WEEK OF JULY 30-AUGUST 5, 2002

• WHO'S CRYING NOW?  We swear that we would not mention the Commonwealth Games in these pages because this is really NOT a major competition.  We did relent once so far to celebrate the fact that Australia swept the gold-silver-bronze medals in the women's marathon.  Today we got the usual 'balanced treatment' arm-twisting from the Tour de France lobby to trumpet the fact that Canada won the triathlon golds for both male (by Simon Whitfield) and female (by Carol Montgomery).  If it were solely up to us, we would not have made a pipsqueak about the Canadians, because we are too busy crying our eyes out as Australia should have swept all the medals with their six world champions in the race (Nicole Hackett, Michellie Jones and Loretta Harrop; Miles Stewart, Chris McCormack and Peter Robertson). 
   
• NEW YORK CITY TRIATHLON:  The scheduling has resulted in the NYRR Club Championships being held on Satuday, August 17th and the New York City Triathlon being held the next day.  This will have a major impact on our running turnout, since the triathlon is the premier event on the local multisports scene.  Our registered entrants include: Nicole Billman, Shelley Farmer, Sean Fitzpatrick, Joseph Frazetta, Ross Galitsky, Joe Gravier, Otto Hoering, Bill Komaroff, Jesse Lansner, Matthew Newman, Mariejo Pasion-Rojas and G'mo Rojas.
   
• NEW YORK CITY CYCLING CHAMPIONSHIPS PHOTOS:  In spite of our warning to our photographer that he would be violating union rules, he went down Wall Street to take photos for this event.  Given that he suffered horribly in the heat earlier that morning at the Manhattan Half Marathon, we have chosen not to give him a demerit at this time.  In looking at the collection of his photos from this championship event, the best photo is not even his!  That would be this photo of Aubin Sullivan at a race in Connecticut.
   
  
   
  Unfortunately, by now, most of our readers are probably asking, "Who is Aubin Sullivan?"  Aubin is a member of the Central Park Track Club in one of those spousal discount packages.  More importantly, she is from the great state of Texas, better known as the home state of Lance Armstrong.  As for the rest of the story, we'll just 'borrow' (or, in Aussie speak, 'flog') her bio from her cycling team because they are more meticulous about such matters.  But we note with bitterness that it was said that she 'was a marathon runner.'
   
  
    
• THE CELIC RUN: From Ernie Beach, President of Staten Island Athletic Club, "I would like to invite your club members to run in the Celic Run. It will be held on Saturday, September 7th at 10am in Clove Lakes Park in Staten Island, New York. The race is dedicated to Marty and Tom Celic.  The Celic Run pays tribute to two brothers, Marty and Tom, two committed competitors, who were pacesetters in the NYC running scene. 
   
  Marty Celic, made his mark early in hurdles, high and long jumps and evolved into a potent 10K runner. Marty, a hero New York City firefighter with Ladder 18, died tragically at age 25 fighting an arson fire in 1977 on Eight street off Avenue C, where "The Marty Celic - Firemen's Park" was established on the site. 
   
  Tom Celic, a 43 year old executive at Marsh, lost his life at the World Trade Center Tragedy on 9-11. Tom was a first class distance runner with two NYC Marathon wins as first runner from Staten Island in two of the years he competed.  Both Marty and Tom lived life fully and were committed in their support of community and friends, who continue to honor their memories. 
   
  The Celic Run is the new name for The Marty Celic Running Festival, established after Marty's death with its 26th. running on September 8th 2001. Tom has been at the center of assuring the quality and success of the race for the last ten years. "The Celic Run" continues to permit an annual track scholarship award at Monsignor Farrell HS, where both Marty and Tom ran. Marty's NYFD "Brothers" remain close to the Celic family since 1977 and continue to provide planning and logistical support for the run. A competitive dimension exists in the run as fire companies compete for bragging rights in earnest. There are many award categories too numerous to mention and cash awards also including a post race party also. You can enter on www.sirunning.com and www.active.com"
   
• FASHION WATCH:  Time flies, and not many people keep careful track of how one changes over time.  Unless, of course, someone else is keeping track ...  Here, the singlet is always the same Central Park Track Club orange/blue/white, but the hairstyle changes with time.  The running has gotten a lot faster too, which may or may not be related to the hairstyle.

• THUNDER WATCH:  We have always said that there is only one safety rule for the workouts --- "The workout stops when there is thunder/lightning."  There were several occasions this year, when the workout continued in spite of a couple of lightning flashes.  As things turned out, nothing bad happened on those occasions, which may breed complacency.  On this Friday night, there was an extended thunderstorm in New York City, with an inclusive package of loud thunderclaps, 3,000 to 5,000 lightning stirkes on the ground, strong gales and even hailstones.  A man in lower Manhattan was killed by a lightning bolt when he went up to his building roof to watch the spectacle and dance in the rain.  This was exactly the type of thunderstorm that you do not want to mess with.
   
• NEWSWEEK CHIMES IN TOO:  Mark Starr poses the question: "Is Lance Armstrong Superman?"  "Yes, I said, in surrender. Absolutely! Four Tours de Force in a row. Lance is in a class by himself ... But even as I said it, I suspected that come December, when these judgments are rendered, Lance will not be the man (for the Sportsman of the Year)."  Why not?  "It's the specter of drugs that hovers over his sport."  While willing to grant that there is not a single shred of evidence on Lance himself, "But it inevitably tempers my enthusiasm and that of many of my colleagues for his achievements. And that's one of the saddest commentaries on modern sports. Those of us most familiar with the terrain can't convince ourselves that our champions are clean. I will always admire the courage of Lance Armstrong's comeback and his cancer crusade. But as much as I want to reclaim the innocence of my youthful view of sports, I just can't be a true believer any more. Not in any of these record-smashers. In pretty much any of our sports. So I guess that means not in "Sportsman of the Year" awards either."
   
  Okay, so what is going to be the Sportsman of the Year?  We begin by eliminating the drug-plagued and/or scandal-plagued major sports --- American football, basketball, baseball, athletics, hockey, boxing, tennis, swimming, soccer, cycling, rugby, jai alai, ... and we are left with David Hite (Angler of the Year)! 
     
• THURSDAY ROAD WORKOUT REPORT: Only thirty-eight people were present at the start of the workout on this hot day with sticky humidity.  Not included in this fair and honest count are: Jeff Wilson on his bike, Darlene Miloski showing up just after the first hill repeat, Tom Phillips and Heidi Newell showing up after the workout and Frank Schneiger pushing a baby carriage.  How is it that we have this terrible feeling that those who did not run this workout are having a better time?
   
  The workout description was not distributed by email today.  For the record, it goes as follows: "Head east across 72nd Street to the boat house.  Four hill repeats up to Cleopatra's Needle at 5K race pace.  After the fourth one, continue jogging up to the reservoir.  Run the mile from East 90th Street to West 86th Street at 10 mile race pace.  Jog back to the statue for a total distance of about 6 miles.  Those hill repeats should really be done as if you were running strong in the second half of the club championship race, up this very same hill."
   
  First question: "What is Cleopatra's Needle?"  Answer
   
  Second question: "I wish I had a 5K race pace, but I don't."  The answer is not "Go to your 5 mile race pace then" because you probably don't have that either.  And the answer of "Go to your 400m race pace" would be a serious mistake (especially since the distance is 700m uphill).
   
  Special instructions before the hill repeats up to Cleopatra's Needle: "There is a New York Philharmonic concert on the Great Lawn tonight.  This means that there will be lots of people walking over.  This does not mean that we can run them over.  And I mean it."  Oh, really?
   
  All of a sudden, we found that we have a pentagon-(or hexagon-?) shaped hut right in the workout assembly area.  Since the door was tightly locked, this was not an outhouse.  In any case, one unnamed person said, "I'm going to come back in the middle of the night and apply orange paint to this hut."
   
  Bola Awofeso said: "I'm going to try to run the workout tonight.  I am really not happy to have gotten injured and therefore having to miss the national outdoor track championships next week ... oh, I see Ana Echeverri coming over right now.  Yes, there is finally someone that I can run with ... hmmm ... I am forgetting something ... Ana is fast these days!  I will never be able to keep up with her!"
   
  Amy Sheeran remarked: "Of all the days for me to come back to an outdoor road workout, I have to find a very hot day on which we are going to do hill repeats!"
   
  Next week, our coach Tony Ruiz will be taking his vacation while we continue to run in the heat.  Tuesday's workout will be supervised by Sid Howard and Thursday's workout will be supervised by Alan Ruben (or Stuart Calderwood).  As his parting shot, Tony Ruiz said, "This means that I was just joking when I said at the last workout that we were going to have batting/fielding practice next week."  So everyone who boarded up their windows after they read the other website can now have their window view back sooner than they thought.  This is not to say that our coach is not taking the softball game with GNY seriously.  "We have been beaten by other teams (NY Harriers and Warren Street) two years in a row.  In this game, it's three strikes and you are out!  So we cannot afford to lose this one."
   
  Here is Shelley Farmer's description of how she got her photo taken with Lance Armstrong (see next item): "I was able to outsprint the security people right before he got on the helicopter.  I handed my camera to some stranger and I just hoped that the photo would come out."  While in France, Shelley logged over four hundred miles on the bicycle, but that obviously did not compare with the guys in the Tour de France.  She said, "It is impossible to keep up with those guys.  They look fast on television, but they are a lot faster in real life."
    
• SHELLEY FARMER AND THE MAILLOT JAUNE:  Remember how Lauren Eckhart said she was scanning for Shelley Farmer high and low in the OLN-TV coverage of the Tour de France?  Look no further, because we have a photo of Shelley with Lance Armstrong wearing the tour leader's yellow jersey.  For the rest of you who are green with envy, you will get an opportunity this Sunday (August 4th) at the New York Cycling Championships downtown, where you too can get a photo op with Lance if you have sharp elbows and/or you can get an introduction from Stacy Creamer, the editor of Lance's book.

• JULY WEB ACTIVITIY REPORT:  It is once again the first day of a new month and therefore time to gloat at how well we are doing.  In response to the Kochian question of "How am I doing?", the characteristic Kochian response is ... well, there isn't any because the speaker absolutely does not care for any feedback  Ah, we digress and by a lot at that, but the real answer is that we are doing just great in our goal to destroy worker productivity at the major financial institutions in this town.  This month, we were handicapped by not having a major race photo album.  The largest audience increase is for this Journal page, now up to 3,500 page views per month, and we could have much bigger numbers if only we had sold our souls to the Great Cycling Devil by covering the Tour de France.
   
  The most dangerous trend that we observed is that the Food Critics page is about to overtake the workout pages.  Given the nature of those food reviews, this is not even a case of us giving up running for gourmet food.
    
• IT'S ALWAYS THE MOTHER-IN-LAW'S FAULT:  At the Tour de France, Lithuanian Raimondas Rumsas, who was hitherto quite unknown, ascended the podium for third-place.  Then his wife Edita was found by Italian custom officer to be carrying a cache of corticoids, erythropoietin, testosterone, growth hormones and anabolic steroids.   Rumsas said, "I have ridden this Tour in a completely honest and legal manner.  My wife is not my doctor and does not supply me with any medicines.  She just accompanies me to the races because she is my biggest fan."  He added that the products were for his mother-in-law.  This opens up a completely new line of inquiry --- "What did mom intend to do with the stuff?"  So far, mom is mum.
   
  Somewhere in there, there is a good comedy that remains to be written, one that would weave together absurdist ingredients such as: East German sports research institutes, Italian medical doctors, Chinese running coaches, snooping national testers, the janitors who were too afraid to clear out the collections of hyperdermic needles in the Olympic Village, killer hornet juice, Finnish reindeer milk, turtle blood soup, altitude-simulation oxygen-deprived tanks, spiked toothpaste, switched/bungled A/B samples and, now, steroid-enhanced mother-in-laws.
    
• OUR OWN TIPS REPORT:  This is what Big Brother can do --- at the Tuesday Night At The Races two weeks ago, we reported that a certain runner changed his mind about going to the race and ended up at the East 6th Street track instead.  Afterwards, the runner said, "You got me into trouble!  I told the coach that I was on vacation and then she read the item!"  Well, this week, the same runner said, "This time, it took me a bit longer to change my mind about going to the race, but here I am at the East 6th Street track again."  And you bet the coach will be reading this!  Of course, we will always rationalise that we are doing this for our runner's own good.  Meanwhile, we are heading down into the basement in anticipation of the nuclear retaliation from him ...
   
• FIRST!  TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE RACES RESULTS:  We are the first website to publish the race results (that is, for our teammates only), thanks to Jesse Lansner who copied down the names and times.  Contributions also came from Noah Perlis and Frank Morton.  As for the rest of the world who ran that race, you too can read about your times promptly if you join the Central Park Track Club ...
   
• NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC IN THE PARK:  The second and last concert in Central Park will be held on Thursday (August 1st), with a programme of Rossini's William Tell Overture, Saint-Saëns's Cello Concerto No.1, and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances.  We may be able to hear the Lone Ranger theme near the end of our workout (but please watch out for the pedestrians at West 83rd Street), but we will be too early for the fireworks at the finale.
   
  On a related note, most of the Mostly Mozart concert series (which was going to be mostly not Mozartian music anyway) have been cancelled because the musicians are out on strike.  Many years ago, we loved these concerts because they were informal and they played many non-standard Mozartian works that are not usually heard.  Prime examples would be the concert arias such as the beautfiul piano-accompanied version (which is much superior to the violin-accompanied version) of K. 490 Non temer, amato bene, which is the encounter of the opera aria and piano sonata.
    
• TUESDAY TRACK WORKOUT REPORT  It was ninety-something degrees out there!  It was a little bit better than yesterday because the humidity had crept down a bit and because of the strong breeze coming through.  No sign of thunderstorms, though.  Fifty-five people were at the distance runners' workout and none at the sprinters/middle-distance runners workout due to the Tuesday Night At The Races meet uptown.  The good news is that sprinters love heat, but we don't know how many people would want to enter and/or finish that 3000m race.  Unusual sightings at the workout tonight included (1) Toby Tanser with an Italian friend; (2) Harry Lichenstein with his hand in a cast; (3) a U Penn fast woman; and then the all too usual sightings of soccer players.
   
  Pre-workout show was the photo-album circulation.  First up was the the Ironman USA photos --- lots of people in the water, more people in the water, still some more people in the water and they all wear the same color hats going out in one single wave.  What excitement!  Then we saw a runner flanked by two other runners with no numbers.  Even more excitement!  Next up were the Bitter End photos, which will be posted on this website momentarily.
   
  The weigh-in/weigh-out continues, with the premise that if you don't lose a pound after the workout, then you haven't worked hard enough.  But on a night like this, we could just sit in the stands, do nothing and lose a pound from sweating.
   
  The workout was 12x400m with 200m jog recovery.  The last half of the 400m's were supposed to be run at 5K race pace.  We were quite surprised to see the large number of female runners in the "D" group who came in at 80 seconds for the final 400m's.  80 second quarters is equivalent to 5:20 per mile, which in turn translates to about 16:30 for 5K.  Well, this is really news to us that we have so many 16:30 5K women these days.  Let's see what happens to them on race day!
   
  Periodically, newcomers wonder where they should leave their belongings while they run.  Presently, we leave our belongings in the stand and make an effort to keep an eye on that area whenver we come around the track.  For many years now, there have not been any property thefts.  Of course, as your stockbroker will caution you, past performance is no guarantee for the future.  So you would be smart (1) not to bring your life savings to the track; (2) to keep your essential valuables (e.g. your diamond-studded gold watch) on you; and (3) to check your belongings before you leave.  Today, one of our runners forgot the last point and had to race back to the track to retrieve his wallet.  P.S.  Since we have a couple of timers who just stand around and chat with the local girls, you can always ask them to hold onto your (very fat) wallets while you run.

WEEK OF JULY 23-JULY 29, 2002

• ANTI-TROLL FAQ  This link may be of interest if you want to know "what is a troll, what do they do, why do they do it, and what can one do about them."  Most of these actions are not applicable to this website, because this is a completely moderated site which offers zero opportunity for trolls (except ourselves, of course).  
    
• BITE ME!   A couple of days ago, we linked to Ron Borges' story on MSNBC.com about Lance Armstrong not being an athlete.  At that time, we said that it was so poor that it had to be a troll.  Well, Neeraj Engineer sent us this VeloNews.com article where someone else bit on the troll, while knowing full well that it was a troll.  
   
  Meanwhile, let us make our only 'stab' on this story.  Since Ron Borges is supposed to be a boxing writer, we will link you to the latest boxing story on MSNBC.com ... is this what Ron Borges' idea of true athletes looks like?  
   
  P.S.  The above is how you handle a troll --- 
  (1) you never respond directly because you cannot let 'the terrorists win';
  (2) you act in an even more unfair, derogatory and demeaning way to them before your own loyal audience;
  (3) you give the troll no opportunity to ever respond to you;
  (4) and, most importantly, you show no mercy by dragging their brands through mud --- like reminding everyone that the Ron Borges' troll piece appeared on that second-rate piece of junk known as MSNBC.com that was brought to you by General Electric-NBC (Bob Wright) and Microsoft (Bill Gates) --- and this extremely unfavorable comment will be read by several thousand people who will remember it very well ...
   
• THINK YOU OWN THE SIDEWALK?  A July 16, 2000 New York Times article by Marc Santora contains these basic rules:

First, walking rules are like driving rules.  "Stay to the right is the golden, No. 1 rule," says Chris Avila, 29, who has lived in the city for nine years.  Europeans used to driving on the left side of the road have acute problems getting used to New York sidewalks, said Giannandrea Marongiu, 36, who moved to New York from Italy five years ago.  "They don't know where to go," he said.  "They are all over the place."
 
Second, don't be a sudden stopper.  "People who stop short really get me," said Carla Melman, 26, a lifelong New Yorker.  She said it was the equivalent to a car wreck on the Long Island Expressway on a Hamptons weekend.
 
Third, when walking with friends, don't crowd every lane of the sidewalk.  Ms. Avila said she reserves a special sidewalk in hell for "mall walkers," which she defined as groups who insist on walking three or four abreast.  "They make me so mad," she said.  "When you are around a group of mall walkers, you just have to find a way around them"
 
Fourth, keep it moving.  The average New York City fast walker does not have to get stuck behind a pack of mall walkers to grow sour.  A single person moving at a slow clip-clop can be enough.  There is even a word for the slowpoke: meanderthal.  An Internet dictionary of slang defines him as "an annoying individual moving slowly and aimlessly in front of another individual who is in a bit of a hurry."

Why are we telling you this?  Well, we are sure that you must have been frustrated by these "mall walkers" at some time and so you are probably on the side of people who respect walking etiquette.  From there on, it is not too much to think that there are also certain rules of running etiquette that ought to be respected.  At the risk of seeming repetitious, we will give you four rules that mirror those listed in the article.

First, running rules are (almost) universal.  On the track, you run in the counter-clockwise direction and you run on the inside lane because that represents the shortest distance.  Do not run in the opposite direction on the inside lane because you would be a menace to public safety.  On the road, this is somewhat ambiguous.  While the park rules imply that ALL runners should be running in the opposite direction of the vehicular traffic, this is routinely ignored as people go in whichever direction they feel like.  It is more important to recognize that you share the roads with people who are running in both directions.  But when running around the Central Park reservoir, it is preferable to run in the counter-clockwise direction with the majority of the other runners.

Second, don't be a sudden stopper.  Never come to a dead stop in the middle of the track, because you don't know who is coming from behind.  By stopping suddenly, you are endangering yourself and others by setting up a multiple pile-up chain reaction.  On the track, you can either step off the track to the inside or peel off to the outside while peeking over the shoulder to make sure that nobody is coming up.  On the road, you should never stop right after the finish line because you can cause a pile-up and that is why race officials always tell you to keep moving.  Caution should also be applied when you veer off to get water. 

Third, when running with your teammates, don't crowd every lane of the track or road.  On the outdoor track, your group can line up wide across the starting line but your group should have moved into the two inside lanes after the first 30 meters or so.  Generally speaking, lane one is for running and lane two is for passing.  It is not fair to other people to have to go into lane four or lane five to go around your group.  On the indoor track at the Armory, lane one is prohibited from use during practice to prevent wear-and-tear.  Generally speaking, lane two is for running and lane three is for passing.  On the roads in the Central Park, there are two recreational lanes for runners and two vehicular lanes.  Your group should take up one recreational lane only, as the other recreational lane is for people coming from the other directions.  Running six or seven abreast across three lanes is unacceptable!

Fourth, keep it moving.  If you are going to go slow, don't do it in lane one on a track (see second point above) and don't do it three or four abreast on the road  (see third point above).  As Sid Howard says, "Keep the jog alive!"

• OUR FAVORITE CARTOON SERIES:  This is not syndicated in the mainstream media because it is rude and offensive.  The drawing is lifeless, the language is profane and the topics are commonplace current subjects and clichés.  It is the juxtaposition of the three elements that compels you to contemplate the absurdity  of it all.

• OUR BEST RACE RESULT OF THE WEEK: ... goes to Naomi Reynolds, who has won the last four Van Cortlandt Park Summer Series races.  Our youngest runner is now our winningest runner too.
   
• COMMONWEALTH GAMES MARATHON SWEEP:  We are going to break our promise not to mention these games here by just saying that Australia swept the women's marathon with a 1-2-3 finish by Kerryn McCann, Krishna Stanton and Jackie Gallagher.  Go, Aussies!

Kerryn McCann

P.S.  Here, we will relent by permitting one single mention of the Tour de France --- Robbie McEwen won the final stage in Paris and earned the green jersey for points leader in the sprint classification.  Go, Aussies! 

• NEW START TIME FOR NYC MARATHON:  "New York City Marathon officials have announced a 10:40 a.m. start time for the invited women's field, with the invited men and remaining 30,000 runners scheduled to begin at 11:15 a.m. This exciting change is expected to increase the lead women's visibility to the 2.5 million spectators along the course and millions more television viewers.  The invited women's field will consist of female runners expected to run faster than two hours, 40 minutes (2:40). As in the past, all 30,000 marathon participants will start on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Staten Island and finish at Tavern on the Green in Central Park, with the first-place woman runner expected to cross the finish line 20 to 25 minutes before the first-place man."
   
  This will be great for most people (runners and spectators), except for that small group of us who want to be everywhere (traditional itinerary: Brooklyn Academy of Music at the 8 mile mark, subway back to Manhattan on First Avenue and quick sprint to Central Park East Drive).  If we want to see our teammates in Brooklyn, then we won't be able to get back to Manhattan in time to see the lead elite women.
    
• DRINK PLENTY OF WATER (BUT NOT TOO MUCH):  This week's front cover features the luminous Alison Rosenthal and Alayne Adams holding water bottles in their hands.  The caption "Drink Plenty Of Water" serves to remind us that we need to replenish our bodies with water in these hot-weather days. 

  

  But there is also such a thing as drinking too much water, or "water intoxication" and it is not an unusual problem in long-distance events such as running and cycling.  When an athlete consumes large amounts of water over the course of the event, blood plasma (the liquid part of blood) increases.  As this takes place, the salt content of the blood is diluted. At the same time, the athlete is losing salt by sweating.  Subsequently, the amount of salt available to the body tissues decreases over time to a point where the loss interferes with brain, heart, and muscle functions. The official name for this condition is hyponatremia. The symptoms generally mirror those of dehydration (apathy, confusion, nausea, and fatigue). If untreated, hyponatremia can lead to coma and even death.

  We quote from Runners World Online's daily chat (July 26th, 2002) with Lornah Kiplagat:

Runner's World Daily: What did you learn from your experience during and after the Chicago Marathon last year?
 
Lornah Kiplagat: I learned how important it is to know exactly how much you can drink before and during a race.  I just drank too much before the race, and my body couldn't handle it. This is a problem, because race directors and doctors are not warning runners about what can happen, because they're afraid of dehydration. What happened with me (suspected hyponatremia) is much more dangerous than dehydration. In the hospital in Chicago, they told me I could have died, but that I stopped just in time. My hope is that more race directors and doctors will be aware of what could happen.

We also note that most professional athletes (such as runners or cyclists) do not accept drinks or food offered by strangers.  The water may be impure (e.g. bacteria-infected).  Worse yet, there is the paranoid thought that the drinks may be spiked with illegal substances (e.g. steroids).  It is not known if this has ever really happened before, but this has certainly been used as the explanation by athletes who tested positive for illegal substances.
  
Now that we have established that pros should not accept drinks from strangers, the next related question is, "Should professional athletes brush their teeth?"  Apparently, the answer is "No" according to Dieter Baumann, who claimed that his positive test result for the anabolic steroid nandrolone was due to someone spiking his toothpaste.

• STAY OUT OF THE WATER!: The bad news never stops coming.  Having just begged people to stay away from the bikes, we just heard one of our top Canadian runners say, "I just took my first swimming lesson."  We are not going to ask "Is squash next?" because that has already happened to our other top Canadian runner.
   
• MORE ON ANN COULTER:  More goodies from www.dailyhowler.com: 

There's much to gape at in Coulter's book. You can enjoy the tribal thinking, in which her tribe-the conservatives-has all the good people, and the other tribe-the liberals-is all "vicious" thugs. Or you can have big fun playing Freud, noting how constantly Coulter assails her own traits, not those found in others.

For us, though, it's still the dissembling. If you read this book with NEXIS nearby, there's amusement on almost each page. Yesterday, for example, we finally decided to check a claim which we had found a bit odd. When President Reagan sought re-election, Coulter says, the liberals conspired to get him:
 

COULTER (page 132): Most peculiarly, a spate of general-interest articles on senility began to pop up in large-circulation magazines. In the ten months before the 1984 election, Newsweek, Time, Ladies' Home Journal and U.S. News & World Report all ran major pieces on senility. That's too many to be a coincidence. The LexisNexis archives yield only one magazine article on senility (U.S. News) in 1976; zero in 1980; zero in 1988; zero in 1992; one in 1996 (Time magazine); and one in 2000 (Maclean's). In other words, the same number of magazine articles on senility were published in 1984 alone as in all other presidential election years combined in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Coulter's cites all carried footnotes. Incomparably, we looked them all up.

Coulter was right on one key point; the four pieces were not "a coincidence." Two of the articles (Newsweek and Time) were written about Reagan's stumbling performance at the October 7 debate-a performance so weak that the president's campaign manager, Sen. Paul Laxalt, said that Reagan "had an off night.but it wasn't because of any physical or mental deficiency. He was brutalized by a briefing process that didn't make any sense.It filled his head with so many facts and figures that he lost his spontaneity and his visionary concepts."  In short, the mags were simply exploring a topic which was being widely discussed. Readers will see how Time took advantage:
 

TIME (10/22/84): About 10% of Americans between the ages of 65 and 75 are senile. The President clearly is not. Doctors watching the debate saw no signs of slurred speech or outright memory loss, the usual telltales. They did suggest that Reagan should be regularly tested for mental acuity. Though Reagan promised in 1980 that he would undergo testing for senility if elected, so far he has not. Earlier this year he told an interviewer that he would take the tests "only if there was some indication that I was drifting.Nothing like that has happened."

.Stress, not age, may explain Reagan's slips. "Any of us could be capable of that kind of performance live on national TV," said Dr. William Applegate, a geriatrics expert at the University of Tennessee.

There is no reason to believe that Reagan's intelligence is diminishing. "The competence of an individual does not change much with age," said Dr. T. Franklin Williams, director of the National Institute on Aging. "Many people in their 80s and 90s are quite capable of being President."

Reagan has aged less visibly in office than most of his modern predecessors. Indeed, his robust example may undermine the notion that age necessarily saps vigor. Said Spar: "Nowadays people between 65 and 75 are statistically more like young people than they are like old people."

Her readers have no way to know it, but this was part of the War on Reagan which Coulter flogs in her book. Meanwhile, the Newsweek piece which Coulter cites ended with this assessment:
 

NEWSWEEK (10/22/84): Doctors see no reason why a man Reagan's age shouldn't be president.  They cite Winston Churchill, among others, as an impressive precedent. And, they point out, decision makers often suffer less stress than the younger people who execute their edicts. "There's no reason a priori why someone in his 70s may not be just the person we need," says Albert. "Sometimes, those very people have the accumulated wisdom, knowledge and expertise to deal wisely with complex situations."

The article-a "major piece on senility"-never once mentions the word. By the way, was it only "the liberals" who were discussing Reagan's performance? As Newsweek noted in its piece, the first such examination was a front-page article in the editorially conservative Wall Street Journal. "IS OLDEST U.S. PRESIDENT NOW SHOWING HIS AGE?" the headline had said. "REAGAN DEBATE PERFORMANCE INVITES OPEN SPECULATION ON HIS ABILITY TO SERVE."

OK, but was Ladies' Home Journal runnin' down Ron when its published its "major piece" back in August? Sorry.  That article was wholly personal, a writer's report on the health care received by her elderly mother. It had nothing whatever to do with Reagan. And to the extent that it offered an overview, this is what it said:
 

LADIES HOME JOURNAL (8/84): [Medical professionals] should be well aware that "old age" and "senility" are not interchangeable terms. In fact, only 5 percent of older people ever suffer from severe intellectual impairment. Fifteen percent may suffer some mild disability, such as minor memory loss. But 80 percent of those who live to very old age, into their eighties or even nineties, never experience any symptoms of senility at all.

We tend to forget that Picasso was painting the last day of his life. He died at ninety-one. Alfred Hitchcock was planning a new film. He died at eighty. Martha Graham, America's greatest dancer and choreographer, produced brilliant new dances this year-the year of her ninetieth birthday. What is true for them is true for hundreds of thousands of older Americans.

And how about that U. S. News piece? Its headline: "Dynamic Elderly; Busier, Healthier, Happier." Here's how the agit-prop started:
 

U. S. NEWS (7/2/84): With more than 1 out of 10 Americans now over 65, the nation is seeing the rise of a powerful "gerontocracy" of elderly who are healthier, richer, better educated and politically more active than older generations of the past.
President Ronald Reagan is 73 years old. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr., is 78. Nobel scientist Barbara McClintock, 82, carries on her work in a Long Island laboratory. Houston surgeon Michael DeBakey, 75, still performs heart transplants. Runner Johnny Kelley, 76, has competed in 53 Boston marathons. Today, the average life span is an unprecedented 74 years-up from only 47 in 1900.

The mag ran an interview with gerontologist Robert Butler. He too praised the robust Reagan. "There needs to be a certain amount of tension, stress and triumph in life," Butler said. "President Reagan, at age 73, is a good example. He seems to love his job. He feels very much in command and derives much stimulation and satisfaction from being President." That's how the liberals at U. S. News tried to bring Ron to his end.

According to Coulter, those are the four "major pieces on senility" the liberals gimmicked up to get Reagan.  Strangely, they all stressed Reagan's "robust example" or the high achievements of the "dynamic elderly." By the way-if the liberals were trying to get Ronald Reagan, don't you think that someone would have written a scary piece about aging? No such piece was ever produced. So Coulter just made a few up.

Coulter's book is professional wrestling-a pathologically inaccurate work. And don't forget the things we've shown you the next time she shows up on TV. Coulter is a fake and a fraud; her work is a giant hoax on her readers. Hosts and reviewers have a big choice to make. Here's the question they must ask: Do we tell?

It should be clear that we are a politically neutral website.  For a balanced treatment, we quote an opposite point of view from an authoritative source (Walmart.com): "With incisive reasoning and meticulous research, Ann Coulter examines the events and personalities that have shaped modern political discourse-the bickering, backstabbing, and name-calling that have made cultural mountains out of partisan molehills. She demonstrates how the media, especially, are biased-and usually wrongheaded-and have done all in their power to obfuscate the issues and the people behind them, bending over backward to villainize and belittle the right, while rarely missing an opportunity to praise the left."
 
Of course, you must all be wondering why we can't seem to let this subject go.  It is not so much the subject that interests us, but we admire the meticulous dissection of Ann Coulter by Bob Somerby (DailyHowler).  Longtime visitors to this website will be familiar with that kind of approach on this website, except most of the time we are willing to let things slide past without comment.  After all, we have real jobs in our real lives working on real issues.  
 
But knowing our reputation, people will send us articles periodically in the hope that we will pounce.  The latest one by Ron Borges (MSNBC.com) came from our Canadian triathletes and would have been enough to push us over the threshold ("Someone postulated on National Public Radio a week or so ago that Lance Armstrong was the greatest athlete in the world. Greatest athlete in the world? I wonder if he's an athlete at all." and "If Armstrong is a great athlete, so are marathon runners. Athletes, for my money, must do more with their bodies than pump their legs up and down. If that's all it took, the Radio City Rockettes would have to be considered the greatest athletes of all time.") but for the fact that we are presently working double-overtime for the Puerto Ricans.  So instead, we will tell you to read it and let your blood boil.  Just bear in mind that this piece is so poor that it is has to be a troll (definition: a posting designed to attract predictable responses or flame), just like our next item about the England-India cricket test match.
 
P.S.  MSNBC.com felt obliged to come back with Mike Celizic to proclaim "Armstrong belongs among best ever"  and trashing football players ("... you can make a very good argument that a 350-pound offensive tackle isn't an athlete at all. He can barely run 100 yards without blowing lunch, probably can't hit a golf ball or a baseball, and you don't want to watch him dance, unless you've had many beers and have a strong sense of the absurd") and baseball players ("... and most people would pick David Wells as Exhibit A, but Curt Schilling would do just as well. I mean, what does he do besides stand on a little hill and throw a ball with an arm that was genetically gifted to be able to do so?") in the process.  Now that they have trolled both extremes, they can just wait for the outraged flames to pour in from everywhere.  Is this anyway to get ratings?

• QUICK TUTORIAL ON SOFTBALL FOR OUR AUSSIES & BRITS:  ... ya know, it's just like cricket ...
   
       
   
  Quick update report:  On Day 2 of the first test match (held over five days, July 25-29) between England and India, England started shakily with Vaughan caught lbw for a duck, but then a century by Nasser Hussain enabled them to collect a mammoth score of 487 runs.  India started just as shakily with Jaffer out for 1, but replied with 130 for 3.  Unfortunately, nightwatchman Nehra was bowled out for a duck before played ended.
    
• USATF NATIONAL MASTERS TRACK & FIELD CHAMPIONSHIPS ROSTER  University of Maine, Orono, ME.  August 8th-11th
  Central Park Track Club performance list:
  M55-59 200m, Richie Hamner, 26.10
  W34-39 400m, Julia Casals
  M35-39 400m, Alan Bautista
  M40-44 400m, Luca Trovato
  M55-59 400m, Richie Hamner, 57.80
  W30-34 800m, Devon Sargent, 2:19.80
  W35-39 800m, Kim Mannen, 2:28.44
  M35-39 800m, Chris Potter, 2:02.0
  M45-49 800m, Frank Morton, 2:25.30
  M55-59 800m, Richie Hamner, 2:20.0
  M60-64 800m, Sid Howard, 2:20.0
  M60-64 800m, Dan Hamner
  M65-69 800m, Jim Aneshansely, 2:30.0
  W30-34 1500m, Devon Sargent, 4:52.55
  W35-39 1500m, Kim Mannen, 5:17.0
  W45-49 1500m, Mary Diver
  M35-39 1500m, Chris Potter, 4:39.0
  M45-49 1500m, Frank Morton, 5:07.6
  M60-64 1500m, Sid Howard, 4:51.0
  M65-69 1500m, Jim Aneshansley, 5:25.0
  M40-44 Steeplechase, Craig Plummer
  W45-49 5000m, Mary Diver
  M30-34 400m hurdles, Chris Potter
  M40-44 Decathlon, Craig Plummer
   

• IRONMAN USA ROSTER:  As far as we can tell, our entrants for this Sunday's race are Ramon Bermo, Jay Borok, Joe Frazetta, Josh Friedman, Eric Schmitz and Scott Willett.  Of these people, we have some rookies and three returnees (Ramon Bermo, Jay Borok and Scott Willett).  Last year, Jay Borok injured his back when he fell down a flight of stairs and even though he was in a great deal of pain, he still bettered his time from the previous year.  This year, he has somehow managed to find the time to train for this crazy event between his crazy work schedule and going to night school.  We wish Jay and the rest of the team the best of luck.
    

• REACH THE BEACH RELAY SLOT:  Craig Chilton entered this September 27-28 race in New Hampshire and now finds that he has to withdraw.  If anyone is interested in taking his spot, please email him at craigchilton@hotmail.com.  This is a wonderful relay race through beautiful New Hampshire.  The Central Park Track Club is represented by two teams.  P.S.  Canadian citizenship is preferred, but not a requirement.
    

• THURSDAY ROAD WORKOUT REPORT: Although the weather forecast called for high temperatures, it was actually nice and cool this evening.  Forty-eight people were at the workout, even counting Margaret Schotte doing stretches at 81st Street while waiting for her group.  That is a perfectly valid choice for Margaret, with the major drawback being that she gets written up in the workout report.  Of course, she could always stretch behind the bushes in the future ...
    
  There is a precept that relay teams are faster than the same individuals running by themselves over the same distance.  So it is that Tony Ruiz emailed the workout and then telehphoned Alan Ruben take charge of the workout because Tony was running late.  Very quickly, the workout was delivered at which point Tony showed up just in time.  The net effect was that the workout began at 7:14pm.  Yes, the precept was tested and verified tonight.  Starting (relatively) early tonight had the unfortunate consequence that we did not get to see the leaders go past in the Media Corporate Challenge race tonight.  All we know so far is that Sue Pearsall was second overall female in the race.
   
  The post-workout conversation topic seemed to drift far too much towards some cycling race that may be taking place in some foreign country.  Unfortunately, the knowledge of the conversants left a lot to be desired.  For example, when our two triathlon stars of the season talked about the third-place cyclist, they could not come up with the name and it took the most unlikely non-cycling person to say, "Rumsas!"  Meanwhile, Lauren Eckhart says, "I've been looking at the television coverage very carefully every night.  Shelley Farmer is in France right now, and I know that I can recognize her if the tv camera just pans over her for one little instant!"
   
  We may have a walk-on runner tonight, with a 29 minute 10K best and a 2:19 marathon best.  Unfortunately, that was in the 1980's and, as Alan Ruben can attest, your running career is over when you hit 40!  Of course, just in case you misunderstand us, the only thing that matters is whether he enjoys running with us and he does not ever have to run a race.  Meanwhile, we understand that there is a 2:14 800m Ivy League female runner around but her current coach refuses to send her over to us.  She would have been a perfect fit for our plan to hoard all the fast middle-distance women in this town.  Well, so it looks like that there is nothing else that we can do except to take over that coach's $120 million-revenue-per-year company and make him report to us personally.  And according to the trade press, this may happen any moment now.  P.S.  Our nickname at the office is "Attila The Hun," so beware!
    
  Running in the park in the summer is dangerous because of the large number of cyclists and rollerbladers going at high speeds.  Tonight, when our group exited towards Columbus Circle, there was a near collision, causing our triathlete coach to yell, "Damn cyclist!"  Erratum: Actually, he yelled, "Damn Central Park Track Club cyclist!" because it was Otto Hoering on the wheels!
   
  Our Canadian male triathlete was apparently kidnapped on his way home, but his wife did not seem concerned because she was sure that her husband was being cornered to discuss the turmoil in the telecommunications sector these days.  His wife explained her husband's job, "You must have read about Jack Grubman.  He is like Jack Grubman, except that he is not Jack Grubman."  We hope that this explanation was clearer than mud.
   
  Most popular question of the evening, "Wow, you really do hate Ann Coulter, don't you?"  Wait a minute, we did not read her book and we did not write that diatribe.  After all, we have a real job in real life doing really meaningful things.  This was a cut-and-paste job from  www.dailyhowler.com that we wanted to share with our readers.  If you enjoyed it, that website has plenty more.
    
  P.S. We will just say 20:57 and then bring this number up again next year.
   

• NYC RUN TO LIBERTY 10K  Most Manhattan races are confined to inside Central Park, understandably so because a street race would cause serious disruptions to vehicular traffic.  The current Manhattan street races are the Revlon Run/Walk from Time Squares to Central Park, the NYC Marathon International Breakfast Run from the United Nations to Tavern On The Green, the Fifth Avenue Mile, the Wall Street Rat Race, the American Heart Association Wall Street Run and the NYPD Memorial Run up and down the westside highway.  Going back in time, we remember a 5K run up the west side from around West 15th Street to finish in Lincoln Center, the Goodwill Games road race from the United Nations down FDR Drive to end in Battery Park, and a 5K run from the United Nations down First Avenue to 14th Street and back.  According to today's RunnersWorld Online,"The first annual NYC Run to Liberty 10-K will take place during Labor Day weekend, on the morning of Saturday, August 31.  This inaugural people's run through the streets of Lower Manhattan will be organized by New York Road Runners, NYC & Company and NYC Sports Commission. As many as 5,000 runners are expected to participate in the run, which will wind around some of New York's famous downtown landmarks."
   

• POST-CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS SOFTBALL GAME: As is our tradition, there will be a softball game held in Central Park, in the afternoon, after the Club Championship Race 5-miler on Saturday, August 17th. This year's game will be between Central Park Track Club and Greater New York.  It will be held on field #2 of The Great Lawn (SE Corner) from 3-6pm.  Please bring any softball equipment you may have, particularly gloves. Drinks will be provided.
     
  The club championships is our most competitive team event of the year and everyone is encouraged to participate and give it their best shot. The softball game is one of the highlights of our social calendar and we invite all our members, along with their friends and members of other running clubs in the New York City area to come along and enjoy the event.
   

• ROAD RACE NOTES: John Prather's time at the Bix 7 is asterisked with this note:"I shut down at 4 miles due to the heat and then went to the medical tent for the first time in my 30 years of doing this sport."  We had a cool Wednesday, but the heat will be right back tomorrow.  Actually, this is 12:30am right now and we just woke up because we were soaked in sweat!  Drink plenty of water, please!
   
  Alan Ruben took advantage of Wednesday's cool temperature and turned in a 16:15 5K in Prospect Park.  Is the rest of the team as sharp for the Club Championships?
   
  At the last Tuesday Night At The Races, our club had 17 runners which was about 30% of the total participants.  What more can we do to make the series a success?
    

• NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (CONTINUED):  The following www.dailyhowler.com item about  Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right by Ann Coulter has been making the rounds on the weblogs: 

Coulter closes with a screed against the New York Times. "[L]iberals have absolutely no contact with the society they decry from their Park Avenue redoubts," she stupidly fumes. Then, her penultimate paragraph:
 

COULTER (page 205): The day after seven-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt died in a race at the Daytona 500, almost every newspaper in America carried the story on the front page. Stock-car racing had been the nation's fastest-growing sport for a decade, and NASCAR the second-most-watched sport behind the NFL. More Americans recognize the name Dale Earnhardt than, say, Maureen Dowd. (Manhattan liberals are dumbly blinking at that last sentence.)  It took the New York Times two days to deem Earnhardt's name sufficiently important to mention it on the first page. Demonstrating the left's renowned populist touch, the article began, "His death brought a silence to the Wal-Mart."  The Times went on to report that in vast swaths of the country people watch stock-car racing. Tacky people were mourning Dale Earnhardt all over the South!

Typical, nasty, ugly, mean stuff. For the record, Earnhardt died on Sunday, February 18, 2001. And Coulter is right about one thing. The next day, February 19, "almost every newspaper in America carried the story on the front page."

Coulter is right about something else, too-the New York Times piece to which she refers appeared on February 21. It was written by major star Rick Bragg, a down-home boy from the South. (When Bragg won a Pulitzer in 1996, the Times notice said, "Rick Bragg, 36, a native of Piedmont, Ala., has long said his life's ambition was to write about the South.") On this occasion, Bragg was writing from Earnhardt's hometown; his piece began in the local Wal-Mart because, on the day of the NASCAR crash, residents bought every last bit of the store's Earnhardt memorabilia. As Bragg explained what happened next, the tone of his piece became clear:
 

BRAGG (page one, 2/21/01): Today, it was clear what had become of some of it all: People had written their love on shirts and toys, and hung or propped them on a fence outside the offices of Dale Earnhardt Inc., one of the fanciest buildings in town. By morning, the makeshift memorial stretched 40 yards, and cars lined the country road.

"You were God to me," a mourner scribbled on a card. Another wrote, "My boyfriend's daddy loved you dearly."

To the world outside Mooresville and the other little towns around this red-clay corner of North Carolina, Dale Earnhardt might have been racing's biggest superstar, a walking corporation who won millions in prizes and millions more through smart marketing of his fame. He may have been the force behind the sport's rise to nationwide popularity, after greats like Richard Petty had faded from victory lane.

But before he was "theirs," as people here like to say, he was "ours."

Bragg is hardly a foppish "northeast liberal." But what did Coulter tell her readers? According to Coulter, Bragg had said that "tacky people were mourning Dale Earnhardt all over the South." Her nasty comment reveals the sick heart which informs her rank, bile-induced volume.

But forget about the tone of Bragg's piece; Coulter made a stronger point in that penultimate paragraph. She complained about the way the Times had supposedly ignored Earnhardt's death altogether. Everyone else treated Earnhardt's death as a page one story the day it occurred. Coulter's question: Why, oh why, did the great New York Times wait two more days to put Dale on its cover?

We suspect you know the answer to that; Coulter was inventing. (Again!) In fact, the Times did run the story of Earnhardt's death on its front page on Monday, February 19. (NEXIS makes this perfectly clear. Which part of "Page 1" doesn't Coulter understand?) The headline might have provided a clue: "Stock Car Star Killed on Last Lap of Daytona 500." The piece was written by Robert Lipsyte. Here's how the Timesman began:
 

LIPSYTE (page one, 2/19/01): Stock car racing's greatest current star and one of its most popular and celebrated figures, Dale Earnhardt, crashed and was killed today after he made a characteristically bold lunge for better position on the last turn of the last lap of the sport's premier event, the Daytona 500.

Lipsyte discussed the crash itself; recent deaths to other drivers; safety devices that had been proposed; and Earnhardt's role as king of the track. Like Bragg, the Timesman captured the awe in which Earnhardt was held:
 

LIPSYTE: [NASCAR president Mike] Helton had begun the day by announcing to a drivers' meeting that because of its new television contract with Fox and NBC, Nascar had finally achieved "absolute professional status."

At that meeting.Earnhardt sat in the front row, amiably shaking hands with a parade of corporate executives in suits who seemed thrilled to touch him.

The feeling cut across all classes. As he moved through the garage area surrounded by the guests, sponsors and clients of other racing teams, a man with a videocamera reached out and screamed, "I almost touched God." No one laughed at him.

Of course, Coulter didn't demean the tone of Lipsyte's work. Instead, she simply lied about it, saying it didn't exist. Coulter wanted to close with a bang. She wished Lipsyte out of existence.

What, oh what, are we to do with someone who dissembles like Coulter? Again, we're quoting the next-to-last paragraph in her whole book. As usual, she builds a screed around an invented fact-one designed to demean those she hates. And just how nasty is Coulter's conclusion? She draws an ugly conclusion indeed. "Except for occasional forays to the Wal-Mart," she says, "liberals do not know any conservatives." But conservatives "already know" liberals, she says. Conservatives know liberals as "savagely cruel bigots who hate America and lie for sport."

Incredibly, that is Coulter's final phrase. It closes her strange, disturbed book.

Amazing, isn't it? Coulter-having just lied through her teeth about the Times-closes with a nasty rant attacking "liberals" for lying! The patent disturbance informing this book is thus put on its fullest display. Because no one else-of the left, right or center-lies and dissembles like Coulter. Our question: Why do TV producers and book reviewers and bloggers seem to think that this is OK? The entire establishment puts up with Ann Coulter. We ask our same question: Why is that?

• FINLANDIA-HYMNI:  As the Central Park Track Club, we seemed to have been much more interested in the 'track club' portion than in the 'Central Park' side.  We were certainly remiss in not reminding everyone about the New York Philharmonic concert in the park on Wednesday night.  This was especially important since the last piece on the programme was our favorite Jean Sibelius warhorse, Finlandia.  Since you would have only listened to the orchestral version, we thought that we'll give you the words to the choral hymn version.

Finlandia Oi Suomi, katso, Sinun päiväs koittaa, yön uhka karkoitettu on jo pois, ja aamun kiuru kirkkaudessa soittaa kuin itse taivahan kansi sois. Yön vallat aamun valkeus jo voittaa sun päiväs koittaa, oi synnyinmaa. Oi nouse, Suomi, nosta korkealle pääs seppelöimä suurten muistojen, oi nouse, Suomi, näytit maailmalle sa että karkoitit orjuuden ja ettet taipunut sa sorron alle, on aamus alkanut, synnyinmaa.

Finlandia Finland, behold, thy daylight now is dawning, the threat of night has now been driven away. The skylark calls across the light of morning, the blue of heaven lets it have its way, and now the day the powers of night is scorning: thy daylight dawns, O Finland of ours! Finland, arise, and raise towards the highest thy head now crowned with mighty memory. Finland, arise, for to the world thou criest that thou hast thrown off thy slavery, beneath oppression´s yoke thou never liest. Thy morning´s come, O Finland of ours!

• WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JOHN PRATHER?  This email came from John Prather: "Good luck finding my race result from my drive home.  Hint:  It was located geographically between New York and Arizona."  A cursory search of race websites across the country has not yielded the answer yet, but we did learn a lot --- all you people in this area should be glad that there are so many local races each weekend.
    
  Additional clue from John Prather: "There was a Warren Street guy there."
   
  Solved in under two minutes:
  Step 1: Google.com search on "Simmons" and "Warren Street" yielded "Bob Simmons" of "Iowa"
  Step 2: Google.com search on "Iowa" and "race results" yielded "Bix 7"
  Step 3: Bix 7 race results search engine yielded "John Prather."
  Yes, we are Google.com search geniuses!  Can anyone do this?  Ah, the mystery is in Step 1 ... how do we know to enter "Simmons" in addition to "Warren Street"?  Sorry, we can't tell you the very obvious answer, but that is the reason why we are geniuses ...
    

• THE EUROPEANS (CHAPTER 2):  Yesterday, we wrote: "Depending on which part of the world you come from, you write your name as 'First Name-Last Name' or 'Last Name-First Name.'  That much we know, or so we thought.  So how is it that we read that a Frenchman named Bois Stephane won the Run To Home Plate 5K and a Brit named Steven Paddock finished second?  We are confused ..."  Today, we received this advice: "To unconfuse yourself, just ask, 'What is the difference between une capote anglaise and a French letter?'  Hehehe ..."  Well, well, well ... the answer is that this object is known as une capote anglaise to the French as an insult to the Engilsh and as a French letter to the English as an insult to the French.  The person offering this unsolicited advice must be quite smug about this risqué comment, which is risky for our website's family-friendly rating.
   

• TUESDAY TRACK WORKOUT REPORT:  At 6pm, the sky was pitch dark and there was thunder and lightning. 
  Question: Will we have a workout?
  Answer: Is the Pope Catholic?
    
  At 3pm, Devon Sargent sent this e-mail: "There is practice tonight at East 6th Street at 6:45pm  (starting 15 minutes)."
  At 5:53pm, Devon Sargent sent the second e-mail: "I recommend coming to practice 'cause we'll run rain or snow unless there's lightning.  Yes, the skies are looking pretty bad, but I am going to head down anyway to East 6th Street. If practice gets cancelled due to lightning, we'll have practice either Wednesday or Thursday. "
   
  Put it this way, if Kieran Calderwood can make it to the workout, why shouldn't you?
    
  Here is a helpful tip:  there is a link to weather.com from our home page from which you can obtain the color Doppler radar map in motion.  You would have seen that the heaviest rainfall had already gone past the city and off to Long Island.
   
  
   
  The workout got started with just a single announcement --- something about softball fielding practice on Sunday?  Well, never mind, before we ever get on the field, we'll have to explain the rules of the game to our Brits first.  Where do we begin?  Oh, yes, with the field positions --- the first baseman is "silly point" in cricket, the rightfielder is "long off", the leftfielder is "deep mid wicket" and so on and so forth ...

  The special post-workout activity was a weigh-in with a portable machine.  James Siegel: "Oh, dear!  After running 4x1000m and 3x300m, I have just gained 8 ounces.  How does this work?"  Bola Awofeso: "I don't see how I could have put on an extra ten pounds from this morning to now.  I don't think that a $5 lunch of Chinese food could weigh that much."  The champion of the evening is Eve Bois, but we are not spelling out the rules of the championship.  But Eve did clarify: "I am not wearing the Mizuno Maverick shoes tonight (see next item).  I swear that those shoes have been worn just once."

  See the following picture about our alpha males.  More interesting is the chimney of the Con Edison plant, which was racked by an explosive fire last Saturday and subsequently led to a power blackout downtown.  Hundreds of people ran from nearby apartments at the sight of huge clouds of black smoke, fearing terrorists had struck again.  As for us, this power plant is right outside our window but we never heard or saw a thing the whole day ...

  
  Alpha males: Erik Goetze, Isaya Okwiya, Alan Ruben, Jonathan Pillow

• MIZUNO MAVERICK:  No, we're not talking about Toby Tanser.  Rather, this comes from Eve Bois: "I have a brand new (worn once on dirt) pair of Mizuno Mavericks women's size 7.5 for sale. The retail price is $80.00 and I'll sell for the best offer over $50. (They're too big and I can't return them.) They're great shoes - and were voted best shoe/new shoe by RW, RT, and RRS just this year. (wow, doesn't that sound all technical and cool!)"
   

• MORE TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE RACES RESULTS:  The point here is that there aren't any.  We can hope that these races do not follow the footsteps of the MAC and USATF-NJ meets, of which we have seen no results yet for the entire outdoor track season.  But, of course, we can always prepare and publish our own results, beginning with:
   
  Men's Mile: 
  Jesse Lansner, 5:03.1 (personal record) with these splits
       400m: 1:18.04
       800m: 2:34.24 (1:16.20)
       1200m: 3:50.16 (1:15.92)
       Mile: 5:02.87 (1:12.71)

  And then we have Frank Morton (7/23/2002): "The results are really slow being posted for this meet. And the last one was posted in less than 24 hours! I ran the 800 meters - 2:26.0, second in this race, (2nd 800 heat of 3). After the race I was coughing continuously for 10 minutes, then I ran the 400 in 67.4."

  Anyone else out there (and you don't even have to be on our team) want their results published?  Please email rolandsoong@centralparktc.org.  At this rate, we will be able to assemble the entire set of results on our own ...

• THE EUROPEANS:  Depending on which part of the world you come from, you write your name as "First Name-Last Name" or "Last Name-First Name."  That much we know, or so we thought.  So how is it that we read that a Frenchman named Bois Stephane won the Run To Home Plate 5K and a Brit named Steven Paddock finished second?  We are confused ...
   

• RECENT RACES:  It was slim pickings this past weekend as we only found four race results.  The coming weekend is much more promising, with Ironman USA (we have three known entrants --- Ramon Bermo, Jay Borok, Joseph Frazetta, Josh Friedman, Eric Schmitz and Scott Willett --- at least two of whom are injured), the USATF Masters Eastern Regionals and then the Nike Run NYC Dash & Spash Four Miler in Central Park.  This last event is loaded with extras: "Come and meet the legendary distance runner Joan Benoit Samuelson at race registration at NIKETOWN (6 East 57th Street) on Saturday, July 27, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.; if you're one of the first 100 at registration that day, you'll receive a free gift courtesy of NIKETOWN--in addition to the race giveaway, a NIKE drawstring gym bag! The race, the second of three events in the new Fitness Series, is a 4-miler followed by a pool party. You'll also be able to try on NIKE shoes and apparel in the NIKE Innovation Van on race day."  More immediate is the Tavern On The Green race this Tuesday morning.
    

• THE POMMIES:  In the recent trivia quiz, this sentence appeared: "All Irish people are automatically Australian, and all British people are automatically non-Australian."  We were asked for an explanation and/or justification.  Accordingly, we quote from the authoritative First Austrailian Dictionary of Vulgarities and Obscenties by Bob Hudson and Larry Pickering:

Pommy.  A person of British ancestry.  Arguments rage as to the origin of the word.  Some people swear blind that convicts had POME, or Prisoner of Mother England, stencilled on their clothes or documents.  Others suggest that their faces were as red as pomegranates when they stepped off the sailing ships.  POME is a complete fabrication and the faces of people just off a four-month voyage tended to be pale or green!  The answer is simple rhyming slang: immigrant - pomegranate.  From which we get an abbreviated pommy. So there!
 
Pommy bastard.  A person of British origin with no redeeming features.  Tautological.

Of course, the Aussies are a rather opinionated lot who don't always get it right.  Take the recent hot topic about Operations TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) --- our hometown newspaper (the Sydney Morning Herald) made this calculation: "The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report 'suspicious activity'."  They based their estimate upon (1) the program will start next month in ten cities with a total of 1 million participants and (2) that the population in the largest 10 cities is 24 million, and 1 million out of 24 million is about 4%.  Assumption (2) may be erroneous because they did not spell out which 10 cities are involved, and therefore the incidence may be much higher if  the program takes place in smaller cities.  By comparison, Americans seem to have a much better sense of humor.
  
More significant on the current political agenda is the Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act currently waiting to be passed in the US Senate.  This bill would expand the existing federal crack house law, which makes it a felony to provide a space for the purpose of illegal drug use, to cover promoters of raves and other events.  The major issue is that this bill does not refer solely to 'rave parties' but it covers 'any other events.'  How about our workouts?  Or how about our softball game?  According to the bill, we could be fined US$250,000 and/or spend 20 years in jail if we 'reasonably ought to know' that someone might use 'an illegal drug' during an event.  So we can play it safe by cancelling all our group activities, including our workouts, the softball game, the annual party.  And the Olympics and the Tour de France are both gone for sure because everyone 'reasonably ought to know' that someone might use 'an illegal drug' for those games.  Oh, by the way, if you don't like meandering trains of thought that begin with one subject and end up with something completely different and very much off topic, then you are on the wrong website ...

WEEK OF JULY 16-JULY 22, 2002

• 10,000:  It was on June 25th that we hit 300,000 visitors.  The next 10,000 was achieved on July 22nd, just four weeks later.  Summer is hot, and so are we.
   

• ROLFING & MOVING:  Club member and Rolfer Brian Marchese is moving to Chicago August 14th. He would like to offer Rolfing sessions to CPTC members at a 10% discount of $90 until the August 8th. If you're achy and interested call (212) 979-0219 to arrange an appointment.
   

• ANNUAL CLUB SOFTBALL GAME:  For some years, it has been our tradition to hold a softball game on the afternoon of the Club Championships race in the park.  In the beginning, this was an intramural game (see 1998) for anyone who cares to show up.  In the last two years, this game has been proclaimed as the club softball championships.  Unfortunately, we were shellacked by the New York Harriers in 2000 and then by Warren Street in 2001.  And by 'shellacking', we mean 'losing count of the score.'  This year, we have arranged to play another local powerhouse, the Greater New York Running Team.  According to our coach Tony Ruiz, being swept three years in a row is simply unacceptable.  As usual, he will be bringing our secret weapon, namely the coach's son Anthony.  Of course, Anthony has been improving every year; he will now be a ripe-old thirteen-year-old.  If we get shellacked again this year, we may have to go back to ... as the saying goes ... playing with ourselves again.
   
  Further details will be posted.  In the past, it was usually held around 1pm or 2pm in one of the ball fields in North Meadow in Central Park.
   

• ENDURANCE TIP:  This comes from our triple Ironman finisher (no, it does not refer to the fact that he has completed three or more Ironman triathlons; rather, it refers to the fact that he finished a race that was three times the Ironman triathlon) Ross Galitsky: "Both Arenz and Ross Galitsky, also a member of New York's Athletic & Swim Club and an ultradistance triathlete, agree that beginning runners should wait until the race to run the full distance. Rather than helping to increase stamina, they say, completing 26.2 miles beforehand can actually prompt injury and deplete energy reserves ... Galitsky advises novice runners to focus on time rather than distance. "If you can recreate once or twice or three times [spending] three or three-and-a half hours on your feet without rest, I think it's almost as beneficial for some people as knocking yourself down for 22 miles," he says."
    

• NYPD MEMORIAL RUN PHOTO ALBUM:  These three photos came from Jonathan Cane, and the credit goes to one of the NYPD running club photographers.  This race drew around 400 entries and collected over $10,000 for the Survivors Of The Shield.  Sadly, Adam Newman is missing from the race because they were out of race numbers when he got there.  He and his friend were holding forty dollars in their hands, and were prepared to run the race even if they had made up numbers written on toilet tissue!  
   

• NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS:  We note with some consternation that someone purchased the book Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right by Ann Coulter through our Amazon.com affiliate program.  After all, the Central Park Track Club was founded by a bunch of liberal hippie do-gooders lawyer-types (Jack Brennan, David Blackstone and Frank Handelman).  Although you may not realize it, politics has always been a serious matter on this club.  In fact, after every Tuesday workout, serious right-wing baiting takes place as we go down down East Sixth-Street and up Avenue C.  You are all welcome to take part in these cliché-ridden rote performances.  Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes.
   

• HERCULIS MEET (MONACO):  Great day for Latin Americans: Felix Sanchez (DOM) wins the 400m hurdles, Ana Guevara (MEX) wins the 400m in a world best time of 49:25 and Zulia Calatayud (CUB) wins the 800m in a world best time of 1:56:09.  We can also tell you that Anier García was second in the 110 hurdles.  As for the rest of the events and winners, you can read about them yourself.  This website is sponsored by Latin American companies and we are not obliged to mention anyone else. 
   

• JORDAN!  Here is a collection of links to Jordan Metzl, M.D. 
   
  -  Boning Up On Pain  CNNSI.com, GOLFonline, November/December 1999
  -  Study: Young Athletes Take Creatine   WXYZ-TV, Detroit, August 8, 2002
  -  Kids and Strength Training:  The Early Show, CBS, April 12, 2002
  -  Oh, the pain. It's in the shoulders, the elbows, the ankles, the knees...  Kansas City Star, May 28, 2002
  -  The Young Athlete: The Today Show, MSNBC.com, June 7, 2002
  -  Warning Signs of Unhealthy Sports Participation: Interview with KidsRunning
  -  Overtraining Can Injure Kids for Life  NBC5.com, Chicago
   
  Note: Dr. Metzl has no direct connection to the Central Park Track Club, but he gets these mentions by association.
    

• OUR GOOGLE.COM CITATION LEADERS:  There are two competitive categories for Central Park Track Club members:
   
  The Global Competition:  The score is obtained by typing the name of the individual (e.g. "Peter Gambaccini" and "Gambacini, Peter") into Google.com and see which person has the highest number of citations anywhere.  The results are by no means clean-cut, because there is the possibility of name confusion (e.g. "David Smith" would have been the runaway winner at approximately 174,000).  Therefore, we have had to make some editorial judgement on the plausibility of certain answers.  Here are the provisionary results for three people for whom the likelihood of name confusion is quite minimal
  (1) Peter Gambaccini, with a score of 1756; sports journalist responsible for hundreds and hundreds of daily articles on Runner's World Online and other places.
  (2) Toby Tanser, with a score of 746; tons of race results (e.g. raced 48 times in year 2001), affiliated with three local running clubs (Central Park Track Club, Urban Athletics and The Reservoir Dogs) and mentioned by every library in the universe for his book
  (3) Roland Soong with a score of 376; rarely mentioned on the Central Park Track Club website (perennial question: "Have you ever run in a race?") but has many improbable citations elsewhere (e.g. the "dedicated bibliography for the role of social networks in the diffusion of innovations among farmers" --- farmers?  what does he know?  all he ever did was to spend one day on a farm once upon a time in Australia, but he never even got to milk a cow).
  Technical note:  David Pullman should probably be in third place but it was too much work to sort out the namesakes
   
  The Intramural Competition:  The score is obtained by typing the name of the individual into Google.com and see which person has the highest number of citations within the Central Park Track Club website.  This website is fully indexed by Google.com.  Here, we are on firmer grounds with respect to the reported results.
  (1) Alan Ruben, with a score of 185
  (2) Stacy Creamer, with a score of 180
  (3) Audrey Kingsley, with a score of 180
  (4) Stuart Calderwood, with a score of 159
   
  If you think that either you or someone you know should be up there, please let us know.
   

• THURSDAY ROAD WORKOUT REPORT:  Stuart Calderwood substituted for Tony Ruiz, and we did not manage to get the workout description out by email beforehand.  For the record, the workout was: "This Stuart Calderwood workout began at the "S" mark just south of Tavern On The Green.  Given the fact that the temperature was near 90 degrees with high humidity, it would have b