more.  More is better, but they better be good ... 

• WORLD CUP UPDATE [3/7/2003]  Today is the start of the Super Six round  of the Cricket World Cup.  Here is a brief explanation of the tournament procedure.  In the preliminary round, the fourteen teams were divided into two groups.  At the end of the round-robin play, the top three teams in each group advanced to the Super Six round.  These are Australia, India, Kenya, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.  At the end of the Super Six play, each team will have played every other team and be ranked from number one to number six.  In the semi-finals, number one plays number four and number two plays number three.  The winners will play in the final, whence Australia will win the cup.
   
  In today's first match, Australia overpowered Sri Lanka by 96 runs (319-5 to 223 all out).  Australia's batting stars were opener/wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist (99) and captain Rick Ponting (114 ).  Apart from losing this match, Sri Lanka's long-term prospects suffered a severe blow when captain Sanath Jayasuriya was injured.  In the second over, Aussie fast bowler Brett Lee hit Jayasuriya on the thumb with his fourth ball.  Then Lee hit Jayasuriya on the forearm with his sixth ball.  Jayasuriya was recorded as  the proverbial 'retired hurt' in the scorecard, with a fractured thumb and a bruised forearm, and his playing status is in doubt for the next game.  Ponting said, "We don't want to see anybody seriously hurt but this is a World Cup.  We have picked up a weakness in Sanath lately and we try to bowl where the opposition batsmen least like it."  At this point, Australia has already made the semi-finals since they have beaten three out of five Super Six opponents already.
   
  In today's second match, India beat Kenya after a scare.  Against Kenya's modest total of 225, India lost 3 wickets for 24 runs, including their star Sachin Tendulkar.  But their middle order played up to their potential and guided them home to win by 6 wickets with 22 balls left.
   
  Since England is already out of the tournament, they are still trying to continue the fight in other arenas.  Last year, British athletes gave the Aussies a damn good thrashing in the world triathlon and world duathlon championships, with two gold and three bronze medals over the two events.  Unfortunately, all but one of the GB medallists was raised in Australia, being able to compete for Britain by being born here.

• MORE SPECIAL BROOKLYN HALF INSTRUCTIONS [3/7/2003]  From the NYRR --- 

  Weather Advisory for NYRR Brooklyn Half-Marathon
  A decision will be made about changing the course of the NYRR Brooklyn Half-Marathon on RACE MORNING, Saturday, March 8.  NYRR officials will assess the snow and ice conditions on the Coney Island Boardwalk early Saturday before making a decision. If it is found necessary to change the course, the start will be moved to Surf Avenue, and any lost distance will be made up once inside Prospect Park. The start time of the race, 8:00 a.m., will remain the same. 
   

• SPECIAL BROOKLYN HALF INSTRUCTIONS [3/6/2003}  Eventually, we would like to produce an effective checklist (distributed only to our members and hidden from people on other teams) before every race to maximize our performances.  In the meantime, we will rely on an autoregressive method that draws upon previous races.
   
  At the Joe Kleinerman 10K last year, we forgot to tell people to assume their rightful positions at the starting line.  This was a scoring races and it was a shame to be losing 15 seconds at the start for being stuck far back in the pack. The  Central Park Track Club runners are famous for their sharp elbows.  Use them and move up there.  Do not let your running talents go to waste.
   
  At the Snowflake Run this year, we forgot to remind people to make sure that their club affiliation has been duly registered.  One of us forgot to do just that and our team dropped down one place in the scoring.  KILL!
   
  For the Brooklyn Half Marathon, we remind people that Ocean Parkway is one long road with hardly any bushes.  The trees in the meridian have trunks with circumferences less than a couple of inches, and there is little or no cover vegetation at this time of year.  So please make sure that you take care of business before the race (and not, as Herbie Medina observed, during the race).
   
  Of greater relevance and utility is this NYRR announcement: "Due to reconstruction the West 8th Street and NY Aquarium subway stop is closed - the F train stops at Avenue X and is replaced with a free bus shuttle to West 8th Street (please see www.mta.info for the shuttle schedule).  The Q train stops at Brighton Beach and Brighton 6th Street then you can use bus B68 to the start at West 5th Street. We urge you to leave additional time for your commute if you are using the subway or encourage you to use the NYRR bus transportation."
   

• THURSDAY NIGHT ROAD WORKOUT REPORT [3/6/2003]  
   
  Facts:
  #1: There is a NYRR scoring race (Brooklyn Half Marathon) on Saturday morning, 37 hours away.
  #2. There is an indoor track meet (MAC Open/Masters Championships) on Saturday, 38 hours away
  #3. Three inches of snow fell in Central Park during the day.  The road was partially cleared, leaving behind an ice-coated surface.
   
  Database:
  The sum total of previously published workout reports
   
  Problem:
  What is your unique minimum variance unbiased estimate (UMVUE) of the number of attendees at tonight's workout?  (Correct answer will be given at the end of this item)
   
  Geometry.  No, Tony Ruiz is not a geometer and that is the reason why he conscripts people to tutor his son on the A-train after the Tuesday night workouts.  Tonight, in search of the word 'perpendicular,' he could only come up with 'parallel' before the resident mathematicians came to his rescue.  
   
  Mathematical psychology.  Our Grinnell graduate introduced us to another Grinnell graduate, whose idea of fun is the old greased pig trick.  Since he is a mathematician, more is better.  So instead of releasing one greased pig, he released three greased pigs.  Since he is a mathematical psychologist, he tagged the pigs with numbered bibs, respectively #1, #2 and #4.  His enjoyment would be after the surprised folks have secured the three greased pigs, they would have to look for the missing #3 pig.  So you now know what you are going to have to put up with in the future ...
   
  Timer.  The same new Grinnell person is a self-proclaimed automatic timer.  His assumption is that he always runs at 8 minute mile pace, even if the official clock says otherwise.  So his workouts are based upon the total elapsed time on his watch, which when divided by 8 minutes will give the distance in miles.  If this is the Grinnell-style of timing, then we had better audit all those Tuesday night workout reports.
   
  Instructor.  Given the conditions, tonight's workout was prescribed by the coach simply as four or five steady miles, with the objective of staying upright all the way through.  Good luck coming down Cat Hill!  Special instructions were given to the tallest girl on the team (sorry, we got into trouble with the guys before and so we will amend this to be 'one of the tallest girls on the team') to the effect that she needs to stoop a little to make sure that she stays close to the ground.
   
  Favorite runner.  Right now, Dion Mulvihill is Tony Ruiz's favorite runner.  As Dion is the only one present today who intends to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon, Tony told him to just head home.  Dion did just that.  An astonished Tony said, "Oh my God!  Somebody here actually listens to what I say.  Now, if this were [name withheld to protect the guilty], she might have gone in the other direction and sneaked in a few more lower loops ..."
   
  The counter.  Seventeen people were present tonight (not counting Michelle Santomassimo, Harry Morales and Kevan Huston).  How close did you get?  

• RABBIT RABBIT [3/6/2003]  We have a friend whose idea of sibling rivalry is to call her sister up at the beginning of each month and say the words "Rabbit!  Rabbit!" before her sister does that to her first.  But that is not what we are talking about here. We could be talking about the help-wanted ads for male runners who run between 2:15-2:24 to lead the women at the 'women-only portion' of the London Marathon.  We have yet to hear a single kind word about that decision, but it is a business decision that does not violate any law, rule, regulation or code.  At this point, to comment further on this issue is like beating a dead horse rabbit.
   
  The London Marathon flap did inspire us to consider the etymological roots of the term 'rabbit.'  We take this to be derived from the artificial rabbit lures mounted on mechanical trolleys at greyhound races.  If we adhere to a strict analogy, the superior business decision for the London Marathon would be to set the pace with a motorcycle (note: electrical and exhaust-free) dressed up as a female runner and programmed to run at a very exact speed.  The advantages are many --- it is cheaper than hiring human pace-setters and it bypasses the gender-related controversy.
    
  Our research opened our eyes to some very unpleasant facts about rabbiting in greyhound racing.  PETA offers this information: "Each year approximately 100,000 small animals--most of them rabbits--are used as live bait to teach dogs to chase lures around the track. The dogs are encouraged to chase and kill live lures hanging from a horizontal pole so they will chase the inanimate lures used during the actual races. "Bait animals" may be used repeatedly throughout the day, whether alive or dead. Rabbits' legs are sometimes broken so their cries will excite the dogs; guinea pigs are used because they scream. When animals are "used up," dogs are permitted to catch them and tear them apart. Trainers claim the use of live lures is necessary to teach dogs to be champion racers, and the cost of "bait animals" is low compared to the potential earnings of a winning dog. Less aggressive dogs are sometimes placed in a cage with a rabbit or other animal and not released or fed until they have killed the cage companion.  A small percentage of greyhounds are trained using an artificial rabbit lure. However, in Massachusetts and other states where training with live animals is illegal, owners often send their dogs out of state for training, thus circumventing the state's humane intentions. Many dogs are trained in Texas and Kansas, where anti-cruelty codes are weaker or less strictly enforced than in other states."  
   
  May we suggest that the term 'rabbit' used in road and track races de-sensitizes the cruelty towards animals?

• THE GREAT SAUNTER [3/6/2003]  Kathy Warner: "I am a volunteer with Shorewalkers, an environmental and hiking club here in New York City.  On May 3, 2003, we will be hosting The Great Saunter, a 32-mile hike around Manhattan's outer rim.   I am writing to inquire if we can publicize this event on your Website and/or directly contact your members about this event.  The more publicity we can get, the more people hiking the outer rim, the more attention we can make on environmental issues affecting the shores of New York City, a goal important to all of us."

• TUESDAY TRACK WORKOUT REPORT [3/6/2003]  First of all, we humbly apologize for the tardiness of this report. We might propose that we are really making an artistic statement, by having the speed of our reportage match the speed of our recent running, thus creating a harmonious symmetry. But that would be false; and as you must know, we hold truth in very high regard here. So really it's just cause we're getting behind . . .

  As always, the most interesting events happened post-run, on the subway home, where a cavalcade of weirdos, led by one Jesse Lansner, accessorised by wizard's cap and staff (Mr. Lansner, we must report, confessed to a pre-workout Boomerian slip, which might explain his more leisurely pace during the 1000's. But that would be slander to report, so we shan't), held forth. We could outline in more detail the outrageous events, but really, you had to be there? The downtown A train, it's the new Williamsburg; you heard it here first!

  On the track itself, things were much saner, with a larger group than usual (ok ok, it was exactly 44! 44 factorial?) running 5X1000 at, for once, something approaching the mandated 5K pace. Alan Ruben and Kevin Arlyck, clearly frustrated at having had to run so slowly, added an extra 1K, leading one workout timer to wonder about possible overtime pay. Sadly, the timers have yet to form a union to address their many pressing needs (the wage is not so good, really).

  As the careful reader might infer, we were not running this workout; we were timing. For we actually ran the earlier middle distance workout, a complete doddle at only 3X1000. Really, it's much much easier, every one should try. Of course, there is a small question of pace, but that's ok when you've got Frank Handelman as your rabbit, or might we say hare. (what happened to the hare in that story? Didn't happen this time, tell you that). The middle distance workout also saw the welcome return of Sid Howard, slowed only for a week by illness.
   

• DMR PHOTOS [3/5/200]  Fast-Women.com has photos of our women at the USATF National Indoor Championships and MensRacing.com has photos of our men.

• BEST TIME QUALIFIERS [3/5/2003]  What qualifies to become a best time for the Central Park Track Club?  We have agonized over this for some time.  Since we are not the USATF Official Records Committee, we actually have some flexibility.  Thus, we accept intermediate splits in road races.  An example is Laurie Madson's 10K time of 35:26, which was recorded en route in the Trevira Twosome Ten Miler.  After some agonizing, we have also decided to accept relay splits in track races.  Technically, apart from the runner in the lead leg, the other runners get a 'flying' start, which translates to an advantage.  Thus, the fastest 400m ever recorded and the only sub-43-second time was the 42:94 by Michael Johnson in a relay.  However, we also feel that it is embarrassing to deny someone a spot on our best times list for this technical reason when the margin is obviously far beyond the possible advantage.  A case in point is Clinton Bell's time of 4:09.6, compared to the listed best time of 4:13.8 by Marcel Romer.  If we insisted on technical purity, we would have become ... the AAU!  Therefore, we have elected to accept relay splits while asterisking those times as such.

• LONDON MARATHON NEWS [3/5/2003]  Press release (3/5/2003): "Following a request from Paula Radcliffe for a mixed Men and Women's race, the Flora London Marathon today announced a unique solution. The Men's and Women's races will remain separate but there will be male pacemakers for the Women.

  The decision was ratified by the Marathon Directors who met this morning to discuss the proposal. "We already have the Women's Only World Record," explained Race Director David Bedford, "and knowing Paula is in the shape of her life we realized there was a good chance that we could capture the Mixed Race record as well."

  In London last year Radcliffe sped to the fastest ever debut of 2:18:56 before demolishing the Mixed Race record in Chicago with 2:17:18. Last month she sliced eight seconds off the World 10km road record in Puerto Rico. "I'm really pleased that London has taken this step," commented Radcliffe. "It is obviously very difficult to find pacemakers who can go fast enough for me so this arrangement will help me discover my true worth over the distance." After consultation with the other elite women, the majority were in agreement with male pacemakers. The Marathon will now be seeking a selection of men who will cover the pace between 2:15 - 2:24."
   
  Bizarre is the word, for the London Marathon is the foremost organization that denigrates the female results from mixed marathons.  From the same David Bedford a couple of years ago:  ''The London marathon has found it quite strange that world bests are accepted in mixed races where women can have a major benefit of being paced and supported by men during the race.  You can be paced and you can be shielded from the wind and you even have situations where men carry drinks for the women.  If you took that to its ultimate it would be like having an empty bus going down the course with the athlete running in it protected from all the elements.  Everyone who watched the race in Rotterdam where Laroupe set the record saw she was substantially aided. We believe the IAAF should only accept performances that are done in women-only races."
   
  But we suppose that everyone can have a moment of enlightenment in which they changed their minds 180 degrees.  What is unknown is the amount of persuasion that is implied in the opening phrase, "Following a request from Paula Radcliffe ..."  Did she hit them over the head?  Did she pick them up, shake them and tell them to get real?
   

• NY TIMES FINALLY GOT TO IT [3/5/2003]  Many weeks later, George Vecsey finally gets an assignment to report on the cricket world cup.  The result was a desultory look at the political aspects of the tournament.  Sample: 

"I was reading in the paper this morning about how 50 people were locked up because they protested at the Holland-Zimbabwe game," said Nasser Hussain, the captain of England, who was born in Madras, India.

"You just don't know what would have happened if England had gone there, and we weren't willing to take that risk."

This was a particularly lame portrayal, as all sorts of people get locked up for protesting in all sorts of places around the world.  What is so peculiar about the Zimbabwe situation?  And what does Hussain's place of birth have anything to do with anything.  With due respect, we must say that our continuous coverage of the World Cup cricket is superior to the NYT article.  The difference is that we know the rules of the game, we are versed in the socio-political significance of cricket, we followed all the games and, as you surely can tell, we cared passionately about those proceedings.  And this is why independent websites have become the worst nightmare for mainstream media, because we are everything that mainstream media are not and cannot be --- knowledge, focus and passion!  Of course, we are not really talking about cricket here, for we are talking about our running, our teammates, our friends, our work, our city, our world ...

• DMR SPLITS [3/5/2003]  Splits for our DMR teams at last weekend's USATF National Indoor Championships are now available on the Results page.  This had some impact on our all-time best lists.  
   
  For the women, there was no change in position, but there were two changes in the times.  Melissa Tidwell improved her 400m time to 1:02.57 (4th best) and Margaret Angell improved her (adjusted) mile time to 4:59 (3rd best).
   
  For the men, David Epstein moved from 8th to 6th with 50.13 for 400m and Evan Zeisel moved from 10th to 4th with 1:55.56 for 800m.  On the anchor leg, Clinton Bell soared to our all-time best with 4:09.6 (adjusted from 1600m by adding 1.5 seconds) for the mile.  A spectator reported that the NYAC runner in the lead went through the first half of the mile in 2:02 but Clinton was gaining on him!  As for Amerigo Rossi, we unfortunately do not have the 1200m category (yet) so his 3:03.12 does not appear. 

• FLYING HIGH [3/5/2003]  We were chatting with our favorite webmistress the other day, and she alerted us to the new design she was working on for the New York Flyers website.  That new design appeared last night, and we are suitably impressed.  It even got us to thinking about changing this site, an idea that's been kicking around in the back of our head for a while.  Look for our own redesign any month now; 2004 at the latest.

• WEEKEND UPDATES [3/5/2003]  As we await the Tuesday Night Track Workout report (we imagine that our intrepid reporter is hard at work on it right now, although we worry that he is busy timing his subway rides instead), we thought we would take the opportunity to fill you in on some events that occurred over the weekend.  Over in Auckland, Alinghi swept Team New Zealand 5-0, bringing the America's Cup to Switzerland for the first time in its history (and returning in to Europe for the first time since the 19th Century).  Alinghi faced more challenges from the weather (the fourth race was delayed for over a week as the winds alternated between too light and too strong for sailing) than they did from the Kiwis, who failed to even complete the first and fourth races after their mast snapped in strong winds.
  
  A little closer to home, embattled USOC CEO Lloyd Ward finally gave in to the pressure and resigned.  The committee is now searching for an interim CEO, who will serve until the organization is restructured later this year.  At present a USOC task force and a Congressionally-appointed committee are both working on a new structure for the USOC, which will likely involve a smaller executive board (probably with about 20 members, which means eliminating over 100 spots) and a greater delineation of the duties of the professional CEO and the volunteer president.

• BROOKLYN HALF MARATHON [3/4/2003]  The half marathon race on Saturday is a scoring race for both men and women.  The race starts early at 8:00 am on the Coney Island boardwalk and finishes inside Prospect Park.  Afterwards, you are invited to have brunch at Jesse Lansner's place (see 3/3 journal entry for directions; RSVP requested).  The course description is as follows: "Start on the Coney Island Boardwalk at West Fifth Street. Head west to a turnaround at West 37th Street and proceed east. Exit off West 10th Street and continue east on Surf Avenue to Ocean Parkway. Turn left onto Ocean Parkway to Prospect Expressway to Park Circle. Enter Prospect Park at Park Circle and head east on South Lake Drive. Continue around the northern end of the park and south on West Drive. Turn left onto Hill Drive and left/north onto East Drive to Central Drive. Turn left and proceed to the finish on Central Drive."  This means that there is the seemingly interminable hill with less than one-half mile to go.  Be warned!
   
  The current championship tables (note: this NYRR page features the photo of Victor Osayi draped in bright orange) have the Central Park Track Club in the these positions:
   
  Open Men, 3rd place
  Masters Men, 1st place
  Veteran Men, 4th place
   
  Open Women, 1st place
  Masters Women, 1st place
  Veteran Women, 7th place
   
  Being in first place in 3 of the 6 divisions obviously makes us the top all-round club, for the rest of this week at least.  On Saturday, at the MAC Indoor Championships, we should also have a large showing too.
   
  For the Brooklyn Half, our open men's team could use Steven Paddock's 1:14:23 in the London Half Marathon this past weekend, but we would have preferred to see him get the sub-15-minute 5K first.  Our veteran men should have been in 3rd place at the Snowflake Run, if only someone had remembered to put down CPTC on their application form!  So we remind everyone to check that their club affiliation has been duly registered because you don't want to let your talents and efforts go to waste.
   
  At the end of the Snowflake Run, we thought that our open women's team had finished second . Somehow, a recount showed that we won that race.  This puts us now at the top of the table, where we belong as the defending champions.  Don't forget that the top four runners score for the women.  

• NEW MEMBERS [3/4/2003]  The Central Park Track Club is pleased to welcome our new members:

  John Cinelli
  Paul Groce

  Paul Groce is a member of the M35-39 4x800m team that just set the American record last week.  Previously, Paul was an outfit named the Wednesday Night Laundry Runners where he ran track as well as ... God help us! ... marathons.  John Cinelli was a co-captain of the Harvard track team, class of 2002, where he ran 800m/1500m/mile and cross country.  Recruitment points go to Devon Martin (2) and Margaret Schotte.  See the scoreboard for full totals.  
    
  It is clear that we have two major pipelines operating now, one from Harvard (Tom Phillips, Margaret Angell, Margaret Schotte, Lee Shearer, Sara Grillo) and another one from Columbia (Alayne Adams, Devon Martin, Kira Morser, Craig Anne Lake, Ana Echeverri, Julie Denney, Jiyon Lee, John Scherrer, Evan Zeisel, David Epstein, Mike Grant, Amerigo Rossi, Bill Dunlop, Alex Peterhansl, David Birchfield).  Let the Crimson Lions roar!

• OBED MUTANYA UPDATE [3/4/2003]  For those who are interested in the career of Obed Mutanya, here are a couple of recent race results.
   
  Jim Mielke Track and Field Classic, Tucson, Arizona, February 15, 2003:  10,000m, 30:51.5, 1st place (second place in 35:57.6)  
  ACCAC Conference Meet, Tucson, Arizona, February 22, 2003: 1500m, 3:58.7, 1st place (second place in 4:11.6)
   
  The NJCAA Indoor Championships will take place in Carbondale (IL) this weekend, and the his school Central Arizona College will be hosting the Arizona Relays Classic the weekend after that.

• WORLD CUP UPDATE [3/4/2003]  The Super Six will be Australia, India, Kenya, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.  England and the home team South Africa failed to advance because the critical games were washed out by rain, and no rain days were scheduled.  Afterwards, English captain Nasser Hussain (see photo) resigned as England's one-day captain.  No, he was not a happy-looking bloke ...
   
  

• MONKEY BUSINESS [3/4/2003]  From Paul Bendich:

This, apparently, is what happens when you give a monkey a stopwatch:
 
Ok, so I, like many folk no doubt, complain long and loud about how much of my life I waste riding the damn subway.  And with the ride downtown to my job, and the one uptown to the park, I really thought I was losing hours every day.  But it occurred to me that perhaps said travel time, though unpleasant, might not be quite so much of my life as I had thought.  That is, perhaps I (and by extension, most New Yorkers) perceive my daily commute to be far longer than it actually, objectively, is, due to the inverse of the old "time flys when you're having fun" truism.

Thus, an experiment!

After my run in the park this evening, I boarded the A train at 59th and broke out the stopwatch.  I timed how long it took to get down to W 4th, taking splits along the way.  Here's the kicker, though:  I didn't look at the watch during the ride (just hit the split button blind); at the end, I made a guess as to the time taken. This then would be my "perceived time."  The guess was "about 20 minutes." And now ...

Travel Time from 59th to W 4th on the A with splits (Note:  ride started at 7:40 pm on a Monday, no delays, not very crowded):

Total Time:  7:12.35

59th to 42nd:  1:43.43
Stationary time at 42nd:  0:24.53
42nd to 34th:  0:57.15
Stationary time at 34th:  0:21.87
34th to 14th:  2:15.50
Stationary time at 14th:  0:21.87
Bell Lap:  1:30.17

Discussion of Results:  on the basis of one experiment, it seems that our thesis is correct.  The actual time is far shorter than the perceived time, showing perhaps that New Yorkers are a kvetchy lot with little justification.

Problem:  How can we continue this study honestly?  For now that we are aware that the perception/reality gap goes from high to low, might we now be tempted to "perceive" differently in the next trial?  Oh, dear . . .

Commentary from the sideline:  "As is well known, any statistic based upon a single observation has infinite variance and is therefore useless insofar as precision and accuracy are concerned.  Precision can be improved by larger samples and a good point to start would be to pool your lone observation with the vast collection of A-train splits of Audrey Kingsley (note:  many of those times may have been published in past workout reports on this website).  An open thesis subject thrown at aspiring graduate students in search of a disseration topic in the area of mathematical statistics is the problem of the sampling properties of a sample of size one drawn from an unknown population.  As far as we know, no one has completed such a disseration (confession: ah, but we did personally invest a considerable amount of time thinking about it just like any other graduate student, and we can claim to have delineated the sampling properties of samples of sizes two and three for the isotonic regression problem)."