Category: Personal

run fatboy, run

I ran a marathon.  Faster than I ever imagined.

Probably helps that I started jettisoning the extra weight I was carrying around starting this past July.  In any event, running this 2nd marathon was a lot of fun and I owe a lot of thank yous.

Thank you to:

  • Molly: for cheering me at mile 14 and joining me for a memorable trip to Philly (and carting my butt back home the day of the race)
  • Clif Bar: for your oaty, delicious (and sometimes caffeinated) energy bars
  • Nike: for making shoes that didn’t do a bit of damage to my feet in nearly 700 miles since July — not even a blister
  • Saucony: for the sweet running pants that kept me from freezing so many 5am mornings this fall
  • Music: for making the runs not-so-boring (specifically John Butler Trio, Jeremy Messersmith, Civil Twilight and Kings of Leon, whose albums I listened to one after another over the nearly 4 hour run)
  • Philly Cheese Steaks: for being my end goal/reward (btw, cheese whiz is the only way to go)
  • The Society Hill Hotel: for being such a sweet hotel

And last but not least:

  • Nip tape: for preventing countless “gun shot” wounds

Looking forward to PGH’s 26.2 in May 2011.

Reviving the Top Five (11/12/2010)

Back at the University of Vermont (UVM.edu) I posted my top 5 songs every week on what is probably the closest precursor to this site that there ever was (something like http://bsad.uvm.edu/jthibaul which was created with Microsoft Frontpage; thank goodness UVM taught me something useful in technology…NOT).

Anyway, a friend suggested I revive it.  So here goes (thanks, Tyler).

Top 5 songs (that I’m currently digging):

  1. Kings of Leon – Radioactive (from my current favorite album)
  2. The Roots – Right On feat. Joanna Newsome, STS
  3. Post Human Era – Building the Machine (found this one yesterday)
  4. Atomic Tom – Take Me Out
  5. Phantogram – Mouth Full of Diamonds

Quote – Michael Pollan

That such a diet makes people sick and fat we have known for a long time.  Early in the twentieth century, an intrepid group of doctors and medical workers stationed overseas observed that wherever in the world people gave up their traditional way of eating and adopted the Western diet, there soon followed a predictable series of Western diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.  They called these the Western diseases and, though the precise causal mechanisms were (and remain) uncertain, these observers had no doubt these chronic diseases shared a common etiology: the Western diet.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

Jesse Schell: Visions of the Gamepocolypse

One of the funniest and most engaging/interesting lectures I’ve ever watched/listened to.  Seriously worth the full 2 hours.

http://fora.tv/2010/07/27/Jesse_Schell_Visions_of_the_Gamepocalypse

It’s also full of great quotes and insights.  One of my favorites is,

So let me explain social networking, it’s a fancy term that means: Facebook.