I can't wait for Friday!

I'm blessed with having Friday morning available to do something fun, and I CANNOT WAIT, to go do this!

This Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Austin is hosting the "Austin Grandprix of Swimming".

I've never seen a live swim meet, and I'm totally psyched about seeing world class swimmers in real person to get to see how fast they truly swim!

I remember back in 1984, Mats Wilander, Henri Leconte, Pat Cash and a pink polo, jeans short wearing 18 year old Andre Agassi came to the little town in France that I lived in for a tune up the week before the French Open.  I was absolutely amazed at how FAST that ball really travelled over the net, back and forth, and how incredibly accurate these tennis players were.  Mats Wilander ended up dominating the event, and then went on to win the French Open, in arguably his best Grand Slam tournament ever.  It was fantastic to see him at the top of his game.  ( I still have all their autographs in the official program book!)

So now, I'm totally committed to checking out the swimming.  The agenda calls for preliminary swims on Thursday and Friday both at 9:30am and 5:30pm, then finals on Saturday morning.  It's general admission, and doors open at 8:30am, so I'm going to be there shortly thereafter to get a GREAT seat.  

I'm so friggin' excited!!  Seriously!  (May even bring my SLR high end camera!, just need to find a zoom lens to borrow.  anyone!?)

If you watched the olympics, and paid attention to names of the kickass swimmers, you can't tell me you don't recognize each and every one of these names:  Aaron Piersol, Dara Torres, Katie Hoff, Eric Shanteauh, Peter Vanderkaay, Garret Weber-Gale, Kristy Coventry.

I'm even more exicted that I get to go at 9:30am, when everyone else is hopefully at work!

Tickets are ONLY $6!

Who's with me!?!?

USA Swimming 2009 Grand Prix Series Fourth Stop in Austin, Texas 5-7 March

Olympic Swimmers Dara Torres, Aaron Peirsol in the 2009 Austin Grand Prix Meet

From USA Swimming, for About.com

Dara Torres, USA, and Cate Campbell, AUS, Women's 50m Freestyle final held at the National Aquatics Centre during Day 9 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 17, 2008 in Beijing, China. Torres won the silver, Campbell the bronze

Adam Pretty/Getty Images

Ten members of the 2008 US Olympic Swim Team, including Dara Torres¹ and Aaron Peirsol², will compete March 5-7 at the 2009 Austin Grand Prix, the fourth stop of the2009 USA Swimming Grand Prix Swim Meet Series³. The meet will serve as the first competition back for both Torres and Peirsol since Beijing. Torres, 41 years old, won an Olympic silver medal in the 50-meter free in 2008, becoming the oldest Olympic medalist in the history of the sport.

Both Torres and Peirsol took home hardware in Beijing and will be competing in preparation for the ConocoPhillips USA Swimming National Championships in July which will serve as the qualifying meet for the 2009 FINA World Championships in Rome. Torres is entered in the 50 free.

National Teamer and current Grand Prix Series leader Mary DeScenza will look to extend her 32-point lead in Austin. DeScenza is in pole position for the $20,000 prize that will be awarded to the highest-scoring swimmer at the conclusion of the series.

Additional U.S. Olympians competing in Austin include multiple American record-holder Katie Hoff⁴ (Towson, Md.), Lacey Nymeyer⁵ (Tucson, Ariz.), Peter Vanderkaay⁶(Rochester, Mich.), Kara Lynn Joyce⁷ (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Elizabeth Beisel⁸ (Saunderstown, R.I.), Kathleen Hersey⁹ (Atlanta, Ga.), and Austin locals Garrett Weber-Gale¹⁰(Milwaukee, Wis.) and Eric Shanteau¹¹ (Lilburn, Ga.).

In addition to the strong pool of American talent, world-record holder and Olympic gold medalist Kirsty Coventry (Zimbabwe) will compete at the Austin Grand Prix. Brazilian Olympic gold medalist Cesar Cielo, French Olympic silver medalist Fred Bousquet, and Trinidadian Olympian George Bovell will also swim in Austin.

In Austin, preliminary heats will be held in the 25-yard pool (short course) while finals competition will be held in the 50-meter pool (long course). Race footage from each night of finals, as well as interviews from the Grand Prix meet will be broadcast online at www.swimnetwork.com¹². Footage will be available on-demand, beginning Friday, March 6, at 12 p.m. ET.

The Austin Grand Prix is the fourth stop in the six-meet USA Swimming Grand Prix Series, which awards the overall series winner a $20,000 grand prize. A leaderboard¹³ can be found online. Swimmers are awarded five points for a gold medal, three points for a silver medal and one point for a bronze medal.

Tickets for the meet, taking place at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center at the University of Texas at Austin, are $10 for final sessions and $6 for prelim sessions. Tickets for students and children are available for $5 per session. Tickets can be purchased at the door. The complete competition schedule can be found online here. Finals start at 5:30 p.m. and prelims begin at 9:30 a.m.

About the frantic pace at the Olympics Marathon

"The lead pack passed five kilometers in 14:34, fast enough to win last week's women's 5,000 meters on the track by more than a minute. Yet these guys still had 23 miles to go."
Wow, those women were slow.


and some articles with some quotes from the US runners:
LA Times Ryan Hall quotes

Dathan Ritzenheim apparently cramped up

Brian Sell isn't sure about his future after hitting the wall.

Olympic coverage sucks - My RANT.

NBC touts 3,600 hours of Olympic coverage. That is easily acheieved when you just show repeats of stuff overnight.
3,600 hours of what? Same shit over and over again.
There are a millioon different sports out there, and all they are &^%#^% showing us is BEACH VOLLEYBALL, and MICHAEL PHELPS. For @#^%$ sake NBC, enough of Michaeel Phelps. It's over. MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIVES.
You have a dedicated soccer channel, and apparently MSNBC is the deidcated BOXING channel. You also have a dedicated BASKETBALL channel. For those three sports, you show every nation.
Thank god for the Korean Channel. At least they show other stuff, like Archery, Table tennis, Badminton, Pistol and Rifle shooting.

Why the HELL can you not show us more TRACK AND FIELD? it's Sunday. All night long for us, day time for China, they had TRACK AND FIELD events. WHY CAN YOU NOT SHOW THESE TO ME?? Show them live on a channel, let me choose if I stay up all night or NOT.
I record your overnight stuff. You showed a few 400 meter hurdles heats, some 100m women's heats. Where is the men's 1500. Hammerthrow is over and we didn't get anything. What about heptathlon? What about all the other stuff.
FOR GODS SAKE NBC. You guys really suck.

You have half the country wanting to see stuff all day SUNDAY (and SATUDAY) but you're just showing us repetitive shit, or BEACH VOLLEYBALL.
Obviously, my eyes aren't hurting when watching women's volleyball, but come on... there are tons of other Olympic sports and at MINIMUM show us the americans in those sports.

I HATE YOU NBC. I. HATE. YOU.

And now i'm happy to report I'm FIRING YOU partially. You see, I've found a way to watch television feeds of the Olympics from: Denmark, France, Norway, Holland, Italy, Russia and England on the internet. So in a few hours, when it's day time in China, you can bet your sweet ass I won't be relying on your pathetic 3,600 hours of Michael Phelps, and Beach Volleyball.

If you're reading this, and you're interested in watching other TV feeds on your computer...
1- Right click HERE (open in new window)
2- Click on the TV image in the middle of the webpage.
3- A new window will open with the TV tuner.
4- Switch the left category to SPORT TV then pick your channel on the right! (I'm liking the Denmark channels. )
5- Press PLAY (the triangle)

Switch channels and press play all you like!(you may have to download Koo PLayer if you don't have it)

Hey NBC!!! I'm watching Sailing in storm like conditions, and there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!! HAHAHAH

GO TO HELL, NBC. You don't control me anymore!

Fake Beijing

Last week I encouraged you to read this article.

Here are some quotes:

"Authorities have taken pains to hide as many of the unfinished buildings as they can. "

"Then, a few weeks ago, the shabby apartment complex across the street from mine was covered up with a 10-foot-high sheet metal fence."

I'm sitting here watching the women's marathon, and something funny happened. The runners ran by this nice wall:


Here's a picture from the helicopters a few moments before they reached that seemingly real wall. Not how the walls, are exactly the types of fake facades the author of that article wrote about. I think that's funny.

(I feel so bad for Deena, now, I gotta hope Paula Radcliffe can whoop up on the chinese favorite.)

Mere mortals attempt to be Olympians. hahah

(stolen from my running group's forum - Thanks, Karen! Great stuff!)

These 2 guys who considered themselves average athletes, picked 5 Olympic events and decided to do them and see how they would do in comparison to the Olympic athletes. They did the 100 m freestyle, 110 m hurdles, 100 m. sprint, long jump, and the rings.



Watch it from this link or in the video above and imagine how you might do.

More fake stuff during the opening Ceremony

BEIJING, China (AP) -- Not all was what it seemed during the spectacular opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Beijing organizers confirmed Tuesday that some of the fireworks display featured prerecorded footage.

Fireworks that burst into the shape of 29 gigantic footprints were shown trudging above the Beijing skyline to the National Stadium near the start of the ceremony.

Though the footprint-shaped fireworks were real, some of the footage shown to television viewers around the world and on giant screens inside the "Bird's Nest" stadium featured a computer-generated three-dimensional image.

Continue reading here...

*******************
What's next? No, really, our athletes are not doping. All these gold medals are all from naturally gifted athletes. They just trained REALLY hard for 4 years. Those dozens of chinese athletes that were caught for doping in the last few years are completely different.

On CNN.com right now...

Olympic girl apparently not cute enough for TV
A little girl and her song captivated millions of viewers during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. But what they saw was not what they heard. Games organizers confirm that Lin Miaoke was not singing at all. Lin was lip-syncing to the sound of 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, who apparently was deemed not cute enough for TV.

What else are they hiding?

Times for Michael Phelps' Final swims this week (EST)

good to know....
Monday: 200 freestyle final, 10:13-10:17 p.m.
Tuesday: 200 butterfly final, 10:18-10:22 p.m.; 4x200 freestyle relay final, 11:16-11:26 p.m.
Thursday: 200 IM final, 10:45-10:49 p.m.
Friday: 100 butterfly final, 10:07-10:10 p.m.
Saturday: 4x100 medley relay final, 10:55-11:01 p.m.

Olympics Photo - A quick poll...

Check out the Austrian rider's jersey. See how they used regular letters?
Now look at the Italian jersey. Looks like the name of the restaurant on a chinese menu.

I. LOVE. THE. OLYMPICS!!

It's day one, and I'm already yellin' during the swimming relays qualifiying heats!!

(no results chatter please, i'm staying away from scores, and watching recordings all games long)

I made my own Olympics TV Schedule

I found a site that lets me grab the data I need, Tab-delimit it, then clean it up pretty easily (for a print job/consumption away from the web.)

It only goes through next friday so i'll make on next friday again for the following week.
Here's a screenshot... let me know if it's of interest to you via email to me. Don't have my email? Post yours in the comments (and we can then delte the comment once i grab it).
(Click to make make it bigger)

Olympics TV Schedule?

Hi, If you find a nice and easy to use, yet rich, TV schedule for the Olympics coverage, please be so kind to share the URL for it in the comments or email me directly.

So far:
I vomited on NBC.com's website
with this one, you have to go to the TV schedule and search by "all sport". You then get what initially looks like a blank calender, butif you click on the time you get a rundown on what is going to be covered. It still could be way way easier.

I also found this Google Calendar, which is a bit easier, but still not what i'm looking for.


Ideally, there's a PDF,or some type of document i can print out that will show me what EACH channel is showing EVERY DAY throughout the day.
So essentially, a 21 page (21 days) day by day run down of every hour, and what every channel will show.

It could live on our coffee tables, and we could easily get what we're looking for instead of having to access the web every 30 minutes.

Why can't this be found anywhere??

Seriously, it's only haze, we promise.

Here are some pictures of Beijing today. (Austin is 13 hours behind Beijing).

They claim this was mostly haze, so I guess we're not supposed to be alarmed and think this is pollution. I lived in Mexico City for 14 years, and I can tell you that the worst days of Smog (as we call it in old Mexico) almost resembled this. Teary burning eyes, bloody muccus, was normal, but, you know, it's same stuff you always get from Hazy days here!


I've got Cameroon vs. S. Korea on the TV(Channel 89 on U-verse), and the commentators are Japanese, Korean, or Manadarin. Pretty funny stuff. I'm not really sure. Any way, the point is, you can actually see haze (pronounced smog) in the stadium when they pan out!)

In other news, I ran 10 miles today around the Lake with Jo Dee, Ruth, Ken, and Larry. Good times. After the Barton Springs soak, I decided I needed a hearty breakfast instead of my usual waffles with honey, yoghurts and fruit. I stopped at Taco Deli for 2 Sirloin, Egg and Cheese tacos. They hit the spot, but I'm still hungry. I've got a busy busy day today, so it should go by fast, and 6:30pm should be here soon enough! I can't wait! (6:30pm... Opening Ceremonies, but I doubt i'll watch the whole thing as it goes till 11pm, and I need to run at 4:55am.)

Beijing - Behind the scenes.

I enjoyed reading this article about the "behind the scenes" Beijing, written by an A.P. journalist who's been living there for 16 months now.

Here's the start to the Beijing story:

It all began when my colleague Steve's favorite noodle lady was forced to close down. Soon after, the Popsicle lady was gone, followed by the scary fruit guy.

Then, a few weeks ago, the shabby apartment complex across the street from mine was covered up with a 10-foot-high sheet metal fence. The barrier blocks a row of small shops on the ground floor that offer everything from handmade Chinese bread to bicycle repairs.

The Beijing that visitors and television viewers see during the Olympics isn't my Beijing...

Give it a chance by clicking here.

(Sorry about the format of that website, it's the AP site for the iPhone, and I can't find the regular formatted one. But once done reading this one, you can click on the Category button up top, then Wacky News, then read how a "Mexican woman (riding a donkey) fights off a lion with machete(in Acapulco)".

They're not fooling us...

Fresh from Reuters...


A few week's ago I mentioned South Korea's practice of selling cute doggies in the back streets by the Olympic Village as a food item, and I got some less than happy comments.

Well... this just in... China does it too:

"Beijing has asked hotels and restaurants in the city to take dog meat off the menu for the duration of next month's Olympics and September's Paralympics.

You can read the rest of the article about this disgusting practice here. (Careful... If you're a dog lover, you're not going to like the picture in that link.)

In other news: Edouard has officially been renamed "Pathetic Wuss".

Leo Manzano Interview

A few weeks ago, I posted some pictures of UT runner Leo Manzano, who made it to the Olympics for the 1500 meters

Runtex has a nice interview of Leo Manzano on their website.
You can read the interview here.

You can really tell he's a nice and humble guy. I really hope he does well. Getting to the final would be fantastic!

Olympics Update

The new USA track and Field Uniforms are 19% faster. Read about them here. (looks like they're all part of American Gladiators if you ask me.)