Red Dirt Harriers

If you've never experienced Norman, OK during the holidays, than you've never felt the way that a large college town completely respires it's student body to parts unknown and finds the locals creeping out of their holes and heading out to reconnect with their favorite watering holes. If you're really cool, like me, than you head to The Library, which is what I did last night and experienced the somewhat surreal fact that every other table in the joint was occupied by former acquaintences of some form or another. The next point of order here would be to explain that like Kevin Barnes, I too have an alter-ego. Unlike his Georgie Fruit, the former R&B sinder turned genderless superhero, my doppelganger is a 54 year old, 1 mile fun runner named Jerry Lang. Well yesterday, fate intervened and low and behold Jerry Lang recalled the fitness of his youth and set a new age group national record at the OKC Trukey Trot. My memory of yesterday eludes me but I did find it odd t...

I think it is a shame that psychotherapy is such an overlooked area of medicine, I know I would like to have some things explained to me about my addiction to short shorts and hate of cell phones, as I'm sure others may be curious about as well. You my fine reader do know that running for many is the ultimate expression of the libido in the Freudian sense of the word, which is to say the life force and the combatant to Thanatos . Or is the death drive the true mark of the beast, the impulse that drives one through the darkness unconcerned with the return trip. More Sober Updates: Pretty good training as of late with the help of Jordan, Holly, and a few others. Turkey trot on the way. Evidently Team OKRunner Elite will be gunning for the coed relay title at the White Rock Marathon, which should be a blast. Hopefully Megan knows where to find a good pint afterwards as well.

I met up with Aaron Jaqua and Justin Lebeau last night at the former Le/Qua compound on Highway Symmes. These are a couple friends that we basically met from running down Symmes St. so many times and they were gracious enough to have a get-together last summer where they sampled my Belgium Dubbel. While not hardcore beer aficionados like myself, they are willing to drink what I bring and give me loads of compliments in return. So during the first installment these two were nextdoor neighbors but are now each married and Lebeau and his lady had to move but that didn't stop us from using his former patio, stoking up the chiminea, and sampling my last pale ale, some of my spiced perry, and a couple brown ales. Jaqua is about as happy and gracious of a person as you can imagine and Lebeau is practically the mayor of Chickasha, OKlahoma so I can complain about their roads and lack of donut shops. I got to here about the recent Jaqua trip to England and Scotland and his infamous "wo...

I manufactured a couple arch inserts at Jordan's advising for my Brooks Defyance, which I like but seem to be a little too neutral for me. Anyway, the tad extra support did the trick and my heal felt pretty good. I have an bit of a adductor strain but nothing outrageous, so Holly and I got moving reasonable well until his Cici's decided to return the favor and he had to jog it in. I dropped him off and then pushed it intermittently according to traffic. I caught a 3/4 mile late in the run around 5:40 pace. It seems to help to have a closed route for faster stuff when you run around lunch and as of today, I have officially graduated to some more specific training. The title of this post refers to the statement by Q from the Bond films. I got to see some of the previews for their latest go of it, which seem pretty good. I just hope Bond doesn't destroy any new wonders of the world in the like he does his cars and women. I was remembering Desmond Llewelyn, who played Q and in...

Man, I couldn't hold on to my Pub Run legacy and was relegated to a 4th place finish. I actually had a decent run I think and I didn't re-rupture my plantar so it was as much of a success as I could have hoped for, unless I lived in a Bizarro Guinness world, where my consumption of the coveted life elixir healed all that ails and soothed all woes and I was talented enough to win races without having to do any quality work. I did have a blissful time and downed lots of the namesake beverage. Holly and newcomer Jordan made a nice go of it while former OSU All-American runners were less than impressive. I appreciated the NY Times article regarding conflicts between runners and autos and can safely say that I've pretty much encountered all the mentioned situations and then some. I'm not sure what's happened lately to make the average interaction seem less than cordial, maybe I'm somewhat to blame but the situations that piss me off are when drivers are pretty much ...

Tried to vote early last week but that wasn't happening as Cleveland County doesn't have much of a venue and evidently alot of folks are turning out. Being Oklahomans, we have some very important fundametal state ballot issues. For instance, we have an initiative to add hunting as a constitutional right. Now being a liberal who enjoys fishing and sees an importance in hunting (it's a crazy paradox right?) I still don't see any need for this issue and I don't like the notion that people could override state conservation experts if a animal species were endangered. Remember this is a state where you can legally noodle with spearguns, trap animals, shoot mountain lions (which are not in abundance), kill feral pigs without a license, and buy automatic weapons at flea markets and people get all worried that a vegan PETA supporter would somehow get elected and then pass an initiative to ban hunting? Not bloody likely. More reasonable would be that the allowed people to sh...