Queen of Kona

Chrissie Wellington
Originally uploaded by Mariano Kamp

This is an awesome action shot of Chrissie Wellington winning the Ironman Frankfurt 2008 in July.

Queen of Kona will return to defend her Ironman Hawaii World Championship title on Saturday.

River crossing in Icelandic ultramarathon

In the video below you can see Iceland's Daniel Gudmundsson crossing the final ice-cold river in the Laugavegur Ultra Marathon 2008 in great style. Daniel eventually won this tough 55K (34-mile) race in under five hours.

215 out of 236 participants were able to finish.

The race was on July 12th, but I was reminded of it now, as Icelandic Prime Minister warns the nation of bankruptcy.

Like Geir Haarde told the press conference in Reykjavik, the entire world is experiencing a major economic crisis. Haarde said "With that optimism which characterises the Icelandic people, we will emerge from these difficulties and make a new and energetic comeback". 

What wasn't mentioned, is that perhaps not all nations will be able to cross this river as calmly and confidently as Daniel Gudmundsson did.

41 down, 11 to go

This was my 41st self-supported ultramarathon training run in 2008.

Total distance was 44.3K. Total time was 5 hours and 13 minutes.
41 down, 11 to go!

Pick your cotton carefully

Please pick your cotton carefully.

After seeing this film by EJF about the dark side of "white gold", I've looked for organic cotton.

I've also avoided events which distribute "dirty" cotton shirts to participants.   

By the way, NewScientist published an informative blog posting about the true price of cotton recently.

Also, Sustainable Cotton Project seems interesting.

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is scary as hell, but undeniably brilliantly researched and written. It tells the sad story of how the rise of disaster capitalism has kept on erasing and remaking our world. 

This book (which is also available as an audio version) is not about endurance training, it's about our first important priority: surviving democracy in these shocking times.