Rolling Stone Magazine: Banned at the Office
Rolling Stone was the outlaw music/counter culture publication of the late-'60s and early-'70s, but these days it's the best-known mainstream entertainment publication, which can even be found in the likes of school libraries. Yet, the HR Dept. at the corporation I work for is up in arms about a recent issue (cover photo on your left) that someone left in the lunch room. This is an email we got sent to us the other day. Names have been removed and replaced with XXX.
"Please refrain from placing periodicals in the lunchroom that display inappropriate content. This morning, XXX, Director of Management Training, brought a Rolling Stone magazine to my office that had been left in the lunchroom. The cover of this magazine displayed two naked women wearing only ammo belts and an ad on the inside displayed a naked man and woman shielded only by a guitar. Another section of the magazine featured an article on Iggy Pop, with pictures that portrayed Iggy giving someone the finger and another displaying Iggy's bare backside. This type of literature is not only offensive and inappropriate in the workplace but prohibited by our policy against harassment, including sexual harassment. This is not the first time literature of this nature has been left in the lunchroom, but I hope it is the last.
I find it discouraging that I need to send out a note like this a few weeks after completing 'Respect in the Workplace' training. If you have questions about what is and isn't appropriate, please ask before you end up jeopardizing your employment over something that could have easily been prevented. Thank you.
Old School Badass: David Bedford
David Bedford was one of England's most colorful athletes of the 1970's, known for his brutal high mileage training, front running tactics, shaggy rock 'n' roll haircut and for racing in trademark red socks! Though he never won an Olympic medal, he's a badass in Rock 'n' Roll Runner's book. Bedford is now the race director of the prestigious London marathon, and in recent years, was in the news when he sued the British phone directory enquiries service 118 118 for using twin models with strikingly similar looks to his '70s self in an ad campaign. 118 118 claimed that they had never heard of Bedford and were looking for a Steve Prefontaine look a like! Well, you be the judge, the Bedford 'twins' are posted below:
The Go - Howl On The Haunted Beat You Ride
This is only the third Go album in eight years (fourth if you include the limited edition self-released vinyl only Supercuts from a few years ago), but each one has been well worth the wait. Howl On The Haunted Beat You Ride is the Detroit outfit’s most laid back effort thus far, incorporating country rock and seventies pop influences into their R&B driven rock ‘n’ roll sound. One of the standout cuts, “Invisible Friends,” has a similar retro AM Radio feel to Outrageous Cherry, complete with infectious melody and appropriate handclaps. “So Long Johnny” sounds like the late-sixties Rolling Stones when they were hanging around with Gram Parsons, while even better is “Caroline,” a lush epic worthy of Badfinger in their prime. Two other favorites, “Down A Spiral” and “Smile,” have similar Canyon Rock grooves to The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield – infectious stuff. A couple of songs like “Help You Out” hint at the more aggressive direction of The Go’s 1998 Sub Pop debut, back when Jack White was a member of the group, but for the most part this is a more subdued effort. Mellow Gold.
www.thegodetroit.com
A shout out to BMLC's Stephen Magee
This past weekend my BMLC teammate Stephen Magee broke 18:00 for the first time as a masters runner with a stellar 17:59 at the Dogfish Head Dash in Delaware, capturing First Place in the Masters Division. Stephen is the world's biggest fan of Dogfish Head Beer so it's appropriate that he won their race! Here's his race report, followed by a report of the weekend festivities:
It was a tough day strong wind from the North 15 mph. I was so geeked up for the race. I ran too hard the first mile 5:34 wind clocking around the back. Then the 2nd mile dead into the wind. I was 5th at the mile. A pack of 11 or so came up on me including my pal Brooks. He said it too nice a pack to let go, so he drafted up to me. By the time they reached me it had shredded to 4 people. Brooks passed me at the turn-around and I quickly came back on him. The rest of the pack dropped like bricks. I increased pace and was closing on the kids in-front of me but they had too big a lead. I was 5th over-all and first masters. Brooks won the 40-49 age group in 18:36. If I had better control and less beer in me I would have been about 10 seconds faster, but I was pleased. After a weekend of drinking and playing it was a great result. Another note Jennifer won the women's over-all (top 25 over-all I think). Her first ever over-all win! clocking 19:55 respectable for her, but not a PR like myself. All the fans were cheering for the first Women. We even got a picture with Sam after the race! He was so excited for us! This year the 5k and 10K had some real runners I think the 10k winner was 36:03! I think I would have been 3rd if I ran the 10K, but I was in no shape http://www.dogfish.com/news/2007_Dogfish_Dash_Winners!/962/index.htm If you look in the picture at the start I am right under the starters arm with my orange hat and BMLC singlet! The picture is of me at the finish!
Weekend Report:
I had no idea that I was a celebrity at Dogfish Head. They rolled out the royal welcome for me! We got treated to meals, excellent beer, behind the scene tour of the brewery, I was interviewed for a local paper! The manager of the brewpub comped us a $100.00 bottle of 2004 World Wide Stout! Clause treated us to dinner and so much great beer, even had us over to his house! Even the Chocolate infused Vodka they make. It was a super weekend. They gave me so much swag! and a few collectors only bottles of beer. I was even given a 6 pak of IPA 90 that they can't sell because it came in too high on ABV! I have that for special occasions only (but I am dying to taste it)! I will have pictures to follow and the newspaper article in a week or so. It was a great weekend. I hope some fellow BMCL's can make the trip next year! I will be trying to get more people out there. The ocean Kayak tour was a great hit. Next year they are going to comp me the Kayak trip! It was amazing! The weekend was too good. Next year I will take off Friday and Monday so I can party after the race. It was so hard to leave!
40 second improvement from last year!
Today I raced at the Cleveland Heroes Run, which is billed as Cleveland's hilliest 5 mile race and I'm not going to argue with that! Rolling hills early on and a brutal half-mile climb from 3.5 miles to the 4 mile marker definitely give your quads a good workout. The last mile is flat, but it's hard to get back your old groove after destroying your legs on the climb.
Last year I ran 30:26, so this year I was quite pleased to lower my time by a full 40 seconds with a 29:46, good enough for first master and I think 6th overall. My strategy for the race was to keep it pretty even paced early on and try to make sure I still had something left in the tank after the big hill. On the flat, fast opening mile, which includes a nice downhill I contained myself well and came through in 5:56. I picked it up slightly on the second mile, which included a gradual climb of maybe 1/4 mile, followed immediately by a short downhill. I seemed to do most of my passing here. I hit the 2 mile mark in 11:48 and at this point the only people directly ahead of me were the top woman and the guy who was the second master. Both were a few seconds ahead of me and I managed to catch them by 2.5 miles. After that I was in total no-man's land for the rest of the race. The top 3 guys (open guys from Team Good River) ended up running 25:58, 25:59, 26:00 and I think 4th was under 27:00 as well. I could see the 5th place guy maybe 60-90 seconds ahead of me but that was it. That said I kept my focus on the 3rd mile and hit the marker in 17:40. I kept the pace going and felt like I ran the big hill well. Climbing the hill felt like running in quicksand in comparison to my previous pace, but I felt strong. At the top of the hill I hit 4 miles in 23:52, which means mile 4 was 6:12 (I think I did the climb in 6:30 last year). With one more mile to go I was able to get it back together and I held on for a 5:54 and 29:46.
Really happy with the race and I can't think of anything I would have done differently. I think if I had someone maybe 10-15 seconds ahead of me in the last mile I could have run 10-15 seconds faster, but that's just being picky!
As a side note, the training has obviously been going well. I've been averaging 55 a week or so over the past 5 weeks, focusing on two key workouts. The first has been a 12 miler midweek with speed-work mixed in the middle (stuff like a 2 mile at 1/2 marathon pace; 60 second rest break and then 4 x 5 minutes at 8K/10K effort with brief 60 second rests). The other main workout is a long run of about 15 miles unless I'm racing.
rocknrollrunner.com
Yes, I bought the domain name but I'll still be managing this site via blogger.com because I have no idea how to set up coding for blogs and this website makes it real easy. On the plus side, you only have to type in rocknrollrunner to get here though! Maybe more people will find this site via search engines, which means I should try to update more often. Well, it's midnight and I have a race tomorrow but I can't sleep at all so I'm doing geeky internet stuff like looking up race results!
Read more...Dances with Dirt 2007
Video footage from the DWD trail relay. I show up briefly for three seconds towards the beginning -- 5:23-5:20!
To Hell and Back!
Well, this past weekend I took part in a 100K trail relay race called Dances With Dirt (www.danceswithdirt.com) in a place appropriately called Hell, Michigan. The race takes place in the area around the Washtenaw and Livingston county border in Michigan, including Hell, Pinckney and Dexter. Each team has 5 runners and there are 15 legs total ranging from 1.5 miles - 6.1 miles. Depending on what leg you run, you encounter pretty much everything imaginable. Hard dirt, lots of rocks, tall grass, river crossings, mud/quicksand, etc. The course is marked pretty well with flags tied to trees and other landmarks and you really have to trust your instincts. A lot of times the flags will take you off a 'proper' trail and into the woods or something and you just have to follow them or else you'll get screwed. Your team needs to travel from site to site too. Each site will have 1-2 legs and when your runner takes off you have to pile into your van and drive as quickly as possible to the next handoff site. My team, The Damned Unpleasants, finished 8th out of 350 teams though we're 34th after various handicap formulas were applied (having a woman on your team gives you a 12% handicap, so next year we're going to get a good woman on our team so we can really kick ass). I'm definitely more of a road race guy but I did have a lot of fun. I don't think I would do an individual trail race, but I really enjoyed the team aspect of DWD.
Other than DWD, I did a 5 mile race on September 1 called Celebrate Westlake. This is always a really good race as top Kenyans show up to get the prize money. I ran a solid 29:21, which I was happy with as I ran 58 miles that week and didn't taper at all for the race. After going out in a conservative 17:57, I cranked out the last 2 miles in 11:24 with a 5:34 final mile.
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