Run to Win

I just saw information about chainless bicycles for the first time. What a neat concept! Dynamic Bicycles has a lot of information about chainless bikes on their website. Supposedly, they are cleaner, safer, quieter, and require less maintenance than a normal chain and derailer bike, at the expense of being a bit heavier. I also saw information on the Outback Chainless Bike and a GT chainless bike. I have not seen any information about road bikes using this technology, although Dynamic does have hybrids available.

I started looking into chainless bicycles when I read a post about whether or not mountain bike technology has reached a plataeu, and saw Marshall Brain’s post about chainless bicycles on his site.

I would love to test ride a bike like this. Have any of you ever used one? What do you think? How do they compare?

Disclaimer: This is not a scientific finding of any sort.

In Portland there is a foot path around the bay that is very popular for walkers and runners, especially in the summertime. Over the last few weeks, I have been noticing some trends that seem to relate to the weather. The numbers that I am going to throw out are completely arbitrary and I am pulling them out of thin air, since I did not actually do any counting. I am just using the numbers to show proportionally what I am noticing. The actual number of people that run around there is higher (it is a 3.5 mile trail…)

I notice on days with inclement weather, that there are not as many people on the trail. No big surprise. Of the people I see on the trail, about 50-60% or so are men, at a rough estimate. Maybe a few more.

On sunny days, there are probably 5-10 times the number of people as on a day when the sun is not shining and the rain is coming down (lightly). Of the people out there, though, it seems like 80-90% of them are women. That just seems a little odd to me. I have seen a lot of men around the trail before, but maybe it is just a late summer thing where men can’t find the time on a sunny day but can when the weather isn’t so good? Or maybe the same number of men are out running and it’s just the number of women that show up on the trail that is so different? I don’t know; it just seems odd to me.

I am not curious enough to actually set up a controlled experiment to see how many people pass me by. Maybe once I have something to sell I will set up a stand to promote myself and do an informal study then. But probably not.

O’Neil Bell knocked out Sebastian Rothman to retain the cruiserweight title. He had to fight dirty to do it, though. He knocked Rothman out cold in the 11th, but he had had points deducted for hits below the belt. Unsportsmanlike, in my book. Points do not matter on a KO though.

The Portland Sea Dogs defeated the New Hampshire Fisher Cats 5-2 today at Hadlock Field in Portland. Portland has beaten NH 18 times this season and has not lost to them in the last 14 meetings.

We had coupons from the Mother’s Day race that we kept forgetting to bring with us, but we did not get to use them today since the game was sold out. However, a friend we were meeting had gotten us tickets already so we got in. We got to see a guy get hit in the mouth from a line drive foul into the third base stands, and we got to see another guy reach over a little kids head to single grab another fly ball. He gave the ball to the kid so all was well. The rain held up just long enough for the game to complete; most of the game was under a great sun.

The changes to the site will probably happen this weekend or early this week after all. I have been playing with redirects and the like and have modified a migration script so that permalinks will still get you to the correct page. I just need to write a theme for the new site, and verify whether my changes will keep the feeds working or not. If not, then I will need to figure something out with that.

Just an update, and an explanation for anybody that has noticed anything strange over the last couple of hours.

Kenenisa Bekele has cut about 3 seconds off his previous best to run a world record 10k in 26:17.53.

“I had tried to beat the World record (5000m) in London but the pacemakers there were not too good, and in Hengelo (10,000m)I had to compete in bad weather. Today my brother Tariku did a very good job, he was with me up to 5000m, and it is not easy to run in the front for such a long time. The weather and the pace were both perfect, so I was able to break the World record.”

The 10k has been a very fast race all around this year. Bekele has just recently won the 10k at the world championships in Helsinki, Finland at the beginning of the month.

The goal this weekend is to make a few changes to the website. They may or may not trickle to this blog for a few weeks. Basically, I am going to play around with WordPress and see if I can’t get that working (and eventually migrate everything over to that if I like it – permalinks won’t change though or will have redirects…), and I need to get something done on the main website itself with the workout log. My paper log has one week left in it, so I need to come up with something that I can work off of. I will put up a warning if I start messing with this part of the site, but in case it goes down that is why. We will be back up.

Earlier this week, French newspaper L’Equipe accused Lance Armstrong of cheating, and that he used EPO during his 1999 Tour De France win. I predicted that this would happen when Armstrong retired in July. Armstrong is not getting any support from the Internation Cycling Union. Hein Verbruggen, president of cycling’s governing body, had this to say:

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