It's a Midwest Thang

Well shootz brah it's been a long time. It's ya boy Jeb here, hollerin' at you from Chicago. I had planned to churn out one last nugget of love from my old Jersey IP, but alas it wasn't to be. Hell, I've been here a week and a half and I'm just getting to this now. Under ordinary circumstances I don't like to make my blog too synopsesy (yeah, we all know it's not a word), and yet it probably ends up happening a shit-ton anyway. In general blogs are themed, sort of niche marketing if you will, and my theme is that there is no theme except that the words put down here tend to be related to my retarded brain and interests.

So in the world of track, a world I'd inhabit a bit more if I were much faster, things have been going down. The world championships took place a couple of weeks ago and Usain Bolt did what Usain Bolt does, rewrite the record book for the 100m and 200m. Demented is a word that comes to mind when I watch this guy run, this guy who is younger than me. Of course, I'm biased towards the longer distances I have competed in in my lifetime, so when Dathan Ritzenhein crushed the American Record in the 5k, I was pretty stoked. I think it certainly helped that it seemed more unexpected than Bolt's tremendous performances and that Ritz graduated the same year as me in high school and I've been following the guy from my earliest love of the sport.

The only knock against Bolt, for me, is that he's so amazing I turn my surprise-o-meter off when watching him. I'm hoping humble little Tyson Gay can put things together after his impending groin surgery and make things interesting. Yes, I called Gay little because according to his USATF bio we are the same height and he only weighs ten pounds more than I do. Considering I run 50+ miles a week these days and my bicep is roughly the same size as my tricep, well, that surprises me. Not as much as reading that the man in the photo below apparently also only weighs ten pounds more than I. Corresponding photo of self on its way sometime in the next decade.



Blah blah, nerdly track commentary. Before I wrap up though, shout out to Matt Tegenkamp as well who dipped under the coveted 13-minute barrier in the 5k himself.

Quick notes on Chicago include that it kicks ass. It's a city, no question, but there's a friendliness to it that I never quite found in Boston and New York. Just roaming the streets as I try to get a feel for things I have had many a spontaneous conversation with strangers. On my runs too, I've been feeling the love. I have no problem admitting, as I frequently do in here, that my appearance might be something the average dick and jane are not used to. I'm shirtless, in tiny shorts, cross country flats rather than traditional trainers, probably sweating gratuitously and, oh yeah, I run like I'm sitting down. I must reassert as I always do, that when I'm running it doesn't feel like I'm adopting such ridiculous posture. I hope the high-fives from bikers continue but I think that as the weather gets cooler I will be one of the few souls out roaming the streets.

Also, every time I see photos people have taken while in Chicago they tend to include this giant shiny orb and I definitely was kind of thinking what and where the eff is that thing until I walked by it in Millenium Park. As usual I tend to forget my camera when doing anything so my own chronicling of the orb will surely follow...maybe.

So, until they create the camera built into your eyes or hand, I am going to continue to forget to photograph a bunch of pretty cool shit I have been lucky enough to see here and there. That applies to uncool shit as well, like the tow truck that backed up and crushed the front bumper of a Subaru that wasn't even going to be towed, just in the wrong place...Welcome to September folks, wake me up when it ends.

MFO

Alright, I can't deny that all I've been doing of late is viewing the Olympics. I have been a bit pissed that NBC does not show any of the track events live since, well, I'm a runner dork and that interests me just a bit more than other Olympic sports. Still, hasn't stopped me from seeing NBC's six Olympic commercials approximately 438,000 times each. Sadly that isn't much in the way of hyperbole.

Quickly then, my favorite couple of idiotic commercials, which I have already mentioned, perhaps ad nauseum, to actual humans. The first is an ad for the Buick Enclave, an SUV. It begins with some stupid white guy saying "A lot of people think the words SUV and fuel economy don't go together." He's right, I don't associate them, so this is where I wait to be proven wrong. But I'm denied this when I'm told that Buick Enclave has better fuel economy than the Acura MDX because, yes, that's right, the Acura MDX is also an SUV. Congratulations on your totally worthless advertising campaign. If people will vote for Bush twice though, I doubt they'll notice this clever effort from Buick.

Oddly enough, I'm blanking on my other most-hated Olympic ad, so as filler I'll say those Chevy "gas pumps hate us" ads suck some rather significantly-sized ass.



Anyway, let's be joyous and move on to my "Most Favorite Olympian," or MFO. It very well could be the girl pictured above, Shelly-Ann Fraser. She's just so damn jolly, and she wears braces, which makes it better. I also dig Lolo Jones, and was very sad to see her nick the second-to-last hurdle as she was well on her way to gold. You never know I guess, but again, she seems like a nice person. My bias is obvious here on the track front, as I also dig Walter Dix and how do you not like a guy like Shawn Crawford, who races giraffes and zebras?

With great love of track athletes, there are inevitably those I don't love. The big talk of the games for anyone but me is probably Usain Bolt. Maybe it's the cockiness, maybe it's just that it makes the seemingly impossible look so easy (sometimes I think they call this jealousy), but I just was not rooting for this guy. The 100m record was amazing and of little consequence in my mind, but the 200m...I remember watching that from the Atlanta Olympics and I really never thought that record would be broken while I lived. Hell, a lot of people thought that, including Ato Boldon, whose trackside commentary is one of the few things I enjoy in the NBC coverage. Records are made to be broken, but somehow I just wanted Johnson's to live on a while longer.

Still, congratulations Bolt, you are an absolute freak of nature. In the meantime I'll hope for a sick men's 400m final tonight and for my man Bernard Lagat to get to wag his tongue in the 5k after not advancing to perhaps beat stupid Rashid Ramshit in the 1500m like at last year's world championships. Maybe if I knew why he really moved to Bahrain and was able to drop his 1500m pr from 3:39.xx to 3:30.xx in one year and didn't speculate it was drugs and money I wouldn't dislike him so much. Until then, he can continue to not give a shit that people like me think he is a disgraceful cheater doped to the gills.