Where’s the peanut butter?!

So it’s been ages since I’ve written anything in this blog and if I’m going to pick running there are definitely more interesting developments like my recent marathon, ultra marathon, or even forgetting my shoes at the Cougar Mountain race this weekend, but instead, dedicated reader, you get ibeatjohncurley.

Apparently John Curley is some local news personality, who’s willing to pay thousands of dollars on wheels for his bike, one-upping me in his stuffwhitepeoplelike quotient. All I know is there’s this deal where you can run some upcoming race and if you sign up to beat him, he gets a 3 second handicap on his start and if you *do* beat him, you get a free Brooks technical shirt and get entered in a raffle for $1,000 to go to a charity of your choice at the awards after the race.

He ran the Fremont 5K last Friday and finished in 22:50 after what appears to be about a 2:00 handicap (40 challengers earn a 3 second handicap each for a net of 2 minutes). Seafair has 46 challengers at the moment, which means Planned Parenthood has pretty good odds on getting that $1,000 on race day.

Here’s the media bias again, favoring humans over animals again. We assume the 51-year old Chinese man’s penis was clean, though, right?

A Taiwanese man became a sitting target for a snake, which bit his penis as sat on the toilet at his rural home, local media reported on Monday.

“As soon as he sat down, he suddenly felt a knife-like pain and reacted instinctively by standing up,” the China Times said. “When he looked down, he saw the big snake.”

The 51-year-old man, from Nantou County, was under medical care with minor injuries, a director at Puli Christian Hospital said.

“As soon as he has passed the risk of infection, he can go,” the director, who declined to be named, said. “A snake’s mouth isn’t always clean.”

Local television images showed the black and yellow reptile, reportedly a species of rat snake, being uncoiled and plucked slowly from the toilet bowl.

Snakes regularly enter rural homes in Taiwan and other sub-tropical regions of Asia.

• Admirer: “Well hey there :)”
• Me: “Is ointment or cream better for a rash?”
• Me (quickly): “oops…nevermind…”
• Admirer: “Haha ointment? Was that to me haha?”
• Admirer: “Haha alright I still think we should hang out”

Where next, Columbus?

Previously

Early yesterday morning when I woke up for my long run, I found the following text on my phone:

Get them out here

I didn’t recognize the number and couldn’t even understand the message, so I ignored it. Then while I was out on my run, this came in:

I want you

Flattery will get you everywhere! But I still don’t know who this is so I keep ignoring it. Later in the afternoon, I receive:

Hey you

OK, this obviously isn’t going to stop and I’d earlier thought “maybe this is some sms scam to send vague/provocative spam messages and validate recipients and sign them up for lots of text spam?” but that’s seeming less probable. So last night I reply:

Hey you

A few minutes later I get:

What up girl

At this point I’m pretty confident it’s a dude sending me the messages. Naturally, I am crestfallen. He doesn’t know when to quit:

What r u getting into tonight

And apparently he’s too poor to afford a phone which can punctuate anything. I tell my friend Chris, who I’m out at a concert with and he recommends I reply honestly:

Getting into some panther…u?

(Panther were opening for The Thermals right at that time). My secret admirer replies:

Idk just chillin

And that’s where it is. Possible next steps:

• Keep ignoring? - seems like too much of a waste
• “OMG I JUST HIT SOMEBODY WITH MY CAR…DON’T TELL ANYBODY”
• “i feel like im not the person u think i am”
• “can u meet me at [place] at [time]? i might b late”
• Send a mms of the picture of myself with the mustache saying she found another guy?

Suggestions are welcome!

There are approximately three sides in the war for the interwebs - which are you on?

1. Non-participant - “what’s a twitter?” Also found: absorbing rays of sunshine.
2. Solipsist - “blah blah blah here are way more details of my life than anyone could possibly care about but I’ll keep on going any way because then maybe SOMEONE WILL NOTICE ME AND GIVE A SHIT!!!” Also found: waiting in line for tix to the Alkaline Trio show and thinking of witty adjectives to call him/herself.
3. Circular referentialist / credit obsessivist - “Check out this sweet link to someone who talks about something in a link from this guy that I found via @ronald http://is.gd/f00” Also found: within the top 5 commenters on random blogs demanding credit for having tweeted the topic 5 seconds before it showed up elsewhere.

I’m straddling the fence of solipsist and non-participant.

@scottsorheim shows some amazing sheep antics:

Just ran a quick map and it looks like the standard (summer) ChuckIt hill gains about 140′ and runs about 1/5 of a mile (about a 10-15% grade). Maybe I’ll remember this some day when I’m trying to find other hills to do these workouts on.

The Eugene marathon is under two months away now and this has me thinking about what to do in this last window leading up to the big day. My training schedule calls for the following on my long weekends: 20 miles (this weekend), 17, 23, 20, 20, and then the taper starts with 15, 12, 10 and then it’s go time.

A couple other things intersect, though. The 17 miler in a week is the day before the St. Paddy’s Dash which I’m registered for. And I thought about doing this (the 17 mile weekend) as my long hard run where I’d aim for about a 7 minute pace and go uninterrupted. This should be a good training exercise as well as a good confidence run so I’ll probably do it and then just do run the following day at St. Pats however I feel, but not really race it.

However, the following weekend (which is the 23 mile day) is also the Mercer Island Half. That’s a race I’m not yet registered for and if I do it, it’s $60 which honestly seems like way too much. But I could do that and just aim to PR which would also be a good training pace/distance for the marathon.

The only obvious mistake would be trying to race all three (or to do the LHR + race the next day). But however I slice it, there’s not much time left for the marathon. I’m really feeling a lot better going into this one than Portland two years ago now, though (jeez - was that really that long ago?) and even than when I was aiming for Victoria last fall. I’ve done 20 mile long runs for probably the past three Sundays and every time have been at or very close to an 8 minute pace and managed to finish every one feeling strong and last fall I was definitely struggling with just finishing the 20 miles at a (ballpark) same pace.

The other thing on my mind is the ultra I’m doing the following month. I think as long as I just take that nice and slow, it’ll all be fine (but very long and still hard). I asked Joe about last year’s course, though, and was pretty surprised. He said that the course does something the following: two 5K loops, then out on a big loop for the remaining 40k. How fast should somebody run it? He indicated that he did those 5k’s in ~58 minutes (which comes out to something like a 10 minute pace) and that in hindsight, that might have been going a little fast. Oooookkaaaayyy. It’s certainly helpful to have that perspective!

I’m not sure what’s going to be in store for me, running-wise, after this. If I don’t qualify for Boston in Eugene, I’m probably going to feel like I absolutely have to run another marathon because the rest of my running and pacing definitely indicates that that should be in the cards for me. At the same time, I’d much rather feel some flexibility to not follow the marathon training schedule to the letter so much - to be able to take my dog on more runs, to not worry if it’s late on a Wednesday and be thinking “great - I still gotta get 90 minutes in…” and to be able to do different sorts of races or types of exercise without worrying about it screwing up my schedule and volume or other goals.

My job has nothing to do with this statement:

The Amazon mp3 store rules

The service works really well, the price is almost always right, and the recommendations are really good (way to go, John!). Here’s what I’ve learned about it:

• Go to the homepage
• Scroll down to the section for “Today’s Top MP3 Albums, Most $8.99 and Under”
• Check these out

There seem to be many great deals that rotate in the site over time. I don’t know anything about what’s discounted at any given time, but discounts are a great influencer of popularity, so it seems great albums (or at least great deals) wind up making that list. Here’s what I’ve downloaded today:

• Old 97’s - Wreck Your Life $2
• Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool $5
• Lyle Lovett and his Large Band $2
• Thermals - Live $6 (not a top seller :))
• War Child compilation that came out today $4
• Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures (collectors edition) $5 - I have a pretty beat up old vinyl copy and no good mp3’s

I probably wouldn’t have bought all those unless it was super easy, the price was right, and I knew I’d be getting good quality tracks - all of which the Amazon mp3 store does. And obviously I demand that it’s DRM-free, which everything in the Amazon store is. Yay, my company!

Has this been coined yet? It should - I’m probably just behind the times. But with the advent of blogging (um, no irony intended there!), twitter, and facebook we’re increasingly self-obsessed. Those platforms don’t have to be used that way, but I think this is what the “25 things about me” meme or innumerable other ways that people are finally getting soapboxes where they can broadcast the most mundane aspects of their daily life are about.

Here’s the article that inspired this, which is basically a couple hooks you can use to push the music you’re listening to on digital sites into twitter and the like. The question it obviously raises is WHO THE HELL COULD POSSIBLY CARE what song you’re playing every time you listen to music? Are our own lives really that empty that we’re desperate to spy on the routine aspects of the lives of complete strangers? Or even our friends?

Life’s too short to waste on completely uninteresting, uncreative vicarious living - be selective with what you talk about and what you spend your time taking in.

OK, I have to go chase the kids off my lawn now and go eat my prunes.