Sports

What’s next after the Hyannis Half? My body turns to dough if I don’t exercise and indeed exercise hard. In fact, just taking it easy for the last week after the half-marathon made me feel all sluggish and yucky. I know I should probably visualize “thin” and go on a diet — but that just doesn’t work for me. And I need a goal to make me stick to a routine, but luckily I seem to have found my drug. So, what’s next is the Cohasset 10K Road Race by the Sea on April 6. My realistic goal is to run the 10K at my recent half marathon pace (9:36 min per mile = 59:39 for the 10K), my “reach for it” goal is to finish under 57:17, which is the time predicted by a cool predictive calculator I found. To assemble a training program for the next five weeks I used the Smart Coach program from Runners World. Onwards!

I have a mission for the rest of this year now. Today, I broke my half-marathon personal best (set last October) by running the 13.1 miles in 2 hours 5 minutes 38 seconds. I managed this even though I struggled mightily the last two miles. So, now my mission is to break 2 hours.

BTW, it was an absolutely gorgeous day in Hyannis. The route goes by yacht harbors and other beautiful parts of the Cape Cod coast. Brilliant.

Our “housing project” a.k.a. Mosaic Commons Cohousing a.k.a. Sawyer Hill Eco-Village is proceeding apace. We just secured a full construction loan for actually building the community. Our general contractor, JJ Welch, has actually already been working full steam ahead for months. The first homes are fully framed and ours looks like this:

We’re expecting that we’ll be moving in some time in the fall of this year. Yikes! This means deciding what to do with our condo in Cambridge prontissimo. Should we sell, should we rent it out? And in either case, there’s plenty of fixing up to do.

This morning, I took Emma to a soccer refereeing course in Westborough. After dropping her off, I drove to Berlin and did 3 turns on a 3 mile loop around our future home. Notice how it says “Sawyer HILL”? To which I have this to say: NO SHIT! This was supposed to be an easy slow-paced nine mile run. Instead, it was a serious hill workout. Once we actually live there, I expect to quickly be in awesome shape because of all the hill running.

The site was buzzing with construction activity even at 8am on a Saturday morning. The beeping of heavy equipment backing up can be heard for miles. Our closest neighbors must be getting batty.

And yes, this means I am in training again: weather and flu permitting, I will be running the Hyannis Half-Marathon in two weeks.

Time for some serious border disputes. Where exactly is the border of Red Sox Nation vis-a-vis Yankee Country? The New York Times investigated and came up with this map:

Note in particular the division of Connecticut and the small Red Sox enclaves across the border in New York state.

Now that it has been leaked to the New York Times that Floyd Landis’ urine sample after 17th stage of the Tour de France contained synthetic testosterone [btw, I seem to remember that this was leaked to someone else on the first day the story broke but it wasn’t picked up widely — and what’s with all the leaks anyway? That doesn’t make the whole process seem all that professional and competent], it’s probably time to become cynical and figure out what might have happened (while of course holding out hope that he is after all innocent). Here’s my best shot at making sense of it all:

• After the collapse during the 16th stage, Landis gets drunk with his teammates. He decides that he needs to try to make up time the next day. In spite of his upbringing, he is clearly not someone who can take being an also-ran or even just second fiddle.
• He asks his German doctor for something to bring him back up to speed. The doctor says that the only thing that could make a difference in such a short time-frame are amphetamines, which are easily detected in a drug test. So, they say no. [BTW: The doping expertise that East German doctors developed over the decades under the old regime is certainly something that they have continued to fine-tune and monetize. Reports are that the infamous Spanish doping doctor received his substances from Germany.]
• Landis decides on his own that some testosterone might help. Riders report that testosterone (which experts say does not give short-term boosts) can lead to euphoria — and maybe that’s all he needed. He self-administers and might have made a mistake in the dosage.
• He probably doesn’t expect to win the stage and thus be subject to a mandatory drug test. All he wanted was to make some time back to be in a position for a respectable finish after the time-trial.

I hope this is not what happened. I hope that Landis is clean. But one has to be realistic.

One thing I think that should happen in cleaning up cycling and other sports is to not just suspend or ban athletes who have been found guilty of doping. I think there should be zero tolerance, as in immediate life time bans, for any coaches, doctors, team managers, etc. who are involved in doping. The Phonak team with its managers and doctors etc. should not be allowed to continue operating. They’re clearly dirty. Similarly, I cannot believe that Trevor Graham, the coach of Justin Gatlin, is still in the sport. I see that the New York Times reports similar sentiments.