inauspicio.us

so khalid khannouchi took London in a new world re…

so khalid khannouchi took London in a new world record. didn’t see that coming. i remain convinced that one day soon Haile will turn the marathon on its head. there’s no way around this guy. i mean, a world-record in your effective marathon debut is a bit much to ask. i’ll stick my neck out and say he’s going to run 2:04 or faster. not to take away from Khalid, so many have been talking about his succumbing to the curse of awesome foreign runners who get their US citizenship and then suddenly stop being so great.

and, btw, give josh cox some time before you get all ornery on him. boston’s going to be a sweet show, a lesser race without him to be sure, but part of the intrigue is that roller coaster of popularity and prestige. anybody remember geoff smith, 1984-85? in 85 he split 14:15 (“Smith blasted out 5k in 14:15 as if he were racing against ghosts” )for the first 5k, 1:02:51 for the first half, and blew up spectacularly with about 8 miles to go. he still won, by nearly five minutes, with a 2:14. the next year, rob decastella set a world record.

the field comes and goes, the prestige is similarly cyclical. boston is a race that endures, though, and it will always be there. i take great personal exception to reports of its decline.

other news: what a fantastic weekend. since i quit chilis, i don’t work on weekends anymore. god, what a great schedule that turns out to be. i had time to run (17 miles this weekend, not too shabby), lie in the grass and take pictures of airplanes, plan a sunday school class (judaism), and gather some data for my AI project. saturday i ran (uphill both ways, honest) around wonderland lake and went for ice cream with chloe. the two of us really wanted a pair of those really cool sneakers with the pop-out roller skates. two hours of searching the pearl street mall didn’t actually net us any shoes, but we did come across the stone cold ice cream store (hey, what do you know, its still there. i wonder if their ice cream is still good!). she is fairly coordinated, so she’d have likely done fine on the skates. for my part though, its probably good that we didn’t manage to get the shoes. i still have visible scars (visible when i am naked) from my first foray onto rollerblades, seven years ago now. its a fore/aft balance thing. i also bit it really hard rollerblading in the front hall of my house during winter break my sophomore year of college anyhow, chloe and i checked out the arty stores on the east end of the mall, and just like when my brother was here, we lamented the cost of the cool martini glasses. they’re hand-blown, with translucent blue or green lightning-bolt shaped stems, and big enough that the olive doesn’t crowd out your drink, but not so big that it gets lost in there.

anyway it was a swell evening, and i was up early sunday morning to run with the group that meets across the street from my apartment. we went a little longer today than the past couple of weeks, plus it was hot outside and even hotter inside my t-shirt. its too early in the season for me to run shirtless with a group – my residual pudge from the winter jiggles. i can stand it when i run alone, but with all these other people around i get all self-conscious. there’s a possibility that i might be getting in shape though, i had exceptionally high praise from someone at church (“You look like you’re getting too skinny”). i have a lot of bad fitness to overcome this year though, so its going to take a lot.

and, taxes. of course mine aren’t done yet, and i had to do them tonight, but i couldn’t let such a beautiful weekend pass me by like this. chloe had tax work to do too, but living right up against the mountains has another interesting feature: if you go real close to the edge of them, the sun sets earlier. so we watched a spectacular sunset at about 5 pm in a little meadow not far from canyon road, and drank fruit smoothies out of martini glasses. we couldn’t have picked a better night to watch the sunset, the sky was ablaze with color and it stayed around 75 degrees. and the martini glasses, in case you were wondering, were from pier one. not as cool as the ones from the boulder art cooperative, but a great deal less expensive and more classically styled. they are very james bond, in fact, but 007 would never deign to put a peach-strawberry smoothie in one