Friday, August 29, 2014

The Oatmeal Is My Celebrity Crush - Part 2

In my last post, I talked about my unrequited love for this guy. He runs and makes comics and sometimes makes comics about running. About a year ago he wrote the one I already talked about. More recently, though, he released another one called "The DOs and DO NOTs of running your first marathon" which is also hilarious. Choice screenshots:

Not to brag, but I have pretty much mastered the sprint-choke
"OMG, no big deal. This is just one loop of Central Park, one Brooklyn Bridge and twice the distance to the 39th Street Ferry Terminal!"

So, yes. I've decided The Oatmeal is some sort of running prophet. He gets it and somehow conveys it in such a way that the rest of us can totally relate. In fact, he wrote a book about it which you can bet I plan on purchasing, like any good super fan/stalker. Please note that all images I've reproduced here have been created by The Oatmeal.

EDIT: I had a conversation with my friend Helen about how maybe not everyone loves The Oatmeal as much as I do. We can still be friends if you don't also have a celebrity crush on him.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

The Oatmeal is My Celebrity Crush

Seriously, though. I love his story and his comics to death. Okay, fine, also I love him because he is funny and attractive. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I discovered a few years ago that he is also an ultramarathoner! A decent one, at that.

Anyway, I didn't intend for this post to be a stalkerish homage to The Oatmeal, even though that's what it's turning into. What I meant to talk about was a couple of comics he's drawn in the past. This is the first one. It's called "The terrible and wonderful reasons why I run long distances." It made the rounds on social media, but definitely read it if you haven't already. I found lots of things in there that I related to, including this:

Image courtesy of The Oatmeal


And this:


And some other stuff. But I don't want to screenshot the whole thing, so I leave it for you to check out. It's probably the most raw, honest and maybe even spiritual take on running that I've ever read. Matthew Inman gets me.

I guess I'll save talking about the other one for another day. That's what inspired this post in the first place.

Monday, August 4, 2014

Prize Purse Controversy in Triathlon

More specifically, long course triathlon. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon this article that was posted in r/triathlon.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Updated Upcoming Races!

I'm very excited that I've recently been able to register for some races, so my calendar is beginning to look delightfully full. I was hoping to sign up for a 70.3 late in the season, but there just isn't one close enough that accommodates my schedule so that will have to wait until next year.

But the rest of the fall is going to be a race frenzy and I couldn't be happier about it.


The Hills are Alive

With the sound of me, huffing and puffing. Actually, I exaggerate a little bit. Since Amortya had never done a hill workout before, he picked the easiest hill in Central Park and it was therefore not that big a deal. Don't get me wrong, it was a good workout, but it was no Harlem Hill.

We met up at Columbus Circle and began the trek to the chosen hill, which is just beyond the 72nd Street Transverse. In the future I guess it would probably be more productive to just meet at the hill but we hadn't made any firm decisions about the location going into it. We arrived at the bottom of the hill around 7:15 and saw a guy standing there, seemingly keeping guard over something.

He must have overheard our conversation about what format the workout should be and offered up some advice, saying the group he was watching was running up the hill and down, around and back to the bottom for recovery. This seemed like a reasonable plan to me and Morty seemed to agree so off we went.

We did 5 hill loops, took a short break and then did another five for a total of 4 miles. Mine were a little over 9 minutes per and I'm sure Amortya's were 8 minutes, at the most. It was very hot and humid and I was sweating a lot. It was a good thing the Jamba Juice credit card machine was working.