Archive for December, 2008

Holiday Hiatus

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, one and all. Running Is Funny will return Wednesday, January 7.

Junk (Food) Miles

My bizarre doughnut experiment is yielding confounding results. I’m afraid at this point the conventional wisdom regarding nutrition isn’t applying to me. Last night I treated myself to a Taco Bell pig-out: three crunchy taco supremes and two spicy bean burritos. For breakfast this morning I had a cranberry bagel with reduced-fat cream cheese, two 14-ounce mugs of 100% Kona coffee with a teaspoon of raw sugar in each, and an Entenmann’s chocolate doughnut.

I proceeded to run six miles in 47:30 without undue effort. It was 33 seconds faster than my previous best on this route this year and only about two minutes short of my best ever for that distance.

I assume as I increase mileage I’ll need more slow-absorbing complex carbs and less sugar, but if this keeps up I’m planning a best-seller titled, From Boston Cream Pie to Boston Marathon.

Naked Pumpkin Runners Offered Plea Deal

The Naked Pumpkin Runners of Boulder, Colorado (see Carnival of Running #4 for details), are being offered a plea deal that involves unsupervised probation and community service - much better than registering as a sex offender, a penalty for the crime for which they have been charged.

Since only 12 of the couple of hundred runners were arrested and charged, it appears additional speedwork is required to stay one step ahead of the police. A training program featuring Naked Pumpkin fartleks or strides would seem to be in order. I would discourage skips and butt kicks, however.

The Missing Ingredient

The Santa Speedo Run finally gets the one thing it has always needed…women. Read the story here, and view the “jumping jacks” video here, if your eyes can stand it.

The Carnival of Running #11

Welcome to the 11th edition of The Carnival of Running!

I could point you to a story about the UCLA Undie Run, but I know you would rather just watch the video.

The good news about the Best Catfights of Women’s Sports is that only one involves runners. The bad news is there is no video of it!

Christmas in Bavaria includes Father Christmas, snow-covered cottages, and people dressed up as demons who scare little children. In other news more fit for Halloween than Christmas, one poor half-marathon runner discovered a dead body during the race.

“Dashing through the snow” took on a new meaning in Calgary, where they ran a 5k in temperatures of -28 Celsius (that’s 18 below in Fahrenheit, students). By way of contrast, the wussies in Kirkland, Washington, canceled the 12Ks of Christmas because of icy conditions.

If you are going to run a marathon at this time of year, where better than Honolulu? Apparently, lots of places, because for the second year in a row they had heavy rain and flooding during the race. This time, however, there were no significant problems with the timing chips. There were a few problems for baseball pitcher Hideki Okajima, who ran the marathon against the wishes of his employer, the Boston Red Sox. Worse than that, he ran a 6:10.

Reporter Layla Bohm was smarter, running her first marathon in Tucson, while keeping in mind this sage advice: “Never pee near a cactus.”

And we have much more race news! Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher will both run the 2009 Boston Marathon. Will this be the year the Americans break through?

Boston has tradition, but so does the Hastings Marathon in England, which just had its 100th anniversary. In fact, distance running at Hastings goes back a lot further than that. Who can forget Team Godwinson outracing the Normans in the Senlac Hill 10K in 1066?

Some runners are finding a new challenge in taking on the Utah Grand Slam, while the Bhutanese participated in the Run Against Corruption. There is no truth to the rumor the race will be relocated to Illinois next year.

Why choose among these races when you can run them all? Meet Larry Macon, a man who has run more than 100 marathons… this year. Strangely enough, running so many marathons is not one of five common mistakes marathon runners make.

Are runners more ethnically and racially diverse than the rest of the population? I don’t think so, but it isn’t like I’ve done a study or anything.

Gobs Channel has a blasphemous thought. Are bagels really that good for you to eat in the morning? What will be the next heresy? Stay away from pasta the night before a race?

Congratulations to Perry, who know officially holds the 50-mile joggling world record. No congratulations to Nitmos at Feet Meet Street, who wrote a Christmas carol about calf cramps. This is a slippery slope, eventually leading to “Hark! The Hemorrhoidals Sing.”

Let’s wrap this up with links to the legendary John Von Auerbach, who at last showed up on the Runners World Forum, after leaving them in stitches on BodyBuilding.com. But how many of his fans knew JVA is also the world’s greatest billiards stud?

That’s all for this time, friends. The next Carnival of Running won’t appear until January 14, giving you plenty of time to deck the halls, wassail, sing a sleighing song, and submit your posts to carnival@runningisfunny.com. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and when the Christmas shopping is getting you down, just be glad you don’t have to find any myrrh. Now run away!

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

Is Illinois Governor’s Corruption Related to Running?!?

You would think there are plenty of details concerning Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s efforts to sell a U.S. Senate seat to occupy pundits and the media for weeks. But some people have clearly lost their minds. Take this headline from a Chicago Public Radio story:

“Governor Wears Tight Pants to Court”

Now a running blog on the Windy Citizen web site suggests Blagojevich, who is an avid runner, is an adrenaline junkie so that (somehow) running marathons and high-level political corruption have similar appeals to him.