The Carnival of Running #65

Welcome to the 65th edition of The Carnival of Running!

In honor of the first annual Global Warming, My Ass! 6.66 Mile Run (which I will be running on Sunday), here is a group of kindred spirits pretending it’s summer on the track:

LetsRun.com wants you to know they’ve figured out how to use iTunes. And I can’t think of a less-desired use of technology than the Adidas miCoach, which verbally nags you while you run. Yippee!

On the other hand, screaming back at your miCoach might help you with a common running problem: boredom.

Deciding which running accessories you need is getting more complicated every day. Here’s one article telling you what you can’t do without, and another telling you what you can do without.

Now it’s time for this week’s Running Photos You Don’t Want to See. First up is the errant snot rocket…

…followed by Andrew Hall running a trail race in a lime-green mankini…

Yikes.

The University of Iowa Nearly Naked Mile didn’t show anywhere near as much skin.

And one coach has a slightly creepy way to tell if young male runners are serious about the sport.

I have the perfect rebuttal to all these lectures about the need to cross-train. I. Don’t. Want. To.

A columnist for the Hong Kong Standard describes marathon running this way: “This bizarre Western craze has four stages: 1) You run. 2) You have a heart attack. 3) You die and are buried. 4) You get this really cool medal bearing the word ‘failed.’”

But a columnist in New Zealand found peace with running after first thinking it was “marginally less fun than waterboarding.”

Awesome Old Dude of the Week is 53-year-old Gary Allen, who has run sub-three-hour marathons in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 00s, and last Saturday did it in the 10s with a 2:51:03 at the Snickers Marathon in Albany, Georgia.

I made the mistake of thinking the Boston Herald‘s The Inside Track was about track. No, it’s a gossip column, but it managed a bit of a crossover by interviewing Valerie Bertinelli about her upcoming Boston Marathon run.

This week’s linky love goes out to triathletes Rock Star Tri and Fish, Bike, Run, from someone who thinks a peloton is a Japanese anime villain.

That’s all for this week, friends. Thirty-three years ago today, scientists discovered rings around Uranus. This is the one day each year you are allowed to snicker. Submit your posts to carnival@runningisfunny.com. Until next time, run away!