Did anybody notice anything different about this week?
Abducted by aliens whilst undergoing rehab
Whaddya mean nobody noticed that I've been gone? Poor Crabby has been stuck carrying the whole blog for over a week and nobody noticed?
Hmph.
Fine.
Be that way.
I was going to write up a big dramatic story about being abducted by
aliens, or going into rehab, or going on strike, but the heck with it.
Crabby goes camping, Merry starts carping
No, I don't mean fishing for carp. I'm whining because work has been
taking up valuable time that I could have spent dating, dining, dancing,
or dallying on blogs. There's been no time for such frivolities. But I
still have been making time to go to bed each night.
Sleeping with Bob Costas
For the last week or so, I've been putting myself to sleep by watching
the Olympics. I go to bed with Bob Costas, and wake up with Matt Lauer.
(Not the image you wanted? Sorry.)
Research, that's what it is. I've been tirelessly researching how cranky Olympic athletes can get.
Those gymnasts are so perky and positive that it's scary.
Happy, happy, happy day!They all hug and congratulate the
Did you see the end of the women's marathon? The winner, okay, I'll give you that. She won, so it's understandable that she should wrap herself up in her country's flag and run another lap just to show off. Fine. Not sure why the 2nd and 3rd runners also felt they had to do a victory lap wrapped in their country's flag. But did you notice how isolated they all seemed? They waved to the crowds and smiled at the cameras, but completely ignored each other. At one point a couple of runners who were cooling off almost walked into each other, but even then they didn't make eye contact.
I'm not counting the relay teams -- they're one unit, essentially.
But while competitors in other sports interact with their rivals, individual runners don't. After a race, they face straight ahead, or up at the sky, down at the track, anywhere but at a competitor. They are alone. They are communing with their inner coaches. Or they are a bunch of surly anti-social bastards.
I knew there was some reason I like hanging out with you guys.
Runners are a surly bunch
What is it about running that makes it such an anti-social activity? At least anti-social at the Olympic level. People running a 5k seem cheerful enough. Maybe that's because they've been getting lots of perks and goodies. (Note: we need to check with our European researchers to determine the ratio of cheerfulness/goodies in European runners. Xenia was lamenting the lack of goodies in the races she's run in Britain. The phrase "cheap bastards" was used.)
Are runners at the Olympic level different from other other athletes? Or is it the whole track-and-field atmosphere that's somehow less jovial and jolly than the gym or the pool? Or even that Bob-awful endless beach volleyball. (It's always on! Every night! You can't escape it! It makes me want to use exclamation points! Excessively!!!!)
Anyone have any good examples of interactive cheerful runners? Please feel free to leave a comment saying "Merry, you fool! What about that runner who was cheerful and perky and went around hugging all the runners who just beat him?" I might have missed him whilst I was sleeping with Bob.
Okay, I did see one runner hug his compatriot who just won a race. Just one. But I consider this to be an anomaly designed to weaken what was otherwise a damn fine hypothesis. I haven't seen any cheerfulness or huggy behavior undertaken by one runner to another who was from another country. So there.
