Spartan Cheerleaders – Marathon

I know no one watches SNL anymore.  However, I do (except it isn’t on Saturday night).  It is on Netflix via my new Apple TV.  And I think my wife, daughter and I laughed until we cried this past month when we watched Craig (Will Ferrell) and Arianna (Cheri Oteri) cheer for the Midwestern Chess Championships.  One of my favorite cheers – “U-G-L-Y You ain’t got no alibi.  You’re ugly!  Hey, Hey, You’re Ugly!  Wooooo!  K-I-N-G You can’t take my king from me.  You’re Ugly!  Hey, Hey, You’re Ugly!  Wooooo!”

This series ran from 1995-1999 and featured these two as awkward, self-conscious cheerleaders who really wanted to cheer but no one wanted to hear them.  They had tried out for the cheerleading squad in the original skit but didn’t make it.  They then made off with the uniforms and cheered (illegally) at everything from football, bowling, ping-pong, swim meets and this one – the chess championships.

Anything Will Ferrell does is very funny but we had forgotten about the SNL Craig character.  It’s even funnier the second time around.  [Side bar – my wife had heard the “More Cowbell” phrase before but never saw the skit.  Go check that one out too.  It is also a classic.]

Anyway, what I thought I would do is send Craig and Arianna to Savannah this coming year to cheer me on in the marathon.  I’ll put them around mile 8 and then again at mile 20 or so to get me motivated.  I’ll even write a few cheers for them.  How about these:

“T-R-I-P You can run but not from me.  I’ll trip you!  Hey, hey, I’ll trip you!  Wooooo!”

or

“Who’s that Spartan running round that tree?  It’s me!  It’s me!  Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.  Uh huh.”

or

“1-2-3-4 Who you runners running for?  You’re momma.  Hey, hey, your momma.  Wooooo!”

or

“R-U-N-N-I-N-G That’s the way we spell run-ning. Run-ning.  Let’s get run-ning!  Woooo!”

I have even found a website with Craig and Arianna outfits so if there are any volunteers out there in blog land that want to step up to the plate just let me know.  Even if I don’t have volunteers I may have to talk my wife into creating a home video cheer of us in this year’s 2012 costume for the November bob2015.com post.

Running Update:  I’m doing 15-20 miles per week at the moment.  I’m still not officially training for anything except training my right hand to put down the second bratwurst (not working).  Near term goal: stay under the Clydesdale category.  I did watch “Forks Over Knives” on Netflix as well.  Their basic message is eat anything you want that is a fruit, vegetable or whole food item.  It examines the claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us (heart attacks, diabetes, cancer) can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods.  Easy description – don’t eat anything with a mother or father.  Plant-based whole food diet.  It is their fancy word for vegetarian.

“A film that can save your life!” – Roger Ebert

“A great film.” – Sanjay Gupta MD, CNN

“I loved it and I need all of you to see it.” – Dr. Oz

“This is ridiculous.  I eat cheese and brats.  This is obviously not for me.” – Bob, Author of this blog

Oh wait, maybe it is?  They start with “2 out of every 3 of us are overweight and most likely obese”.  My odds are not good.  But then again, maybe its you?  Or you?  Only one of us three isn’t obese.  Jokes aside, it did wake me up a bit to some things.  So, lunches are salads and salads are good.  That is what I’ll keep telling myself anyway.

I ran the Greenville News 5K this past weekend in Greenville, SC.  It was my best 5K race thus far (24:45).  PR.  And this came the morning after a Jason Aldean/Luke Bryan concert.  I guess the extra carbs served in 32 ounce cans of whoop *ss at the stadium the night before will have to be me in my future training rotation.  They worked.

I also got to run with a friend of mine who is a Green Beret.  He has so many awesome jaw dropping stories.  And when I brought him over to the house after the run and had him tell a few to my kids they thought he was a real life Jack Bauer.  He is actually; busting terrorist cells from Russia to Chile to Iraq.  He’s even wandered the back roads of Iraq wearing a turban, dark sun glasses, a big bushy mustache dyed black with his trusty revolver in the back of his pants.  All in the name of getting intel on what the bad guys are up to.  I need to do some more runs with him and maybe add a “Jack Bauer Says…” section to this blog.  I don’t know what Jack Bauer says but what I say is don’t mess with the Green Berets!  He’s IN for the Savannah Marathon this year now too.  We’ll leave the turbans at home.

A big shout out to Slider this month!  On January 8th, Slider completed his bucket list item and won finished the Walt Disney World Marathon!  He’s officially in the Marathon Club.  He says now that it’s complete he may be going back to half marathons but I’ll start working on him again for the Savannah Marathon here shortly.

Only 38 months and 26.2 miles to go…

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C’mon Man!

Happy New Year!  What’s with the Paul Ryan campaign poster?  I don’t know squat about his politics but I do know he is a republican;  he is from and lives in my small hometown in Janesville, Wisconsin;  he went to the same high school as I did (I graduated with his older brother); and he worked for Oscar Mayer in college driving the Weinermobile.  He gets my vote just because of all that.  We could be screwed but at least it would provide me some interesting bragging rights and blog fodder.

The end of the year always brings with it everyone’s best and worst lists.  So I figured this month I would take the opportunity to reflect on 2011 and predict a few things about 2012.

My favorite segment on the NFL pre-game shows is “C’mon Man!”.  It highlights bone headed plays from the previous week.  So let me start with a look back at 2011 and the C’mon Man!’s of the Year:

Occupy Shmockupy.  C’mon Man!  First, let me just say that if you want to get a job in America you can.  I could guarantee any of these Occupy’ers that I could help find them a job within a month if they were to ask me.  It may not pay much but it would be a job and a start.  I don’t know anyone in my immediate peer group that even knows what the heck they are protesting.  All I know is they have a lot of time on their hands and should quit sitting on them and start using them to flip some burgers.

Time Magazine’s “Protester” as Person of the Year?!  C’mon man!  While I’m moaning about the Occupy losers let me just say that Time lumped them into this prestigious award.  Stupid is as stupid does.

Boston Red Sox Epic Collapse.  C’mon Man!  They were up nine games in the early part of September and blew it.  “We’ll go down in history as one of the worst collapses in history, so it definitely doesn’t feel good to be part of that.” said their left fielder.  You think?

Celebrity Divorces.  C’mon Man!  Kim blames it on the nude male yoga incident (there was a nude male yoga incident?  I’m sure my daughter will fill me in.)  All I know is the Kardashians were married for 72 days.  That is like 2 1/2 months.  I’ve had my fancy running shoes for longer than that.  Condiments last longer than that.  I trained for the marathon for longer than that.  I say we all join the 280,000 that have already signed the petition. (www.boycottkim.com)  Add to this “in” thing to do this past year and you’ll have Demi and Ashton (at least they made it 6 years) and Russell and Katy (14 months).  Sigh.

Planking.  C’mon Man!  Ok, I guess this is the 46-year-old in me coming out.  To be honest I’d probably plank myself if I could.  My son can plank and has pictures to prove it.  I may just be jealous.  Maybe I’ll do a planking blog post one month and just post pictures to get this out of my system.

Do you have a CVS card?  C’mon Man!  No I don’t.  So quit asking me (especially since you then just swipe some card behind the counter anyway).

As for the “Best Of” for 2011 here are my favorites (sorry – most are sports related. I’m a guy.)

World Series Game 6.  David Freese who happens to be from the St. Louis area not only hits a shot off the left field wall in the 9th inning to tie the game but he then hits a homer in the bottom of the 11th with 2 outs to win it for the Cardinals.  That has to go down as the best baseball game and individual performance ever.  He even made the Ellen show.  (My wife watches it.)

Superbowl XLV Green Bay 31-25 over Pittsburgh.  I’ve said enough on the Packers so I won’t belabor it but had to include it.  You can’t blame me.

Savannah Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon.  This is a running blog after all.  If you read my previous blog (www.rfbr262.com) you’ll know why this makes the list.  I also rented (and now bought for Slider) a movie called “Spirit of the Marathon”.  I realize I must have officially gone off the deep end.  I’m even forcing my wife to watch it.  But it really was a Best Of moment in 2011 to finish this goal and hopefully can be repeated again on down the road.  Side note – my wife actually made a book out of this blog.  It is awesome and way more creative than the blog itself.  It goes down as the best Christmas gift of 2011 (and probably ever).  Come on over anytime and I’ll show you.

“Poop Dolla!!!”  I could have just put this under the Savannah Marathon item as it occurred that weekend.  Slider, me, his sister and mother were walking along a sidewalk with a group of Haunted Pub Crawl people in Savannah’s historic district.  Some guy in our pub crawl group from Wake Forest (preppy, runner dude) who is walking just ahead of us happens to reach down and pick up a dollar.  He kind of looks at it as Slider says “hey, its your lucky day”.  Then he proceeds to whip it into the bush to the right of us.  We all kind of looked at him strangely but then the next thing you hear and see is some guy without a shirt yelling at the top of his lungs out of a 2nd floor window to our left “Poop Dolla!!!”.  I bet he had waited for hours for someone to finally pick up that poop infested dollar to yell that.  It was by far one of the funniest moments or things we’ve ever seen.  Poor preppy Wake Forest guy was very embarrassed and insisted he didn’t get any on him but we just couldn’t help but laugh.  You would have too.

Leaving Iraq.  I loved the pictures of the soldiers exiting Iraq.  I can’t even imagine having to spend a full year or more in the desert and dust of Iraq with land mines and lunatic snipers and such.  Good luck to the people there but come on home boys.

Family.  I continue to be blessed with a great family, good health and awesome friends.  These all make my personal list of Best Of’s for 2011.

So what are my 2012 predictions?  Kim K. will fade away.  Charlie Sheen will come back (he says he’s even famous on Mars).  A Jeremy Graham song will make country’s Top 30 (Harlem, GA native; now on iTunes; future CMA Awards winner).  Packers will three-peat.

Running Update:  Ok, “running” on the evil elliptical running machine is over.  I’m now back on track.  Literally.  You don’t know how much you like something until you can’t do it anymore.  I really do like running and missed it!  That is something I’d have never typed about a year ago.  I’m going to make my wife watch the Spirit movie over and over this coming year until she types this as well.

I have about a month of freelance running and then I’m officially training for something again.  Five of my neighborhood buddies and I are going to do the Nashville Rock ‘N’ Roll Half Marathon in April.  I’m still following good ol’ Hal’s advice and it includes what they call Speedwork.  That is like an oxymoron when you put it anywhere near my name.  Hal says if you want to run fast you have to run fast (at least a couple of times a week).  I’m like a Hal zombie now.  Ok Hal, whatever you say Hal.

Speaking of going fast, some things never change.  For Christmas, I bought myself a pair of Mizuno Wave Rider 15 running shoes.  You know how you used to feel with the new Converse shoes on your feet and how you couldn’t be caught with these new “fast shoes” on?  Well I have fast shoes on again now.  I can feel it!  Buzz kill for my new shoes and one word of caution for my Johns Creek neighbors – if you think the new sidewalk continues on along 141, think again.  You’ll be caught along the road having to choose between life and death or jumping away from the cars into ankle-deep mud.  I chose mud.

Other than the mud incident, the only funny thing running wise this past month was the monkey that sat on top of the dog running at halftime during a Broncos game.  My simple-minded humor found that very, very entertaining.  I’ve posted a link to that clip below assuming you have the same sense of humor.

Only 39 months and 26.2 miles to go…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/monkey-riding-dog-broncos-patriots-video_n_1158098.html