A gritty, six minute film. R-rated, language. Equisite videography.
Sk8 or Die in Fresno, CA
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Category Archives: Sports
Sports Report
• USC is reportedly paying Kiffin $4m/year. Not sure whether that’s $750k a win or $1m.
• Another brilliant essay by the best sportswriter at work today. I’d like to think I coulda’ been a decent sportswriter, but I would hate to have to go mano y mano with this guy.
• Ran a half marathon Domingo with Dano, Katie, and Annie. Another beautiful morning in Paradise. I ran well and I’m supposed to credit Lance with an assist. I left the house on the mountain bike without any gel (liquid carbos). Lance and cutest daughter in the world rode by on mountain bikes, got comfortably ahead, and handed off one of their gels. Shortly afterwards, I started mowing down people. But since Lance said “Thank you though for showing me that I have at least 8 years of physical fitness left” as if I’m about to keel over, I don’t think I’ll give him the credit he otherwise deserves. He is going to tear up the mountain bike course on the Sky to Sea race in B’ham in a week and a half.
• A few questions which will only make sense if you read Simmon’s essay. What’s your “one word”, not as a baller, but as a person? Is that the word you’d use to describe yourself, the word others would use to describe you, or would the one word be the same for both? In other words, is their congruence between your self perception and other’s perceptions of you? For myself, I’m undecided between “deluded” and “balanced”.
• 1,095 peeps ran the Capital City Half Marathon. 391 M’s (36%) and 704 F’s (64%). Hypotheses?
Nearing the Finish, Pretty Dog Tired
Right After Finishing
Lessons in Bahrain
What a beautiful, hopeful essay.
Ephemeral Victory
A Sports Illustrated story. Synopsis. A South Pasadena High School pole vaulter thought she won a meet and league title for her team on her final vault until the Monrovia coach pointed out she had a string friendship bracelet on which is against the rules. The pole vaulter was disqualified on the technicality, giving Monrovia the victory and league title.
I’m going to guess this was what the Monrovia coach was thinking upon seeing the bracelet. “We got em’. Victory is ours.”
Here’s an alternative idea. Let’s assume that none of the South Pas or Monrovia girls are going to become professional tracksters. And let’s assume that in ten or twenty years few people will remember or care about who won the meet and league title. And let’s speculate on how the Monrovia coach might have processed things had he been thinking more like an educator.
Specifically, what if he had asked, “What’s the take-away for my athletes if we claim victory based on the technicality? What is it if we refuse to stake our claim to victory? Which is likelier to result in classy adults?”
Or what if he had quickly huddled up with the team and asked them what they thought they should do? “Coach,” I’m betting they would have said, “let’s go congratulate them on their victory.”
Best YouTube Video Of All Time (7:29)
Time Warp
And in other news, China was stripped of a bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics for fielding an underage female gymnast, with the women’s team medal now going to the U.S.
Funny. China built every Olympic venue in less time than it took the IOC to determine the actual age of an athlete.
And this just in, Tour de France officials have determined Bernard Hinault was ridin’ dirty in the 1985 Tour.
Why Exercise?
I once had a colleague, a smart scientist, who said research showed exercise extends people’s lives the same amount of time spent exercising. If that’s close to correct, and if you excercise 5 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for forty years, that’s an extra 13 months. If that seems paltry, he’d agree, which was why he chose to be sedentary.
I don’t exercise to extend the length of my life as much as I do to improve the quality of it. Most of the time I enjoy the activity itself, the swimming, running, and cycling, especially since I have great training partners. Long story short, exercise improves the quality of my life on lots of levels.
Last Sunday I was traveling all day and on Monday and Tuesday I wasn’t able to squeeze in a workout. Felt completely out of whack. Finally rebooted with a 5 mile run along the edge of Storm Lake Tuesday night. Travelled all day Wednesday, so four days, and one five mile run. Salvaged the week by hitting it hard Thursday-Sunday.
Sunday’s ride was especially nice. Longest ride of 2010 thus far. The numbers, 63.27 miles, 3:34:11, 17.7mph avg, max 42.5, 2,954′ of elevation, 4,057 calories. Morning resting heart rate, 48, 52 in the middle of church (so I drifted during the sermon, what else is new). Great riding with Lance except for the hills he added on. His front tire exploded mid-ride. Loudest flat ever. Embarrassing the lengths he goes to to force rest.
The pictures.
In the peloton, you are what you eat and drink
Ready to roll
Dropping in on 81st Street
Line of the day, "Don't throw that away, I'm going to patch it."
Lance's elaborate rest stop ruse
Self portrait mid-ride
Calorie replacement. . . stage one
Calorie replacement. . . stage two
Calorie replacement. . . stage three
Calorie replacement. . . finishing kick
We Don’t Know Phil Mickelson Either
Masterful Masters. Listening to Bones and Mickelson talk it through and then witnessing Mickelson’s shot on 13 from the pinestraw and trees just may have been worth wasting a beautiful afternoon indoors. Unbelievable. Has there ever been a better player-caddy relationship?
Sometimes an announcer make no sense like when Jim Nantz said Tiger’s play on Thursday was so warmly welcomed by the Masters patrons (don’t call them fans) because Americans love the redemptive arc or something nonsensical like that. What the heck does Tiger’s making a few birdies and getting his life together have to do with one another?
Here’s how the press will want you to remember the 2010 Masters. Phil was inspired to win it for Amy, his wife who is battling breast cancer. Watch SportsCenter for the continuous replaying of Phil’s and Amy’s post championship embrace or the Golf Channel or see pictures of it in Sports Illustrated on Thursday. Analysts will laud Phil as the anti-Tiger for days to come. Faithful family man versus filandering “family” man. The joke will be, “Wonder which blonde Tiger would have embraced had he won?!”
The truth of the matter is, we don’t know Phil just like we didn’t, don’t, and won’t ever know Tiger or Kobe or Sandra or name the public figure. Hell, do we truly know half of our friends and acquaintances? Maybe Phil hasn’t always been faithful. With no way to know, why put him on a pedestal for anything other than that filthy shot on 13. That’s not cynicism, it’s healthy skepticism. Cynics assume the worst, skeptics know things aren’t always as they appear, and therefore, question conventional wisdom.
Now Lee Westwood, he seems like an all around great bloke. :) Here’s hoping he breaks through later in the year.
Play Ball
Shortish clip (4:41) in honor of Opening Day. Mariners 2010 “World” Series Champions. You read it here first.
Dispassionate Madness
Give the debacle that was the UCLA bball season this winter, I nearly gave up March Madness for Lent. But alas, the allure of winning big bucks in the office pool (so far ten people have put in five dollars each) inspired me to fill out and submit a bracket. Despite my late-adapting techno idiosyncracies, as an experiment, I decided to go with the Wall Street Journal’s computer generated bracket from beginning to end. Regrettably, we have Puke beating Kansas in the championship game.
One thing is nagging me, how does a computer factor in game location, crowd intensity, and 20 year olds’ emotions? It’s not like swimming where the predicted finish of the finalists in any given heat is quite predictable. The tourney’s popularity is largely a result of unforeseen upsets.
If the computer could speak for itself, it would probably say that by factoring in every result from the season its accounted for home/away, crowd intensity, and emotional variables. As a result, we have BYU in the Final Four. The experiment is whether a computer can predict upsets. Hope so.
Here’s a relevant excerpt from Tuesday’s journal:
To better understand upsets, and to find the best way to predict them, The Wall Street Journal looked at the 40 biggest NCAA tournament upsets since 2004—the games where the surprise winner was seeded at least five spots below the favorite. For each upset, we compared the teams involved by their performance in two dozen categories. The majority of these comparisons were based on how the teams matched up—for instance, how well one team shot three-pointers during the season and how well their opponents defended against them. The same head-to-head comparisons were made for factors like rebounding and steals. In the end, we found a few strong similarities between all of these matchups. But there was only one unequivocal theme: the importance of turnovers. In 30 of the 40 games, the underdog “David” team had been better all season at protecting the ball and avoiding turnovers than the “Goliath” team had been at forcing them. Getting steals also is critical.
How should I spend my winnings?
Pressing Pause 