Philies fan gets it.

Awesome. I always wanted to see one of these idiots leveled.

I thought this was pretty funny. Jacoby Ford is freaking fast.

Our president sends out recaps after each of our races. Here's the one from our last race:

USAT Collegiate National Championship- April 17, 2010

Why Lubbock? That is the question.

Triathlons always have the worst race conditions, especially ours, right? Well, this one was the worst. To put it in perspective, the race director who has done 250 races or something said this was one of worst he’s ever seen. That being said, the overall experience was totally awesome!

Given the high level of competition and heavy workloads at UT it’s hard missing a full day of classes. Well, not that hard. It’s actually kind of awesome. We left Friday morning before dawn (this isn’t race day yet) to reach packet pickup on time. It was cold, windy and raining in Lubbock.

After packet pickup was the captains meeting. Here the race director explained the challenges that we may encounter the next morning: the water is currently 60 degrees so the swim is wetsuit mandatory, there might be mandatory dismounts on the bike portion to wade across water, the run course is currently flooded so it is rerouted to another loop, and alligators. Then he took questions, which consisted of:

(Alabama) “What is being used to start the race?”

‘Excuse me?’

“Like a gun, or…”

‘Air horn.’

(LSU) “Are there strippers?”

‘Excuse me?’

“You know, volunteers to strip off wetsuits.”

‘No strippers.’

(Texas A&M) “When does the spirit contest start?”

‘Now.’

“GIGGEM AGGIES WHOOO”

(Cal) “Do we have to put all three helmet stickers on our helmet?”

‘Yes. For safety.’

(LSU) “Who wants to party tonight?”

Alabama did.

Then we made a trip to Wal-Mart to buy extra clothes and gloves and oreos.

Free pasta dinner was provided in the Texas Tech rec center (meh) and we got to eat with schools from our conference. The atmosphere had a bit of tension. A&M showed up with like 30 people including one of their male cheerleaders and ruined dinner for everyone. No joke, they started doing their football cheers and the whole deal. Someone from our team, all being smartasses, proposed that our goal be to never win the spirit award because it’s lame and to add that to the club constitution. “There’s the spirit award, and there’s the spirit award.”

Then we drove to check out the race course. Ridiculous. The hills were nasty, the run course was covered by rapids (no joke), wind howling, cold, dark, scary, death.

“What’s the worst that could happen tomorrow?”

“You could die” replied The Stache.

Randy Bass appeared like a hallucination of a jedi “Well, you got to die somehow.”

And so we were comforted for the time being.

The Red Roof Inn gave us a disgusting, obviously smoking room. We told the lady behind the counter in a red raiders shirt that we reserved a non-smoking room and they gave us a smoking room. She explained “It is a non-smoking room. People smoke in there all the time Honey.” Wonderful.

Race morning. The rain stopped but it was 48 degrees and like 30 mph winds. We took the bikes out of the trailer, pumped up tires, carried our bikes and gear through water to transition area and got set up. They informed us that the water was now 53 degrees and they are cutting the swim in half for safety concerns. We met up for a prerace briefing with Coach Allan, a native Canadian.

“How are you doing Allan?”

“Freezing my nuts off.”

It was a run-in beach start. All the silver caps lined up at the starting line, spectators cheering from above. It was really really cool and epic. Each wave the guy with the megaphone would say something ridiculous like “You aren’t a real triathlete until you pee in your wetsuit!” and sounded the horn to start the race.

The first guys finished the swim in like 6 minutes. What the? So short. Mollyfish contemplated swimming the course a couple more times for good measure. Marauder Saunders, an experienced swimmer, commented that it was the worst swimming conditions ever. At least it was short, and the warmest part of the race.

Transition offered no solace, however. With frozen hands it was nearly impossible to get wetsuits off, shoes on, and helmet buckled. The Stache broke his helmet in the process but managed to avoid destroying the entire bike rack this time. “The” Hunter, searching for an edge over the competition, rummaged through Chris’s backpack for his Epi-pen and stabbed it in his own jugular, eyes bulging and tongue sticking out and making an Arnold Schwarzenegger sound, and bolted out of transition.

The bike was misery. Right out of transition we had to climb a mean hill. Untouchable Hannah’s chain came off at the bottom of the first hill so she resorted to riding her Segway for the rest of the course. Dasher, notorious for taking out her opponents on the bike course while out of sight of the officials, pulled alongside a Baylor chick on a descent. Under her breath she warned “It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of gum” (she’s a Duke Nukem fan) and she shouldered the Baylor chick off the side of the mountain.

And yes, there are serious hills out there. They are actually really epic and it’s unfortunate that we couldn’t appreciate the awesome course because we were too busy holding on to our aero bars for dear life in the relentless wind. Racers were blowing all over the road. And it was freakin’ cold.

The second transition was even harder than the first with hands frozen in the handle bar death grip, especially for those dealing with shoe laces. Backlund and Dan The Man and some engineers from other schools built vehicles like in the Twisted Metal video game and battled for the finish.

The run course was also very windy, long and hilly. It was two loops so everyone saw almost everyone else at some point. Now it was up close and personal. All the coaches were out there yelling to their teams and having fist fights just for the hell of it. Props to Allan for his encouraging words and reinforcement. He was surprised by the intensity of the Navy coach, who was mumbling to himself with veins in his forehead bulging, grinding his teeth, veins in his neck, veins in his teeth.

Finishers sprinted to the finish to be wrapped in mylar blankets for warmth. Then to the line for food and finishers’ prizes- USA Triathlon laundry bags. Sweeeet. They made everyone wait for the sprint race to end before they opened transition, so our team huddled for warmth for a couple of hours with the Penn state team who we learned was also staying at the Red Roof Inn.

The awards ceremony was later at the host hotel, complete with live band. The spirit award went to Colorado state after a cheer off against Texas A&M. Colorado won that in a landslide, most people booed for A&M. They were a little embarrassing. We had to explain who’s horns they were sawing off to the Virginia Tech guys next to us. “Apparently Gigg’em mean ‘to stab them’” – The Stache. The armed forces and Colorado and California schools took all the awards. The Cal guy had ostrich legs for goodness’ sakes. We totally deserved an award.

Later we hit the soup (the hot tub at the Red Roof looked like soup) with the Penn state guys. Drove all the way home the next day.

Mission accomplished. For our first year as a team and first time at nationals, we made an excellent showing. I’m really proud of everyone who competed. The best part is how stoked everyone is to start training for next year. Alabama should be paradise in comparison. Great work!

chris"

I hate blogging.

East China Sea Gaze

2010 USAT Collegiate Nationals

Race recap coming soon... 42 degrees and raining with 20 mph winds... yay hypothermia!

Tiger's First Commercial "Back"

The voice over is Tiger's late father. Nike ads are usually some of my favorite, but I'm not sure how I feel about this one yet. Let me know what you think.

I read an article today about the overuse of superlatives in sports. It claims that words are losing their meaning since we use them too much. Here's an excerpt from the article:

"Disconnecting words from their meaning isn't important until it is -- as George Orwell was at great pains to remind us. In the doublespeak language of the military/industrial complex or corporate/entertainment complex lies the seed of a terrible future in which war is peace and freedom is slavery. And "Lost" gets six seasons without answering a single major plot point."

You can find the article here:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=5037973


Also on The Onion I read a piece going in the opposite direction. It claims that "'wow's' and 'oh-my's' have recently hit all-time lows." Excerpt below:

"Over the past five years, sports announcers have displayed a marked increase in their ability to accept the evidence of their eyes and find the sporting efforts they witness "entirely credible," a study published Wednesday concluded."

You can find the article here:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-announcers-increasingly-able-to-believe-what,17056/

If you could experience only one of the following feats, what would it be?

Pitching a perfect game.
Hitting a walk off home run.
Hitting the winning three pointer.
Bowling a perfect game.
Kicking the winning field goal.
Scoring the winning touchdown in sudden death OT.

Would you rather be a number one draft pick bust with 50 million dollars in the bank or a super successful journeyman who never made the big bucks?

Would you rather win a gold medal or a professional championship?

Would you rather be a hall of famer who never won a championship, or a minor role player who did win a championship or two?

Tourny Time

Don't have much to say this week. I'm not filling out a bracket this year. I want to see if it makes the tournament more or less enjoyable not having to worry about cheering against the underdogs or for teams I actually really hate.

The Perils of a DVR

The whole being a student thing kinda gets in the way of being a sports fan sometimes. Like any true sports fan I have a bad habit of getting distracted by games when I should be doing homework or studying for exams. There always seems to be some sort of heart wrenching drama on ESPN and I don't want to be "the guy throwing pistachios at his buddy's mouth in the airport." If you watch enough ESPN, you know what I am talking about.

Last Sunday I decided that while I love the Olympics, and USA-Canada = one of the most compelling moments of the Games, I'm paying UT a ton of money to get an education. And with 3 tests and a paper coming up in the few days after the game, I should probably spend my time more wisely than watching a hockey game.

So I recorded it on my DVR determined to not watch the game until the end of the week, after I had fulfilled my duties as a student. My roommates told me I was crazy and that there was no way I could make it through a week without someone spoiling the score for me. I told them this was Texas (not exactly hockey country) and that I felt pretty confident I could make it a week without hearing a hockey score, even if it was a bigger game than usual. I had to switch my homepage from ESPN.com, couldn't watch any ESPN or TV that had any kind of news, and had to divert my eyes away from the front pages of newspaper stands. But the hardest part was not catching a glimpse of the score on someone's computer screen while sitting in class. Being a sport management major, everyone in my classes has ESPN.com as their homepage and many surf its pages while in class.

I managed to make it through the week without having the score spoiled. I finally found out it was a great game, but a lose for Team USA in the end.

U-S-A!

I can't buy the comparisons that some analysts are making between today's USA-Canada hockey game and 1980's Miracle on Ice. Yes the US was a big underdog and Canada a huge overdog coming into the Vancouver games, but a game between two teams made up of all pros should never be mentioned in the same sentence as the Miracle. But it was an extremely entertaining game nonetheless. And an excuse to watch one of my favorite sporting clips again...

Come Early. Be Loud. Stay Late....I wish.

After the Kansas-Texas basketball game this past Monday, I came away with a sour taste in my mouth. It wasn't the loss that put this taste in my mouth, but the Longhorn fans at the game. After spending all week pondering the state of Longhorn fans and sports fans in general, I planned on writing a piece about the sad state of Texas fans. But halfway through writing it, while flipping through 100 Things Longhorns fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, I decided this was a topic that merited more attention than the short rant I had pieced together.

What intrigued me were these two quotes I ran across:

Jane Weinert Blumberg wrote this in the 1930's about UT students, "...students were reluctant to express too much enthusiasm because that would not have seem sophisticated."

Joe Frantz had this to say in the 1970's, "Lord, I wish Texas audiences would arrive on time and remain in their seats until the game is over!"

I have never felt Texas fans have lived up to the t-shirt slogan: Come Early. Be Loud. Stay Late. But now I want to find out the history behind why a university with one of the nation's premier athletic programs has such crummy fans.

Now don't get me wrong, being crummy fans doesn't mean Longhorn fans aren't highly knowledgeable and very passionate about their teams. But this alone does not a good fan make.

In my next piece(s) I'll give my definition of a good fan, why Texas fans are not good fans, where this comes from and how I wish Texas fans would act.

'til then,
Hook 'em.

Coming Soon

Texas "fans" make me sick. More to come soon.

Terrifying

You should know writing a blog terrifies me.

Right up there with jumping out of an airplane, one of the most terrifying things I can think of for an acrophobiac like myself, is having my writing out there for anyone to read. I can barely write a text message without compulsively worrying about the way it will be interpreted and what it will say about me. I am constantly concerned with what light people see me in. And to me writing is a 10 million candlepower spotlight shining right down on me.

But you should also know that I love conquering my terrors. It thrills me. Skydiving may be the most horrifying thing I can imagine, but I will do it some day. Not because I want to, but because I have to. I have to feel the thrill.

So with this I post the first of many thoughts accessible to the entire world. Something that has terrified me for a long time. Something that I can finally feel the thrill of conquering. I have no idea where this blog will lead. I only know it scares the hell out of me. And that's a good thing.