Extreme Ironing

A random find on the internet has upped my laugh quote of today to well beyond average.  This has to be the most awesome thing EVER.  Apparently this stuff is a pretty big deal.

http://www.extremeironing.com/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ironing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Extreme_Ironing_World_Championships

Yes that says Extreme Ironing World Championships.  Yes, that is for real.

It Was Supposed to Be a Joke

Lewis Black made a joke about how we should nominate a president who is dead, a la the video above.  That being said, now read this article from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7459695.stm

&^%*%

Good thing the humidity is only 38%.  That won’t be for long though, because it’s supposed to rain for the next FIVE FRIGGIN DAYS.

Weather in NC

Summary of weather in NC-

• Winter - Cold, but not cold enought to snow.  It still rains and ices though :).
• Spring - Weather is entirely inconsitent and it rains a lot
• Summer - Temperature isn’t so hot, but it’s ultra humid.  So it might as be 120˚
• Fall - weather is once again entirely inconsistent and it rains a f*ckin lot.
• Total summation - it sucks.

Worst Race Ever / Lessons Learned

I did an olympic traithlon today, and I have to say, it completely outdoes any race or practice I’ve done as far as bad performance.  But before I get into what sucked, I’ll point out some of the pros of the race, which were pretty good pros.

• The swim finish was marked with a Wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man
• The shuttle bus to the swim start made a wrong turn, backed up to far while making a three point turn, and got stuck in a ditch.  Everyone took it lightheartedly, luckily a few guys helped push and got it out.
• A noble man in front of me on the bike stopped and sacrificed some of his time to pull a kitten out of the road and to safety.  He was pretty fast though, didn’t take him long to pass me again.
• I liked the course.  It was a point to point, with a swim-bike and bike-run transition area, instead of having just one transition area.  You swam to your bike, and biked to the run.  The swim temperature was awesome at 75 degrees, nice and cold and invogorating.  Made my muscles a bit tense though.  Bike had some nice hills and scenery.  The run kind of sucked though, because by the time I got to it around midday there was barely any shade and it was 89 degrees.

Now for the suck.

• I only got an hour of sleep the night before.  Excitment, combined with a quiet hotel room conataining a loud snorer is a good recipe for insomnia.  Try it sometime, you just might kill yourself.   Regardless though, at my race back in October I didn’t get much sleep either, so I didn’t expect this to affect performance too greatly.
• This is the prime reason the race sucked so bad:  In haste in the morning I made the mistake of putting my front wheel on backwards.  Normally this wouldn’t make any difference, because I have road tires with no tread.  However, my brakes are adjusted very close.  Thus my brake was rubbing my wheel hardcore the whole race.  What with all the hills on the race it destroyed my legs trying to go my normal speed.  I didn’t stop to check because I figured I just wasn’t performing well.  I had no idea things were so bad until near the end.  Whenever I went to do the run and was exhausted I knew something was wrong.  I’ve done workouts much harder than this race.  But thanks to this, this was harder than any workout or race I’ve done, ever.  Harder than the marathon I ran in March.  The marathon with an elevation change of over +/- 400 feet.
• NO GATORADE, FTW?!  If you know much about exercise nutrition, you may know that when you sweat you release salt and water.  You may also know that drinking too much water can lead to death, it takes a lot, but if you do, it’s a painful painful way to die.  Now, if you sweat a lot, and drink only water, you’re losing water and sweat, but only replacing water.  And it advances the water overdosage process.  The result is called hyponatremia and all of the symptoms closely resemble dehydration.  Apparently the excuse for this was the sponsor providing gatorade pulled out.  The pooch is not happy.

No failure is a failure of you didn’t learn something though.  Despite the suck I’ve learned a lot from this race and wil definitely not make these mistakes again.  I plan on doing a redemption triathlon as soon as possible.  Now that all is said and done, time to pick up and move on.

Edit 6/3/08:  I added the guy saving a kitten to the awesome things list.

Shoes Suck

Right now I could give a multitude of reasons why running in shoes is bad for you.  But why would I do that when SEVERAL PEOPLE who KNOW MORE THAN ME have done it already.

Great article by a friend from a forum (with citations).

From Vibram’s website (written by guys with PhDs and stuff).

And of course you could always Google it for multitudes more articles.

Runs on “Alternative Fuels”

This was part of a Charlotte Mecklenburg campaign to improve bike usage.  I found a PDF about the campaign, but I cannot locate it again.  I saw one of their posters in a Bike Line store long ago, and I’ve wanted one.  I’ve scoured the internet and all I can find are some small images included in an internet article.  So I took the image and used what Photoshop skills I have to blow it up to a printable size I could print out on standard 8.5″ x 11″ paper.  So here it is if anybody wants it.  Screw copyrights, if there was somewhere I could buy this I would respect there rights, but it doesn’t seem like they care enough to track me down.

The picture is a .png.  For those interested, here is a PDF File.

Parkour in History

Technically It’s been around since man has.  You think finding the fastest path through an area is anything new?  Jumping on/over/climbing things is something new?  If you answered yes, you’re an idiot.  These videos, while quite old, are quite amazing.

Help Southeast Asia

It’s a depressing time if you watch/read the news. I recently ranted about it seeming like too many good people are dying around here. But the situation in Southeast Asia is horrendous on a massive scale. The earthquake in China has killed more than 12,000 people, but luckily China is doing at least a decent job of cleaning up and is accepting aid from other countries. China is accepting foreign aid. Booming giant of a country they are. Hell, the US accepted aid from China when Katrina hit. On the other hand, FUCK BURMA. They stopped counting the dead at 22,000 and estimates range upwards of 100,000 dead. Currently they are stonewalling foreign aid from other countries, all because of their stupid politics. All of those people are dead and more are dying and their government could care less. And with the current conditions left by the storm, spread of diseases like Cholera and Typhus is imminent. These people need help. I’m in a lot of personal debt myself, but I will be donating at least a small amount. Anything helps. Hopefully the US can pressure Burma into allowing more aid into the country, and not make our donations worthless. Either way, it’s better than having done nothing.

Here’s some links provided by The Washington Post on how you can help: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051301308.html?nav=rss_world

Also, go here: http://www.google.com/myanmarcyclone/

For more on the disasters, you can read the recent news, because it’s still going on and being reported on. And you can read these articles from good sources.

“Like The Apocalypse” - A Burmese Tragedy <- highly recommended

Thousands Feared Dead as Earthquake Hits China

Pat McRory Meet Pat(rick) Bateman

From what I’ve read of the candidates, Pat McRory seemed like a good choice for governor.  So this isn’t against him.  This is just kind of funny.  See the resemblance.

Note: Technically I’m also saying Pat McRory looks like Christian Bale (the actor who plays Patrick bateman).  But he really seems to most resemble his visage in American Psycho more than anything else I beleive.  And if you really want to patronize McRory, you can use this loophole to say he looks like Batman.