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Week of April 27, 2004 - May 3, 2004 It's a
Boy! We're proud to welcome the newest member of the Central Park Tykes Club. (Or the Central Park Tots Club; we haven't decided which name we prefer yet.) Lucas Andrea Modica was born last Tuesday at 11:01 am. Dad Chele Modica writes about his 7-lb. son: "The nights have been longer and the miles harder to come by, but he's priceless."
Bannister Everybody's getting into the 50th anniversary of Roger Bannister running the first sub-4:00 mile. We were going to hunt down all the articles we could, but LetsRun.com saved us a lot of the trouble. It's a really big deal over in England, so the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent and the Sunday Herald, all interviewed Sir Roger. On our own side of the pond, USA Today offers some nice coverage, including an audio interview with Bannister, while a dozen other sources run a story from the AP. (It seems likely that Bannister has spent the last month doing nothing but but telling reporters that his grandson believes Sir Roger was the first person to run a mile in under four seconds.) Meanwhile, Down Under, the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald give a little bit of attention to John Landy, who failed to break the barrier before Bannister, but then broke Bannister's record six weeks later. No newspaper seems to have interviewed Wes Santee. And, for those not planning to be at the Armory on Thursday, ESPN Classic will be running "The Barrier Breakers," a special on Bannister, Landy and Santee, starting at 8:00 pm. Photos Bruce Hyde hangs out at the Penn Relays before the start of the 5000m (photo 1, photo 2), and then runs the race (photo) in these photos at LetsRun.com. Visible in all three photos is runner no. 46, a.k.a race winner Alan Webb. Thanks to Craig Chilton for spotting the photos. Plus, photos from the Brooklyn Half-Marathon are now posted. Updating
This Site Makes Us Feel Like Sisyphus, Too Still not reading John Scherrer's new blog, Exit, Pursued By a Bear? (Note the restored comma!) Then you're missing entries like this one:
Since we strongly suspect that author is already contributing to this site, we're not all that keen to see him restrict his best material to his own blog. Apartment
for Rent Kevan and Anna Huston are moving to the Bronx, which means their apartment near Central Park is available. "Near" in this case means precisely 37.8 meters from the Bridle Path. The 1-bedroom rent-stablised aparment is at 6 West 90th Street, and is available now. The monthly rent will probably be in the mid-teens (exact rent to be determined after vacancy appreciation). If you're interested, contact Kevan at 212.821.5103 (work), 718.884.0338 (home) or khuston1@yahoo.com. Around
the World Update # 19 - Northern India Dear all, After a 30-hour train journey, long but comfortable (given the country), we finally arrived in the State of Madya Pradesh, in the Northern half of India. Orccha Khajuraho Varanasi
(Benares) We are now in Kathmandu, Nepal, about to go for a long trekking tomorrow. Do not expect news from us during the next 3 weeks. Cheers,
Over Racing,
Over Posting We're starting to wish we'd never asked about over racing. Not because we don't enjoy hearing your stories, but because we're getting a little worried about the sanity of our members. We already reported that Jonathan Cane did three races on the morning of September 22, 2002, but we just learned that Marty Levine participated in two of those races: the New York City Biathlon and the Fred Lebow XC 5K. And if you think running two or three races in a row sounds foolish, just consider the bizarre accomplish of Tim Decker (NYF). Last year he ran 8 miles of the New York City Marathon, hopped in a car and drove up to Westchester where he won the Terry Ryan Memorial Run 10K in a time of 38:05, drove back to the 8-mile mark in Brooklyn, and finished the marathon for an official time of 8:27:32. Readers of Runner's World may recall seeing a photo of Tim in the March issue, surrounded by his 66 pairs of running shoes. Gettting back to our own runners, John Prather writes in from Arizona with his tale of over racing:
And if any of our runners in the UK want to try this race out themselves, we found last year's application, which includes some contact info for the organizers. The races schedule last year was: 11 mile multi-terrain race, 6 mile hill race, 7 mile road race, rest day, hafl-marathon, 6 mile cross-country race and 9 mile canal race. Despite the terrain challenges, the winner finished in a total time of 4:26:53 (5:06/mile). But it's not just CPTC runners who overrace. Stuart Calderwood shares the strange tale of Jay Helgerson:
Three marathons in three days may not even be the craziest thing Helgerson did then. In 1979 he ran a marathon every week for an entire year. And where is he now? Well, over the last few years a now-48-year-old man named Jay Helgerson has been running some races in Portland, OR, including the Portland Marathon at least at least three times. Could this be the same man, now older and wiser and limiting himself to one marathon a year? Guess
the Fake Headline Two of these headlines are real. One is fake. Can you guess which it is?
If you said B, then you're right — and probably a regular reader of The Onion, where the story ran. Headline A came from The Palm Beach Post (link via Radosh.net) and Headline C is from the Washington Post (link via the always hillarious Wonkette). The funniest line doesn't come from the Onion story, but from a witness to the self-shooting incident, who noted that "the point of gun safety hit home. Unfortunately, the agent had to get shot." He's back at work now, but hopefully not doing any more classroom visits. Poem in
Your Pocket Day Today is the second annual Poem in Your Pocket Day. Among other promotions, MOMA is offering free admission to anyone who brings a poem with them. Last year we posted A Drink With Something In It, Ogden Nash's paean to cocktails. This year we're going with Rudyard Kipling's If (which makes the PIYP list of suggested poems), since we already put part of it up here two weeks ago. Also, it mentions running.
In other poetry news, Reverend Run (a.k.a. Joseph Simmons) failed in his bid to be named Queens' third poet laureate, partly due to the fact that he no longer lives in Queens. The title was instead bestowed upon Ishle Yi Park, who appears to actually be a professional poet. (You can see some of her work at www.ishle.com.) The job comes with no salary and no official duties, and we're not sure why Queens (or any other borough, city or state) needs a poet laureate. But any woman who writes poetry about video games (To Nintendo) deserves some kind of honor, so it might as well be this. Sports
Museum The National Sports Museum is coming to 26 Broadway sometime next year. The museum will focus on all sports, and will include exhibits from various other sports museums and Halls of Fame across the country, a theater and, in certain areas "subtle but distinct scents, such as chlorine in the swimming area and popcorn, cut grass or cotton candy in the baseball area." Staying
Put, Pursued By a Proofreader Copyeditor Extraordinaire Stuart Calderwood reminds us:
Too late! John already caught it and posted this comment to his site:
And you might get much better from Roland over on his site, but here you're stuck with our typos. Mile Race Remember, next Thursday NYRR will have a special Thursday Night at the Races Commemorative Mile to mark the 50th anniversary of Roger Bannister's historic first-ever sub-4:00 mile. The race is currently set to be run at the Armory, but we worry that it will be infernally hot in there, so we're hoping that NYRR will move it outdoors. If you don't trust them to realize the wisdom of this move on their own, you can email Ian Brooks at ianb@nyrrc.org and ask him to embrace the great outdoors. Also, read or listen to what Frank Deford thinks about Bannister: "In a way, Roger Bannister was the last hero in sport. All that have followed, however great, have only been celebrities, stars and superstars." Some More
Over Racing Toby Tanser weighs in again:
I think we're close to establishing a rule here: Racing too often is a bad idea, unless you are Alan Ruben or Toby Tanser. New CPTC
Jog Bra Ladies, this summer stay cool and in-style with the new CPTC jog bra, creatively designed by our very own resident graphic designer, Bill Haskins! To get information on sizing and to place your order, please e-mail Sarah Gross at SGross@Marakon.com by Monday May 3rd. Quasi-Over
Racing Tyronne Culpepper writes: "I witnessed a former CPTCer run two 5Ks within 30-45 mins of each other, both times were 17 minutes and change, and within a few seconds of each other." We'll just consider that to be a rather odd 10K. Young
Pioneers Regarding the Pioneer Club Track Meet, Stuart Calderwood writes: "Zeb and I were double-victims at this meet: we went to the TRACK meet to run a TRACK 5000-meter race, but arrived to find a course map being handed out! The race did start on the track, but from there it headed off to the Van Cortlandt cross-country course's 'Freshman Loop.' As I ran with two other guys in the lead at about a mile, a marshal very confidently directed us off the course with a large arrow-sign. We improvised and ran about 3.3 miles, so our times aren't really the disgraces that they look like." Finishing 2nd and 4th can hardly be called disgraces, whatever the course turns out to be. Tuesday
Night Uptown Track Workout Report Boy, the weather improves a bit, and runners come crawling out of the woodwork. Twenty-three of them, this time, including Glen Carnes, just back from his honeymoon and bearing the exciting news that his new bride has taken up running. Glen was so excited to be back that he tried to start the workout 20 minutes early. Jessica Reifer was back from California, where she may have run in some track races for which her times may have been reported correctly. She repeatedly challenged the validity of the Race Results page, but offered no actual corrections. Sue Pearsall jogged over from her apartment a stone's throw away. Otto Hoering jogged up from his apartment, roughly four stone's throws away. John Affleck took the subway, but he'll be able to jog when he moves into his new apartment, which is approximately one-and-a-half stone's throws from the track. The workout
was 3-4x1000m at 3k pace, followed by 1-2x300m at 800m-mile pace.
Chris Price found a way to pace himself properly on the third
interval: "I just follow Marvin Cabrerra for the first
600, since he's running the perfect splits for me, and then I speed
up." Marvin responded by leaving Chris in the dust on the next
interval. So much for that strategy, but in general everyone ran
well for the 1000s. Alas, they lost all self-control on the last
300. Either that, or they actually can run the mile in 4:10, in
which case we apologize. We also apologize to Coach Devon,
who asked that we stop referring to her as The Dictator.
(Speaking of dictators, today is Saddam Hussein's birthday.)
This sounds suspiciously like an attempt to stifle the independent
media, but, as she saw, the decision is out of our hands. She gives
orders that must be followed, so the group insisted we continue
to recognize her power over us. And, as the title of "She Who
Must Be Obeyed" is already
taken, we're stuck with The Dictator. Although a few variations
were suggested, including Dictator Devon, abbreviated as D.D. or
Dee Dee and Dictator D-Money, abbreviated as 2D$, D But, you ask, wouldn't a true dictator supress such language and insist that we all address her as Your Majesty, President-for-Life, or The Infalliable One? In some cases, yes, but this is more like the system in Cuba or the Glasnost-era Soviet Union: we get to complain a certain amount as long as we never threaten the power of the boss. Those who try geneally learn their lesson quickly when they are forced to do extra intervals as punishment. Lastly, on the long subway ride home Jess noticed our Mets shirt and Carlos Stafford's Yankee hat, and started bragging about how great the Dodgers are. Last night's results? Yankess win, Mets win, Dodgers lose. Bike Month Trade in your running shoes for some clipless pedals, because Bike Month is here. Officially it's the month of May, but it kicks off early with the NYC Bike Show (Thursday through Saturday), and gets going for real this Saturday, May 1, with the Blessing of the Bikes at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. See the full schedule for more details. Best Female
Athletes ESPN's Page 2 want help narrowing down a list of the top 32 female athletes. Marion Jones is the only runner on the list and Barb Lindquist the only triathlete. There are also two pole valuters, one swimmer and a heptathlete, compared to six basketball players and two golfers (are they even athletes?). Are we the only one who thinks Paula Radcliffe and Lori Bowden should have made the list? Even with a flawed field, it's still worth voting, complaining to the editors, and then checking out something more important, like the page's new poker columnist. All the
News That's Fit to Complain About The Times is still one of the best sources for foreign news, but it's increasingly clueless when it comes to culture. Today they discovered that South Park is funny (or possibly even just learned about its existance for the first time), glorified Red Lobster (the fact that the editor of Seventeen magazine likes it doesn't change the fact that the food there stinks), and actually printed this sentence: "Wolfgang's [Steakhouse] also offers some un-Luger-like amenities that seem plenty appealing to Manhattanites: you don't have to drive to get there, and you don't have to pay someone to watch your car while you eat." We're assuming that's a reference to valet parking, not to paying protection money to some local teens to keep them from stealing your hubcaps. But who drives to Peter Luger's? It's one subway stop into Brooklyn, and a quick cab ride over the Williamsburg Bridge for those who don't like public transportation. Besides, doesn't the Times know that all the cool kids are moving to Williambsurg, not away from it? A Peter Luger knock-off on Park Avenue isn't nearly as newsworthy as a Jean Georges Vongerichten restaurant on Roebling Street would be. Enter,
Pursuing a Bear CPTC member John Scherrer joins the blogosphere with Exit Pursued By Bear. John explains the title this way:
It's also one of the few Shakespearean stage directions that's not just "Enter," "Exit" or "Die," and it can be found in Act III, scene iii, line 63. It should be noted that there is no bear mentioned in the scene before that line. (A few years ago we made up some personal "business" cards in which we claimed to be an employee of "Pursued By a Bear Enterprises," so even though we've never managed to get through the whole play we did become familiar with this part.) It should also be noted that the correct stage direction is "Exit, Pursued by a Bear." We're willing to accept that a different edition may drop the indefinite article "a" before the word bear, but that comma is very important (remember, we're a stickler when it comes to punctuation). Welcome to the internet, where your slightest mistake gets mentioned all over the world! Over Racing
Update 2 The man who started it all, Alan Ruben, admits that this isn't his first time doubling up on marathons:
Baseball
Steroids Baseball has a new drug testing program. Sort of. MLB, the players union and the International Baseball Federation agreed to a drug testing policy that matches that of the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Olympics, but the new tests will only apply to the hypothetical World Cup of baseball. Players who choose to participate in the World Cup will be subject to random and repeated testing, with any positive test resulting in immediate expulsion from the competition. Players who are doping can just make up some excuse for not participating in the World Cup and not have to worry about testing. (It already looks like George Steinbrenner won't let any of the Yankees risk being injured by playing in a World Cup.) Jayson Stark notes on ESPN.com that a few details still need to be worked out, like "Where they'll play. And when they'll play. And who will televise it. And which countries will be in -- or out. And what the format will be. And who would be eligible to play for which countries. And, oh-by-the-way, even what the name of it will be." But assuming that all gets worked out in time to kick off the tournament next March, we might actually see some real testing, and that might make it easier to get a real steroid policy in place in the next collective bargaining agreement. Poll
Positions About two months ago a poll showed that a majority of voters supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage but also thought that gay marriage wasn't an important enough issue to merit tinkering with the Constitution. At the time we figured they must have been confused by the wording of the questions, but maybe the American people are simply showing an ability to hold two opinions that contradict each other. Support for the latter idea can be found in Clyde Haberman's column in today's Times:
We're going to go with "some people can't begin to figure out what they want," which might be an improvement over the days when H. L. Mencken suggested that "the people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard." These numbers will probably reverse themselves by the time the election comes around, and more people will vote for Mayor Mike that actually approve of his work. But that will mostly be based on the collection of lightweights who are planning to run against him. Week of April 20, 2004 - April 26, 2004 Over Racing
Update We should have known that Toby Tanser would have a double marathon story to share. "First marathon in Istanbul (Euroasia Marathon) on Sunday. Flew back home to Sweden by way of visiting a friend in Finland, where I entered a marathon on the following Sunday. That's two in a Sunday-Sunday range. Times: 2:31 and 2:30, winning the latter race." We're not sure what year this was and the only results we could find for Toby in the Istanbul Marathon are 2:35:11 in 1995 and 2:22:38 in 1994. Meanwhile, a member who shall remain anonymous writes: "Last year I ran the Dublin marathon on Monday, October 27th, and the New York City Marathon six days later (the latter using a friend's number - best not to tell the authorities). Neither was close to 3:00, and the last few miles of NYC were definitely a struggle. But my knees and I lived to tell the tale." Remember that the Central Park Track Club does not condone such breaking of the rules, but in this case we feel that the guilty runner already paid for his transgression with the leg pain he endured. Help Wanted Shane Clarke writes: "Rocco's 22nd Street is currently hiring for all front of house positions. We are extrememly busy and need good people ASAP!" If you have restaurant experience and are looking for a job, email Shane at shane@roccosrestaurant.com. Hot Runnings Wonder just how unpleasant it was in Boston last week? Stuart Alexander recommends this article on Cool Runnings, which he describes as "a pretty accurate account of this year's Boston Marathon." Of course, heat is a little easier to manage in a shorter race. Witness Stuart Calderwood's sixth place finish in the Seven Mile Bridge Run, where the temperature was 83° with 90% humidity. That's a heat index of 94.7°. But, he was in the Florida Keys, so we don't feel too badly for him. Best Times Yes, another one. Clinton Bell, fourth place in the 800m. Yes, this entry is in English. Right now only Kate Irvin's record times get the foreign language treatment. Some language other than Latin, obviously. Culpa
Machina Or whatever the Latin should be for "It's the computer's fault." We did lots of updates for this site yesterday, only to find ourselves unable to upload to connect to the server in order to upload them. So you get them all today instead. Journal entries, race results, pictures. Plus a few new things, just because we love you all so much. Brooklyn Half-Marathon pictures will be up tomorrow, assuming we get home from the track workout at a reasonable hour. When we were entrusted with the care of this site, there were certain conditions attached. Among other things we had to promise that the journal will be full of original content. We try our best to live up to that promise, but every weekend we find ourselves writing the same journal entry: "Kate Irvin's latest race result puts her on the Best of Times list for ..." This week it was 10:11.38 in the 3K at the Yale Sprintime Invitational. That's good for 3rd place on the list, less than one second behind her partner-in-crime Andrea Haver. Congratulation, Kate. Next time we're reporting this a foreign language, so it will at least sound different. Over Racing In response to our search for double marathoners, our chief researcher writes: "In the days of Fritz Mueller, they all overraced. In the contemporary life of the CPTC website, my vote goes to Dan Sack in November-December 1999." While it would take far too much research to establish this as the definitive answer, it's hard to see how anybody could beat Dan's streak:
His explanation for this spree? "I did them for the t-shirts." Meanwhile, James Siegel did the NYC/Philadelphia double that same year, but with less happy results:
A marathon a week? Who would do such a thing? Well, Charles Allard, Jr. for one. He once ran three marathons in three weeks:
We can surmise, then, that joining CPTC helps cure people of their need to overrace. At least for the most part. We all remember how Jonathan Cane participated in three races — the New York City Biathlon, the Race to Deliver and the Fred Lebox XC 5K — on the morning of September 22, 2002. And Chris Solarz ran two races this weekend, but they totalled just 7.1 miles, so there's still hope for him. Dig, If
You Will, Some Pictures We're still waiting for a few more photos from yesterday's Brooklyn Half Marathon, but we finally got the photos from the Boston Marathon, Niketown Run for the Parks and the Scotland Run posted. Anyone who can identify the last Niketown picture gets a cookie. Race Winner Another race with Chris Solarz, another CPTC victory. But this time the congratulations go to Jennifer Smiga, who won today's Earth Day 5K. Chris didn't do too badly, though: he finished third. Double
Marathon A Concerned Citizen wrote us: "I noticed that Alan Ruben ran two marathons in two weeks [Paris and Boston]. Could this be a CPTC record? Perhaps for sub-3:00 marathons, at least?" As ridiculous as the idea of running two marathons in five months seems to us, we suspect this isn't the first time a CPTCer ran two in 15 days. We're looking into this, but if any of you know the answer, please share let us know. Dating/Games In an apparent effort to make people think that they're a minor league team, the San Francisco Giants held their first "Singles Night" last Tuesday. In one midgame promotion called "4 love or PlayStation" three men vied for a date with one woman. After Bachelor No. 2 won, he was given a choice of prizes: the all-expenses-paid or a PlayStation 2. He chose the game system (see pictures or check out The Southpaw's comments). Loser! What self-respecting sports fan doesn't already have a video game console? The men in the audience cheered after he made the choice, which explains why all of them still won't have dates when the Giants host their next singles night. More on
Carbs Active.com has an article on why carbohydrates are important for marathoners and other endurance athletes. We're glad to see it, if a little disappointed that even athletes have to be reminded about the importance of a balanced diet. Runners
Needed for TV Commerical in Spain From Coach Mindy:
Happy
Bard's Day A European friend once asked us if we'd read a lot of Shakespeare's plays and we responded, "No, only about six of them." There's no other writer out there whose ouevre is so great that we would consider reading only six works to be inadequate. We mention this because today is William Shakespeare's 440th birthday, and also the 388th anniversary of his death. Celebrate by reading the plays or watching movies that transpalnt the Bard's work to the present day. We like 10 Things I Hate About You and the Ian McKellan version of Richard III, but didn't care so much for the Leonardo DiCaprio-Claire Danes Romeo & Juliet and couldn't stand Ethan Hawke as Hamlet, prince of the Denmark Corporation in New York City. But there was one amusing part of that version of Hamlet: When Hamlet goes to visit bohemian artist Ophelia in her East Village tenament he walks through a dark, decrepid hallway, and then looks out upon the Key Food at Avenue A and 4th Street. A friend of ours lives in the only building that would offer the view Hamlet sees. It's a beautiful building with large apartments, and even when the movie came out our friend and her roommates were paying close to $3,000/month in rent. There are no starving artists anywhere in there. Of course there are sill some slums left in the East Village and Alphabet City, but they're all being rented to would-be-hipsters paying obscene rents just so they won't have to worry about finding a taxi as they stumble out of a bar every night. For a more lighthearted observence of the Bard's birthday, check out a condensed version of Pericles, Prince of Tyre or see Romeo and Juliet portrayed by marshmellow peeps. Boone
Times Noting that yesterday's article describes Pat Boone as being "clad in a yellow blazer, black slacks, a canary yellow tie and white leather shoes," Stuart Alexander asks, "If censorship was extended to dress code do you think the majority would allow Pat Boone to continue to dress like a chickadee?" That's so gratuitously nasty that we're almost embarassed to print it. But we're more embarassed that we didn't think of it ourself. Cinco
de Mayo Run Anyone who tries to run in Central Park on Sunday, May 2 will find the roads clogged with 30,000 cyclists taking part in Bike New York. The solution? Come run in Prospect Park, at CAMNY's Cinco de Mayo 5K. The race starts at 10:00 am (registration is from 7:30-9:30) at the 15th Street Entrance to the park (F train to 15th Street). Lots of trophies, plus the top 3 men and women get gift certificates to Jack Rabbit Sports [link] in Park Slope. If that's not enough motivation, the first place woman (assuming she runs under 18:00) also gets an all-expenses-paid trip to the Guayanilla, Puerto Rico 10K. That's even better than the round trip Jet Blue ticket that Chris Solarz got for winning the JFK race last weekend. Plus there are children's races and a party after the race. There's no online registration, but you can sign up at Jack Rabbit Sports in Park Slope, or contact the Club Atletico Mexicano de Nueva York at elcamny@aol.com or 718.871.1021. Registration is $12 before April 28 and $15 afterward. Best Times Now we can't even go one day without a new best time. New kid on the team Bruce Hyde grabs third on the 5K list with 14:44.45 at the Penn Relays. This knocks Stuart Calderwood out of the top ten, which is a little unfair as Stuart is the one who compiled all the lists. Wednesday
Night Uptown Track Workout Report Baker Field was being used for a lacrosse game on Tuesday, so we had a special Wednesday workout, followed now by a special Wednesday workout report. The advantage of working out at the Columbia track is that there are no soccer players firing errant shots towards our heads. The disadvantage — aside from it being so far from civilization — is that there is nobody at all up there while we run. This can be good for the workout, but it makes the workout report that much harder to write. Would you rather hear that we ran 1200m, 1000m, 800m, 600m, 400m with 3:00 rest between each interval, or hear about a fight between soccer players, cyclists and a few escapees from a local mental institution? Not that we have any evidence of the latter occurring down at East River Park. But it certainly could have happened down there, and it couldn't have happened at Columbia, and there's nothing the 14 runners present for the workout cold have done to make things more interesting. Kate Irvin and Andrea Haver modeled the new track uniforms. The Dictator described her college track workouts, making us appreciate how un-sadistic she really is compared to other coaches. And Chris Price recommends The Perfect Mile, calling it "the Seabiscuit of running." In Today's
Papers We read more than just the Times today, and we're sharing the best of what we came across. Some of it even relates to running or Central Park.
Best Times We thought a week might have gone by without a new Best Time, but then we actually looked at Sunday's race results (yes, even we don't read half this site) and discovered that Kate Irvin is now tied for 8th on the 4 mile list. Appreciate
This! Today is Administrative Professional's Day, formerly known as Secretary's Day (see The Onion's story, "Rumsfeld Looking Forward To Secretary's Day" for a good laugh). Our bosses bumped it up to Staff Appreciation Day, and showed their appreciation by giving all us underpaid employees a meidocre box of chocolates and then acting just as unreasonable and/or nasty as usual for the rest of the day. Thanks, but next time we'd prefer you show your appreciation with cash. Photos!
(Finally!) Better late than never, here are photos from the Paris Marathon and the U.S. Olympic Trials. Thanks to Tony Ruiz, Kiefer Angell and Stuart Alexander for their camerawork. Next up are a couple pictures from the Scotland Run, the Niketown 4-Miler and maybe a few others. Broad
Street Run The Broad Street 10 Miler is the early May focus race for the club — straight, flat, and fast. Any CPTC member planning on running (Sunday, May 2nd) should contact me right away at chillwizzard@mindspring.com. I am coordinating transportation and accomodations for the race, and will be finalizing plans later this week. I need to know what size vehicle to rent for transport (leaving Saturday afternoon and returning Sunday afternoon), and how many rooms to reserve at the Days Inn near the race finish. Fence-sitters, take note: it is still possible to register for the race, as long as you are willing to pay the $5 late fee. You can register online through doitsports.com. See www.broadstreetrun.com for all the details.
World's
Best Athlete It's easy to tell who the fastest runner is. Just pick a race and look up the record holder. But who's the best athlete? Is Tim Montgomery better than Sammy Korir? How about Haile Gebrselassie? Do any of them beat Michael Phelps or Ian Thorpe or Lance Armstrong? And that's before you get to the less easily quantifiable sports. How do you compare them to Shaq, Becks, Michael Vick, Ichiro, Roy Jones, Jr., etc.? Well, Men's Journal tried to rank them mathematically last summer (although we're not sure how one can rank hand-eye coordination on a scale of 1-10), and they put Michael Vick first, followed by Bode Miller, Ronaldo, Bob Burnquist (skateboarding), and Alexei Nemov (gymnastics). ESPN's Page 2 decided it would be more fun to let everyone vote, so they put the top 64 men in a bracket. They also have a couple of articles on the best athletes and the greatest athletics feats, with much more to come over the week. Next week voting starts on the best female athletes. Job With
Reebok We received the following message today: "I was hoping that you can help me to find a casual to competitive runner looking for a full time position with Reebok. I have attached the job description and steps to be taken in applying for the job. If at all possible, please let this position be known about to members of your club." This is a retail job, and the full details are available in this Word file. Week of April 13, 2004 - April 19, 2004 Female
Runners Wanted for Ad Want to be on TV without having to be on a reality show? Read on:
Take That,
You Atkins Freaks! The headline says it all: "Experts stress post-exercise eating; Carbohydrates crucial in muscle recovery." But read the article, too. Around
the World Update #18 - South India Dear all, After 2 weeks of well-deserved rest in France, we started the last part of our trip: the Indian subcontinent. We landed in Cochin, a small (by Indian standards) city on the Malabar Coast, in the Kerala State (South West India). Kerala being among the richest and most developped states of the country, we spent a pleasant first week traveling in quite decent conditions. We liked Cochin for its Portuguese flavor (it really felt like being back in Brazil !) and enjoyed the tropical landscape of the "Backwaters", an area where the limits between sea, lakes, swamps, rivers, coconut tree beaches and villages are hard to define. We were also charmed by the tea plantations in Kumily, where women in colorful saris pick up young bright green tea leaves (for 8 hours a day in the heat...). While Kerala is a place of natural wonders, Tamil Nadu, the State we have been visiting since, is reknown for its South Indian temples. Those of Madurai, Trichy and Thanjavur are huge city temples, where there seems to be no delimitation between street life and sacred areas. Our favorite place was Mamallapuram, a small town which wakes up with the noise of stone carvers, whose knowledge has been transmitted from generations to generations for centuries. Most boulders there are sculpted, either in the form of "Mandapams" (cave temples with sculpted pillars), bas-reliefs (the largest measuring 30x12 meters) or "Rathas" (temples sculpted in a single piece of stone). As the Rathas are located on a beach, they look like giant sand castles. However, what makes our trip in India so intense is not what we have been seeing, but what we have been experiencing. We already went to India in 1992. That was our first trip together, and our first trip outside the Western World. At that time, meeting such a different universe was almost overwhelming. It took us 12 years to "get ready" to go back. Here we are again, and although we have been on the road observing different worlds for 9 months, being in India remains a striking experience. First, the conditions are more extreme that what we have had to overcome so far. The heat is so unbearable that we often have to stay in the shade - or in our room - during the hottest hours (even the temples are closed from 12 to 4PM). The noise, mainly due to traffic, is a nightmare (we have to use earplugs while traveling in buses). Talking of buses, public transport conditions are the worst we have ever had (with an average speed of 30 km/h on paved roads, with no stops, beating the so far champion Bolivia, with similar average speed, but on dust tracks, and including long, long stops). However, in our "cuisine" ranking, India brilliantly wins the Best Food Award, beating even Brazil (incredible but true !). We have been sampling all sorts of South Indian cuisine, always served on banana leaves, eating with the right hand like the locals. Nevertheless, the hardest thing to cope with, beyond physical obstacles, is mutual incomprehension between us and the Indians. Although most speak English, they still speak a different language. While the Western way of thinking is almost exclusively based on logics, the Indian way is driven by religion, superstition and ancestral traditions, which is incomprehensible to us. We are learning, the hard way, not to lose patience, to accept things as they are, without questioning, as without calm and tolerance, one just gets crazy down here. Finding the right attitude is the challenge that we are facing now in order to fully appreciate our stay in India. We are now in Madras, the largest city of South India, about to go North tomorrow. Hope everybody is doing well,
Cherry-Picking We don't cherry-pick our races. We pick races that fit our schedule, that are geographically convienent or that just look like fun. If a number of these races happen to present easier opportunities for medals than the average NYRR race in Central Park, well, that's just a happy coincidence. So we ran the JFK Rotary Club 5K yesterday because it's easier for us to get to the airport than to Central Park and because it's a fun race where we get to run on the runways. The fact that we finished second last year, and knew that we could easily beat last year's winning time had nothing to do with it, although it certainly didn't discourage us from racing. But it also meant that we couldn't be too disappointed when we noticed a tougher crowd than last year milling about at the start. In the end, seven runners beat last year's winning time, and three of them were from CPTC, including Chris Solarz who picked up his fifth win of the year. For those who do cherry-pick, we suggest the Lincoln Tunnel Challenge 5K on April 24 or the Rikers Island 5K on May 1. We have no idea what the winning times will be in these races, but when we ran the Rikers Island race a couple of years ago it wasn't too hard to pick up a trophy. Nostra
Culpa Everyone knows that this site is updated each and every day, except for the days when it's not. Two occassions make up for the majority of the latter days: (1) we go out of town; (2) it's Friday. On most Fridays — or at least on the good ones — we get home too late to even think about the website. Since we can't get online while at work, this menas the website stays unchanged those days. A comibnation of factors (race, errands, plans with friends, etc.) kept us out of the apartment all day yesterday, which means that weekend race results were not posted until this morning. We apologize for the delay. We can't guarantee that such lapses won't occur again in the future, especially when the weather is so nice, but we'll do our best to prevent them. Hey, Hey,
Paula The Scotsman talks with Paula Radcliffe about the training regimen that has made her the world record holder (2:15:25) and favorite in pretty much any race she runs. The Guardian examines the other end of marathoning: the people who don't train; the people who run a marathon every weekend; and the people who run dressed like chickens. Cooking
Classes at SOY - Summer Schedule From our favorite Japanese chef, Etzuko Kizawa:
Party
Time! It's not a party until CPTC shows up! The proof is in the two invitations we received today. First is a party tomorrow (Friday):
Prefer to do your partying next weekend? Try this party after the Brooklyn Half:
One Singular
Sensation As if the failure of most writers to punctuate properly wasn't enough, today we were reminded that too many writers don't know the difference between singular and plural pronouns. Witness this New York City Department of Education advertisement aiming to recruit teachers. According to the Times, the ad features the following narration:
First of all, people don't "go platinum." A record is designated platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America when one million copies are sold. A gold record is one that has sold 500,000 copies; a multi-platinum record, two million or more. The correct sentence here is "And they probably won't see their records go platinum." But that's a minor error compared to the second sentence: "They'll never be a running back for the Giants." Of course they won't! Multiple people can't be one running back (although the Mets are trying their best to combine Karim Garcia, Shane Spencer and Eric Valent into one right fielder). The two choices here are "He'll never be a running back for the Giants" or "They'll never be running backs for the Giants." Which is good, because the Giants don't need 50,000 running backs, especially if they're able to trade up and draft Eli Manning. The problem here is that English lacks a good gender-neutral third-person pronoun. We have he (and him and his) for a man and she (her, hers) for a woman, but nobody has ever shown much interest in using it to refer to a person. As a result we often use they, them and their as singular terms, despite the fact that such usage sounds ridiculous. Using he or his to apply to both genders sounds discriminatory ("Any child in America can group up to be whatever he wants to be") while using it sounds cold ("The baby lost its bottle"). Too bad. Use it or he or she. People have been trying to turn they into a singular pronoun since the 16th century and is still never sounds right. If a usage doesn't catch on in its first 500 years it never will. The worst thing about this example is that the word they is clearly not being used as a singular. They takes the place of "some of New York's most admired figures," meaning all the teachers — or all the good ones — not just one person. This means that an entire advertising team is so used to hearing they used incorrectly that not one person noticed the mix of singluar and plural terms. We don't know how effective this ad will be in recruiting new teachers — the Times' ad critic noted that it "does not really make a practical pitch" — but it does a good job of showing why we need more teachers. Join New York's Brightest and teach the next generation of advertisers how to write propertly! More Old
Times Inspired by Frank Handelman, Stuart Calderwood went through his old race results, and found a 9:42 2-miler from 1990, which works out to an 8:58.9 for the 3k, and moves him from ninth to fifth on the Best Times list. Keep those old results coming, guys. We will not rest until all the lists are accurate. And it seems we won't rest after that, since everyone insists on breaking the old times. Tuesday
Night Track Workouts Report Forget all those workout reports that claimed to be about the last indoor track workout. Like the Who or Luisa Tetrazzini the middle distance group doesn't really mean it when they say "farewell." Yes, the rain drove us back indoors, into the infernally hot confines of the Armory. But the Armory did have three things going for it last night: (1) It was dry (except for a small leak in the room that created a sizeable puddle in the stands); (2) it was nearly empty (about 10 other runners were on the track); and (3) they let us run in lane one. Plus Leon Brown was back after his smash theatrical success in Lexington, KY, although he probably would have been at the workout wherever it was held. There were 20 runners in total, for a nice ladder workout (600m, 800m, 1000m, 800m, 600m). Kate Irvin minimized her achievements in the 800m and 1500m, noting that she only made it onto the Best Times list; she didn't actually set a team record. (If ESPN can overhype Barry Bonds moving into third place on the all-time home run list so much that even some of their own commentators — Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon on Pardon the Interruption — complain, certainly we can celebrate one of runners doing so well when she's just returned to track running.) Chris Price explained that the only acceptable socks are either barely above the shoe or else go all the way up to the knee. The Dictator complained that 3000m was too long a distance for a race. The distance crowd could only manage 17 runners, and that included two guests — Phil and Angela — and Brad Weiss, who had just arrived back from Paris and Amsterdam and didn't participate in the workout. Coach Tony probably would have yelled at him for even showing up to run on his own nine days after a marathon, but Tony wasn't there. Superfast Sid led the workout instead and we helped with the timing, since by that point it was far too late to get to the Park Slope Barnes & Noble to hear Lynne Truss read from her new book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. For those unfamiliar with this slender, witty book, it's partly a style guide but mostly a manifesto for those of us who can't read the newspaper without marking up all the grammar and punctuation errors. "Sticklers unite!" she writes. "You have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion — and arguably you didn't have much of that to begin with." We're proud to consider ourself a stickler, a trait which we inherited from our father (note how proper use of capitalization distinguishes our father from Our Father, which would be quite different), who once distributed a memo on punctuation to his employees titled Commas and Their Flying Friends the Apostrophes or maybe Commas and Their Flying Friends, the Apostrophes. That comma is optional, but dad usually prefers to put a comma wherever it can be used while we often choose to leave it out. (James Thurber and Harold Ross used to have similar arguments at The New Yorker, with Ross continually adding commas where Thurber didn't want them.) However you title it, the memo had little effect, as most of the employees, despite 20 years of education, proved incapable of constructing a proper sentence. And this was before email caught on and convinced everyone that punctuation marks were only useful for creating emoticons. Of course, when we reply to an email we often fill in the commas, periods and apostrophes that were missing in the original message, but we understand that's not exactly normal behavior. But how can we expect the general public to write properly when so many professional writers can't be bothered to do so? Why be a stickler when many bloggers can't be bothered to punctuate and top newspapers seem to have laid off their entire copyediting divisions? And then there are the writers who even take a certain amount of pride in their poor grammar. David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth note in the preface to Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players that "the purpose of this book is not to get an 'A' from our English teacher. Rather it is to show you how to make a lot of money in all but the toughest of hold 'em games. So if we end a sentence with a preposition or use a few too many words or even introduce a new subject in a slightly inappropriate place, you can take solace from the fact that you can buy lots more books by Hemingway with the money we make you." Jim McManus retorts in Positively Fifth Street that "if they only knew how strenuously Papa's so-called final drafts had to be burnished by Maxwell Perkins, they wouldn't be quite so defensive. And maybe they'd hire an editor." We would add that, while there's nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition (just ask Patricia T. O'Connor), there is something very wrong with writing so poorly that your attempts at explanation serve only to make the matter more complicated. (Our microeconomics teacher had the same ability, but we soon learned to ignore any of her counterproductive attempts at clarification and focus on the crossword puzzle instead. This led to an improvement in both our grade and our crossword puzzle skills.) Our attempts at reading Sklansky's book have so far resulted in several headaches and an actual decrease in our poker skills. Eventually we gave up on the book entirely and read some more Hemingway instead. Not only is he a better writer, but we suspect that might even have been a better poker player. But as long as we have this page you can rest assured that a spot will still exist where English is used properly; where punctuation marks serve proudly; where sticklers can relax their blue pencils for a few minutes. At least, as long as we have Stuart Calderwood to catch our mistakes. Asterisk
Needed? Speaking of Barry Bonds... If you somehow missed the giant headlines, the 20-minute career retrospectives, or ESPN's incessant interruption of their programs to show each and every one of his at-bats, Barry Bonds hit his 660th home run (tying Willie Mays) on Monday, and his 661st (giving him sole possession of third place on the all time list) yesterday. Ignored in most of this coverage was the elephant in the room. No, not Bonds himself — though he is approaching the size of a young pachyderm — but steroids. Remember steroids? The months of allegations, grand jury investigations, Congressional hearings, planned White House summits, indictments and subpoenaed urine samples that threatened to overshadow the game itself? The epidemic of cheating that had those who love the game calling out to Commissioner Bud Selig to exercise some strong leadership? Well he stepped up to the plate and took the kind of action that the others owners were counting on when they put him in charge: he called for time. Or, more specifically, he imposed a gag order on all baseball officials and hoped that everyone would forget about steroids once the games got underway. Who says he's stupid? The season starts and suddenly everyone forgets all that talk about the legitimacy of modern records and the need to attach an asterisk to statistics like Bonds' home runs. For those not familiar with it, the asterisk is a mythological parasite attached to Roger Maris' single season home run record. In 1961, as Maris and Mickey Mantle were chasing Babe Ruth's single season home run record, Commissioner Ford Frick declared that "Any player who may hit more than 60 home runs during his club's first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than 60 until after his club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark in the record books to show that Babe Ruth's record [60 home runs in 1927] was set under a 154-game schedule." In response, Daily News columnist Dick Young suggested "Maybe you should use an asterisk on the new record. Everybody does that when there's a difference of opinion." Our guess is that the asterisk was meant to be a reference to a footnote that would explain the different season lengths, but we can't be sure because the official record book never contained an asterisk for the simple reason that there was no official record book at the time. Frick's reference to "record books" was a plea to sports publishers to distinguish between Maris' record and Ruth's. After Maris hit his 61st homer on the last day of the season some publishers initially listed both records, but within a few years they all recognized Maris as the sole record holder. In 1973 Frick himself denied the existence of the asterisk. Just to be safe Commissioner Fay Vincent slew the imaginary asterisk in 1991, so by the time Major League Baseball got around to authorizing an official record book there was only one record to list. (See Allen Barra in Salon.com for more info on the whole silly affair.) In the real world none of this ever mattered. Everybody knew that Maris has the record and everybody also knew that if they ever were hanging out on a baseball diamond carved out of a cornfield in Iowa and they were asked to manage a team of phantasmic baseball greats their first pick would be Babe Ruth and the record book and the asterisk could go hang themselves. Of course, by now the record has passed through Mark McGwire (70 in 1998) and to Bonds (73 in 2001), though some people have added their own asterisks to these records: to McGwire's for his admitted use of androstenedione, as steroid precursor; to Bonds for his suspected use of steroids themselves. And now Bonds has a new record, or at least a new place on the all-time list, and few commentators wanted to tarnish that milestone by mentioning the increasingly strong suspicion (and the evidence backing it up) that he got there by cheating. One who did was The Times' Murray Chass. Yes, the same Murray Chass who two months ago mocked the "self-appointed, self-important observers who have criticized the baseball drug-testing agreement" is now asking what Major League Baseball is prepared to do about steroid use. In his column today, Chass urged the owners to use the "reasonable-cause testing" provision in the current anti-steroid plan to begin testing the biggest suspects. It's been interesting to read Chass' columns and watch his position evolve as he's come to understand the danger of steroids. Let's hope that same evolution is possible in baseball executives. Mile Race New York Road Runners is having a special Thursday Night at the Races Commemorative Mile at the Armory on May 6 to mark the 50th anniversary of Roger Bannister running the first sub-4:00 mile (3:59.4). The meet starts at 7:00 pm, consists only of the mile, and costs $5 to enter. For more on the quest to break 4:00, check out Neil Bascomb's new book The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It. And listen to WNYC's Leonard Lopate interview Bascomb and Wes Santee about the lead up to Bannister's record here. Duh! From CNN [emphasis added]:
You think? You Oughta
Be In Pictures We get emails. We pass them along to you. This one is from the NYC Olympic Bid. It got to us a little late, so it might be too late to get involved, but you can always try.
Triathlon
Stories Wanted As part of its
Ford NYC Triathlon
preview, MetroSports
New York Magazine is looking to profile a few local triathletes
with interesting or unusual stories. If you are signed up for the
race and think that you have a good story, e-mail editor Jeremy
Shweder at jshweder@metrosports.com.
Rye Derby From our friends at the Taconic Road Runners Club:
Barbeque? We are so there! And Some
More Best Times Usually when we update these pages it's the new kids knocking the veterans off the list. This time Frank Handelman has struck a blow for the old-timers, turning up 3k and 4 mile times from 1979. Frank writes: "I have too much time on my hands as I have been injured and not running for six weeks, so I looked up my 3000 meters times and found I did 8:53.2 at St. John's University track in 1979. Also found the record of my 4 mile time, 19:35 at Eisenhower Park, Lomg Island, in 1979. These are my fastest times as CPTC member." This is the first time we've heard of a CPTC runner setting records while injured. The Return
of Random Links Here are a bunch of stories that don't deserve their own headlines:
Kissena
Velodrome Reopening The Kissena Velodrome in Flushing, Queens will have it's grand reopening on April 24th and 25th. Elite races on Saturday start at 12:10 pm. The amateurs race Sunday at noon. This is a great chance to see some cycling track races, and guaranteed track records (thanks to a reconstructed and remeasured track, all the old course records have been declared void). Directions to the track can be found here. Week of April 6, 2004 - April 12, 2004 Workout
Reminder Tomorrow's long distance workout (Tony Ruiz's group) will be at the Armory. The middle distance workout (Devon Martin's group) is still scheduled to be at the Columbia track, but may be moved to the Armory on account of rain. Devon will send an email in the afternoon with further details. If you're not on her list, you'll have to email her, since we won't get a chance to update the site during the day. Double
or Nothing
Or, as Homer Simpson retorted: "You'll be a bonehead!" Whether you agree with Kipling or Homer will probably determine how you feel about Londoner Ashley Revell. Revell sold all his posessions last month, took the resulting $135,300 to a roulette table at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, and placed the entire sum on red. "I find that being 32, not having a wife, not having any kids, seems like the perfect time to do it," he said, although that does little to explain why he went through with it. In fact, even he admits now that "I was pretty mad to do the bet in the first place." We'd go with boneheaded as the best description, but we know from our own (much lower stakes) gambling that it's better to be lucky than smart. Revell got lucky and doubled his money. He plans to use the proceeds to buy back some of his old belongings, replace some of the essentials (like clothes) that he sold off, and enter the World Series of Poker. Revell is not the first man to risk it all on one turn. He's not even the richest. In 1980 William Lee Bergstrom arrived at Binion's Horeshoe with two suitcases; one with $770,000 in cash (if not his entire worth, than certainly close), the other empty. Without even converting the money to chips, Bergstrom went to a craps table and placed the full suitcase on the "don't pass" line. Three rolls of the dice later he had the cash to fill the other suitcase. Over the next few years he repeated his win with bets of $590,000, $190,000 and $90,000. Then, in 1984 he got together a full million dollars, put in down on don't pass like usual, and lost. But the biggest double-or-nothing bet we've heard of is one that may never have actually happened, involving media mogul Kerry Packer, currently the richest man in Australia with approximately $US2.5 billion to his name. As The Economist reported a few years back:
Whatever else he may have been, the oilman wasn't a bonehead. He declined the bet. For the
Birds If you clean your windows as rarely as we do, you never have to worry about birds crashing in to them. If you think that the purpose of a window is to actually be able to see through it, that's a different story, since birds can't see the glass and often fly right in to it. Enter the New York City Audobon Society, and one of their volunteers, Kellie Quiñones. According to the Times, Kellie "has made it her mission to raise awareness of the chronic problem of birds' crashing into the city's millions of glass windows, to save what wounded birds she can find and record the deaths of the less fortunate." Read all about it here. This Is
Your Brain On Drugs... If you were just driving around one day and decided to buy some crack and then offered to split the crack with a woman in exchange for sex but instead she smoked all the crack and ran off, you'd be upset, but you'd probably realize that there's not much that you can do about it. When this happend to a man in Cameron, TX, last week, he decided that there was something he could do about it; he could report the incident to the police. Officer Philip Anelli explained to the man that, not only was there nothing the police could do in this situation, but, if they did find the woman and substantiate the man's story, he would probably go to jail on a number of drug charges. It took a little time for this information to sink in, but when it did, the man announced that he and the woman could work this out on their own. Even in Texas you can't be arrested just for being incredibly stupid, so the man was allowed to leave. But we suspect it's just a matter of time before he ends up back at the police station. Tuesday's
Workout Due to the heavy rains forecast for this week, Tony Ruiz's Distance Group workout will be held at the Amory this Tuesday. More Best
Times New member Bruce Hyde grabs third on the 10k list with 30:21.31. Clinton Bell takes over second place on the 5k list with 14:27.82. That's the first update to each list since they were created! Also, thanks to our crack research team (a.k.a. Stuart Calderwood) we now have best 3k lists for men and women. These lists only include times run during the life of the website, so if you ran a faster 3000m before 1997 and want it included, send us an email. Indoor
Season Wrap-Up Some highlights of the 2004 Indoor Season for the Middle Distance Group: RECORDS
Sid Howard
- Two American Records for the 65-69 age group LIFETIME PRs John Affleck:
3k - 9:41.5 SEASON PRs John Affleck:
800m - 2:10.39, mile - 4:49 USATF Masters Indoor National Championship GOLD MEDAL SILVER MEDAL BRONZE MEDAL Placed in the top 3 at Masters Nationals, but couldn't take a medal b/c non-US citizen 1st Place 3rd Place USA Indoor National (Open) Relay Elite Masters
1000m Invite Best Times Another weekend, another slew of record-setting times. Amerigo Rossi and Clinton Bell improved their second places times for the 800m and 1500m, respectively, though neither one moved up any spaces on the list. And Kate Irvin grabbed seventh place on the 800m list and third on the 1500m list at today's Columbia Univeristy Invitational. Plus we figure Andrea Haver's 3000m result will be on the best times list for that distance when we finish assembling it sometime in the next few years. Also,
It Makes You Think of Citrus Fruits According to How Colors Affect Your Marketing, "Orange evokes fun, cheeriness, warm exuberance. In business, it's great to highlight information in graphs and on charts evokes positivity, sunshine and cowardice. In business, it appeals to intellectuals and is excellent for accenting things. Too much is unnerving." Cowardice??? What nonsense. But we can see how too much orange can be unnerving, especially to all the other runners being passed by people in orange singlets. We Hear
ESPN Is Planning to Televise This Next Year A German team won this year's World Marbles Championship. There's really nothing we can add to this that isn't alreay at Ananova.com. Brooklyn
Half Marathon Brunch Back by popular demand, it's Jesse Lansner's post-Brooklyn Half-Marathon brunch! All CPTC members and friends are welcome. RSVPing to lansnerj@yahoo.com is appreciated, but not necessary. WHEN: Saturday,
April 24, after the race. Directions from the Finish Line or from the F Train (Ft. Hamilton Parkway station) are below.
Christo
and Jeanne-Claude at the Met Christo and Jeanne-Claude's orange (okay, saffron) curtains won't be installed in Central Park until next February, but a preview is on display now through July 25 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show, "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates, Central Park, New York," features plans, drawings and samples of the gates themselves. "The Gates" will run from February 12-28, and will consist of some 7,500 saffron "fabric-panels" suspended from 16-foot high frames spaced 12 feet apart over roughly 23 miles of walkways throughout Central Park. Brooklyn
In Da House! Brooklyn College won yesterday's Inter-College Cricket Cup, defeating City College by five wickets. While this may not be important to most of you, it is a big event for our editorial staff, whose defining characteristics are a disturbingly deep Brooklyn chauvinism and an even more pathological love of cricket. Voting;
It's Not Just for Reality Shows A movement is afoot to grant legal immigrants the right to vote in New York City. Voting in New York State has been limited to U.S. citizens since 1804, with the exception of New York City school boards, in which all residents had the right to vote (those boards, and their elections, were shut down two years ago). The Times reports that a similar proposal was made a decade ago and got nowhere, but since then five towns in Maryland have given non-citizens, including even illegal immigrants, the vote in local elections. In addition to New York, campaigns for immigrant voting are underway in Hartford, CT, Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC. There appear to be no provision in New York State of federal law that would prevent the city from giving non-citizens the right to vote in city elections. There are an estimated one million legal immigrants in New York City, so giving them the vote could have a profound effect on local politics. Or it might not, since the non-citizens may vote the same way the citizens do. There are two main reasons for this. First, as an interesting study in the Austin American-Statesman (registration required; or see the article on Slate.com) shows, America is increasingly segregated politically. Over 45% of Americans now live in counties in which one of the main parties can count on over 60% of the vote. It's reasonable to suspect that many of the legal immigrants who live in New York share the politics of their neighbors. Second, as Fiorello LaGuardia noted, "there's no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage." New York City has a $45 billion budget, but most of this is spent on state or federal mandates, or on services that most, if not all, New Yorkers demand. Just compare the budget process in Congress with New York City's attempts to close budget gaps in the last few years. In the Capitol, Democrats and Republicans gleefully propose cuts to their opponents projects. In New York (and many other cities), there are few programs that anyone is willing to cut. Allowing non-citizens to vote would almost definitely increase the number of minority officials elected, since Latin Americans and Asians have much greater representation in the immigrant population than they do in the general one. The main argument against letting non-citizens vote is that the right to vote is one of the defining characteristics of citizenship. The Times quotes opponent Mark Krikorian: "Extending voting rights to non-citizens eliminates the last distinction between people who have accepted permanent membership in the American people and those who have not. That distinction is important to maintain." That's going a little overboard, since the Constitution does define some rights as belonging only to citizens. And while we're a little leery of giving people who are still loyal (even if it's name only) to a foreign state the power to influence our foreign policy, it's silly to extend that argument to municipal government. Non-citizens are an important part of New York City, they pay city taxes and use city services, and it's reasonable for them to seek a say in how the city is run. Some vacation communities have given their part-time residents the right to participate in local elections. These residents thus have the right to vote in two sets of local elections, although they are limited to just one residence for state and federal elections. Of course, New York City, unlike most beach communities and ski resorts, often seems to conduct it's own foreign policy, which is a good argument for keeping the vote away from citizens of countries that New Yorkers may decide, independent of the federal government, to sign trade deals with or declare war on. But on the whole, we're for letting non-citizens vote, if for no other reason then because it will increase the electoral power of the Central Park Track Club. And maybe that will be enough to finally get those damn cars out of the parks. Coach's
Tips Anyone who's clicked on the "Coach's Tips" link over the last two years may have noticed that the only tip there concerned running the marathon (Tony Ruiz's Ten-Ten-Ten Approach). Finally we have a second tip to share - Devon Martin's advice on weight training for middle distance runners. We hope to add more advice from both of them soon. Yes, technically we should rename the page "Coaches' Tips" now, but we don't plan to. If we can persist in the fiction that there is only one journal author, we can easily pretend there is only one coach. Instant
Results Those running the London Marathon can have friends alerted by text message as they pass various checkpoints. Orange (a UK phone company named for the best color there is) will send your splits (looks like 10k, 20k, half-marathon, 30k and 40k, but we're not certain) to up to three UK cell phone numbers. And here we thought TMing was silly. Brooklyn
Restaurant Week Or, as it's officially called, "Dine in Brooklyn." Whatever the name, it's a number of good restaurants around the borough (see the list here) offering lunch and/or dinner for $18.98, in honor of the year that Brooklyn and Manhattan were joined into one city. (A few Brooklynites still refer to this as the "Mistake of '98," but we thinking inviting the other boroughs to join Brooklyn was the charitable thing to do.) The promotion runs from Thursday, April 15 to Thursday, April 22. We're
Looking for a New Job; How About Transferring Power to Us? From the official White House transcript of the President's remarks to reporters in Charlotte, NC on April 5, 2004:
The Ten
Commandments of Running Toby Tanser explains them, over at MetroSports. Hood
to Coast The New York Flyers are putting together a couple of teams for the Hood to Coast relay, and they've asked us to help them fill a few spots. Details below:
Indoor
Tri
The brainchild of a local small business and an established community organization, the JackRabbit Indoor Tri at the Y will provide athletes the opportunity to gain exposure to a new form of fitness, or become more skilled at racing triathlons. Triathlons combine the sports of swimming, cycling and running in one event. The indoor event, held at the Prospect Park YMCA on May 2, 2004, will benefit the Friends of Youth Campaign. Participants will swim for 10 minutes in the pool, cycle for 30 minutes on spin bikes, and run 20 minutes on a treadmill. Achievement will be measured by the number of laps completed in the pool, and the distance covered during the bike and treadmill. The event is sure to bring beginners, athletes currently in training for the NYC Triathlon, even elite level competitors hoping to complete a simulated race as preparation for their race season. This event is of particular interest to local media from the following perspectives:
Logistics:
INFORMATION SESSIONS WILL BE HELD AT THE YMCA ON APRIL 21st and APRIL 26th at 7:30pm. For more information
on media opportunities or race logistics, contact Laura Galbraith
at laura@jackrbt.com or (718)
636-9000. For more information on the Prospect Park YMCA and their
fundraising efforts and race day sponsorship opportunities contact
Kathy Birro at kbirro@ymcanyc.org
or (718) 768-7100. More
Photos of Margaret Paul Sinclair found this photo (Margaret Angell is the second runner from the right), and fast-women.com now has two photos up at the bottom of this page, with witty captions to be added soon. We've got a few post-race photos that we'll post later this week, hopefully with some race photos that we expect to receive shortly. Second
Verse, Same As the First For some reason it didn't hit us until we got to the Four Questions that tonight is not actually different from all other nights. In fact, it is exactly the same as last night. Matzah, bitter herbs, etc. The only real difference was that tonight the host was Uncle Dan (or, as Grandma refers to him, "my son whose brother and sister are lawyers"). Once again Dan condensed most of the book of Exodus onto the dinner plate (see last year's plate for comparison):
The simple story: We were slaves in Egypt (the pyramid of rice) and God brought forth the ten plagues upon the Egyptians, (the paschal lamb), parted the Red Sea (the chopped beets on endive, shown pre-parting) and led us through the dessert (the kugel from Second Avenue Deli) to the land of green pastures and milk and honey (the asparagus). The circuitous trip around the plate reflects the 40 years we spent wandering in the dessert. Not pictured are the gefitle fish, matzo ball soup, and a whole lot of desert. We'll be putting in a lot of extra miles over the next few days to work off this meal. Track
Photos We can't post them, but pixel-run.com has a bunch of photos of CPTC runners at the Masters Indoor Nationals. All the photos are for sale, but they're still free to look at. Also, photos from the New Bedford Half Marathon, some of which clearly feature Kevan Huston, though there were too many pictures for us to look up the other CPTCers in the race yet. Some
CPTC Relays History We wondered if last week's Intrasquad Relay had produced a club record. Club Historian Stuart Calderwood not only established that it had, he even worked out the top ten teams, the top five runners at each distance, and added in some interesting trivia. Top Ten Teams:
Hall of Fame: Top 5 times at each distance: W200
W400
W800
W1200
W1600
(No other female competitor has run this leg.) M200
M400
M800
M1200
M1600
Some points of interest:
Week of March 30, 2004 - April 5, 2004 Why Is
This Night Different From All Other Nights? Because we eat matzah and bitter herbs, dip food in salt water twice, recline while dining, and refrain from making fun of Major League Baseball's steroid farce. Oh, okay, just one comment, because it's too good to pass up. Barry Bonds' lawyer, Michael Rains, said that the feds are trying to set a perjury trap for Bonds. According to the New York Times, "Rains said it was logical to assume that Bonds told the grand jury during testimony that he did not use steroids. Bonds appeared before the grand jury Dec. 4. But if a urine test showed that he had tested positive for THG or some other steroid, Bonds could then become vulnerable to a charge of perjury over his testimony. THG was not detectable last baseball season, but a screening for it has since been devised and could be applied to a retesting of Bonds's urine sample." "A perjury trap is created when the government calls a witness before the grand jury for the primary purpose of obtaining testimony from him in order to prosecute him later for perjury." United States vs. Chen (933 F.2d 793, 796-97). Some courts (though by no means all of them) will dismiss statements made in such circumstances. Bonds and other athletes testified last year before a grand jury that was investigating steroid suppliers. The athletes received immunity for their testimony. And, until recently, investigators were unaware that the urine samples of all major league players (including those who testified before the grand jury) had been saved. It's hard to see how there could be a perjury trap when Bonds was granted immunity for this testimony and when there has yet to be any evidence that he actually lied. But Rains' comments strongly suggest that Bonds did lie in his testimony when he (Bonds) denied taking steroids. Which means that BARRY BONDS TOOK STEROIDS (we've put that in bold just in case you're not paying attention). Remember, there's still no proof that Bonds did anything wrong, just a lot of suspicion, which Rains is only encouraging with statements like these. Rains already looks like he's trying to get his client off on a technicality, but Bonds' real trouble won't be with the U.S. Attorney's office, but with Major League Baseball and the fans - two groups that won't care about technicalities. Birthday Short Trivia Quiz: Which member of the website staff who now lives in Hong Kong is celebrating a birthday tomorrow? No prizes for guessing this one. Triple
PR We missed Sue Pearsall's result in the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler the first time around. (We're maintaing that her name wasn't on the original list of finishers until it's proved otherwise.) Her result is posted now, and we're happy to report that not only is her 1:10:14 finish a PR, it also includes PRs for 5 Miles and 10K inside the race. Wallopped This site is known for it's near-real-time reporting of race results and sightings of members in magzines, movies and other websites. But we don't limit ourselves to just current events; our dedicated staff is constantly tracking down anything we may have missed. And so we have two web sightings of Ellen Wallop (see famous quote #1462 for more info on her). First, a race result from last October 19th. Second is an April 2002 article from the Columbia News Service detailing Ellen's experiences as a wedding photographer. That article, by the way, was written by Alexandra Polier, who became slightly famous when it was alleged that she'd had an affair with John Kerry. (Then it turned out she hadn't, and we all forgot about her again.) The Un-Uniform
Uniform Almost as serious as the Trials themselves was the trial by fire that produced Margaret Angell's unique CPTC racing singlet. Only shortly before her race, Margaret learned of a USATF rule that limits the size of team logos on uniforms worn in the Olympic Trials. Like any intelligently designed uniform, CPTC's singlets have easily readable (read: too big) team logos on them. Margaret's options were to cover the logo with tape or wear something else. After several teammates had ransacked ancient stores of retired CPTC uniforms, still no logo fit within the USATF thumbnail. But all was not lost. Margaret's frequent training partner Bill Haskins possesses many little-publicized gifts, among them the ability to apply original designs to clothing via an arcane, quasi-industrial method performed at the construction site that he oversees. He knocked out Margaret's one-of-a-kind CPTC uniform for the occasion. We can only assume that it performed as well as its wearer did.
The Best
of Times We're happy that our members are running such great races, but it's also making us do a lot of extra work updating the Best Times pages. This weekend alone Margaret Angell took over the top marathon spot by running 2:44:05 at the Olympic Trials, Clinton Bell grabbed second in the 1500m with 3:53.48 at the Duke Invitational, and Brad Weiss ran 2:55:41 in Paris, improving his PR by 1:17 and his place on the marathon list by 14 spots. Worth
3000 Words (So Far) We don't have any of our own photos of Margaret Angell yet, but we've found a few on the web so far. There's one on Let's Run (bottom center picture), and two on iPlayOutside (1, 2). Plus we expect to see a few pics of Margaret on fast-women when they finish uploading their photos (which they may have already done by the time you're reading this). Thanks to Shane Clarke and Roland Soong for the links. Wave an
Orange Flag Raymond Prybylski knew of these other orange flags: Bhutan, Ivory Coast, India, and Niger. We did a little more research at the World Flag Database, and found these (click on any of the pictures for bigger versions of the flags):
Olympic
Trials Deena Kastor said she would face tough compeitition in the Olympic Trials. Her competition diasgreed (Colleen De Reuck: "She's so far ahead of the rest of the pack."), but it turns out she was right. De Reuck pulled ahead of Kastor with about two miles to go, and won the race. The top three finishers (and Olympic qualfiers) were:
More importantly, Margaret Angell finished in 2:44:05 (a blistering 6:15/mile pace), for 31st place. That's a PR by 2:15, and it moves her into first place among CPTC marathoners. More details, and hopefully some pictures, as soon as we get them. Update: Stuart Calderwood noticed that the results page includes half-marathon splits, and that Margaret's were nearly perfect: 1:21:58 and 1:22:07. Not only that, but Margaret passed 21 runners who were ahead of her after the first half, and also finished ahead of the four other women who crossed the midpoint in 1:21:58. The number of runners who passed Margaret after the first half? Zero. Summer
Track Races For the last two summers, NYRR has sponsored weeknight track races. This year they've decided that track runners shouldn't get to sleep in any more often than road runners, and have switched to Sunday mornings. The race dates are still tentative, but will probably be at the City College Track (Convent Avenue and 133rd Street) on June 27, July 4 (seriously?), July 11, and July 19. Plus a special "Thursday Night at the Races" at the Armory on May 6 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Roger Bannister's historic sub-4:00 mile. Distances for the meets are still to be announced, except for the May race, which will be just the mile. Boy Is
His Face Crimson! This site only engages in April Fool's Day pranks on the home page. The journal entries are still real. But, really, how could we have even made this one up? It seems that a man named Weldong Xu was actually dumb enough to fall for the Nigerian 419 scam. The scam, named after the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code that it violates, is the one where an emailer asks for your help in transfering millions of dollars (usually from the estate of a deposed dicatator or corrupt businessman) some out of some African country, for which you will receive a percentage of the funds. Along the way the scammer asks you for some money to help faciliate the transaction, and after he's fleeced you enough, ups and disappears. We (and most of you, too) receive about five of these emails per day, mixed in with all the miracle diets, offers for discount perscription drugs, proposals to enlarge various body parts, and occassional viruses. But back to Mr. Xu. He got one of these emails, which promised him a $50 million profit, and he went for it. It's not clear yet how much he "invested" in this, but it was more money than he had on hand, so he collected $600,000 from 35 friends, colleagues and students, claiming it was for SARS research in China. Yes, students, because Mr. Xu is (or, until last week, was) a professor at Harvard University and researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. (At this point you're probably wondering if this might really be an April Fool's story after all, so we'll just refer you to the original story in the Boston Herald, as well as all the cites on Google News). Xu never caught on to the fact that he was being conned until Tuesday, when he was arrested for his own scam. So what kind of elite Ivy League school hires people this dumb? And what does this say about the Harvard Alumni on this team? We're not sure, but we plan to mock them mercilessly the next time we see them. Runner
in Chief Toby Tanser reports that Bill Clinton is looking to run a marathon this year. We can't find any other confirmation of this, but there's no reason to think it's just an April Fool's story. Assuming he's serious, we think he should train with CPTC. Specifically, we think he should work out with us at the East Sixth Street Track, which will hopefully involve the Secret Service barring all the soccer players from getting in our way while we run. Fool Us
Once... This one almost got us.LetsRun.com had the following headline on today's homepage: "Regina Jacobs Files Lawsuit Against Suzy Favor Hamilton. Jacobs says Hamilton basically forced her to get on drugs and as a result her reputation is now ruined. The women who were denied US Olympic spots in 1988, 1992, and 1996 as a result of Jacobs being on the team are also expected to join the suit against Hamilton as co-plaintiffs. Experts predict that the case could reach the $5-10 million dollar range in damages." We wondered what claim Jacobs might have, but recognized that, with the litigiousness of today's society, this wasn't all that implausible. Then we read the rest of the article:
At least one reader didn't see the humor in this:
As something of a First Amendment scholar, we would like to respond to the letter writer: You are a moron, both for not being able to tell that the article was a joke, and for thinking that you can sue over it. Frankly, we're a little worried about your ability to even hold down a job. However, we think you might be able to help us in transfering $142 million from an account belonging to the late Gen. Sani Abacha into the United States. For your assistance you'll get 10% of the funds and a job at Harvard University. Precisely For the record, Paul Bendich is the club math genius. I will however happily accept a nomination as the club's official math *geek*. As if my case needs pleading, I should point out that I noticed Alexandra Horowitz's 5k result this week. Seems that the Carlsbad people are real sticklers. Most times, 18:41 will be listed as a 6:01 pace, since 18:41 divided by 3.1 equals 6:01.613, and in most cases, pace figures are rounded down. Apparently, the Carlsbad folks took into account the 1k actually equals .621371192 miles, not the convenient .62 that we usually use. That being the case, 5k is 3.10685596 miles. 18:41 divided by 3.10685596 equals 6:00.815/mile, thus if we continue the practice of rounding down, Ms. Horowitz did indeed run a 6:00 pace.
Bronx
Race Want a chance
to run on the Grand Concourse before the Bronx Half-Marathon rolls
around? Check out the Bronx
Community College 10K on May 1. Ten-year age groups, with trophies
to the top five runners in each. Plus flat panel color TVs to the
overall winners and "DVD" (we're guessing that means a
DVD player, not just a movie, but we're not sure) for the second
place runners. Somewhere
to Run, Nowhere to Hide Jeff Wilson reports that "Those who've grown used to 'hiding' their not-so-valuables in the bushes around the Daniel Webster statue need a new plan. The shrubbery has been removed — completely." Photos Photos from the Intrasquad Relay are now up. Photos from Masters Indoor Nationals will be up soon. Compromising photos of certain members will be posted after that unless we receive $5,000 in unmarked, non-sequential bills. You know who you are. If you're not sure whether we have photos of you or not, we recommend you pay us anyway, just to be on the safe side. What a
Wonderful World! Real baseball (i.e., games played at a time people can actually watch) starts next week, but the season technically kicked off with Tampa Bay beating the Yankees 8-3 in Japan, resulting in these wonderful American League East Standings:
Ride Needed
for Boston Marathon John Affleck writes: "I'm looking for a ride to Boston on the weekend before the marathon (preferably Sunday). Anybody who is looking for someone to carpool/split gas and tolls can drop me a line at mcflick@att.net." Wins Two more 5K wins for Chris Solarz, giving him 4 of the team's 10 wins so far this year. He even got into a picture for one of them.
Relays Congratulations to Team F for winning the CPTC Intrasquad Relays in 12:07.13. This may be a team record, but we're still waiting for club historians to confirm it. Full results on the results page (obviously). Photos of the event and the follow-up party at Dallas BBQ to be posted soon. |
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