Fall[acies]

You ever dislodge a booger and have it go up your nose? It's really disconcerting for some reason even though it's comprised of just those things that just left there anyway.

I was thinking about sinus infections because I get them every fall, and because my girlfriend's sinuses are always crap and I thought I'd make a hyperlink to someone signing the word "us." But in rudimentary googling, I returned no results. What a sad thought that in ASL, there is no us. Bad enough that it's already co-opted for A/S/L.

Mostly in fall I dream of cross country and the pleasant experience of running over hill and dale. Even the scent of port-o-john chemical leads to fond reminiscence. Of course it's not long then until it will be nut-bitingly cold. 

In other running news, the Chicago Marathon was yesterday. I was too lazy to get around to the course this year, but I did at least catch the last few miles on my computer. The NBC live webcast was rather awful, with cutaways every few minutes to interview god-knows-who or lend another update to the weather. I understand that not everyone happens to be a running enthusiast and they are trying to draw in viewers, but that is not the way to do it, especially not in the closing minutes of the race.

At any rate, watching these guys (Kebede and Lilesa), drugs or not, click off miles in the 4:40s and still be able to surge and drop into the 4:30s boggles my mind. And that they battled each other. It was an actual race. Multiple surges in races of 5k or less took their toll on me, though I suppose in the longer race there are more opportunities for moves and time to counter them. I can only imagine the horrible death of covering an early move and paying for it for 7, 9, 12, 15 miles.

One of the stranger aspects of the marathon to me is that you eat and drink during it (technically you're not quite eating in a lot of these instances). One year perhaps I'll get injuries figured out and be able to train to run a marathon in a time I'd consider reasonable. Maybe this will even be the city for it.

In political news, for the opening presidential debate it might be worth taking Matt Taibbi's word for it.