NYRRC races-the perks December 9, 2007

 Garbage can post NYRRC Joe Kleinerman 10 km race–carbo loading for squirrels.Some would say the perks of New York Road Runners club races include:

• well organized
• nice speeches by celebrities (Joan Rivers was last week, doing the same “is there a single jewish doctor in the crowd”)  speech she did last year
• lots of porta potties
• the predictability of slow people lining up at five mile pace marker only to be bulldozed by faster people who are in danger of crashing into them from behind
• volunteers telling people to stay to the left so anyone else who happens to want to be in central park during a race has a tiny path carved for them 

Having done many NYRRC races though, I have other reasons for loving these races:

• stocking up on french toast bagels ( I don’t know where they buy them, but french toast flavoured bagels are strangely delicious) at the finish line.
• giving said french toast bagels to the homeless man on the subway post race. They never really want food-they want money, but…..today the guy I gave one too was decidedly unhappy with my donation–at least, judging by the yelling at me
•  snow day races–when they cancel the chip timing and make it a fun race.
• having a bath afterwards 

 

Mens Olympic Marathon Trials November 4, 2007

Watched the Mens Olympic Marathon Trials yesterday. It was one of the more amazing and inspiring things I’ve ever seen.

Ryan Hall was at the front from the get-go, setting the pace for the first group until mile seventeen, when he took off and ended up winning by almost two minutes. Each time I saw him, he looked completely relaxed and his face never showed signs of strain.

Second and third were by no means a sure thing. There was a small group at front which included Hall, Meb, Abdi (for awhile, but then he dropped out) and Fitz.

After that group Khalid Khannouchi ran solo pretty much the whole race. Hall said the reason he took off at mile seventeen (clocking the fastest mile in CP ever) was because he saw Khalid catching up and knew if he caught their group, it would be dangerous.

Brian Sell was not in the first group at all during the race, so it was great to see him run a smart race and end up coming third.

And very sad about Shay.  

•  Brian Sell’s feed bottle that I picked up
• Ryan Hall
• Fitz 
•   Brian Sell 

want me to add bigger, or more, pics? send a comment 

scones are hard to make October 31, 2007

I’ve now tried two recipes and they all taste like cardboard. I have now collected a few more recipes and will try them. It seems that I might have to kneed after all. I have avoided all recipes that require kneeding, but I think that shortcut is over. At Oren’s , where they have cornered the market on the best coffee, they have the Balthazar scones that are soooo good.

But back to scones. A friend gave me a “Cooks Ilustrated” recipe that I will try next. In the meantime, as I was about to dump all those scones in the garbage, I realized that I could make bread pudding using the scones as the bread. So that’s the next plan.

In the meantime it’s Halloween which means the West Village is cut off from the East Village by the parade-of-all parades. It looks to be a lovely day for it.

Happy Halloween!

Marathon trials October 30, 2007

The Olympic mens marathon trials are this Saturday-they start in midtown and do several laps of central park, cutting off the Harlem hill. Still a hilly course though. Of the 130 or so running, only the top 3 will go to the Olympics. Runners World has a bunch of videos of the main contenders training and they’re really great to watch.

Actually, they are not so action packed. The majority of the videos seem to show the guys in a creek soaking their legs after their runs. And the creek seems cold, and they talk about that a lot. In fact, they throw snowballs into the creek to see how long it will take the snow to melt. Then they take their shirts off to show their lean lean bodies, made leaner still by the intake of their breaths as they get in and soak. So if you want to see several guys in a creek talking about running, you now know where to do it! It’s oddly fascinating.

Oh yeah, and the marathon for mere mortals is Sunday. Somehow that doesn’t seem as exciting anymore.

best of…. October 19, 2007

A few of the finest best of titles, as well as a few excerpts from the Village Voice best of edition.

• Best Zen Frenzy – Trader Joe’s: Maybe it’s the dorky West Coast decor, or the superhumanly mellow employees, but nowhere in the city will you find so many hungry citizens crammed into so small a space fiending over the same rapidly vanishing products behaving so well. In its inimitably frantic way, the place is positively blissed out.
• Best therapeutic ass-whuppin’-Village Chinese Therapy Center: one of the shoulda-been-a-dominatrix masseuses over at the Village Chinese Therapy Center will chop, slap, and pinch (toss in a punch or two if you’re really lumped up with tension) your woe-is-me butt back to reality and give you, as Mom used to say, “a real reason to cry.”
• Best Place To Ogle Pregnant Women And Not Feel Bad About Yourself - Expecting Models
• Best Way To Handle The Stress Of Shopping At Century 21 - Buy whatever you’re even remotely interested in, try it on in the luxurious confines of your own home, and then dump it all—or at least most of
• Jean-Paul Sartre And Simone De Beauvoir’s Last Meal – Yo Yo Fritaille-The goggle-eyed existentialist and his proto-feminist fuck buddy will be treated to one of the highest achievements of French cooking