Going into the Super Bowl, the Patriots had a perfect record: 16-0, with 2 playoff wins. They were looking at a 19-0 season, and the best season in NFL history. The 1972 Miami Dolphins were the only other team to accomplish that feat, but they did it in a shorter regular season of 14 games, giving them a final record of 17-0.

We all know what happened. The Pats lost the Super Bowl to the Giants, finished with an 18-1 record, and while they had more wins than the 72 Dolphins, they didn't have the perfect season. Ya gotta admit, that's gotta hurt to end the season.

The Giants, for their part, have been taking a lot of flak. I keep hearing people say that their win was cheap, that they didn't deserve it, that the touchdown pass at the end, in a low scoring game, was just luck... I don't buy it, for two reasons.

First, the Giants won, fair and square, by the rules of the game. And second, the Giants have a history (remember 1991?) of winning the Superbowl on a last minute decision. The Pat's coaching staff should have been more careful, going up against that sort of Karma.

Mostly, though, I like the Giants for the way they won. That was just a great play to end a game which was dominated by the defense. Better luck to the Patriots next year.

Yesterday at work, we had a wicked deadline. A new project came into the department, and everything got dropped so we could meet it.

You know that sort of thing really ticks me off. I like my job, and I like the work I do, and I like the people I work with, so going to work is hardly a chore. It's easy to get out of bed in the morning, when you've got a situation like mine. But when the "higher ups" do this to us, send us a big project, that'll use up a lot of man-hours, and tell us a 9:30 am that this needs to be done by close of business, it really takes the joy out of working.

So file this one under 'life is a race,' and take some advice: on a day like that, don't stop for lunch. Don't pass go, don't collect $200. Just buckle down, do the job, and when you get it in under the wire, breathe deeply, and go out with your coworkers for that well deserved beer.

But not too many beers, because you're going jogging in the morning. At least, I am.

Because if I'm going to race, I'm going to race on my terms, and not the boss's.

I just found a news article about the current worst record in college sports. There's a college basketball team, the New Jersey Institute of Technology Highlanders, that is currently 0-33. They lost 29 straight games this season, after finishing with 4 losses last year. They're only one game away from tying college hoops record for worst losing streak.

Now here's a funny thing. I respect these players. Their school moved up to Division I a few years ago, and it seems that they're a bit out of their league, literally, but they've never thrown a game, and some of the players quoted by the paper say they don't regret joining the team. These guys are in it to play the game and compete, and thay's what they're going to do. No matter what. Still, it'd be nice to see the team win.

So what do you do, when you're trying to compete and you can't win for love or money? Honestly, I don't know. I think you just have to show up to every game, and play. And play hard. Play to win. There's really no other way out of it. Competition means that someone will win, and someone will lose. So even if you're the perennial loser, the Washington Generals who play the Harlem Globetrotters and get whupped (almost) every single time, you go in there and hold your head up and compete. Be the Jamaican National Bobsled Team, if you must, but compete.

About 15 years ago, I participated in a fund raiser bicycle tour in Michigan, in early July. Temperatures that weekend hit almost 100 degrees, and the humidity was about 90%. I made it through the first day, but got a nice case of heat exhaustion on the second day; I managed to finish the route, but about half of the riders did not.

I want to talk about this past Chicago marathon. I'm sure you remember reading about it; it's the race in which a runner died. You can read a news article about it here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071008/ap_on_sp_ot/run_chicago_marathon

It's a simple, and sad, story. The race was scheduled for early fall, but the weather was unseasonably hot. As the article notes, 10,000 runners did not show up, and another 10,000 didn't finish. And one runner died. At first, it was thought that he died of heatstroke; it turns out that he had a hidden heart condition which caused his death. Either way, I feel sorry for him and his family.

In any case, this past Chicago marathon is a good object lesson for any runner (or cyclist) out there: make sure to pack water. And lots of it. The biggest threat to runners and cyclists is not traffic. It's dehydration. It is absolutely vital to replace the fluids you lose while you exercise! This is even more important on a hot day.

Everyone's metabolism is different, but I have found that, for me, about half to 3/4 liters of water per hour is sufficient. That's about 3 pints. Yes, that does sound like a lot, but remember, you'll be sweating and breathing it out as your body tried to cool itself.

So the rule to remember: When you're thirsty, even slightly, drink!

I was channel surfing the other day, and flicked onto the beginning of a show that caught my attention, at least for a little while.

They were talking about a race. It turns out that I was watching the opening sequence of a "reality" show called The Amazing Race. I'll admit, I just turned it off when I realized what it was. You see, I have a deep, intense dislike (OK, hatred) of "reality" shows.

To start with, reality television is definitely not reality. From the genesis of the genre with MTV's Real World, to the plethora of shows out today, not one of them has anything to do with any aspect of real life. They are television, and television is make-believe, and it's that simple. I know, because I used to watch these shows a lot. Until I realised that they were all alike.

This show about the amazing race was no different. A bunch of people are put into a completely unreal situation, and made to do unreal things in order to get out of it. The only thing "real" about it is the lack of a shooting script, and from the opening sequence, I am not sure that there isn't a shooting script...

And the one thing that show is not about, anyway, is any kind of race or real competition. And if you've been following this blog, you'll know by now that my interest in racing, of any sort, is really my interest in competition, and the internal drive to exceed one's limits.

I'll talk more about that next time.

So I was browsing through some sports articles, like I frequently do, and I found a most interesting article (I thought, anyway) about competition, running, good sportsmanship, and championship performance.

Just to give you the quick rundown, Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrselassie broke the world marathon record, by 26 seconds, in Berlin on September 30. 26 seconds might not sound like much, but it's truly an eternity in running; anything can happen in 26 seconds.

Acutally, anything happened after the 26 seconds.... When Gebrselassie won, and after he'd cooled down a bit, he was handed a cell phone. On the other end of the line was his longtime friend and rival, Paul Tergat of Kenya, calling to congratulate him on the new record. As the previous record holder, this was a matter of no small import to Tergat. And when Gebrelassie got on the phone, this is what he said:

"I'm sorry."

In an interview later, he elaborated:

"I am sorry -- this record belonged to Paul Tergat," Gebrselassie told a news conference when asked about the phone call. "Paul is my friend."

...

"I really wanted to do this record but I was a little bit worried about it, worried about attacking my friend's record," said Gebrselassie, 34, who fell 61 seconds short a year ago in Berlin in his first attempt to break Tergat's mark of 2:04.55.

Now, I am all for good sportsmanship, and friendly competition, but is it really necessary to apologize for breaking a world record? If Gebrselassie wasn't in the race to win, then why was he there? And if he was in it to win, what does he have to apologize for?

Now don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to knock the guy. I actually think it's kind of nice, that he'd apologize to the previous record holder, for breaking the record, and even nicer that two world-class competitors can be friends as well as rivals.

But I also think that he had nothing to apologize for.

So, the year is starting to wind down, the days are starting to get shorter, and the warm summer weather has been cooling off towards autumn for a while now.... And what does all that mean?

Well, for starters, it means that my wife doesn't want me biking after work. She says it's too dangerous, in the dark. To encourage me to see things her way, she invited me to join her at the gym, and try spinning, or jogging on the indoor track.

Now, I'll tell you something: the one thing I can't stand more than anything else in the world is an exercise bike. They don't move. Bikes are supposed to go somewhere. I had to decline her offer on the spinning.

I could not, however, find a good excuse to back out of the jogging. And so I found myself on an indoor track, jogging laps alongside my wife. You may remember that I have tried this before.

That last time didn't work out so well. I'm not a very good runner, and my wife has been jogging for years. Usually, when we try to go running together, I end up gasping for breath, with a stitch in my side, while my wife keeps smiling through lap after lap. From my end of that, it isn't pretty.

To make a long story short, I went to the gym with her, running shoes in hand, and hit the track. As usual, it was a matter of pride. Could I really let my wife outrun me?

And as usual, she did. One of these days, I'll get her on a bike, and then the tables will turn, but until then, I'll just keep running every winter.

I have said this before, and I'm sure that I'll say it again, but modern life is a race. And not always a fun one.

We're always racing somewhere, or through something. We race out of the house in the morning, and we race through our work, or through our lunch, and to our next appointment, and we race to pick up the kids on time, and there's always a clock ticking somewhere in the background.... We measure success by how many times we don't get beaten by Kipling's "unforgiving minute." And that's really not a good way to live.

Or, to work. I was sitting in my office the other morning, working on a project, and my boss stops by and says she needs it by 3:30. Today.

I'm not sure if this is good or not. OK, I have the material ready to collate and condense down to the short articles, but I've barely started on the actual writing. And now I've got to race the clock.

Deadlines are races that we can never truly win. At best, we break even. After all, the clock doesn't take a lunch break, or a pit stop, and it doesn't stop to chat with the colleague in the next office.... And then there are all of the niggling little interruptions that dot the day: How would you edit this sentence? Should I use "well" or "good" here? Do you know the Dibbles' first names?

It's not that any of that suff is bad, or inappropriate, or even difficult to answer; it's just that it piles up, and suddenly it's 2:45, and the articles are still only half-done....

That's when the office door gets shut, and the serious race against the deadline begins. At 3:40, I emailed the work to my supervisor. The extra 10 minutes weren't a problem, which is where people have an advantage over clocks: we're flexible.

I remember, back in the early 80s, how Carl Lewis was billed as the "world's fastest man" before the Olympic Games. He was a truly impressive runner, but his records are long consigned to history.

Last week, as I write this, the Jamaican runner Asafa Powell set a new world record for the 100 meter dash, with a time of 9.74 seconds. He set this record at the World Championships, in Japan.

9.74 seconds is really fast. I won't tell you my speed on the 100 meter; it's too embarrassing. Let's just say that I won't be getting close to any records any time soon. Or even any time not soon, for that matter.

Be that as it may, Asafa Powell does set records. And I do mean that in the plural, since the record he broke with this 9.74 was his own, which he'd set back in 2005. He's an excellent runner, although he seems to give poor Olympic performances; to date, his only Olympic medal is a bronze, from the last summer games. I hope that breaking his own world record will help him to keep up his confidence. Track and field has been dominated by Americans for so long that it's nice to see someone else win for a change. (Is that an unpatriotic sentiment? I do like rooting for the home team, but Jamaicans have a cool accent!)

So, if you want to read more about this runner, and his remarkable time, check out this link to a news story about it:

http://sports.yahoo.com/sa/news?slug=ap-worldrecord-100&prov=ap&type=lgns

Notice this, especially:

Michael Johnson, the world record holder at both 200 and 400 meters, criticized Powell during the worlds last month, saying the Jamaican is "not a great competitor." Johnson said Powell gave up in Osaka when he was overtaken by Gay in the final 40 meters.

"He's not a great competitor, you can see it in his eyes," Johnson wrote in his column for the British Broadcasting Corp. "He can learn to be a great competitor, but first you have to admit that you're not."

I think that's a most interesting comment, and it goes along with something I have said here before: that the real competition comes from within.

That's it. My wife smoked me again on the indoor track, so I am taking the gloves off.

The cycling gloves, that is.

With winter here, I figure that this is the perfect time to start a training program to get in shape to run. My aim is modest; I don't want to run a marathon, I just want to keep up with my wife when we jog a mile, without my breath or knees giving out. I've talked to a guy I ride with, who's a high school phys ed instructor, and gotten some good advice on how to do this without hurting myself. I shall now share this advice with the world.

1) Start running. Not a lot, but every day. At least two laps around the block in the neighborhood. Keep the speed down for the first few weeks, until you're used to the route and can make it to the end without feeling winded, and then try to increase your pace.

2) Start weight training. Focus on the legs. If you have knee problems, you can use the various weight machines in the gym. They'll help to reduce the impace, and hence the strain, on the knees. Use the first session to figure out the maximum weight you can lift for 10 repititions, and then start the program using 2/3 that weight, for 3 sets of 10. The object is to build endurance, not bulk. Don't add weight until the 30 reps feel too easy.

3) Stay hydrated, even if you're excercising indoors, and don't start a workout if you're hungry. This sounds basic, but too many people ignore it.

And that's it. I'll keep you posted on my progress.