I broke an 8-minute mile on my 1.5 mile jog this evening. One more arbitrary threshold crossed. My best mile was in high school, and will never be duplicated. These most recent workouts, though, carried me through a mile of running and under eight minutes, which is something I haven’t seen since college, on either count.
To celebrate I biked 10 miles. My last mile was a pure sprint, where I got down to 2:08. That’s a personal, lungs burning, legs aching best.
Someone asked if I’m training for a triathlon. No. The dirty little secret: I love swimming. Love the water. I couldn’t swim a straight line to save my life. I don’t need to run over people any more than I wish to be ran over, so I’ll stay away, but thanks. Besides, that I’ve just reached a little over a mile of jogging will keep me out of any races for some time. But, still, I’m flattered.
Brazil and Portugal … I hate to say battle it out … OK, they conceded that neither team felt the need to press and, thus, ended in a draw. Ivory Coast, who deserve better than to go home early, beat Korea DPR 3-0. Spain topped Chile in workmanlike fashion. If that team comes alive Spain will be tough to beat. Switzerland and Honduras flail their way through 90 minutes to another scoreless draw. They’ll both depart the tournament very dissatisfied, I think.
And now the Round of 16 begins tomorrow. No more ties, now the desperation comes. Now the nationalistic dreams and passions will be on display for when leather meets nylon it will mean only joy and sorrow. Those first efforts in group play, so calculated and cautious, give way to derring do and success, or timidity and defeat.
Hey, if the commentators can overstate things, so can I.
Thursday / video — Comments Off on Gym, Cup, Work and salt to taste 24 Jun 10
We’ll go see this movie soon, I’m sure. I’m going prepared. You should too:
Anyway. Spent the afternoon on campus, doing a little work and meeting with the boss. He’s given me a few projects to do over the next few days. One of them, pulling together the exit assessment scores of recent graduates, seems never-ending. But I’m happy to do it. I have the time. It is useful. It makes me remember things about Microsoft Excel that I’d previously deemed it acceptable to forget.
Did a little bicycle test driving today. Rode about three miles on hills and parking lots, trying out different bike styles and geometries — a fancy way to discuss how the bike is shaped. It is true what they say, I learned. You never forget how to ride a bike. Riding is easy. Getting on the thing can sometimes be a challenge for those of us not blessed with fair amounts of grace.
I liked both bikes. They are both out of my price range. I will now shop online, looking for some used geometry. I might one day find one the right size and the right price range. I hope I’ll still remember how to mount the thing by then.
After that I went to the gym. Ran 1.5 miles by foot, pedaled 8 miles. Now I’d like to get back to my sprint speeds.
Shouldn’t be too long, now. I finally figured out my iTunes problem. I had to get help from a kid on campus, but at least I can put songs on my iPod. Turns out I was having a synch issue. No one said that 30 years ago.
So I have a bunch of songs on the iPod. I’ll keep adding a few a day. I have that cool looking arm band thing that really gets in the way as much of a convenience as it is intended to provide. And now I just have to get back into proper form.
In the World Cup, defending champion Italy is out. They look dreadful yet again. Paraguay and New Zealand battle to an unsatisfying draw. Denmark got mauled by Japan. The former will go home, the latter advances from group play. The Netherlands looked solid as they defeated a struggling Cameroon. All of the groups have rounded into form. The tournament started slowly, but things are certainly picking up now.
Tomorrow we’ll watch the last matches of group play. I’ll hit the gym, peck on a few keys on the laptop and call it a week. Not a bad week, at all.
What a day. The US win and two other important, meaningful World Cup games and history on the grass at Wimbledon. This was a great day to be a sports fan. First, read this.
Soccer defies that. It is opera on a field. Not the Italian variety where a series of humorous misunderstandings yield mildly sexy results, but German opera—Klingon opera. Plenty of tridents. Sheets of rain. Thunderbolts cascading from the sky. In the background armies march through the mud, toward each other. Patterns converge in a rumble, pressure building until it’s unbearable and someone falls over, a spear jutting out from his breastplate.
[…]
The USA’s narrative has been bootstraps. College kids rescuing the program, batty goalies with an American flag fetish, Paul Caliguri, and so on. Tom Friend just published a lengthy story on USA 1990 third-string goalie David Vanole that’s veritably dripping with half-truths dedicated to shaping that narrative. The USMNT is the 1980 hockey team spread over twenty years, because that’s the way we want it.
We don’t roll around on the ground. If we fall over, we probably just fell over. We run and and run and run, and late, when everything is stacked against us in a game where it’s just so hard to finish the job, we do it Puritan style: ugly effort. A minute into stoppage time, the ball’s just lying there and it’s all about who will get there first.
The defensive shakeup for the Americans didn’t hurt, though it came to resemble an open scramble, as much of a track meet as you ever wish to see on the pitch. The Algerians are just begging to give this game away, but the referee has, again, interjected.
There are too many dives, too many questionable calls. This game is a microcosm of the entire tournament. Though a purely representative challenge at midfield would be both symbolic and useful in a game that is starting to grind. Ian Darke asks about our nerves; he’s really telling us that his are shredded.
Clint Dempsey is bloodied. The man is bleeding, marching down the field. Ultimately he is fed a ball in the box and he and the goalkeeper maul one another. Dempsey goes into the net, Landon Donovan takes the rebound and … well, the announcer for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation calls it best:
Soccer is a communal game. If you’re watching at home you aren’t really seeing everything. Check out a big game in a crowd. Like Spencer Hall, who live-blogged the game. With others you can know the frustration, the elation, the relief and joy. In the 90th minute, plus three, the United States went from going home early (a big disappointment) to winning the group (something they haven’t done since 1930’s inaugural World Cup).
And then there was Wimbledon. I’m not a big tennis fan, but watching a piece of history is something I’ll tune in for. The John Isner and Nicholas Mahut match became easily the longest tennis match ever. In fact, today this set alone became the longest match ever. So I have a new proposal: When the tiebreaking game reaches 25-25 we start pulling strings out of the rackets.
Serves dominate. Both players are exhausted. Volleys are rare. Oddly, neither tennis player have fallen, grabbed their ankle and rolled around in anguish while covering their smiling face.
Someone is updating Isner and Mahut’s Wikipedia pages as their death march continued past the nine hour mark. Nine hours! The grass on the Mahut-Isner court has been worn down. And is now growing back. There’s no real at-this-rate of progression in this match any longer. It is stasis and progress rolled into a singularity. Is the hadron collider on?
We’re beyond the point where one of these guys is secretly admitting to himself — and the Smurfs sitting on the net because they must both be delusional — that they hate tennis. I compiled a list of things I’ve done for long stretches of time than this tennis match: slept, studied, breathed. That may be about it.
I’m secretly cheering for Isner, who just looks out on his feet, to pull out the American Gladiators tennis cannon. And then, finally, Mahut surrenders to the darkness. The crowd is chanting for more, but they will have to wait until tomorrow, day three of this epic contest. Records have been crystallized, frozen and shattered in the wake of this pull of equal forces. Neither of them know it yet, but these two young men will be forever attached to one another. I hope they get along.
Meanwhile, as Wimbledon stops for the night, there are two excellent finishes simultaneously in the World Cup between Ghana/Germany and Australia/Serbia. The U.S. will face the Ghanaians for the second consecutive World Cup. And if the ride is finished here this team will have done a lot for the game at home. But you have this feeling that they might be able to ride their spirit just a little farther, yet.
I had to call someone this morning for business purposes. Perhaps calling first thing was my mistake. The man on the other end was bemused as I stumbled through the most convoluted explanation of the situation. I re-started the story two or three times before I got it right.
That man would have never guessed I once talked for a living. Today I scarcely believe it myself.
Three soccer games today. Portugal vs. Korea DPR, where the Portugese routed their opponents, 7-1. Two different styles clashed when Chile faced Switzerland. It got chippy, a Swiss player was sent off early and the South Americans were able to capitalize on yet another poor officiating decision.
One of the changes I’d like to see in the game — long famous for its few alterations — is an ad hoc ruling on players taking dives. I’d create a three-panel commission that watched each game after it was resolved. If they vote that you faked your stumble you don’t play in the next game. That would fix the simulation. That would help solve a great many of the officials’ problems.
Maybe the issues are the same in other sports. The athletes are now bigger, faster and cunning, and thus more easily able to fool a lone official. The television angles are better, replay exposes all. Even if those aren’t the problems we’re seeing at this World Cup, they are the things we are seeing in this World Cup. It certainly would have changed things in the Chile game.
The third game was Spain vs. Honduras, which David Villa made academic early in the second half. You’re beginning to see why Spain are the World Cup favorites.
Went to buy cat food today. The young lady at the cash register was holding a snake, as if on display. I have nothing against snakes, but this can’t help their sales with many of their customers. Someone didn’t think this through.
And then I realized I hadn’t eaten much today, so I sought out Cajun. I sat on the porch of the local Cajun place, sweating, listening to Zydeco and eating beans and rice and various other things offered in a spicy denomination.
When feeling famished, stuffing one’s face is a bad idea. I’d ordered something the waitress said she’d never tried. She later asked me if it was good — it was — but I felt and looked so miserable when I answered that I wasn’t very convincing.
Spent the rest of the evening preparing a long social media presentation. I’m putting three previous programs together to make one long talk. This will be for a summer class at Alabama in which I’m guest lecturing. If the students are even still talking to me by the end of the session I’ll be pleased with the outcome.
The last honeymoon photo barrage: I have finished, finally, editing pictures from our epic adventure. There are 409 photographs in the gallery. That doesn’t count the two slideshows from Borghese and the Spanish Steps elsewhere on the site or the panoramas. It also doesn’t count the videos, which I have still to produce. There’s about an hour’s worth of footage there.
But a lot of pictures. I decided such an epic project needed its own splash page. So, check out the new honeymoon page. All the pictures are ordered chronologically in relation to the location and where that visit landed in our trip. So you’ll see four different sections of Rome pictures. We spent three days in Rome and then took our cruise. After the trip we had another day in Rome, hence the four sections.
During the trip there are pages for each of our excursions and a section for photographs from the ship itself. Off to the side you’ll see the panoramas. Hopefully this will all be self-explanatory when you see the page. Do visit.
