Great Advice When Going Back to School

 

Your Best Christmas Present

So I haven’t posted on here in a while and I was getting pretty bored, so I decided to go ahead and make a new entry.  Sticking with the Christmas theme, I went into a chat room and surveyed about 200 or so people, seeing what their favorite Christmas present from this year was.

Surprisingly, most of the answers were pretty unique.  The most popular gift was the Ipod Touch, followed by a laptop.  The only other answers to be repeated were clothes (3 times), money (twice), love (twice), a diamond necklace (twice), and a box of condoms (twice).  Certainly a good variety going on there.

There were a fair amount of cheesy answers…the kind that you would expect to see written about in a 4th grade personal narrative, however these two definitely took the prize for the cheesiest:

“a jacket.. i didnt really ask for anything. I’d   rather see all the little kids in the world happy than myself”

“My baby sister’s expression when she got everything she wanted”

On the other hand, the most depressing had to be:

“A gun and one bullet”

And the weirdest goes to:

“A mounted bear”

As for what my best present was, I would have to says Assassin’s Creed 2 for the PS3…I’m still waiting on my Ipod Touch, haha.  Anyway, I encourage everyone else to leave a comment and share with me what your best present was!  Happy holidays!

And oh yeah, here’s the entire list of answers I got, just in case you’re curious =):

• Ipod touch (6)
• IHome
• Clothes (3)
• Jeans
• Shoes
• New Cowboy Boots
• Zebra Snuggie
• Hair straightener
• MJ’s “This is it” album
• A box of condoms (2)
• A mounted bear
• Money
• Cash Money YOOO!
• A blonde with a bow on her
• Cowboys/Saints tickets
• Wii
• Star Wars movie poster
• Team Canada hockey jersey
• A gun and one bullet
• Raw Vs. Smackdown 2010
• GPS
• Cell phone
• Hummer
• Longchamp Pliage Bag
• Jack Wills Skirt
• A trip to Europe
• A 1984 Porsche
• Laptop (4)
• a jacket.. i didnt really ask for anything. I’d rather see all the little kids in the world happy than myself
• My baby sister’s expression when she got everything she wanted
• Family
• Love (2)
• Parisian Bookends
• Diamond necklace (2)
• Snowboard
• A Ring

 

On Second Thought…Vote for Jamarcus Russell

After viewing Vote4Jamarcus.com, I’ve been convinced that Jamarcus Russell is the most deserving of a trip to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl.  His impressive stats of 2 touchdowns, 8 interceptions, 5 lost fumbles, a 46.3 completion percentage, and an overall QB rating of 47.2 (Ryan Leaf’s career QB rating was 50.0) speak for themselves.  Give Raiders fans something to finally cheer for and vote for Jamarcus.

 

And Your NFL’s Leading Rusher is…

Cedric Benson

The former Texas Longhorns and Chicago Bears running back who was arrested twice on DUI charges and subsequently released from Chicago is now the NFL’s leading rusher as a member of the Cincinnati Bengals.  He currently has 720 rushing yards, 38 more than second place Adrian Peterson.  He is also leading the league in yards per game with 102.9; the only running back to have eclipsed this 100 yard mark.  Benson is currently on pace for 1,646 rushing yards for the season.

Do him and yourself a favor by voting him into the 2009 Pro Bowl.

Who Dey.

 

Enter the Social Media Revolution

 

Words of Wisdom…from Tupac

Simple, profane, and profound:

 

Best Banner Ad Ever

Check it out.
Don’t understand why?  Well then give it a click…or a hundred.

 

In Memory of Michael Jackson

Below is a link to a website that has a lot of covers of Michael Jackson’s songs. Included are covers by John Mayer, Fall Out Boy, Amy Winehouse, Charlotte Church, James Morrison, David Cook, and others.

http://www.hypeful.com/2009/06/25/king-of-pop-michael-jackson-dead-at-50/

Now I must begin the arduous task of searching for covers of Billy Mays’ infomercials.

 

Links of the Week

Apparently cats like to get high, too.
Still don’t know if you’re in the friend zone? Check out this chart.
Diddy is left utterly perplexed.
16-year-old toddler defies aging.
See how this kid was able to top LeBron.
Watch this World of Warcraft freakout.

 

A Long Distance Running Q&A

Chris McDougall is an avid long distance runner who recently wrote a book called “Born to Run.” In the book McDougall meets and learns from the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons, who because of their uncommon techniques are able to run hundreds of miles at a time. If you’re at all interested in running, you should definitely check out this book; I know I will at some point this summer.

Anyway, McDougall recently did a very interesting and insightful interview with TIME about the in’s and out’s of ultra distance running. I’ve attached the interview below:

What misconceptions do people have about running?
Anyone can do running. Running should be easy. It should be fun. It should include everyone. It shouldn’t be a punishment for eating cheesecake, which is what we’ve turned it into. There’s this kind of war on running — people keep telling you you’ll get hurt, get injured, that you need orthotics, that you need go to a special running store before you try it. There’s this totally misconceived notion that it’s hard to do, and it’s not.

What is the correct way to run?
Prior to the creation of the modern running shoe, people were taught how to run either by a running coach or by simple feedback from their feet. If something hurt, you would start running differently. You’d never, ever land on your heel on a thinly cushioned shoe, because it hurt. Your heel’s not designed to absorb impact. Running should feel weightless. It should feel like you’re floating in space. It’s basically a series of controlled jumps. Then we started trying to trump nature and come up with something we could sell, and what we’ve created are these monstrosities that allow people to forget about form and running technique and just clump along in whatever kind of sloppy fashion they want.

You spent a lot of time with the Tarahumara, a society of master runners who live in obscurity in Mexico. I’d never heard of them before. How do they manage to still stay so secluded, and what did you do to get them to trust you?
They stay secluded by remaining down in the depths of this vast network of canyons. One reason they haven’t blazed across the competitive circuit is because our kind of running is really stupid and foreign to them. We bust out as fast as we can from gun to tape, and the Tarahumara don’t do that. Humans are built for endurance, not speed. We’re awful sprinters, compared to every other animal. We try to run our races as if they were speed races, but they are not. They’re endurance races. Even a marathon, the way it’s run now, it’s not an endurance contest. But the Tarahumara do two things that are different: they run as a group. Secondly, they alternate between bursts of effort and recovery. That’s what’s brilliant about their running — it’s this really smart, strategic combination of fast and slow.

Running a marathon seems like a big deal, but ultra-runners run hundreds of miles over mountains. How do they do it?
I never saw an ultra-marathon until I was in one. I ran 50 miles with the Tarahumara. My stomach was clenching up like a fist before the race. I received the best advice for running I ever heard: “You’re not going to win, so just relax. If it feels like work, you’re running too hard.” I just wish people would run two miles as if they were running 100 miles, because one thing that you will always see in ultra-races that you will never see in normal marathons are smiles. People are relaxed and enjoying the moment.

What did running those 50 miles feel like?
Most of the miles were a total blast. You start before dawn, so it’s dark outside, and you’re all huddled for warmth at the start. As you’re running, the sun comes up. It’s just brilliant. Every moment, every mile brought a vivid sensation. When you allow yourself to ease into the run, as if you’re easing into a hot bath, the sensations come to you gradually. You feel your body warming up. You feel yourself hitting a stride. Nothing ever feels forced. It feels soothing and fun. The only crunch time was the last 10 miles or so — they were a little hard. I thought there was going to be more water, but they ran out. One man, Barefoot Ted, was drinking his urine at one point.

About drinking your own urine — you talk in the book about people who hallucinate while running or become disoriented and exhausted. You say running is really easy, but obviously ultra-running is an extreme sport. It’s very hard, and people go through a lot. Why do you think people push themselves that hard?
A really smart scientist, Dr. Dennis Bramble at the University of Utah, said to me, “Recreation has its reasons.” It’s an instinct we have inside of us. We push ourselves that far because we’re hard-wired to want to remind ourselves that we can do it.

What exactly is the Running Man theory?
The theory is that humans evolved as running-pack animals, that they only way we got food was by running our prey to death. The human brain exploded in size about 2 million years ago, expanding from a peanut to the melon we have now. That could’ve only happened if humans were eating animal carcasses. But the first weapon only appeared 200,000 years ago, so for 1,800,000 years we were somehow acquiring dead animals without having a weapon to kill them. So the theory is that we ran animals to death.

What do you say to people who say, “Oh, I don’t like running.”
I say, Go for a run. Or let’s play some Ultimate Frisbee. Almost every sport involves running. You will not find a 4-year-old on this planet who does not like to run. Why? Because they haven’t been told it’s a workout.

Why are runners not as famous as other athletes?
There’s no money in it. To get on a bike and look like Lance Armstrong, you’re going to drop $8,000 or more. If you’re an ultra-runner, you buy one pair of shoes. Tony Krupicka, one of the greatest young ultra-runners, has worn the same pair of crappy, cross-country flats for the past six years. It’s actually one of the big debates in ultra-racing right now: some of the top competitors want there to be prize money, but the second money gets into it, the sport is ruined. Right now, there’s a certain sense of amateurism and purity to the sport. I was crewing for ultra-runner Jen Shelton during one race, and she was gunning to win, but she ate a jalapeño pizza and pitcher of beer five hours before the start, so at mile 40, she blew up and was retching on the course. When she lifted her head up, she realized that two of the guys she had been competing with were standing there waiting for her. She was 40 miles out in the woods alone, and they wanted to make sure she was O.K. They took her to an aid station, and once she was cared for, they took off [for] the finish line. You get a sense of real camaraderie out there because ultimately it’s about everyone pulling together.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1902027,00.html