WEEK OF DECEMBER 30, 2004 - JANUARY 5, 2004

• Malfunction [01/05/2003]  Our apologies for the site being down this morning. We started uploading new pages at about midnight last night. Somewhere in the middle of the night our connection cut out, with only half the pages up, and none of the main ones (home page, journal, etc.). We have a vague memory of waking up at 5:00 am and restarting the upload, but we spent so much time on this over the last three days that it could just as easily have taken over our dreams at well. In any event, we started the final upload before we left for work, but it didn't necessarily load the most important pages first. We believe that every page was reloaded by 2:00 pm, but that's just a guess.
  
  Frankly, though, we're a little disappointed at how few of you noticed the error. We received only two emails asking why the site was down, and one was from outside the club. What happened when you all got to the office and found nothing orange to read? Did you defect to other sites, or did you just do actual work instead? The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't break down productivity statistics by day, so we'll have no way of knowing how much this temporary outage aided the economy, but if productivity is up this quarter the credit should go to us and not to anyone in Washington.

• Redesign [01/05/2003]  By now you've probably noticed that this site looks a little different than it did yesterday (and for the last seven years, for that matter). This is essentially CPTC 2.0. By now everyone knows that the first release of an upgrade is full of flaws, and this one is doubtless no exception. Hopefully there are only minor issues to be addressed, along with a few pages that we know need to be improved.
  
  Why post it before it's finished? As we said yesterday, if we wait it will never get done. Our goal was to have this done by New Year's Day, but there was always an unfinished task that needed to be attended to. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of the problem is solved with 20% of the resources — time, money, staff, etc. — while the last 20% takes 80% of the resources. (Some people even feel that a 90/10 rule is more appropriate. We can't decide if that's optimistic or pessimistic.)
  
  By last night, we'd reached the point that the site was good enough to show publicly. We'd also spent so much time on it that we couldn't remember what still needed to be done. After a while we couldn't even remember what we wanted to do in the first place. In a perfect world we'd have a dedicated Quality Assurance department to check everything out. In the real world we have all of you to point out what we missed and what we never even thought of in the first place.
  
  So, why New Year's Day? It seemed like a good arbitrary deadline. We'd been toying around with a new design since sometime last January, but our old computer lacked the power and speed for the job. Once we bought a new computer in November we could set to work in earnest.
  
  And why redesign the site at all? The short answer is "why not?" The long answer is that the site has grown too big for it's current structure (or lack thereof). As the preeminent running site in New York City (and probably the world) in terms of content, it needed a design to match. It also needed to be a little more user-friendly, hence the new menus (although a number of pages still require effort to find, just to keep you all on your toes). To make it easier for us to update files needed to be moved around a bit, and once we started moving files around we figured we might as well edit them, too. And finally, it needed to be just a little bit less orange so that everybody can read it at work.
  
  Hopefully you like the new look, but, as you're all aware, your opinions aren't all that important. (See the endless references throughout this site to how we maintain this site out of pure self-indulgence.) They're still welcome, though, especially if they are complimentary (see the endless references to our desire for groupies). Or even if they're not, since we're always up for a little constructive criticism.

• Those Crazy Kids! [01/05/2004]  What did we ever do before the internet?  Sure there's a lot of junk out there, but for those of us who favor primary sources over reporters' summaries, it's a gold mine, even if the only thing we saw today was Britney Spears' applications for a Nevada marriage license and an annulment (filed about 54 hours after the wedding, and granted about two hours later).  We's make some comment about "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," but 100 other websites already beat us to it.

• Wild Weekend [01/05/2004]  Well, it looks like Payton Manning can produce in the playoffs after all (perfect passing rating as the Colts trounced the Broncos 41-10).  Just the capper to a great weekend of wild-card playoffs.  The Cowboys lost, making most of America happy.  The Ravens lost to the (marginally) less-offensive Titans.  And Brett Favre and the Packers continued their streak of amazing games.  (There was some college game, too, but it seemed to revolve entirely around voting rather than actual football.)  To cover our bases we're hopping on both the Indianapolis and Green Bay bandwagons.  Colts topple the Chiefs and Rams.  Packers clip the Eagles's wings, then beat New England in the snow.  Super Bowl XXXVII is one last hurrah for Favre vs. start of the Manning family dynasty, and we get one of those increasingly rare games that's more entertaining than the ads.

• New Look [01/04/2004]  Some of you have no doubt heard us mutter about how we were planning to completely redesign the website.  But how many of you actually believed us?  Yeah, we don't blame you.  We never thought we'd get it done either, but here it is.  It's still a work in progress, but we knew if we waited until it was "perfect," we'd never finish it.  Anyway, we think it all works, but if you find any broken links or missing photos, please let us know.

• Top Photos [01/03/2004]  Although we group race results by the standard calendar months, the workout and journal pages don't change over until the first Tuesday of the month (or, in this case, year).  That, and not any procrastination on our part, is the reason that the Top Photos of 2003 page is only being posted now.

• 2003 Wrap Up [01/03/2004]  As the long recap below shows, we care nothing about our runners winning races.  On the other hand, we care greatly about statistics related to this site.  The proper way to show this obsession would be to not report on the data at all, but that would deprive all of you of the knowledge you so crave.  So, in 2003 we reported on 357 races (an average of 6.8 per week), published 926 journal entries (an average of 17.75 per week), and shared photos from 23 races and 10 other events, which, after inlcuding photos from the journal and the three trivia quizzes, comes to just over 1,750 photos.  In a shocking drop off, however, we featured only four restaurant reviews and 27 famous sayings.

• 2003 Road Race Winners [01/03/2004]  In theory, we have just closed the books for the past year and we can in fact provide a summary.  This is a subject that we have always said that we have zero interest in, which is why we will analyze these wins in great detail now.

  First, the bottom line is 63 road race wins for the calendar year 2003, as of today.  This is the highest count since we got into the serious business of collecting the statistics that we don't care about.  These 63 wins came from 25 individuals who won one race plus 11 multiple race winners who won a total of 39 races.  We will leave it as an exercise as to why 25 + 39 = 64, which is not 63.  We are confident that there may be technical disputes about our qualifying standards as to which races count, but this is our website and our decision is arbitrary, binding and final.  So there you have it.  But the important thing is that we managed to spread the wealth among 36 different people, many of whom are joyful first-time winners. 

  The next subject that we don't care about at all is the team member with the most wins.  This is Catherine Stone-Borkowski, whom we felt was robbed of the Most Versatile Runner Award this year since her seven wins ranged from a 20K road race to the Fifth Avenue Open Mile to that amazing Pentathlon (5 races at different distances within a single day).  Let us repeat, she wuz robbed!  Right behind her is our multi-sport athlete Margaret Schotte with 6 wins, dominating the local duathlon scene this year and going on to win All-American honors even though she is Canadian.  Third place was shared by Margaret Angell, who was smart to avoid winning more races when she could have easily gotten another dozen wins just by doing training runs in the park on weekends and Sue Pearsall who travelled far and wide around the tri-state area for leisurely strolls in the countryside.  Angell and Pearsall each had 4 wins.  We note without comment that the top three (or four) were all women, and this leads us to reflect on the sad state of running on our men's side, which has never been the same since Fritz Mueller retired...

  Our other multiple winners are Stacy Creamer, John Kerner and Armando Oliveira at three wins apiece, and Stuart Calderwood, Jessica Reifer, Amerigo Rossi and Alan Ruben at two apiece.  The street rumor is the Rossi actually has a third win recently, so our books may have to be re-opened again.

  Next we come to the subject of couples.  During the year, we have two male-female partners who won the same race: Stuart Calderwood-Stacy Creamer in Philadelphia and Frank McConville-Kim McConville in downtown Manhattan.  Jonathan Cane and Margaret Schotte are not partners in the legal sense, but they won the couples relay.  Kevan Huston and Ana Huston got legally married and won, but in different races.  And, last and least, we have the amazing duo of Charles Allard Jr. and Jesus Montero who entered different races in Tokyo, Japan but nevertheless managed to cross the same finish line at the same time to finish dead last in their respective races.

  To rack up ever greater number of wins (which is something that we never cared about), we have always told people that they need to go out to the boondocks for obscure little races.  Defining Central Park as the center of the universe, the furthest win was by Charles Allard Jr. in Tokyo, followed by Ali Rosenthal in northern California and Amerigo Rossi in southern California.  Stacia Schlosser deserves a honorable mention for going out to Erie (PA) to win in the snow.

  Finally, on the most important and controversial issue, we counted that only 9 of the 63 wins came from Canadians (Schotte (6), Adams (1), Manewell (1), Huston (1)).  So pray tell us just why in the world did the Canadians sweep 7 out of 13 club awards this year!  Well, at least not of all them got All-American honors ...

• Resolutions [01/02/2004]  We were still trying to come up with a New Year's Resolution this evening.  Our best choice was "Stop being so lazy," but we had to give it up after we read this in The Kicker:  "My number one New Year's Resolution was going to be 'Stop Procrastinating,' but given that it's January 2nd and I haven't actually made any resolutions, I've decided to change it to one I can actually keep:  'More Decadence.' (This will likely happen anyway.)"  Whoops!  And our fallback resolution was "Be more original,"so we've already screwed up that one, too.  Here's to another year without any self improvement!

• Time Crawls [01/02/2004]  Today marks the first anniversary of our involvement with this site.  It feels much longer.

• Hats Off! [01/02/2004]  The latest in Canadian fashion:
  
  
  
  Just $14.99 Canadian (about US$11.65) from Polar Leafs Cool Candian Store.  If only they'd make these hats in orange...

• Off to a Good Start [01/01/2004]  J.B. Priestly once wrote "Something in me resists the calendar expectation of happiness."  He was talking about Christmas, but the sentiment is just as appropriate when it comes to New Year's Eve.  Is there any other holiday for which expectations are so high and the reality so disappointing?  Last night fit the pattern well — another party that would have been disappointing even on a regular weekend, although it did keep us out late (which kept us from updating this page).  Luckily, there's New Year's Day.  The race at 10, the Polar Bear Swim at 1 (we spotted Chris Solarz there, but we missed Toby Tanser in the crowd, though his website offers photographic proof that he attended) and then the party all afternoon.  The New Year's Day party started in 2000 as a calm "recovery" party, for thsoe who had had a little too much excitement the night before.  In the last four years it's grown into an all-together more raucous affair.  Last year we stayed well past midnight, and this year only our utter lack of sleep forced us out of the party before 10:30.  For all we know.  One of these years we may just skip the whole Eve and instead rest up for all the fun of New Year's Day.

• Tuesday Night Early Armory Workout Report [01/01/2004]  This last workout of the year had 19 middle distance (almost all wannabe sprinters) attempting a workout of either 2 or 3 sets of 4 intervals of 200 meters each at 800 meter race pace, with a 1 minute recovery between intervals and a 5 minute rest between sets.  Overseer Jim O'Brien made sure those in a daze were able to keep to the correct recovery times.  Several discussions revolved around post-race comments and self-analysis from last Sunday's MAC meet (which only ran an hour and a half overtime), mostly having to do with the usual topics of race pace, strategy, excuses, and the famously elusive learning curve most of us are forever seeking to perfect.

  This reporter's highlight of the evening was watching the very proud gleam in papa Tom Phillips' eyes as his young daughter Amelia took active part in some of the intervals.  She looked like a pretty young angel dressed in white and seemed to hardly be touching the ground with her feet, more like floating, as she was seen to fearlessly pass two of our veterans on one of the intervals (each of whom was old enough to be a grandparent of hers).  Let's hope for more workout evenings with no school the next day to see her again, and perhaps other children of our team members, join in the effort.  Perhaps it will be in our not too distant future to be considering ordering kid size uniforms for a junior contingent of competitive CPTCers for track or road events.

  On a disappearing trick note, we saw Coach Tony Ruiz quietly enter the track area pre-7 PM and he said he would do some running before the late session.  By 7:45 he was still a no-show on the track.  Maybe he was warming up in the rafters to do a quick solo workout just prior to the late session, especially since he may have overheard this reporter telling Jim to make sure Tony gets the honor of joining the A Team.

  Fred Trilli led his C group by far and is clearly ready to move up to the next group in future sessions, so this public announcement may serve as a motivating reminder to him.

• What Are the Odds? [12/30/2003]  British bookmaker William Hill has set the odds of finding proof of intelligent extraterrestrial life in 2004 at 100:1.  That's the same odds they give for the Knicks to win the NBA championship, the Rockies to win the World Series, Nashville to take the Stanley Cup, Senegal to win the 2006 World Cup, and law student Brett Allen of Canturbury, Kent, to score a date with Kylie Minogue.  Allen's comment after persuading the firm to take his £25 bet: "It's nice to think that I have got a much better chance of dating Kylie than winning the lottery."  (The favorites in all those sports are, not surprisingly, the Lakers, the Yankees, the Colorado Avalanche and Brazil.)  All these events are apparently more likely than Al Sharpton or Carol Moseley Braun of winning the presidential election (150:1) or Elvis being found alive (1,000:1).  The safest bet would probably be the 4:7 odds on Paula Radcliffe winning the Olympic marathon.
  
  We've already offered 1,000:1 on Sid Howard running a marathon in 2004 (or 2005) but nobody took us up on it.  We're thinking of offering 25:1 that Coach Tony starts any workout on time; 5:1 that more than 20 people show up for any workout where the temperature is below 0°F; 15:1 that either Alan Ruben or Jerome O'Shaughnessy is wearing shorts at that workout; even money on Sid winning something at next year's awards dinner, and 1:5 that we publish a photo of somebody sticking his or her tongue out.  Of course, gambling being illegal in the State of New York, none of this can be for money, so payouts will be in increased mentions and photos on this site.

• Time Machine [12/30/2003]  While discussing our mutual anitpathy towards mornings, Jonathan Cane remarked that he is often awake late enough to know just how inaccurate the "01:30" update time listed on the home page is.  The homepage has shown the time of the last update since March or so, when there were two people regularly updating this site and we needed to make sure that we didn't erase each other's updates.  Even then the times were often fudged to seem as if updates were being made earlier than indicated.  While we've kept up that tradition, the Webmaster Emeritus has gone in the opposite direction on his own site, marking his updates into next year already.  Yes, we know he's in Hong Kong, but that's only 13 hours ahead of New York, so it won't be 2004 there until 11:00 am here, and, while it may be a little later than the 1:30 am we're putting on the homepage, it's still a few hours before any part of the world hits 2004, and it's still light out in Hong Kong.
  
  
  

WEEK OF DECEMBER 23 - DECEMBER 29, 2003

• Around the World Update #12 [12/29/2003]  Dear all,
  
  Here we are, in South-East Asia ! The most exciting part of our trip has started. Why most exciting ? Because it is an unknown territory to us (barring Malaysia which we visited in 1993) and it is, contrary to Australia and NZ, VERY different from the Western World. In Asia (and, to a lesser extent, in Latin America), every second counts: there is always something new going on, a surprise, a puzzling situation, a bust of laugh, sometimes a disgust and some heavy bouts of stress. Eating, talking, sleeping (you should see some of our “hotels”…), taking the bus, visiting, everything is different from home.

  THAILAND (Part I)

  Thailand is the richest country in the region, in terms of wealth, history and culture. Bangkok, in itself, is so interesting that in five days we could only see one third of the main tourist attractions.
  
  We were expecting a crazy city, where millions of people would bump into each other in the streets, with clouds of fumes and contamination, unbearable noise, etc. It is so, but only in some parts, and this, in itself, is not enough of a deterrent to enjoy the city. Bangkok offers to the travelers a myriad of aspects: the Wats, the canals, Chinatown, the markets, and everyday life in itself. But everything has to start with Khaosan road.
  
  Khaosan Rd is a separate ecosystem in itself, where thousands of backpackers from all over the World eat pseudo-Thai food, buy “local” handicraft (we all buy exactly the same standard stuff), and drink thai-style coffees and thai beers at the ever-busy terraces while watching the colorful crowd passing by: a perfect place to land, a buffer between the West and Asia.
  
  The Wats are the Buddhist temples, where people come to prey and venerate Buddha, and around which the monks, all wearing orange robes, spend their lives. In Bangkok are the most ornamented and most famous Wats, like the one with the Emerald Buddha, a masterpiece in itself with centuries of history, surrounded by fabulous golden temples and bizarre half-human-half-animal statues, and the one with a 15-meter high, 46-meter long golden Buddha in a reclining position, a world-famous tourist attraction.
  
  The best way to explore the old Bangkok is to take a water taxi or charter a small long-tail boat that can go into the smallest canals. There we were amazed at some incredible housing along the canals, just a few minutes away from the city center.
  
  Chinatown is a city in itself that we also reached by the river; it is full of small streets where human density largely exceeds anybody’s imagination (and where people sell and buy food that also exceed anyone’s nightmare).
  
  Courageously, we visited the largest market in South-East Asia, the Chatuchek week-end market, with 15,000 stall vendors and 200,000 visitors a day! Mindboggling, and equally exhausting.
  
  A stay in Bangkok would not be complete without a Thai-massage. We can already see the smile on some faces, but do not expect us to tell you dirty stories: traditional Thai massages are practiced with hands, elbows, knees, at some point we even got stepped over, and it hurts!
  
  On our way to Laos, we did a stop at Nongkhai, close to the border. There we rented bikes and motorbikes to visit nearby villages inhabited by the Isans (the ethnic group which lives in Thailand’s North-Eastern part) and visited the so-called Buddha park, a park where a (half-crazy) artist created some 25-meter high statues made in concrete and inspired from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions and religions, but transformed by its own (Salvador Dali-like) vision of life. Very different from what one can usually see in South-East Asia.

  All in all, the only frustration we had came from the language barrier. Thai writing uses a different alphabet to ours (too bad you can not see the keyboard we are using right now, with a mix of thai and roman alphabet), and most words are composed of monosyllabic sounds with five different tones (high, medium, low, rising and declining tones), so that for a Western ear everything pretty sounds much the same: for example, far away and close sound the same, and if you are not careful, you can call your mother a horse !

  LAOS (Part I)

  From Nong Khai we entered Laos, taking the Lao-Thai Friendship bridge. We always enjoyed crossing borders overland, as you realize that in spite of different languages, different currencies and different habits, people hardly change on either side. Vientiane, the Lao capital, is at the other end of the Friendship bridge. At first, it appears like a sleepy little provincial town. After wandering in the dusty streets for a few hours, one discovers the true charm of Vientiane: nice wats of different styles, little street stalls were people stop for a traditional Lao coffee, and nice scenery along the Mekong river. The sunset on the Mekong is splendid, as the river is slowly covered by mist. We spent our second sunset in a wooden house on stilts in the forest, where, after a lemon-scented steamed bath, we had a traditional massage and then relaxed, sipping green tea. In Vientiane, we also discovered that Laos has another great thing to offer: French Baguette!

  Our first bus ride in Laos was to Vang Vieng: more than 4 hours to cover 140 km (less than 90 miles) on a sealed road, in a “VIP” air-con bus that was supposed to take us to our guesthouse. We ended up crammed in a mini-van with no working A/C (the buttons were there) that dropped us at the guesthouse of his choice … the one he would receive a commission from.

  Vang Vieng is a very very small (6 streets), lovely village on a small river, surrounded by sugar loaf-like hills. The main attractions there, apart from the natural beauty of the area, are the caves in the limestone mountains. Locals believe that they are inhabited by spirits. Therefore, they have been worshiping them, and set up in some caves small shrines with Buddha images. Some caves are very narrow, though deep, and you need a torch, a guide, and good flexibility to explore them thoroughly. Another was so big it looked like a cathedral, with a golden reclining Buddha statue in its center. Accessing the caves was an adventure in itself: we had to ride run-down bikes through dirt, bumpy trails, then through fields, and sometimes had to rock climb on the cliff to reach the sacred caves.

  We spent Christmas Eve in Vang Vieng, and found by chance the only place (probably in the country) where they had a French Log Cake (the famous Buche de Noel!!!!) for desert … we had to keep in touch with traditions!

  We then headed north, to Luang Prabang. Overall, Laos has been preserved from mass tourism so far, but Luang Prabang is on the edge. The city was declared a World Heritage site by Unesco, hence attracting lots of tourists on a “see-Asia-in-two-weeks” tour. They can easily be avoided, though. We rented a motorcycle and rode some 30 km away from the city, looking for Hmong villages celebrating their New Year. Nobody seems to agree on when the Hmong New Year is, or maybe it lasts for weeks. The Hmong is an ethnic minority in Laos that has migrated from Southern China. Their traditional costumes are decorated with colorful embroided scarves, and small silver coins hanging from the dress. Women wear weird-looking hats with various shapes, from Napoleon style to Birthday cake. The Hmongs were very proud of showing these beautiful costumes to us (we were the only foreigners there), so hopefully, we’ll get nice pictures!

  We send you all our very best wishes for 2004,

  — Anne Lavandon & Olivier Baillet

• Trivia Quiz [12/28/2003]  Better late than never, it's a trivia quiz about the Awards Dinner.

• The Key to Happiness [12/28/2003]  According to a quiz we found, our key signature is A major (3 sharps), described on the site as "You love to live life to the full.  You have a vibrant social life and are not afraid to take life as it comes.  You are content, bright and often spontaneous."  That sounds about right.  We're too upbeat to be a minor key, and just a little too complicated for F Major (1 flat) or G Major (1 sharp), let alone C Major (no flats or sharps).  Regardless of its accuracy, it is rather fitting, since our favorite of symphony by Beethoven is his 7th, which is in the key of A Major.

• MAC Meet 12/28 Initial Report [12/28/2003]  Isaya Okwiya ran the mile in approx. 4:31 and won the race in a perfectly strategized race.  He made all the right moves at the right time to move up from the middle of a large pack early on to win in a strong finish.  It could be the smartest race we have ever witnessed for one of our teammates.  He will return in approximately two weeks to race again.

  Marty Levine ran the mile in under 6 minutes, and gave up a few seconds during the race to figure out how to get his new toy — a fancy shmancy stopwatch worn on his finger — to work properly.  He had last Tuesday at practice to get it right, but it seems to be hurting the result.  It is a good thing Frank Handelman was not there to witness the epitome of his pet peeve taken to an extreme (if you even look at a watch during a race Frank will take you to task).

  Alston Brown ran a strong race in the mile with a 4:51, and came back in the 200 with a sub 26).

  Sue Pearsall ran the mile, along with Catherine Stone-Borkowski, who also won her 200 race.

  Glen Carnes and David Zeisel also ran the mile, with Glen starting out behind the pack and working his way up rapidly to come in second.  David also ran a fast 200 in under 23.

  After a year and a half absence, due in part to a broken leg from playng hockey (a hazard of living in Ithica, NY), Tom Hartshorne returned to the boards in a mile run to get his bearings.

  Craig Plummer is back in action, running the 400, 200, and long jumped.

  Ardian Krasniqi ran a fine 400, and our new sprinter Ronald Reid ran a fast 200 (approx. :23).

  Noah Perlis ran a 200, John Affleck ran the 3000, and Mary Rosado ran the 400.

  Frank Morton showed up to cheer on our teammates.

• All-Americans Part 2 [12/27/2003]  It turns out that the Inside Triathlon rankings are for all of North America, which is how all the Canadians got in.  We always suspected that NAFTA was going to cause trouble...

• Prospect Park [12/27/2003]  We've run in Prospect Park so often that we usually don't even notice it most days.  Then this afternoon we found ourselves running on the dirt track that parallels the road, the sun setting in front of us and a bagpiper playing to our left, and we remembered why we love the place so much.

• Just Du It! [12/26/2003]  Inside Triathlon magazine has just announced its 2003 All Americans and, while we're a little confused as to why Canadians are included, we're not at all surprised to see Margaret Schotte at the top of her age group (25-29, for those of you who are well-mannered enough never to ask a woman her age).  We don't know if she gets a trophy for that (rumor has it that there's no more space in her apartment for more awards anyway), but it certainly merits a link to her website.  Amy Hurtubise received honorable mention in the same category, and Rebeccah Wassner (Movning Comfort), who trained with us at the 6th Street track this summer, made the list for triathletes.  Congratulations, ladies!

• Golf Bags [12/26/2003]  Today, we all know that the worth of a website is measured by its google rating, which in turn depends heavily on the number of external sites which link to it.  Simply put, the more links, the more authoritative a website is.  Thus, it becomes our mission to accumulate as many links as possible to this site, and every one of you can help.  It may be news to our British member Paul Stuart-Smith but he has inadvertently contributed one more link at Stuart Paul Golf Bags.  Remember, every link counts!!!

• Christmas Day [12/25/2003]  Until recently Christmas for us was a week in the suburbs of Chicago.  Then grandma moved from the house into an apartment and there wasn't enough room for the whole family out there, so for the second year in a row everyone came to Brooklyn.  Now, instead of a week of traditional family activities (presents, dinner, family photo, playing Christmas carols, Sunday brunch, Risk game, etc.) scheduled down to the minute, Christmas has become mostly dinner, with a few of the traditions tossed in whenever time allows.  Which is pretty much how we celebrate most of the Jewish holidays with the other side of the family.  That left us with plenty of time to run, watch a bit of the Yule Log on channel 11 (something we'd always heard about but never seen) and search high and low for something to post here.  But all our favorite bloggers have taken the day off, and none of the magazines were updated today.  All we found was a story on what Jewish kids learn about Christmas from the movies and the news that the European Space Agency has lost contact with the Beagle 2 probe on Mars.  Our theory?  The litte green men there thought it was their Christmas present, and, like we all do with our technologically advanced presents, they managed to break it on the first day.

• Carols [12/24/2003]  By the time we left work today at least four radio stations were playing nothing but Chirstmas music.  Not holiday music, just Christmas music.  Now, we've never been the type to make a big deal about Hanukkah, but would it have killed these DJs (or their automated computers) to have played just one song about menorahs and dreidels?  Especially since either of Adam Sandler's first two Hanukkah songs is better than nearly every Christmas song out there (the main exceptions being The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping, The Kinks' Father Christmas and Jimmy Buffet's Christmas in the Caribbean, none of which gets much play these days, and Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, but only because of Bruce's performance).  And any station that plays Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer should have its license revoked by the FCC as punishment.  At least it'll all be over soon.

• Tuesday Night Armory Workouts Report [12/24/2003]

Two nights before Christmas and all 'round the track,
The runners were running, and not looking back.
Their socks and their track shoes they pulled on with care,
In hopes that some PRs soon would be there.

We ran interval laps like we usually do.
The first group did three laps, the latter group, two.
But the coaches didn't lead as they usually did;
In their steads we had James and the world famous Sid.

Not as many showed up as we've had in the past,
But the ones who were there were sure running fast.
The number we counted (as close as we reckon)
Was fifteen the first session, sixteen the second.

On Noah!  On Margaret!  On Fire Chief John!
Go runners in relays, who pass the baton!
We took on the teams, 4x4, 4x2,
And beat them of course (like we usually do).

Then we headed for home on the good old A train,
And got up this morning to run in the rain.
But we wanted to add here before we are done,
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good run!

With apologies to Henry Livingston.  (While "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" has long been credited to Clement Clark Moore, there is strong evidence to suggest that the poem, first published anonymously in 1823, was actually written by Livingston.)  And apologies to all of you.  We won't do this again.

• Timing Is Everything [12/23/2003]  In the last week two readers have asked if we actually update this site at 1:30 in the morning, as the home page regularly indicates.  Sometimes, yes.  Sometimes it's even later, but we're often embarassed to admit that, so we just leave the previous day's time up and change the date.  Of course, if we were really advanced at this everything would be updated automatically, with the exact time attached to each entry.  Then we'd just have to figure out how to change the computer's internal clock so that our updates appear to be posted earlier.

• Home on the Range [12/23/2003]  It looks like the Alex Rodriguez trade has finally fallen through for good.  While we'd love to see A-Rod playing for the Red Sox, to a certain extent we're glad that both he and Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks continue to be penalized for the ridiculous contract they signed ($252 million for 10 years, dooming the Rangers to losing records since they can't afford any other good players, while making A-Rod virtually untradable because no other team will take on his contract).  In another stellar moment for baseball, all the parties in this deal managed to come out looking bad:  A-Rod looks ungrateful for his attempts to get out of Texas; Hicks looks greedy for demanding that the Red Sox pay an extra $5 million/year for the right to take on A-Rod's bloated contract; the Red Sox look callous for trying to replace star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra (and must now repair relations with him); the union looks controlling for not allowing A-Rod to renegotiate his contract; and Commissioner Bud Selig looks inept (as usual) for allowing the whole mess to play out as long as it did.  The best part about all this is that there's still a slight chance negotiations will resume, so we can keep reading about this for another month.  At least it's more interesting then seeing how Isaih Thomas will manage to make the Knicks even worse than they already are.  Sure the Knicks are already pretty awful, but Thomas did managed to destroy the CBA in a mere two years as its CEO, so he should be able to ruin his new team a bit.

• Final Scores [12/23/2003]  Looks like the final standings for the NYRRC Club Champoinships are up, and CPTC men are 3rd Open, 2nd Masters, and 5th Veteran.  The women are 2nd Open and 1st Masters.

WEEK OF DECEMBER 16 - DECEMBER 22, 2003

• 2004 Goal Races [12/22/2003]  Now is the time when everyone makes big plans for the New Year. With this in mind, we have posted CPTC's goal races for the first half of 2004. There are some very important changes from previous years so please take your time to absorb the notice.  If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to contact Alan Ruben at alan@montran.com.
  
  In 2004, Central Park Track Club will focus on the following series of races from January through June. There are two groups of races from which to choose: one designed for runners competing at short to mid-length road distances (5K-10K); the other for those competing at longer distances, particularly those with spring marathons in their sights.  We have elected to focus on these races rather than on the NYRR-designated team scoring series for several reasons:

  1. The progression of each group of races makes sense from a training perspective.

  2. It's advantageous for us, as a large co-ed team, to have both men and women training for the same events.

  3. Only a small percentage of our members score in NYRR team races. By focusing on these carefully selected races instead, we hope to put the emphasis of our training where it was always meant to be:  on helping each member live up to his or her racing potential.

  4. In selecting some premier out-of-town races, we hope to encourage members to compete on some fast courses facing stiff competition — the kind of circumstances that can lead to PRs.

  As you will see, many of the races on our schedule are NYRR races.  The Central Park Track Club will continue to support the NYRR and its rich offerings.  The main difference this year will be that when the NYRR scoring races are not our goal races, our workouts will not be specifically geared to them.  However, we are a large team and we expect that we will still have competitive teams for all the 2004 NYRR scoring races.

  We encourage everyone to choose between the shorter-distance and marathon group of races.  We hope that as many CPTCers as possible will focus on this slate of races — for the sake of camaraderie as well as competitive results.
  

  	Central Park Track Club Road Racing Schedule (Jan-Jun)
  	Short and Mid-Distance Schedule	Marathon Schedule
  January	Fred Lebow 5-Miler (Jan 11)	Fred Lebow 5-Miler (Jan 11)
  February	Snowflake 4-Miler (Feb 28)	Cherry Tree 10-Miler (Feb 21 - Prospect Park)
  March	NYRR 8000 (Mar 27)	New Bedford Half (Mar 21 - Massachusetts)
  April	"Local" Fast 5K TBA	Marathon (Boston/London/Paris) or Brooklyn Half-Marathon (Apr 10)
  May	Broad Street 10-Miler (May 2 - Philadelphia) Ridgewood 5K/10K (May 31 - North Jersey)	Ridgewood 5K/10K (May 31 - North Jersey)
  June	Men - Shelter Island 10K (Jun 12 - Long Island) Women - Mini-Marathon (Jun 12)	Men - Shelter Island 10K (Jun 12 - Long Island) Women - Mini-Marathon (Jun 12)

• Tuesday Workouts [12/22/2003]  The Tuesday night workouts at the Armory will take place as usual this week and next week.  Because Christmas and New Year's Day both fall on Thursdays this year, there will be no Thursday workouts for the next two weeks.

• New Ideas [12/21/2003]  Luckily, the end of the year is a slow period at the office, because we really don't have time for work these days.  There's last minute shopping to be done, out-of-twon relatives to be entertained, and holiday parties to be crashed (with lots of alcohol to be drunk).  Then there's everything we need to do to prepare for the new year and to get a head start on our new year's resolutions.  2004 is the year that we're going to keep the apartment neat, so we need to start cleaning now.  It's also the year that we're going to be dilligent about our training log, so we need to acquire one, or at least set something up on the computer.  And we're going to be more efficient with maintaining this site, which means putting in a lot of work now to save time later.  Also we're going to get a new job, which means we'd better develop a few marketable skills, or at least some clever lies to put on our resume.  Plus we're going to write the Great American Novel, so we really need to think of a couple of story ideas. 
  
  Except we've made all those resolutions before, and never kept any of them past Presidents' Day.  Maybe this year we'll make some new ones, like resolving to cook dinner at least once a month, or to cancel a few of our more useless magazine subscriptions, or maybe just to not watch any movies on cable that we already own on DVD.  We can probably handle that.

• Cool Running [12/20/2003]  Finally a race that wasn't snowed out.  Heck, it wasn't even that cold.  Guess asking Santa for good race weather paid off.

• Holiday [12/19/2003]  Happy Hanukkah to all!  For those not among the newly-trendy chosen people, Hanukkah has something to do with oil (though not the kind found in the rest of the Middle East) and eight days.  That's about all we know, although you can find out more info here..

• Thursday Night Armory Workout Report [12/19/2003]  The 18 runners at the middle distance workout last night included the original Armory reporter (visiting from North Carolina) and his replacement (making a regular appearance), but they both refused to write even a single word of the report.  The original reporter at least offered the excuse that he's a lunatic, although why that should prevent him from writing on this site is unclear.  Much better weather inside than on Tuesday.  We've come to the conclusion that it's always about 25° warmer in the Armory than it is outside, so on warm days the Armory is unbearable, but on cold days the Armory is just right. 
  
  This was a big day for the middle distance group, since it was the day that Coach Devon handed out the racing schedules to all the runners.  Wisely, she did this just before we all started running our 300m intervals so that nobody had time to complain.  And then, as soon as we had all finished our 6-8 or 8-10 intervals (did anybody run 10?), Devon disappeared to change into a stylish number she'd brought with her, and then ran off to some sort of party that she failed to invite the rest of the team to.  What, we don't all look good enough in our jeans and sweat shirts and track pants and running shoes and sweaty shorts and bright orange jackets?  Wait, don't answer that.
  
  Oh, that count of 18 runners?  That doesn't include the runner who said "My boss thinks I'm sick, so don't say that I'm here, just in case he reads this site."  Don't worry, we'd never do anything to jeopardize the job of a fellow member.  On the other hand, if any of you can figure out a way to get us out of our own job, we'd really appreciate it.  Just wait until after New Year's.  We expect the work load to be pretty light for the next two weeks, and we'd like to get paid for doing nothing for as long as possible.

• Thursday Night Road Workout Report [12/19/2003]  This workout report was filed by the original original workout reporter, which means that you will find little or nothing about the workout itself.

  Since this is December, it will probably be correct to write:  "It was another cold and breezy night ..."  Actually, it was less cold and breezy than during the middle of the day, as the wind died down a bit, but just a bit.  After the weather description, the traditional second item must be the headcount.  A total of thirty-three people showed up at the workout, not counting that baby carriage that flew by us a couple of times or the beloved distributor of runners' food after the race.

  Our most recent road race winner Harry Morales showed up, being duly apologetic for winning the Knickerbocker 60K in what he considered not to be a fast time.  This caused Alan Ruben to say, "A win is a win" and Harry agreed, "I'm not complaining."  In the case of Alan Ruben, he would surely appreciate the value of a win as he was the principal in the famous Blue Statue Race.  Once upon a time, Alan ran a 50K race under continous snowfall inside Central Park.  Although he led the ace after nine four-mile loops, he did not finish because he was frozen blue according to the legend.  As you would have guessed, he was wearing shorts that day.  Alan has not learned a thing from that experience (namely, he was wearing shorts last Sunday in the snow at the Joe Kleinerman 10K as well as tonight).

  Other than Charlotte Cutler leaving us, we have Thierry Beniflah bidding us farewell tonight to return to France.  Thierry thanks the club in appreciation of providing him with a running support environment where he noted these milestones: at the 2002 Joe Kleinerman 10K, he ran 42:03 as an unaffiliated runner; at the same race in 2003, he ran 38:50 on the snow.  It also took many months before it was appreciated that one of Stuart Calderwood's best friends from France happens to the brother of Thierry's wife.  What is even less appreciated by most of us is that Thierry worked for the United Nations to reduce the export of deadly small arms weapons around the world.

  There will be no Thursday workouts for the next two weeks, because of Christmas and New Year's Day.  Hmm ... we are turning into wimps because I remembered that the only non-workout-days in our schedule had been Bastille Day and Boxing Day (read on to next paragraph).  Since I am not around that often to do these reports, I should really dish out more gossip.  Here is the most sensationalistic topic of conversation — massive electoral fraud was believed to have taken place at the Club Awards.  What!?  Look at this — Adam Manewell, Margaret Schotte, Yves-Marc Courtines, Lauren Eckhart, Craig Chilton, Kevan Huston and Alayne Adams won 7 of the 13 awards given out by the road coach Tony Ruiz.  What about them?  French and/or Canadians all!  What is the likelihood of that happening without massive vote tampering having occurred!?  The people have a right to know.

• Next Week [12/18/2003]  No workouts next Thursday, because of Christmas.  The middle distance group will still be at the Armory on Tuesday.  We imagine the distance group will be there as well, but check here for more updates.

• Yes, But Is It Art? [12/18/2003]  Because you've got nothing better to do with your time, it's Mr. Picassohead!  Create your own portrait in the style of everyone's favorite 20th Century Spanish cubist.  What's that?  You prefer Juan Gris?  You'll have to build your own site.  If you're more of a history buff than an artist, you could always check out "Which Historical Lunatic Are You?" 

• A Vast Wasteland [12/18/2003]  Our schedule for the week starts with the workouts on Tuesday and Thursday.  Poker is every other Friday, except when it isn't.  Since we're not really a morning person, and sometimes think that getting up in time for work is too early, we don't do too many a.m. workouts, so we often need to run or swim after work.  Add in errands, happy hours, dinners with friends or family, occasional parties, and the fox (as one conductor's been calling the F train recently) back to Brooklyn, and we're rarely home before 10:00.  Since we're the only kid on the block who still doesn't have a Tivo, we haven't seen much of prime time television in a while.  Oh, we still watch TV, but it's mostly limited to 11:00 reruns and B-movies.
  
  But yesterday afternoon our dinner plans were canceled, and our only other invitation was to go see The Return of the King, which we had to pass up since we'd already seen it before work.  (Yes, we went to a 5:00 am showing of the film.  No, this doesn't make us a geek.  We just couldn't figure out any other time in the next month when we'd have four hours free to watch a movie, so when Shame suggested the pre-dawn showing we agreed to it.  His comment at the end was "Great movie.  Let's never do this again."  And it actually is a great movie, though it does have a few weak spots — like the ending, which drags on for about 20 minutes.  This is nothing compared to the book, where J.R.R. Tolkein rambles on for another 75 pages after the climactic battle, and then follows that with a half-dozen appendices.  Unlike the "purists" out there, our main complaint with the trilogy is that is was often too faithful to the books, leaving in characters and scenes that we could have easily done without.  At least Peter Jackson had the sense to cut the incredibly annoying Tom Bombadill out of the first film.  We might not have even watched it if he hadn't.)
  
  Still, as incredible as the battle scenes in the movie were, watching it twice in one day was a little much for us.  As the early morning had left us a little too tired to run, we found ourself home at a reasonable hour with no plans.  So we watched The Simple Life, the new hit reality show (it had more viewers than the president's interview on Tuesday) in which ditzy rich girls Paris Hilton (who's famous for being famous) and Nicole Richie (who wasn't famous before this show, but is Lionel Richie's daughter) live in small-town Arkansas for a month.  We expected that a show about two vapid, self-absorbed party girls would be bad, but nothing could prepare us for how truly painful it was to watch.  The two girls lie, steal, shirk any reponsibility they're given, and disparage everyone they meet.  When the latest boss to fire them tries to collect the $100 in personal expenses that they charged to his credit card, Nicole tries to get out of the debt by making up a story about how her cat just died, while Paris wonders why he cares about such a small amount of money.
  
  Nicole's behavior may be influenced by the drug addiction that landed her in rehab shortly after filming ended, but Paris has only herself to blame.  Or maybe Paris is on drugs, too.  She certainly appears to be under the influence of various substances in her homemade porn tape that's been circulating around the web.  For those who haven't seen it, she looks like an alien, continually primps for the camera, and is apparently so bored with her paramour that at one point she stops to answer her phone.  And it's still less demeaning than her TV show.  Paris Hilton's old role in the world was to make us all wonder why gossip columnist kept writing about her.  Now her job is to be Exhibit A for why we still need strict parenting, drug laws, the Estate Tax, and possibly a resurrection of communism or maybe eugenics.  When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that "the very rich are different from you and me," he meant it in a good way.  But, then, he never saw Paris Hilton.

• Nails [12/18/2003]  Red wants us to mention how great her fingernails look in this photo.  We're going to humor her this time, but shouldn't our groupies be setting up webpages glorifying us, and not the other way around?
  

• Tuesday Night Early Armory Workout Report [12/17/2003]  Another nice day outside, which means another hot day inside.  We had twenty-one runners plus a couple of timers, and a coach who showed up just as we were all finishing our strides.  (As self-imposed punishment she stayed to run with the distance group after the end of the early workout.)  The workout itself was 4x1000m at 3k pace, followed by 2x200m for form.  Um, 1000m intervals?  That seems kind of long, especially since the long distance crew was only running 600m last night.  Chris Price was a little sore from a snowboarding trip on Monday.  ("The mountain had 10 inches of powder, so I called in 'sick' to work and went up there.")  Jessica Reifer decided that the workout wasn't challenging enough for her, so she added a few hurdles.  Those are literal hurdles, not metaphorical ones.  Alexandra Horowitz received the unofficial "Best Drafting" award for her skill at letting the other members of her group block the wind for her.  No meager feat, considering one of those blockers was pint-sized Alayne Adams.  Another was Charlotte Cutler, making her last appearance at the Armory.
  
  In Charlotte's honor, we skipped the late workout (they can time themselves for one night) and headed around the corner to Coogan's for a farewell dinner.  Taking the block bordered by Ft. Washington Ave., 168th Street, Broadway, and 169th Street as our map, the entrance to Coogan's is the polar opposite of the entrance to the Armory.  The speed in Coogan's is also the polar opposite of the speed inside the Armory.  The drinks service was sluggish at best, and the food service was so slow that the distance runners finished their workout and joined us at the bar before the appetizers arrived. Kim Mannen made good use of this time by rushing up to the karaoke stage and belting out a rousing rendition of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot."  Marty Levine considered performing the entire Bruce Springsteen canon, but decided he would need to imbibe nearly a case of beer before singing in public, and at the rate we were being served that would have taken about 10 hours. Alas, our attempts to get some member — any member — to sing "London Calling" proved futile.  But London did call, and Charlotte answered, so she's off to Jolly Old England, part of an ever-increasing number of CPTC runners to be found there.  Now who will we chase around the track?
  

• Holiday Cheer Request [12/16/2003]  Due to overwhelming favorable response last year, small voluntary gifts will be gathered of $1 to $5 per runner for holiday food goodies for the Armory staff.  Last year was the first time anyone ever thought to say thanks to the many people, mostly behind the scenes, who work to make our indoor track experience possible.  At the early sessions this week and next Tuesday, you can see Noah Perlis or Jesse Lansner with your contribution.  At the 8 PM sessions you can see Jesse Lansner.  Although this is unofficial, the gift is given in the name of the entire club.

WEEK OF DECEMBER 9 - DECEMBER 15, 2003

• Beach Bums [12/15/2003]  Jeff Wilson just sent us a group photo from the start of this year's Reach the Beach relay.  For those who've caught the realy bug, next year's 12-person, 200-mile race will be on September 17-18 and registration is already open.  See their website for more info.  The week after that is the Colorado Outward Bound Relay, a 10-person, 170-mile race across three mountain passes in the Rocky Mountains, from Idaho Springs to Glenwood Springs.  Let's get some teams together!

• Photo Updates [12/15/2003]  Photos from Roland have been added to the Joe K 10 K page, and a few of the photos have even been identified.

• Challenge! [12/15/2003]  People sometimes forget that we have no official role in the club other than maintaining this site.  Actually, it's a good question as to whether our role here is official, or if it isn't, who, if anyone, has the power to replace us.  But that's an issue for another time.  We mention our lack of formal role because we had to keep clarifying it last Thursday at the Flyers holiday party.  Seems a few of their members are still smarting over our victories in softball and football, and a few games of pool we won at the bar (through no skill of our own), and sought to challenge CPTC to all sorts of competitions.  Soccer, pool, darts, poker — you name it, they want to play us.  Admittedly these challenges came from members with no more official role than our own, but we thought we'd let you all know that there's a team that's

• Schedule [12/14/2003]  NYRRC's 2004 Race Schedule is now on line.

• Broken Links [12/14/2003]  It's been brought to our attention that some graphics are not showing up on this site.  We're in the process of redesigning the entire site, part of which involves organizing the files a bit better.  The reorganizing won't affect you when it's done (except to the extent that it makes our life easier, which may lead to us producing a better site), but while it is still ongoing some files may not be updated immediately, and therefore will not display properly.  Thank you for your patience.

• Knickerbocker 60K [12/14/2003]  After the Road Runners Club decided not to put on the Knickerbocker 60K last month, some of the runner got together and organized it themselves.  Lucky for us, since Harry Morales picked up the team's 61st victory of the year there, finishing in 5:59, 38 minutes ahead of his closest competition.  This is Harry's first victory for the team.

• Snowmen [12/14/2003]  And snowwomen, of course.  For the second week in a row a New York Road Runners race was snowed out, and converted to a fun run.  Since this was supposed to be the last scoring race of the year, many of our runners still showed up, and most of them even ran (although a few went back home).  We also had a few photographers out there, and there first (and for all we know, only) set of photos is now up.  With few faces visible, and no race numbers to look up, we guessed at a lot of the runners.  If you recognize any unidentified runners, please email us.

• MAC Attack [12/14/2003]  While some of our members were running in the snow, the saner ones went indoors for the MAC meet at the Armory.  Noah Perlis filed the following report from uptown:

  A practice meet for some of us this early in the season:
  
  Isaya was in town for the weekend and has not had an indoor track to practice on in West Virgina.  Admittedly 10 pounds overweight, he only wanted to do 5:00 for the 1500 for practice.  Sure, and I believed him.  He let himself get caught up in the midpack of his heat and went through the 800 in 2:15.  Need I say more?  His time was 4:15 and he was pleased, though he had to work harder than usual the last 2 laps to finish his "practice run."

  Marty Levine and Marie Davis each did the 1500, with official times due to be posted online within the next 4 months or so (it is a MAC meet after all).

  I ran a 300 and would be pleased with Isaya's hand-held time for me of 43.75, which I was hoping for based on my 300's in practice. Of course I won't admit what MAC had me in except to say that I was about 15m behind the 2 runners in front of me at the finish and I would have to practically crawl to do it in the 5 second difference they allotted me. I took home a 3rd place medal (age 50-59) and will value it more as a sign of my success at relentlessly trying to find a parking space in the street during the snowstorm.

  Jessica Reifer showed up to run the 1000, but I had to leave early and she was last seen with a very upset stomach and a very queasy look. Always the good spin doctor, Isaya tried to convince her it was a good nervous sign before her race and it meant she was getting her adrenalin up.

  Ardian ran the 60m with tired legs from last Thursday's sprint practice and a bad start, but looked good in the 300m with a 38.1.

I also got to cheer on 2 Stuyvesant High 1500 runners in a planned effort to recruit more fellow alumni 5 or 6 years hence.

• Around the World Update #11 [12/13/2003]  Dear all,

  We are about to take off to Thailand in a few hours, where the third part of our trip will start, after 3 months in Latin America and 2 months in Oceania (including stopovers in Singapore and Bali).

  New Zealand
  All in all, out of 19 days in NZ, we spent 11 days doing outdoor activity, of which 8 days were under a bright sun, an exceptionally favorable ratio for the country.
  
  South Island
  NZ is divided into two islands called (guess why!) the North and the South Islands.  We spent two-thirds of our time on the South one, as there is more variety of scenery.  The last trek we did on the South Island was the Queen Charlotte Tramp.  The funny part is that we were carried at the beginning of the trek and were picked up at the end by boat.  The boat also carried our backpack and tent from the start point to the campsite on the first day, and from the campsite to the finish of the trek on the second day.  The trek goes through various styles of forests and allow to have breathtaking views from the crests of the deep blue and emerald sea.
  
  North Island
  We happened to be in Wellington, the administrative capital of NZ, right on the day of the parade held in honour of the third part of 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy.  The movie series has become an institution in this 4-million-inhabitant country.  It brought pride to the Kiwis, showing to the world the beauty of the country and the quality of local know-how.  The estimated commercial spillover is half a billion NZ dollars, and 2,000 full-time jobs were created.  It was fun to see in the parade the Elves, Orcs and monsters of all kind at two or three meters from us.  Otherwise, we visited the 'Te Papa' museum, affectionately nicknamed 'Our Place' by the Kiwis, as the museum explains in details the origins from the NZ people, from the Polynesians to the British.
  
  Back to our hiking habits, we then did a crossing through a volcanic area, called 'the finest one-day walk on Earth', with emerald lakes, a red crater and geysers.  The weather was not good enough, unfortunately.  Finally, the cherry on the pie was a 3-day canoe trip on the Whanganui river.  We rented a 2-people canoe, carrying our stuff in plastic containers and sleeping in huts similar to those we had in the mountains.  We happened to form a very entertaining group with other canoeists, from all over Europe:  two Dutch, two English, two Germans and two Swiss.  The descend was pretty easy, requiring no special skills, which is good, as we had none.  The scenery was, once again, great, with cliffs on both sides, jungle-like flora, caverns and cascades.  We even learned a new English word:  capsizing, as we hit a rock in the penultimate (and by far the trickiest) rapid, and both ended up in the water in a split second.  Shame on us, hence, but so much fun !

  Australia:  Sydney
  Haaa, Sydney!  Being there was like a dream.  The bay in itself is stunning, it does not come close to Rio, but still, it is fantastic nonetheless.  We mainly experienced the city walking, wandering around to get impregnated from the atmosphere.  We crossed the bridge in front of the Opera, which makes a promenade similar to the classical Brooklyn Bridge crossing to Brooklyn Heights in NY.  We walked (and ran) the Olympic triathlon running course, which starts at the Opera and goes along a beautiful botanic park, filled with parrots and all sorts of flying animals (including HUGE bats, called flying fox, which gives you an idea of the size).  We went to the Rocks every day, an area filled with good outdoor cafes, very quiet although in the center of the City.  We walked through the colonial houses of Millers Point and visited the surprising Darling harbour, full of parks, restaurants, casinos, cinemas.  We also wanted to get to know the surroundings, so we took a bus up to the beautiful area of Bondi Beach and crossed the harbour by ferry to see Manly, also a beach place.  Really a great city...

  Hope you are doing well,

— Anne Lavandon & Olivier Baillet

• Armory IDs [12/12/2003]  ID cards are now available at the armory.  Be sure to pick up your ID the next time you attend a workout.

• The Gamblers [12/12/2003]  The first episode of Celebrity Poker Showdown was a disappointment, but we had higher hopes for the second one.  Sure, this week's competitors — five cast members from the West Wing — still weren't professionals, but they probably play against each other often enough to have picked up a few clues as to each other's styles of play, right?  Wrong!  Not only have they never really played against each other, it's possible that some of them had never played poker at all, despite their claims otherwise.  We base this guess not on their poor strategy, but on their confusion about the simplest aspects of how to bet.  Imagine a football player not knowing how many yards are needed for a first down or a runner not being able to find the starting line, and you get the idea of what Bravo was broadcasting the other night.
  
  As actors — and all but one of the competitors are actors — we thought they would be a little better at fooling people than we've seen.  Not that we expected them to be true cardsharps, but we weren't predicting mere dilettantes either.  Could these actors really have played poker for years without absorbing even the simplest of lessons from Kenny Rogers?  John Spencer grasped the "every hand's a winner part," but couldn't quite accept that any hand could be a loser.  Martin Sheen and Allison Janey showed that they understood the order of the hands, but not much more.  At least Timothy Busfield showed some knowledge of the game, and Richard Schiff won based on at least some skill, unlike Willie Garson, whose victory last week came from pure dumb luck.
  
  It's one thing to be amateurs, quite another to be so amateurish.  Celebrity softball and basketball games feature some respectable performances from the stars, even when they're competing against the pros.  Amateurs do even better in poker (the last two winners of the World Series of Poker were both amateurs), and any game which calls for guile and deceit would seem perfectly suited to the Hollywood crowd.  Are the stakes too low?  Are they afraid to look too skilled at anything outside of acting?  Or is it just that they don't care enough to improve?  Pathetic choices, all of them, but the last one is probably the worst.  One needn't be a professional to take pride in one's work.  Or in one's play, for that matter.  Indeed, the best piece of advice from The Gambler — for poker as for any other sport — is the first one:  "If you're gonna play the game, boy, you got to learn to play it right."

• Thursday Night Armory Workout Report [12/12/2003]  The theme for this workout was "short and sweet."  Just like Alayne Adams, who was there to get ready for Sunday's 10K.  ("I joined the middle distance group because the time was more convenient," she confessed.  "But now I'm actually trying to come up with some goals for track distances.")  The other 20 runners present were all on the taller side, but many could still be called sweet (i.e., Kim Mannen McConville, in her first appearance of the season).  The workout was 10-12x200m (the short part), in theory at 800m pace, but in practice even faster (the sweet part).  Especially when Sid Howard decided to show the whippersnappers in Group 1 what a real pace is.  That was a sweet lap!  With a workout this short we expected to be done at a ridiculously early hour, but that idea was quashed when the workout started 15 minutes late.  A nod to Tony Ruiz' style?  No, just a reflection of delays on the A train that kept some runners from getting to the track on time.  But, soon enough, we were outside where the aid was cool and damp, unlike the hot, sticky air inside the armory that left us short of breath.  We could write more, but instead we'll keep this report — what else — short and sweet.
  

• Executive Decisions [12/11/2003]  Show of hands:  How many of you knew that there have been some changes to the CPTC Executive Board?  How many of you even knew that we had an executive board?  Okay, that's just sad.

• Shoes [12/11/2003]  We received the following email today:

This may sound a little strange but I am a photographer looking for peoplewho have an inordinate number of running shoes for a photo story for Runner's World Magazine.  I understand a lot of runners donate their old shoes but there must be some people who just cannot let them go.  I'll be shooting early January.  Anyhelp you may give me locating anyone who would like to be photographed in their home with their collection of running shoes (12 or more pairs) would be welcome.  I think it would be a nice photo story if I can locate enough of the right people.

We've only got about five pais in our aparment (threw out some of the old ones when we moved), but if you've got 12 or more stacked up in your closet, you can email Robert Lewis at rlfoto@mindspring.com, and have your collection featured in Runner's World.

• Top 10 Journal Entries [12/10/2003]  We thought about picking our favorite entries from the last year, but quickly realized that, as the author of most of them, we would have a hard time reaching the minimum level usually seen on this site.  However, if there are any entries that stood out to you, feel free to send them in to us.  We may or may not publish a list, but at the very least we'll probably write more about the topics that get the most votes.

• Tuesday Night Armory Workouts Report [12/10/2003]  Inefficiencies abound today.  Two workouts and two reporters, but in the end only one report.  Middle distance first.  Twenty-two runners and two timers.  Three Stuyvesant High School alumni.  Noah Perlis observes "With one more alum (or Naomi Reynolds) we could perform an off-key, quartet rendition of Our strong band can ne'er be broken...  With six alumni running or practicing indoors, does this make it the most represented high school for CPTC?"  A good trivia question, perhaps.  We know of two orangeshirts who graduated from our outerboro rival Bronx Science, but couldn't tell you about anyone else.  We're not sure we could even name all six Peglegs that Noah referred to, though one of them (in fact, a classmate of Noah's) showed up for the late session.  No singing took place.  Next week, perhaps.
  
  The workout itself was 3x800m, 2x400m.  Newly-minted "Best Track Comeback Runner" Jessica Reifer noticed that she was running the intervals 13 seconds than she did last week.  She must be looking to pick up a "Most Improved Track Performer" trophy next year.  This year's most improved, Alexandra Horowitz, was there as well, running in a group that included Alayne Adams, Charlotte Cutler and this reporter.  The sight of this group inspired Noah Perlis to new heights of trash talk directed towards us (he started the evening at "I'm faster than you"), such as "Look, you're running with a bunch of girls!" and "I wish I had a camera because this is the only time you'll ever be ahead of Alayne."  That's the kind of thing we expected from the old Tuesday night reporter.
  
  We finished our cool down and stretching just in time to hear Tony Ruiz make the announcements before the late workout.  Unlike at Saturday's party, he appeared live and in the flesh this time.  Either by sheer coincidence or as part of some conspiracy whose end goal we can't fathom, their workout also centered on 800m, in this case 5x800m plus 3x300m for form.  Thirty runners for this group, with the Coach, Sid Howard, Stuart Calderwood and ourself as timers.  Our members' hearing seems to be improving, since most of them actually listened when the timers said things like "keep the same pace for this last interval; don't run 15 seconds faster just becasue it's the end of the night."
  
  By the way, if you are a female runner who also loves Bruce Springsteen, contact Marty Levine — he wants to marry you.  If you are a male runner who also loves
  Bruce, Marty will only be your best friend.
  

• Common Ground [12/09/2003]  Here is an article from Sunday's Connecticut version of The New York Times.  It is about Rosanne Haggerty's attempts to set up a similar housing unit to The Times Square building where we held our Annual Awards Party.

• Points [12/09/2003]  Leading up to this Sunday's final scoring race of the year, here's how our teams stand:  The Open have clinched 3rd, but can't move up.  The Open Women have a lock on 2nd, and trail Warren Street by 3 points.  The Masters Men are also a solid 2nd, and trail The Running Company by 4.  The Masters Women are in 1st by 18 points, which should guarantee them the championship.  Finally, the Veteran Men are in 5th place, 18 points behind Witold's Runners and 8 points ahead of West Side.  Remember that the final standings will be based on only the top 10 races for each team, so these numbers can change more than you might think.

• Flyers Party [12/09/2003]  The Flyers have extended an invitation to all CPTC members to join them this Thursday, December 11th, for their annual holiday party at Citibar, located at 1st Avenue between 75th and 76th Street.  The party is from 7:30 p.m. - 10:30 p.m. and includes open bar (beer and wine) plus a variety of appetizers.  The cost is $30.00 per person.  Please RSVP to Fran Obeid at mal@nyflyers.org.
  

• Land of Confusion [12/09/2003]  It seems somehow appropriate that we misplaced this email from Charles Allard for a week and a half:

Jesus Montero and I participated in a study of confusion on November 23rd. We kind of ran the "29th Annual Worker's Thankgsgiving Day Road Race" (it is even more of a mouthful in Japanese) in Tokyo.  I say kind of because we both started about 1/2 hour late and ended up dead last in our
respective races.  We had duly proposed to meet in front of Tokyo Station over 1 hour before the race.  We were both there on time and with about 30 minutes to go before race start, our mobile phone conversation went something like:

"Where are you?"

"In front of the Taxi Stand"

"So am I"

"Next to the Police Box"

"So am I"

"Near the kiosk"

"So am I"

"Where are you?"

"Right here!"

"No, you are not."

etc.

Unfortunately, the Japanese in their desire to cover all bases have made both the north and south side of the station exact copies (the Japanese are good at this) and insured that we were both correct and incorrect at the same time.  It took us a long time to sort this out.  Beyond the race start in fact.

But, being the dedicated CPTC runners that we are and not one to miss an opportunity to run, we lined up and ran two 5k laps around the Imperial Palace (this is after all the last empire in the world) and finished at the same time.  We ran 10k but Jesus was entered in the 5k race so even though we finished at the same time, he came last in his race and I in mine.  102nd place for me and 39th place for him.  Negative splits of 20:21 and 20:00.

— Charles Allard, Jr.

WEEK OF DECEMBER 2 - DECEMBER 8, 2003

• Urban Athletics Winter Sale [12/08/2003]  All CPTC members and friends are invited to the Holiday Shopping Days at Urban Athletics.  Get 15-50% Off Everything in The Store.  Great Gift Ideas, Stocking Stuffers and all the gear you'll need to run through this Winter!  This Friday and Saturday, Dec. 12-13th.  Friday, 10am-7pm, Saturday, 10am-6pm.  Urban Athletics is located at 2 World Financial Center in the Wintergarden.

• 2003 Track Recap [12/08/2003]  Some track highlights from 2003:
  
  Indoor Track

  Lifetime PRs:
  Stacy Creamer
  3000m - 11:10.39

  Frank Handelman
  800m - 2:13.85 (fastest time since 1985)

  Alexandra Horowitz
  800m - 2:29 (relay split)
  3000m - 10:45.5

  Kim Mannen
  800m - 2:22.5 (relay split)

  Darlene Miloski
  800m - 2:29.7 (relay split - dropping 11 seconds from the beginning of indoors)
  mile - 5:34 (dropping 9 seconds)

  Jerome O'Shaughnessy
  mile - 5:24 (dropping 18 seconds from the beginning of indoors)

  Sue Pearsall
  800m - 2:38.1 (dropping 4 seconds)
  3000m - 11:46

  Jessica Reifer
  800m - 2:18 (relay split - dropping 5 seconds from the beginning of indoors)

  Season PRs:
  Amerigo Rossi
  1200m - 3:02.73 (relay split)

  Evan Bass Zeisel
  200m - 22.4
  400m - 48.8
  800m - 1:55.5

  Clinton Bell
  mile - 4:06

  Stuart Calderwood
  1000m - 2:50.22
  mile - 4:47
  3000m - 9:26.5

  Stacy Creamer
  800m - 2:36

  Mary Diver
  3000m - 13:00

  David Epstein
  400m - 49.8 (relay split)
  800m - 1:57.59

  Sara Grillo
  800m - 2:46

  Paul Groce
  800m - 2:00.5 (relay split)

  Ana Echeverri Huston
  3000m - 11:36

  Sylvie Kimche
  400m - 72.68
  800m - 2:37.5, American Record for 55-59
  mile - 6:02.59

  Harry Lichtenstein
  800m - 2:40.3
  1500m - 5:13.66

  Oliver Martinez
  400m - 53.3

  Armando Oliveira
  800m - 2:01.9 (relay split)
  1200m - 3:09 (relay split)
  mile - 4:27

  Noah Perlis
  55m - 7.8 (fastest time in 5 years)
  200m - 26.65 (fastest time in 5 years)
  400m - 60.9 (fastest time in 5 years)

  Naomi Reynolds
  800m - 2:28.5
  1500m - 4:58.0

  Tony Ruiz
  3000m - 9:20.4

  Ken Shatzer
  3000m - 9:27.6

  Melissa Tidwell
  400m - 62 (relay split)

  USATF Masters Indoor National Championship

  GOLD MEDAL
  800m - Catherine Stone-Borkowski (40-44)
  800m - Frank Handelman (55-59)
  mile - Sylvie Kimche (55-59)

  SILVER MEDAL
  800m - Sylvie Kimche (55-59)
  800m - Darlene Miloski (35-39)
  mile - Sid Howard (60-64)
  mile - Catherine Stone-Borkowski (40-44)
  mile - Darlene Miloski (35-39)
  3000m - Stacy Creamer (40-44)

  BRONZE MEDAL
  800m - Sid Howard (60-64)
  3000m - Ana Echeverri Huston (30-34)
  3000m - Mary Diver (45-49)

  Placed in the top 3 at Masters Nationals, but couldn't take a medal because he's not a US citizen:
  2nd Place
  400m - Alston Brown (50-54)

  RELAYS
  
  MILLROSE GAMES
  Masters women 4 x 400m
  5th Place - Sue Krogstad-Hill, Mary Rosado, Sylvie Kimche, Kellie Quinones
  6th Place - Stacy Creamer, Yumi Ogita, Mary Diver, Alayne Adams

  Masters men 4 x 400m
  3rd Place - Alston Brown, Alan Bautista, Tony Ruiz, Craig Plummer

  USA Indoor Nationals (Open)
  5th Place - Amerigo Rossi, David Epstein, Evan Bass Zeisel, Clinton Bell
  5th Place - Devon Martin, Melissa Tidwell, Jessica Reifer, Margaret Angell

  RECORDS
  
  WORLD Record in the 4 x 800m for the 35-39 age group
  10:01.9 - Kim Mannen, Darlene Miloski, Sue Pearsall, Devon Martin

  WORLD Record in the 4 x 800m for the 40-49 age group
  10:16.7 - Alayne Adams, Stacy Creamer, Sue Krogstad-Hill, Catherine Stone-Borkowski

  AMERICAN Record in the 4 x 800m for the 35-39 age group
  8:17.6 - Paul Groce, Chris Potter, Glen Carnes, Armando Oliveira

  WORLD Record in the 4 x 400m for the 35-39 age group
  4:38.92 - Catherine Stone-Borkowski, Stacy Creamer, Sylvie Kimche and Darlene Miloski

  AMERICAN Record in the 4 x 400m for the 35-39 age group
  3:50.72 - Chris Potter, John Affleck, Frank Handelman, Paul Groce

  Some Highlights of the 2003 Outdoor Season

  LIFETIME PRs:
  
  John Affleck
  mile - 4:46 (dropping 8 seconds from the beginning of the season and his best time in 20 years!)

  Stacy Creamer
  800m - 2:32.8 (dropping 7 seconds from the beginning of indoors)
  1500m - 4:58.84

  Alexandra Horowitz
  mile - 5:07 (dropping 21 seconds from the beginning of indoors)
  5000m - 17:56 (dropping 35 seconds from her best in 1997)

  Ana Echeverri Huston
  5000m - 19:48

  Jerome O'Shaughnessy
  mile - 5.17.5 (dropping 25 seconds from the beginning of indoors)

  Sue Pearsall
  mile - 5:54.1
  5000m - 20:40

  Chris Potter
  800m - 1:59.78
  mile - 4:38 (dropping 7 seconds)

  SEASON PRs:
  
  John Affleck
  800m - 2:11

  Amerigo Rossi
  1500m - 3:51.39

  Catherine Stone-Borkowski
  mile - 5:08 (dropping 13 seconds from beginning of indoors)

  Mary Diver
  5000m - 21:51.58

  Sid Howard
  800m - 2:18.63

  Eugene Lingner
  800m - 2:23.2 (dropping 9 seconds from the beginning of outdoors)

  Ardian Krasniqi
  400m - 54.5

  Chris Plescia
  400m - 53.0
  800m - 2:03.2

  Tony Ruiz
  800m - 2:03.12 (back in action after 20 years!)

  WORLD MASTERS ATHLETIC CHAMPIONSHIP
  
  Gold Medal
  1500m - Sid Howard (60-64)

  Bronze Medal
  marathon - Stuart Calderwood (45-49)

  4th Place
  800m - Sid Howard (60-64)
  1500m - Stacy Creamer (40-44)
  5000m - Stacy Creamer (40-44)

  5th Place
  800m - Tony Ruiz (40-44)

  6th Place
  800m - Stacy Creamer (40-44)
  1500m - Tony Ruiz (40-44)
  1500m - Devon Martin (35-39)

  7th Place
  800m - Frank Handelman (55-59)

  8th Place
  800m - Jim Aneshansley (65-69)

  USATF MASTERS OUTDOOR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP

  GOLD MEDAL
  800m - Sid Howard (60-64)
  1500m - Sid Howard (60-64)

  BRONZE MEDAL
  800m - Chris Potter (35-39)
  800m - Jim Sutton (70-74)

  PAN ARMENIAN GAMES
  
  8th Place
  100m - Vram Malek

  PENN RELAYS
  
  Masters 4 x 400m
  3rd Place 50-59 - Alston Brown, Jerry Scriver, Noah Perlis, Sid Howard
  5th Place 40-49 - Alan Bautista, Tony Ruiz, Craig Plummer, David Ponce

  Looking forward to an even better 2004 season! Great job, everyone!

• Party [12/07/2003]  The first set of photos from the Awards Dinner have been posted.  We expect to receive some more photos in the next day or two, and, if you are truly lucky, we may be able to post video clips from Coach Tony's awards presentation.  We have plenty to say about last night's festivities, but, between the party, the after-party, the after-after-party, and our friend's "cookies and cocoa" party in Washington Heights this afternoon, we haven't had the time or energy to write anything up just yet.  We also found that our ability to remember names is still slightly impaired, so some of the photos have missing or incomplete captions.  Please don't take it personally if we left your name out; just email us and we'll fix it.

• Award Winners [12/07/2003]  The following awards were given out at yesterday's awards dinner:

  Most Improved Track Performer - Alexandra Horowitz
  Best Track Comeback - Jessica Reifer
  Most Versatile - Armando Oliveira
  Best Sprinter - Evan Bass Zeisel
  Best Middle Distance Runner - Amerigo Rossi
  Best in Track - Sid Howard
  
  Best Male Triathlete - Adam Manewell
  Best Female Triathlete - Margaret Schotte
  Rookie of the Year - Catherine Stone-Borkowski
  Most Imrpoved Performer - Yves-Marc Courtines
  Comeback of the Year - Takeshi (Casey) Yamazaki
  Best Women's Open Runner, Short Distance - Lauren Eckhart
  Best Women's Open Runner, Long Distance - Andrea Haver
  Best Men's Open Runner, Short Distance - Craig Chilton
  Best Men's Open Runner, Long Distance - Kevan Huston
  Best Women's Masters Runner, Short Distance - Stacy Creamer
  Best Women's Masters Runner, Long Distance - Alayne Adams
  Best Men's Masters Runner, Short Distance - Bob Holliday
  Best Men's Masters Runners, Long Distance - Peter Allen, Stuart Calderwood and Alan Ruben
  MVP - Margaret Angell

• Snow Day [12/06/2003]  We mentioned in a recent entry that we used to work the midnight shift a few years back.  For reasons lost in the obscurity or the firm's organizational chart, our department was the one that various employees had to call if they weren't coming in that day.  We were always amazed at how many people would suddenly call in 'sick' (complete with shamelessly fake coughing) during the first few snowfalls of the year, no matter how light a dusting of snow we were actually experiencing.  We've noticed this repeatedly over the last two decades in NYC — no matter how long they've lived here, people seem mystified by the annual appearance of snow, and assume that the city must simply shut down if more than three flakes hit the ground.  At least this year the first snowfall was a good one!  Nobody called in sick at our office yesterday simply because they didn't feel like driving or taking the subway in the snow.  Instead they called in with tales of roads closed, buses cancelled, and trains that weren't moving.
  
  With the snow still falling as we write this, we can't give an accurate accumulation total, but it was enough that Road Runners changed today's 15K race into a fun run.  We wonder how many people showed up.  Not that many Brooklynites, we're guessing, since they were all out running in Prospect Park when we went out for our own workout.  We didn't even mind the snow that much, although the wind was another story.  It was bad enough that we started wondering again where the treadmills in our gym are.  One of these days we really must find them.

• Thursday Night Armory Workout Report [12/05/2003]  The following conversation occurred between the two workout reports:

"Are you going to write the report tomorrow?"

"We'll see if I have any energy after running these 400s."

"How much energy do you need?  It's basically the same every time."

"Yeah.  23.5 people showed up at the workout ...They ran hard ... a few of them timed ... then we all went home.'"

You want more that that?  Okay.  The actual number was 18 people (maybe).  The workout was 8-10x400m with 2:00 rest.  Sid Howard showed up but didn't run the workout, saying that he was still worn out from the 15k last weekend, which led Coach Devon to complain "You're always tired after you do those long races.  The worst part is that when you do these long races it makes other people think it's okay, and pretty soon all my runners have wrecked their training because of you."  Wonder how tired Sid will be from dancing at the party tomorrow!

• Running Kids [12/04/2003]  Vram Malek is looking for a running club/training group (x-country, track, mid-distance) for kids age 10-15 that meets a couple of times a week.  If you know of any such groups, please email him at vmalek@dbarch.net.

• Non-Marathon Man [12/04/2003]  Khalid Khannouchi announced that he won't be running in the US Olympic marathon trials in February due to chronic injuries to his foot and knee.

• Armory Update [12/04/2003]  Here are the most recent lists of our runners for the Armory.  If you'd like to sign up but haven't yet, please send your check (payable to CPTC, $250 for the early session or $150 for the late) to Stacy Creamer at 175 West 93rd Street, 8C, New York, NY 10025.  If you have any questions, please contact Stacy at screamer@randomhouse.com.

  Early Session Alayne Adams John Affleck Mark Albers Jim Aneshansley Alan Bautista Alston Brown Leon Brown Stuart Calderwood Glen Carnes Marie Davis Michael Dougherty David Edwards John Gleason Dan Hamner Richard Hamner Frank Handelman Alexandra Horowitz Sidney Howard Jesse Lansner Noah Lansner Bob Laufer Marty Levine Roger Liberman Eugene Linger Jeff Lundwall Jonathan T. Mann Vram Malek Charles Miers Frank McConville Kim McConville Darlene Miloski Janice Morra Jim Ottaway Tom Phillips Noah Perlis Chris Price Adam Raphael Ronald Reid Jessica Riefer Julio Rodriguez Peter Rodriguez Mary Rosado Ken Shatzer Mindy Solkin Carlos Stafford Sebastian Tomac Fred Trilli Rob Zand

  Late Session Bethany Aquilina Margaret Angel Kevin Arlyck Jay Borok Roland Breitenberger Marvin Cabrera Jonathan Cane Andrea Costello Stacy Creamer Neil Denney Mary Diver Lauren Eckhart Dawn Eggerts Doron Fagelson Sean Fitzpatrick Laura Ford Elyse Gagneux Stephanie Gould Sarah Gross Tom Hartshorn Andrea Haver Otto Hoering Kate Irvin Robert Jamieson Scott Johnson Elizabeth Kaicher Ed Kasparek John Kerner Audrey Kingsley Ardian Krasniqi Sascha Kreideweis David Lansner Harry Lichtenstein Jose Martinez Frank Morton Zeb Nelesson Adam Newman Derek O’Connor Andrea Ostrowski Chris Potter Scott Puryear Kellie Quinones John Roberts Michael Rosenthal Michelle Santomassino Sandra Scibelli Margaret Schotte James Siegel Chris Solarz Bob Summers Mark Sowa Gordon Streeter Joseph Tumbarello Phil Vasquez Brad Weiss Jeff Wilson Casey Yamazaki

• Date Books [12/04/2003]  A friend recently suggested that we place a personal ad with one of the online services.  Seems one friend of hers made a successful match online, and that anecdotal evidence was enough to convince her that everyone should try it.  Our own anecdotal evidence concerns our ex-roommate, who got into online personals after the collapse of her long-distance relationship with <sigh> Trevor (the sigh was part of his name).  Seems things broke down between them when it became apparent that <sigh> Trevor was unaware that their relationship was anything more than friendship, at which point our roomie spent a week listening to John Lennon's Mind Games, and then went online to see what new emotional headaches she could create for herself, all the while sharing far too many of the details of her life with us while we tried to watch TV.  Then she moved halfway across the country, though not before stiffing us on a few hundred dollars worth of bills.
  
  But these are just two unrepresentative samples, and prove nothing.  Luckily, there's reams of statistical data out there on the efficacy of online dating which could prove something if it weren't for the inconvenient fact that the data is pathetically inconclusive, even by the normal standards of sociology statistics. So our decision on whether to place an ad came down to our desire to be cool, and, having missed the original mania for online romance, we're seizing our chance to get in early on the backlash against internet-dating, and, indeed, the whole "Dating-Industrial Complex."

  But, just to humor our friend, we checked out one of the sites and even thought about what our profile might say.  There were a number of questions to which our response was "none of your damn business," but the one that intrigued us asked for the "Last great book I read."  Well, that shouldn't be too hard.  After all, we're always reading something, so one recent book must qualify.  (Assuming, of course, that "great book" does not refer to some tome that Harold Bloom and the Columbia professors who teach Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization have seen fit to include in the official canon. No doubt the term would have been capitalized if that were the intended meaning.)  Or perhaps not.  Superlatives like "great" are tossed around a lot these days, but that doesn't make us comfortable with them.
  
  We've certainly read a number of good books, but they all fell short of true greatness.  Positively Fifth Street loses its focus toward the end.  Seabiscuit veers close to hagiography.  Alan Furst's spy novels are tense, atmospheric, and full of crackling dialogue, but it's hard to overlook the fact that they're all essentially the same.  A lot of people consider The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay to be great, but we're still only halfway through it, and not in any rush to find out what happens next.  The Corrections got a lot of hype, but when we tried to reread it for a bookclub it didn't hold up.  Surely a great book would be worth reading more than once.  By that standard, the last book we read that we can truly call great is Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men (which even qualifies as a Great Book in the canon sense).
  
  Is it just us?  Are we too busy flitting across the literary landscape to notice the new classics?  Or is there a dearth of great literature these days?  Surely someone is writing great literature these days.  It's just hard to find it when anything better than mediocre gets labeled "great" by someone.  Trainspotting is an interesting book, but that doesn't mean it's better than the bible, as one reviewer gushed.  Nor should a sticker reading "Celebrity's Book Club" or "Finalist for the Whatever Prize" be taken as any indication that the book will stand the test of time; indeed, many of them are forgotten only a few months later.  Perhaps we'll just have to wait a few years to find out what the great books of today are.  There's precedent in this:  Herman Melville and F. Scott Fitzgerald both died failures.  John Kennedy Toole died a decade before A Confederacy of Dunces was published.  Henry Roth at least lived long enough to see Call It Sleep be rediscovered.  Ten or twenty years from now, who knows what the best book of 2003 will be.  But we're pretty sure it won't be The DaVinci Code.

• Lost Shirt [12/03/2003]  Andrea Costella accidentally left her black, Drylete running shirt (pullover with a half zipper) at the Armory after Tuesday's workout.  If anyone happened to see it and pick it up, please email her at afcostel@hotmail.com.

• Party [12/03/2003]  They couldn't beat us in softball.  They couldn't beat us in football.  As the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, invite 'em to your party.  And so the New York Flyers have invited us to join them at their holiday party next Thursday, December 11, from 7:30 to 10:30 pm.  It's at Citibar, 1446 1st Ave. (bet. 75th & 76th St.), and costs $30/person, which covers beer, wine and appetizers.  Pay at the door, but if you'd like to attend, please RSVP to Fran Obeid at mal@nyflyers.org.

• Tuesday Night Armory Workout Report (Early Session) [12/03/2003]  The workout was 4 x 1000m @ 3k pace with a 3:00 min rest (200m jog recovery).

  Too many old and new bodies running too fast to get an accurate count.  If only they would stand still long enough.  Why have we been so obsessed by
  exact numbers anyway?  Could it be because the creator of this site is a Ph.D. Statistician?

  Old and new faces were a welcome sight.  Bob Laufer returns, with Jim Aneshansley and Sid Howard (not so fresh from his 15K x-country race
  over the past weekend) representing the 60 plus age group.  Frank Handelman, now 58, is looking forward to bettering his national best indoor 800m
  from last year, but will have a tough goal of winning the nationals with Alston Brown turning 55 in January.  All looked appropriately hungry for a new indoor season.

  Does any man on the team have a lower percentage of body fat than Alston?  But for 30 pounds less this reporter could keep up with him ... at least for a few laps ... perhaps.
  
  Some runners were new to the workouts, if not the team.  Alayne Adams, Glen Carnes, and Jesse Lansner were spotted warming up together, prompting Alexandra Horowitz to remark "Hey, you aren't middle distance runners.  What are you doing here?"  Perhaps they've all seen the light.

  The website attracted a runner who paid the Armory for the season and came out to meet the club and consider joining.  Running in John Gleason's shadow for the workout was Angela, but if she joins the club, who gets the recruitment credit?  Is the webmaster eligible, and if so, can he assign the credit to one of the contenders for the year's best recruiter (he is self-confessed to not be above bribery, and would likely be content to meet new young female recruits in any case)?

  Our super secret surveillance unit reports:

  Two free guest passes are available to any paid Armory member to be used for potential new members and guests.  Contact Sharon Warren at the Armory, 212-923-1803, Ext 17, or better yet for her - just leave a note for her at the front desk and the passes can be left for pick-up at the front desk the next time you go.  If you do not have anyone in mind to use these for, please get them anyway to give to the coaches who will have good use for them throughout the season.  Devon may even allow you to run an extra interval for each pass you give her.

  To make it as easy as possible:  copy, paste, print, fill out, and leave at the front desk:

  To:  Sharon Warren, The Armory

  From:  ________________

  I am a paid season member of the Armory evening session (Central Park TC).

  Please leave two free guest passes at the front lobby desk for me to pick up.

  Thank you.

  "Ask me how..." Although not selling anything, Marty Levine will he glad to share his secret approach to how he lost 12 pounds in the last 3 weeks, and yes, he did eat.  Watch for a faster and leaner middle distance runner this season who resembles the Marty we used to know.  As if losing the extra pounds is not enough of a worthwhile achievement, we piqued Marty's interest in an exercise machine we came across on the internet when we accidently typed in an erroneous website address - it promises great results in only a 4 minute workout.  Although the $15,000 price tag did not faze him, the lack of space to put this torture-looking device presented a serious question.  For the curious who want an interesting read on the contra-theories of aerobic and anerobic training (with an analogy to sprinters who get it all done in intervals which add up to a total 3 minutes at 4-minute mile pace), go to http://www.quickgym.com/QandA.cfm.

• Tuesday Night Armory Workout Report (Late Session) [12/03/2003]  This site has never been known for its efficiency at reporting, which is why it took two reporters to cover the two Armory workouts.  While we ran with the early session, we stayed around to time our erstwhile running mates in group B (the other groups were timed by Coach Tony, Scott Johnson and Sid Howard).  Since the late session begins with runners gathering for some sort of announcements, we can offer an accurate count of 30 runners.  We didn't actually pay much attention to these announcements, but they seemed to focus mostly on the rules of the Amory and the description of the workout.  And that workout was 4x100m at 5k pace, with 400m recovery, followed by 3x300m at finishing speed.  So, you may ask, why did the two groups do almost the exact same workout, but at different paces?  Officially it's because the distance runners were doing their first indoor workout, so they were taking things a little easier than the middle distance runners who were already making their third appearance at the Armory.  We tend to think it's because the middle distance runners don't know their paces above 3k, since they never race that long, and the long distance runners don't know their paces under 5k, since they never race that short.
  
  On the A Train home we learned from Margaret Angell that marathon champ Paul Tergat is 6' tall and weighs 136 lbs.  They say you can never be too rich or too thin.  I guess Paul's trying to prove them right.  Fred Trilli asked when the next football game is, and was diappointed to learn it was a one-time event.  Coach Tony griped about his commute from the Armory to Jamaica (the one in Queens, not the one in the Caribbean), and how much easier his old train ride to Brooklyn was.  Not that Brooklyn's all that close to the Armory.  We weren't home until almost 11:00.  Far too late to catch The Simple Life (the new Paris Hilton reality show that may or may not be the final nail in the coffin of Western civilization), but just in time for the rerun of Celebrity Poker Showdown.  We try not to overrate ourself as a poker player, but we'd like to find ourself at a table with David Schwimmer, Wiile Garson, and Emily Proctor (though we wouldn't challenge Ben Affleck or Don Cheadle).  There's a good chance we'd leave that table with more money than we started with.  Although, if our poker table ever included anyone who looked like Emily Proctor we wouldn't care that much whether we won or lost.

• Joe Kleinerman Scholarship Fund [12/02/2003]  On behalf of our members the club has made a $500 donation to the Joe Kleinerman Scholarship Fund.  Each year this fund will provide a scholarship to a runner who is graduating from a New York City public high school and continuing on to college, with selection based on athletic and academic achievement.  We would also like to encourage our members to make their own individual contributions to:

  Joe Kleinerman Scholarship Fund
  NYRR
  9 East 89th Street,
  New York, NY  10128

  Our club is very appreciative of the pioneering work that Joe made in establishing competitive running in New York City for both men and women.  We will be out in force at the Joe Kleinerman 10K race on Sunday, December 14th as a tribute to Joe's legacy.

• Best of the West [12/02/2003]  Look!  There on the Best Times list!  It's Andrea Haver, with 3:15:33 in the Seattle Marathon!

• New Kids on the Block [12/02/2003]  It's new member time, so let's give it up Mark Albers, Biff Capune, David Edwards and Jonathan Mann.  They're joining us thatnks to Devon Martin (2), James O'Brien, David Pullman and Frank Schneiger.  Coming down to the wire, Devon has a commanding lead, with 10 recruitment points, but recruitment monitor Sarah Gross informs us that "Devon really only gets honorable mention since she is a coach."  Suddenly we've got ourselves a horse race here!  Sid Howard and Stacy Creamer each have 6 points, and Yves-Marc Courtines is close behind with 3, but with things this close don't count out the longshots yet.  There's still time for others to scout new fast blood and add to our 47 new recruits so far this year!