8/27/07 - 9/2/07 Like A Chicken With Its Legs Cut Off (270 minutes, 1 tempo run, 1 steady state)

Sunday, 9/2/07 (45 minutes)
I had a cramp so it's probably my period or something. Seriously I need to update this log more often and not run just 45 minutes like a little bitch.

Saturday, 9/1/07 (no run)
It was really hot, and the clicking in my knee was very disturbing. I think all the roads I've been doing are getting at it.

Friday, 8/31/07 (2 x 2 mile tempo, reps)
Used the new Asics DS Trainers for a tempo on the track. I missed team practice after being completely unable to face the prospect of getting myself up on 4 hours of sleep to run repeats on an asphalt hill. My legs simply wouldn't have accepted it. Turned out to be a good decision, since later that day I felt great.

2 x 3200m, 10:33, 10:27. 3 min lap jog in between. I felt controlled, and just focused on relaxation, trying to take as few splits as possible (just first lap, mile, and final time). The new shoes felt great, although my feet felt hot a couple of times. I did 4x200 untimed afterwards, just to get the feeling of cruising along.

That friendly old guy who comes to some of our meets was there, and told me that Matt and I were running too fast. Oh No!

Thursday, 8/30/07 (85 minutes, reps)
Full arroyo in the morning, went ahead by myself because I didn't feel like running Matt's pace. I felt like crap that morning. I haven't gotten the right sleeping schedule down, waking up on a few hours of sleep for practice, then inevitably sleeping during the day, so that again I can't fall asleep when I want to the next night, and the process repeats.

Afternoon I got new shoes and did a very short warm up, 4x200 in 34, 32, 32, 30, and cool down. The goal of the reps is to keep a tiny bit of stimulus there for the fast twitch fibers, so that when I need them to run serious intervals later, they'll be there.

Wednesday, 8/29/07 (45 minutes, strides)
Ran the traditional first-day Huntington with the team, about as easy as possible.

Matt's cousin, Don Kiesz

As you know, he's half-ass.

Tuesday, 8/28/07 (45 minute tempo)

5xarroyo tempo 8:55, 8:55, 8:59, 8:59, 9:00

Riding my bike up to the gym, I remembered that Kenenisa Bekele, the fastest distance runner ever, does not conform to the "skinny runner" stereotype. The reliability of internet data is questionable, and different sites list Bekele as anywhere between 160 and 174 cm. But the predominant stat is 160 cm, 54kg (5'3", 119 lbs for you idiot Americans). So Bekele's BMI (weight/height^2) is 21.1 (technically, kg/m^2, but by convention the units are suppressed).
I spent some time this afternoon avoiding studying by mining for more runners' stats. I didn't find a jackpot reserve of many elite runners with heights/weights all listed right there for me, but I found a few sources, especially the USATF athlete bios page. Here it is:

athlete	height (cm)	mass (kg)	distance	BMI
alan culpepper	185.4	59.0	42000	17.2
yvonne murray	170.2	50.3	3000	17.4
greta waitz	168.9	49.9	42000	17.5
sebastian coe	175.3	54.0	800	17.6
sileshi sihine	165.0	48.0	10000	17.6
gebremariam	178.0	56.0	10000	17.7
dathan ritzenhein	172.7	53.1	10000	17.8
deena kastor	162.6	47.2	10000	17.9
sara slattery	170.2	52.2	5000	18.0
paula radcliffe	173.0	54.0	42000	18.0
abdi abdirahman	180.3	59.0	10000	18.1
hazel clark	177.2	58.1	800	18.5
wendy sly	166.4	51.3	3000	18.5
lauren fleshman	172.7	55.3	5000	18.6
jen rhines	160.0	47.6	5000	18.6
ryan hall	177.8	59.0	21000	18.7
hicham el guerrouj	179.0	58.0	1500	18.7
paul tergat	182.0	62.0	42000	18.7
anthony famiglietti	175.3	57.6	5000	18.8
kara goucher	170.2	54.4	10000	18.8
shalane flanagan	165.1	51.3	5000	18.8
matt tegenkamp	185.4	65.8	5000	19.1
tatyana kazankina	161.3	49.9	1500	19.2
galen rupp	180.3	62.6	10000	19.2
chris lukezic	172.7	59.0	1500	19.8
adam goucher	177.8	62.6	5000	19.8
treniere clement	160.0	50.8	1500	19.8
meb keflezighi	170.2	57.6	42000	19.9
steve cram	186.7	69.4	1500	19.9
dan lincoln	190.5	72.6	5000	20.0
sally gunnell	167.6	56.2	400	20.0
brian sell	177.8	63.5	42000	20.1
ingrid kristiansen	168.9	58.1	42000	20.4
bernard lagat	172.7	60.8	1500	20.4
haile gebrselassie	164.0	55.0	10000	20.4
craig mottram	188.0	73.0	5000	20.7
herb elliot	179.1	66.7	1500	20.8
khalid khannouchi	165.1	56.7	42000	20.8
leonel manzano	165.1	56.7	1500	20.8
steve slattery	177.8	65.8	5000	20.8
liu xiang	188.0	74.0	100	20.9
wilson wipketer	172.0	62.0	800	21.0
jeremy wariner	182.9	70.3	400	21.0
kenenisa bekele	160.0	54.0	10000	21.1
mbarak hussein	172.7	63.5	42000	21.3
alan webb	175.3	65.8	1500	21.4
dan brown	175.3	65.8	42000	21.4
linford christe	189.2	77.1	100	21.5
kip keino	175.3	66.2	1500	21.6
david krummenacker	188.0	77.1	800	21.8
sam burley	175.3	68.0	800	22.2
steve prefontaine	175.3	68.9	5000	22.4
jorge torres	170.2	65.8	10000	22.7
jonathan johnson	175.3	70.3	800	22.9
shawn crawford	180.3	74.8	200	23.0
emil zatopek	174.0	69.9	10000	23.1
andrew rock	185.4	79.4	400	23.1
lashawn merritt	188.0	82.6	400	23.4
kerron clement	188.0	83.5	400	23.6
nick symmonds	177.8	74.8	800	23.7
brian clay	180.3	83.9	0	25.8
breaux greer	189.2	104.3	0	29.1
christian cantwell	195.6	136.1	0	35.6
akebono	203.2	234.5	0	56.8

Matt's and Katherine's recent posts about runners' weights had me thinking about the question of whether it makes sense to diet for cross country. My gut reaction was, "don't worry about your weight, put the scale away, eat healthily and it will take care of itself." In fact, looking at the list, Bekele, Prefontaine, Torres, and Webb are all accomplished cross country runners (to different degrees). Many of the mile/800 runners (Symmonds, Webb, Krummenacker) are on the heavier side of that list as well.

Basic conclusion: if your BMI is 22 or below, you don't necessarily have to lose weight to be a world-class performer. (Mine, at 181cm and 69 kg, is the same as Bekele's to within the margin of error of the measurement.) It's doubtful that losing weight would help Bekele, for example, because it is very likely that the best runner in the world is already running at near his optimum of just about everything. Running talent is, as Garrett pointed out, highly multifactorial and follows a bell curve. Barring super-mutant heroes, it's unlikely that anyone is far far more talented than the rest of the world, so even if you have the most talented guy out there training well but with a major error (for example, weighing too much), be probably won't be the fastest, because there are plenty of other guys nearly as talented right behind him, and someone else won't make that same error, and will therefor move up and beat him. So I conclude that Bekele is already running at very close to his optimal weight, or else he wouldn't be the world-beater he is. And so I conclude it's at least possible for your optimal weight to come at a BMI in the range of 21-22, or even 23.

For reference here are some heights/weights and BMI's, in the format of a chart I ripped off some random website or other:

Alternatively, use a calculator.

But I have a few more words about BMI. BMI is a dirty fucking lie. The objections to BMI are well-known and common. For example, by strict BMI computation, Bryan Clay and Roman Sebrle, arguably the two fittest human beings alive, are both "obese". The problem isn't that BMI is "bad", just that it's not good enough. It's a one-dimensional number trying to describe a human, which is inherently a multidimensional thing (in most cases, anyway). Other single-number measures of the human body, like body fat percent or hip-to-waist ratio, have their own problems. My main objection to BMI is that it doesn't scale correctly.

A priori, one would think that the BMI calculation should be weight/height^3, since humans are three-dimensional (different use of "dimension" than my previous one), and so make some 10% taller, you also make them 10% wider and 10% thicker.

Not true. If you look at a picture of a person standing alone against a featureless backdrop, you can still get an idea of how tall they are. Tall people just look tall and short people look short, even when you can't compare them to anything. That's evidence that people don't scale evenly in all dimensions. Make someone 10% taller, they get wider and thicker, but not by 10%. So the exponent of height in BMI should be less than 3. But why 2? In other words, why 2.00000000000000? Wouldn't 2.2 or 1.9 probably be closer to the truth?

In order to answer the question, you'd have to do quite a bit of statistics, in order to define what makes a statistic "good". You could, for example, let the exponent float, then optimize BMI's ability to predict certain weight-related medical problems as a function of the exponent. But this procedure, or any other like it, would have its own problems (tall people might have a propensity for diabetes regardless of body composition, for example). You could also try to find an exponent such that BMI and height have no correlation (currently short people have lower BMI's, meaning the exponent is too low.)

So let's say we do that, and find the exponent really ought to be 2.3, but was just made 2 for convenience (BMI is not accurate enough for more than one decimal place in the exponent to be meaningful). Does that make a difference? If I set it up so the exponent is 2.3 and a 170-cm person has the same BMI as the old system, the new BMI formula is BMI = weight/(1.1726*height^2.3). The new "2.3 power" BMI gives a 5% deviation from the old BMI at the heights of 200cm or 143 cm, which encompasses the vast majority of the human population. Final conclusion about BMI: the exponent of 2.000000, while wrong, isn't so bad as long as it's ballpark. However, BMI is still a poor measure of appropriate body composition for a runner, as it can vary widely even at the highest levels of competition, and most likely varies far more widely at lower levels of competition. If you want to race faster, don't force yourself to an unusually-low weight, just train to be faster. That doesn't mean carrying around giant bags of cellulose won't slow you down, but it does mean that Ethiopians aren't winning races just because their country has no food.

One more point - the fact that BMI correlates to height (and it shouldn't) led me to wonder about another catch-all physiological variable runners like to talk about - VO2 max. VO2 max is oxygen consumption/unit body mass. Supposedly, runners with the same VO2 max are equally physically fit, at least in the oxygen uptake system. But that may not be true. If tall runners or short runners are innately more efficient, as measured by speed at a set intake of oxygen per kilogram, then VO2 max really ought to be calibrated to height, which it isn't. Total body weight is another variable we should test in correlation with VO2 max. It total body weight is correlated with VO2 max, then really there ought to be an exponent other than 1 in the formula. There's no way I'm going to find the data easily for that one, though.

Monday, 8/27/07 (no run)
I decided to skip running and get some work done instead. I'm giving some consideration to running 4-5 days a week until I've got my academic situation taken care of. Also, I'll likely be tutoring from 4-6PM many days, so it's unsure how frequently I'll be able to train with the team.

8/20/07 - 8/26/07 Lost in Invariance Under Translation (310 minutes, 1 tempo run)

Sunday, 8/26/07 (60 minutes)
Pleasant N. field laps with Kiesz and Ian.

Saturday, 8/25/07 (70 minutes)
Darkness disquiets more fully when incomplete. In pitch black, you're too blind to be scared. In the semi-glow of a moonless night or the murk of a basement cellar, shapes, deprived by darkness of definite form, distort themselves freely, drown out of proportion by disturbed imagination. A coat rack becomes a man, tall and thin, standing to the side in spooky silence. Only on the closest inspect do supernaturally-long fingers resolve into a tree branch, or a deep, empty pit into a darker patch of clover. Shadows, cast out like silver nets from their sources, slinking back and forth, crossing over each other in a ceaselessly-stirring mosaic, assume every possible sinister shape and stature. When the lights are dim, every coil of rope becomes a snake.

Something similar happens when I run by myself. The feedback I get from my body is poor. Most of the time, most parts of our bodies are in "total darkness" - we aren't even consciously aware of, say the area just below the skin above the knuckle of the second toe of our right foot. A sharp pain in your side when you get a cramp or the burning on the roof of your mouth when the pizza is too hot are then "spotlights", temporarily brilliantly illuminating a small bit of yourself for the sake of instant action.

Without belaboring the analogy, what then are the vague twinges and intimations of sensation that I feel when running? On the horizon, silhouetted at sundown, Pancho Villa can see there is SOMETHING standing there, but is it a solitary cactus or scout of the federal army? Running my laps on the North Field, I can catch hints there there is SOMETHING happening in my right achilles, the area above my left knee, the ball of my hips, but they are too distant and too faint to tell what they mean. So I go on for a while, watching carefully, cutting the run 20 minutes short, stopping to stretch, and constantly wondering what fate has in store for me next.

Friday, 8/24/07 (20 minutes)
Kiesz and I decided it would be a profoundly good idea to drive around randomly, stop by the side of the road somewhere, and, crossing our fingers tightly behind our backs and spinning around in circles with our eyes shut tight, hope that we would miraculously stumble upon an interesting trail to follow. After about eight attempts of this game and some serious damage to our respective genitalia, we returned to Tech for burritos and live coverage of the high jump of the heptathlon.

Thursday, 8/23/07 (3 x arroyo tempo)
3 arroyo tempo loop laps of 8:40, 8:34, 8:42 = 25:56

The start was not propitious. I overslept, and didn't have time for the six laps I was planning. Consequently, before the run I was annoyed at everything. I was annoyed at the sun for setting too early, at the stoplights on California for delaying my progress, at the clothes I forgot to dry for being wet, at horses, dogs, and old people on the trail for existing, at the dirt for slipping under my feet, at my knees for clicking with every stride, and pretty much at anything I could moderately anthropomorphize, for in some form getting in the way of my run.

But, magically, the times reading off my watch were fast, and so when I finished the run, I didn't care any more. I didn't care that I was assaulted by some sort of crazed Zamboni driver inexplicably patrolling the Arroyo Seco trail, kicking up a rather-belligerent dust storm in the process. I didn't care that I had a long uphill bike to get out of the arroyo, or that archers were shooting at their targets across the trail I was using. Simply because I was pleased with the numerical result of my run, my entire attitude changed.

This is a bit disturbing to me. What I'm like shouldn't be so closely linked to the small details of just what's happening right at the moment. I'd like to think I can go with the flow a bit. At times when the majority of the physical world seems to grate against my psyche, I ought to be able to step back for a second, chill out, and realize how pointless such an attitude is. It shouldn't take a random lucky occurence to bring me back to the state of a human being fit for interaction in a gregarious society. Apparently, though, what I can't do for myself, a good run can do for me.

Wednesday, 8/22/07 (60 minutes)
There were softball players on my field. Also, the South field was closed. Normally that isn't a deterrent, but I was feeling a little ornery so I used the North field anyway and just dodged around people whenever there was a fly ball to the outfield.

Tuesday, 8/21/07 (no run)
I seriously doubt I ran this day. It was a long time ago, though, and I don't remember exactly. I think there was something about sleeping in the library, eating the last few packages of Mentos from O'Doms, and possibly drinking from sprinklers, but I'm not sure. When did I win Olive Walk Darts? Not sure. I think it was last week though.

Monday, 8/20/07 (60 minutes)
After three weeks of building, I'll try be intelligent and take a down week here, and maybe go to the gym. I haven't been much because it always seems to be closed or closing. Also, it's too fucking hot. One or two days is fine, but weeks of it is just inexcusable. Oh capricious god of daily temperature highs, please stop being such a little bitch. Maybe you don't know how bad the heat has been around here, but I was babysitting the other day, and I left the thing outside for just one hour, and wound up looking like this:

8/13/07 - 8/19/07 The Origin of Feces (425 minutes, 1 tempo run)

Sunday 8/19/07 (60 minutes)
Certain elements have requested that today's entry discuss the origin of feces. Feces, as you well know, is colored brown because it contains the remnants of broken-down hemoglobin. Babies have green feces because they lack a bacteria crucial to this hemoglobin decomposition process.
Guinea pigs eat each others' feces. This is said to be because they are trying to get some of the nutrients other guinea pigs have have excreted. Incorrect. It is actually because guinea pigs are really dumb. This feces-eating behavior is also observed in rats, hamsters, lumberjacks, and my cousin Peter.
What do all these things have in common (besides fitting comfortably inside your mom's vagina?) That's right - nothing.
Conclusion - the only logical origin of feces-eating is your mother's vagina. Logic wins again.

Saturday 8/18/07 (30 minute tempo, strides)
Everything began with auspicious turtles. Twenty of them roiled madly around a corner of Throop pond as I exited SFL after a drawn-out, air-conditioned nap. They were, as I discovered upon the requisite examination, devouring the remains of a half-eaten fish. What was best was, over on the other side of the pond, a five year old kid kept calling to his dad, "Dad, look I found a baby one. A baby one dad. It's a baby one. Dad look, a baby one. A baby one dad, a baby one!" Distracted by the strident calls of his offspring, the man abandoned my corner of the pond and the spectacle of the feasting turtles was MINE ALL MINE!!!

Eventually, I went to the field, only to discover that the turtles had made me miss the 7:30 closing of the gym, so I instead just crapped in a sewer and started running. It had cooled off a bit, the sun was setting, I was on the north field illegally, the ground was soft under my bare feet, and I had to entire field to myself. It was completely badass.
After 30 minutes I pushed it up to a strong pace, and did a 30-minute threshold run that felt easy and smooth. My legs were churning underneath me, lean and fast, surging a bit with excitement whenever my thoughts got ahead of me.

I finished with five minutes of jogging, five long diagonal striders, and five minutes of cooldown before celebrating at Parkwood with pork sandwiches, beer, and some sort of reddish alcoholic beverage that I didn't understand very much but I think it's for grownups or old people like Arjun.

Friday 8/17/07 (50 minutes mountain)
Dumbo the elephant could fly like a motherfucker, but first he had to learn to believe in himself. But I get ahead of myself. Ian, Garrett, Matt and I rode up to Chantry Flats before pushing our way up the trail beyond the helipad. Normally I hate mountain runs because they hurt for a long fucking time, but this one was surprisingly okay. I let Ian lead, and if we'd gone much faster it'd have hurt, but as it was I even glanced out at the wide, smoggy vistas of almost the whole of the greater East Los Angeles area. When we got to the top we met a crazy old vedic mystic. His beard, six feet long if an inch, curled around itself in intricate knots, symbolizing the unity of life, and his staff changed with the angle of the sun from a mere stick of wood to a great serpent to an enormous dildo, I think. His feet never quite touched the ground, and he glowed with an aura that might have been the setting sun, if it weren't for the way it seemed to shimmer and dance circles around his frail, ancient figure. Afterwards I got happily intoxicated, scaled several buildings, walked myself home and watched some Dumbo.

Thursday 8/16/07 (30 minutes, strides)
Old friends and I reacquainted ourselves today - I held a little reunion for myself and my fast twitch muscle fibers. I jogged thirty minutes on the south field with a few easy accelerations tossed in. At first, the legs, sore from two days of abuse, complained about the unusual demands of sub-5:00 pace, but by the end of the run our dialog had become quite amicable, and I even opened up the floodgates all the way for a good forty meters.

Wednesday 8/15/07 (75 minutes)
Kiesz and I ran an unevenly-paced full arroyo, including too-aggressive start, too slow middle, and much-too-fast mad sweat-spraying, baby-frightening, car-dodging, light-hopping, fart-loosing, insane, inexcusable, incontinent return through Pasadena.

Tuesday 8/14/07 (5 mile tempo)
Saw Kiesz just heading out to the arroyo, but neglected to join him because at the moment I was toting 20 pounds of milk on my back. This led me to realize how much easier it would be if Pavilions would just install a pipeline to deliver milk and other pipelinable food items (juice, round fruits, live hamsters, cottage cheese) when I want it. They could have a flowmeter at the end, and every month you'd get a milk bill, just like that one company does with the electricities.
Later, did 10 laps at Lacy in 28:30. Originally I planned 16, but by 7:30PM it had only cooled from criminally hot at two down to worrisomely hot. I decided to cut down the miles for my first timed tempo run in a while.

During the run I had the feeling of being a bit out of shape, both physically and mentally. It takes time to learn to focus in on workouts again after a layoff. I tried very hard not to compare this run to others I've done at Lacy, because I know that 1) it's not as fast 2) it will push me to train too hard. But I couldn't help it. On 8/21/06 I ran 6x2laps with one minute rest, averaging 5:17 (compared to 5:42 today). On 5/26/06 I did 10 laps in 28:25, went to the bathroom, and did another ten in 28:13.

Of course it was my first tempo of the year, and hot, and loops today were a bit longer than those old ones, but still, it's clear I'm not in top shape yet after the injury.

But on the other hand, I probably ran close to a full five miles in 28:30, which is faster than most of my cross country races so far, and I was not yet at full effort. I had a small unfair advantage in that Garrett was gracing the park with his svelte self and cheering me on, so I wanted to show off for him.


Monday 8/13/07 (75 minutes)
I was planning 90 minutes, but my back was a bit sore, so I stopped early. I went to the weight room for the first time in a while, and just did the core exercises that I think are essential to my general fitness, but which I've been neglecting.

8/6/07 - 8/12/07 Your Mother Squeezed Too Hard When She Birthed You (405 minutes)

8/12/07 (no run)
The last few days have seen me saying goodbye to new friends and greeting old ones. I still believe that life is essentially solitary, but with a few true friends, at least we can sit and be alone together.

8/11/07 (60 minutes)
Eerily, the lounge of Theta, where I've lived and taught the past seven weeks, encases me now, dark, quiet and vacant. In the time I've been here, I've learned and played many games in this lounge, from Gongi (Korean jacks) to nerd jousting, but my favorite is a contest of my own invention, necessarily a game of solitude and self-inspection. It is, I think, as much a meditation as a competition.

A motion sensor controls the lights here. If I sit still enough for long enough while alone, the room will declare itself to be empty, and turn off the lights. The challenge is simple. When the lights turn themselves out, I attempt to leave the room without triggering them back on.
I begin with a hand. My right, creeping, centimeters a second, towards a better position to grasp my book. Slowly along the top of my leg, turning a space of half a foot into a voyage of focused intensity. Ten seconds later, the book begins a deliberate migration across the expanse of my lap. At last reaching the end, it must descend, with calculated lethargy, to the floor.
The typical direct assault on the act of standing up would be suicide here. The roles of momentum and action are replaced by balance and caution. The motion must be so perfectly smooth it cannot be observed in an instant. Only over a long period of integration will the displacement show.

If I manage, against the odds, to uncross my legs, then it remains before me to scoot my mass carefully to the edge of my chair, to bring up my arms individually to advantageous perches on the armrests, to plant my feet firmly in the carpet, and, at last, in a triumphant moment, half a minute objectively, but a flash in comparison, to straighten my body, inch by inch, up to a standing position.
That is the first step - there remains an entire, unfathomable room to be traversed.

The game is wonderful in its simplicity and difficulty. The best I accomplished was to stand and waddle a few measly feet across the floor. But the real reason I like the game is that it is incredibly alien. All sense of scale, spatial and temporal, is thrown away. I can feel the instability of a standing position - every slight sway of my torso, normally completely unnoticed, becomes a terrible error. The difference between standing up normally versus when you're playing the game is like the difference between hammering down boards on your deck and screwing in the casing on an atomic bomb.

The difference between sitting in this lounge the day before camp training and sitting in it now, with fifty goodbyes and summer behind me, is just as great.

8/10/07 (60 minutes)
Took it easy again, battling the inevitable chafing resulting from too few pairs of shorts and too little laundry getting done.

8/9/07 (90 minutes)
J.R. sent me an email asking if I wanted to go race at the local all-comers meets. I ran a few of these meets last year, mostly just for fun. But here, it felt like something different. It was an opportunity for a last chance at being a collegiate. If I ran a fast time I would have that final shot at moving my name up on the all-time lists just a bit higher.
But the achilles is still questionable, and my training hasn't put me in race shape. More than that, though, I think it's time to close the door on the previous chapter. It's over and done. There's no need to keep hanging on to what was. At every moment, I live and run in just that moment. So I told J.R. to go on ahead of me, invited him over to watch movies the next evening, put on the shoes and went out the door to train.

8/8/07 (45 minutes )
I felt like I was swimming in a giant pool of jello, that was being shaken at the sides and heated to melting from below. Accordingly, I cut it short.

8/7/07 (60 minutes)
Felt fine, took the pace easy. Recently it seems like even if I take a dump immediately before running, I still need another one half an hour later. I guess my digestive tract is just that efficient.

Previously unmentioned at the NYC Half:
Macharia Yuot runs 1:06:56 ----> Not as fast as CFree
Abdi Abdirahman states, "I'm a lean mean machine. That's why I call myself the black cactus."

Cactus Power

hot calves

8/6/07 (90 minutes)
I ran around the trail back and forth a lot, and then I read about the New York Half, where Haile killed everybody with the effervescence of his infectious bubbling demeanor.

How can you NOT like Haile?


Haile Gebrselassie is the world's greatest concert ukulelist. When he retires he will instantly be elected Supreme Tribal Warlord of the entire African country (minus Morocco and Detroit). Also of the Universe. He will disband all the nuclear warheads and turn them into twirling ballerina robots with nuclear eyes that glow in the dark. He will give one to every child and invalid. If the invalids don't want them he will give the invalid to a child and give the child to a pack of wild hyenas and give the hyenas to another child and commend that child to the hands of God, which is Himself.

Haile Gebrselassie could defeat Chuck Norris in kickboxing, but he is too busy saving baby seagulls from oil slicks and holding the antenna to get perfect reception on channel eight. He is just that good of a guy.

In Ethiopia they have a prayer to Haile Gebrselassie, and it goes like this:
Great
Emperor,
Bring
Rain
So
Every
Lentil
Accretes
Succulentness.
Save
Implacable
Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, they pray in English.

I want to see a Haile Gebrselassie nipple slip. This is the official vehicle from the NYC Half:


This is Catherine Ndereba coming out of the spot-a-pot:

This is Catherine Ndereba picking her nose:

This is Catherine Ndereba barfing like my dog Pansy after we gave her medicine from the veterinarian man in the wooden shed.

It is not actually Catherine Ndereba. It is Susan Chepkemei, but I bet you can't tell the difference.

Catherine Ndereba is the second-fastest marathoner All-time for women but she is disgusting. Haile Gebrselassie does not throw up and he does not pick his nose and he recycles his poo because Haile Gebrselassie loves the Earth.