So if you check out the results page for the Orlando Xtreme half marathon, and click on “Half by Class” down there at the bottom of the grid, then scroll down to “Half F 35-39″, you will see that Ingrid Peck is number one. Me – I can go 2 miles, running a few minutes a mile slower than her pace for 13. But then I have to start walking. Proud of my speedy wife.
Browsing Posts in Sports
I watched the finish of the New York marathon today. Even though I can barely put together a couple miles right now, I still love running. In highschool I ran cross country and track. My dad had been an avid runner for years and his stack of Runners World magazines fell to pieces as they became source material for collages of great runners that went up on my bedroom wall. There were two runners I idolized (as a teen I wasn’t smart enough not to do that yet) above the others. Bill Rodgers, because he was so good and I thought the gloves were cool. Even more than him though, Albero Salazar was at the top of his game and a Christian. That made him someone to emulate on multiple levels. His meltdown in LA was a bummer, but I was still crazy about him as a runner.
A humorous Alberto Salazar story revolves around the Continental Homes 10k. It was a great race that I ran multiple times. It grew to be pretty large and was even televised on national t.v. I enjoyed getting to see stars like Zola Budd and Mary Decker-Slaney in person. The last year I ran it (I think) CBS televised it and Alberto Salazar was a commentator. I didn’t get to see him though. I was busy running.
My mom had driven me to the race and had taken a bunch of pictures. We took the film in (weird to think about now) and got it developed. There was a close-up shot of Alberto Salazar sitting at the back of a truck. My mom says, “I don’t know who that is but a lot of people were paying attention to him so he seemed important.” I couldn’t believe it. She did so well without even knowing it.
So what brings all this up? I was watching the marathon and as Meb Keflezighi won it, the announcer mentioned that this was the first win for an American since Alberto Salazar’s last win in 1982. Immediately my mind flashed back to the posters on my wall and then I did the math. Twenty-Seven years ago. How can that be? It seems like it was just yesterday.
While I’m doing a brain dump on running, I’m going to throw a freebie out there. As I mentioned, I did a lot of reading and cutting from my dad’s magazines. Some were a bit older and this is how I had become a big Bill Rodgers fan. He was still running in the 80’s but his best days were really through the 70’s, so he wasn’t exactly a household name with my peers.
One day at track practice our coaches told us all to get on a bus we were going somewhere. This was odd, we’d never done that before, and we hadn’t been told we’d be doing anything different. They didn’t tell us where we were going or why. The bus took us to Horizon Highschool. (Same district as my school, not too far away.) As we were unloading I looked over towards the track and there was Bill Rodgers. I was pumped and exclaimed, “That’s Bill Rodgers!”, which got me a lot of blank looks. I started asking people if they had paper or a pen and pencil. I was completely unprepared. I ended up scrounging up a raffle ticket or something and Bill had a pen. I got his signature on this little scrap of paper. It was still awesome. He talked to us about running, answered questions and ran with us a bit around the track. A fabulous afternoon I intent to remember as long as I can.
The upgrade will take a little longer. It finished all the prep, rebooted and shows it is now on 141 of 2207 packages to be updated. It is moving along rather nicely – if nothing gets broken I expect to have Fedora 11 running this afternoon. Woohoo.
While I’m here – how about that match between US and Spain in Confed cup? That was a shocker. Nice to see as a big Tim Howard fan. He had a number of clean sheets with Everton this year, nice to see it happen for the US. The big question was were the terrible matches prior the aberration or was this match?
Usually when the national anthem is sung at sporting events, the crowd is pretty quiet until the end or close to it. Some people sing along but not too many usually. At Chicago Blackhawks games, the crowd cheers wildly during the entire song. It is an amazing thing. It’s tough to describe, but when you are there it is just powerful.
For years the anthem was sung by Wayne Mesmer. He would bust it out and the crowd would cheer wildly. He also sang for many other Chicago teams and was well known in the most sports oriented city I’ve ever lived in.
I’ll never forget the year I was still living in Chicago and Wayne was shot in the throat by a mugger.
Wayne lived but I doubted I would ever hear him sing the national anthem again. Wayne became a partner with the ownership of the Chicago Wolves IHL team. The NHL saw the team as competition and they fired Wayne. I thought that was pretty crappy. But I will never forget the night I was at a Wolves game when Wayne sang in public for the first time after what happened. I honestly can’t tell you what his voice sounded like – I couldn’t really hear him. From the first note the place just exploded and it stayed insanely loud through the entire song. It never got that loud during any game I ever watched in that building (Rosemont Horizon – now Allstate Arena I believe.)
Anyway – I’m watching the Red Wings and Blackhawks this afternoon and they showed the national anthem and I got chills just listening to it on T.V. If you are ever in Chicago during hockey season and can make it to a Blackhawks game, do it just for the national anthem.
I get to see a decent number of Tampa Bay Lightning games on t.v. here in Orlando. I do enjoy that. I have to confess, it is odd seeing Rick Tocchet behind the bench in a suit. Not just because I watched him as a player for so long but because it wasn’t all that long ago there was a chance he might go to jail.
Oh! Lightning just went up by one. Need to quit blogging and focus on watching.
In the NHL, there are three teams that I support – in the following order:
- Pittsburgh Penguins
- Detroit Red Wings
- Phoenix Coyotes
Two of them are now going to be in the Stanley Cup finals. (And if you are not a hockey fan- the Coyotes are not one of the two. They haven’t even made the play-offs in a while.)
It’s not a dilemma for me- I’m pulling for the Penguins. They’ve always been my favorite team, even if I did grow up in a Red Wings family. The only thing that I don’t like about seeing them both in the finals is that if the Penguins lose, I will be hearing about it from my brother forever. It will be unbearable for quite a while. Makes it more exciting I guess, since I am much more motivated to care about the outcome.
In the sports realm- need to find somewhere to watch Wednesday’s game on a big screen. It’s on ESPN2, so I could watch it at home, but it seems that the Champions League deserves something bigger.
Chelsea vs. Manchester United
Champions League Final in Moscow.
I don’t have cable any more – wasn’t worth the money. Need to figure out where I can go to watch this. The game is at 14:30 my time. Is it too early to start ‘coming down with something’? If I lived in any other country it wouldn’t even be an issue. The first all English Champions League final? Should be good.
