On Buffalo and Ferraris

Days to Marathon: 147

Weight: 182.1

Body Fat: 21.%

Total Kms Thus Far: 0

Best 1 km time: faster than treacle, but just slightly slower than molasses.

Kms Today: how far is it to Starbucks?

Average Pace: Languid

Cheese o' The Week: Buffalo Mozzarella.

Ah, the Italians. You wouldn’t want one to fix your car (see Germans), manage your money (see Swiss), or swear their undying fidelity (see, um, maybe the Amish?), but when it comes to the lost arts of looking aloofly sexy while holding a cigarette, working three-hour days, and generally sucking every last bacchanalian drop of life out of the day-to-day grind, their supremacy cannot be disputed. Italians: the inventors of Ferraris, espresso, the Roman orgy, Amarone, Sophia Lauren, Armani-clad waiters, and - the source of my eternal gratitude - mozzarella di latte di bufala. Now, let me be clear - I’m not referring to the desiccated abominations that line the local supermarket refrigerators like pale wads of leftover superball rubber, nor to the leathery plastic that congeals like an oily scab on American pizza. Real mozzarella (a physics-defying solid/liquid that Stephen Hawking once exclaimed was ‘proof of God’s love’) will make your heart clench with delight, can only be served on the day it is made, and, once tasted, will make you forgive the Italians for that whole Mussolini thing. The name mozzarella is said to be derived from “scamozzata”, which means “without a shirt” and refers to the fact that these gooey confections have no hard covering typical of a dry-cured cheese. Oh, and let’s be clear on something that should be obvious, but obviously isn’t: Buffalo Mozzarella is made from the unpasturized milk of the water buffalo (those of you who hadn’t figured that out please just put your heads on your desks and be quiet for the rest of the class).

Running update: I’m still sick as a proverbial dog (of course, my dog has never been sick in her blessed life and seems entirely immune to the ill effects of viruses, bacteria, and the gastronomically-questionable and socially-mortifying practice of eating goose feces).

The upside is that I believe I have the first incontrovertible evidence of the fallibility of the first law of thermodynamics: my nasal cavities have developed the capacity to spontaneously generate mucal matter without consuming energy. Naturally, I have a call in to Al Gore - if we can harness this seemingly limitless renewable resource, we can unshackle ourselves from the yoke of our foreign oil addiction. He hasn’t called back yet. I’m sure he’s just busy.

A History Lesson

Days to Marathon: 151

Weight: 182.6

Body Fat: 21.5%

Total Kms Thus Far: 0

Best 1 km time: shut up.

Kms Today: 0

Average Pace: Torpid

Cheese o' The Week: Stilton. Not to be confused with Danish Blue, Stilton is a creamy English gift that can only be legally made in six dairies on Earth (none of which are in Stilton, BTW). The dairies are subject to surprise audits by an independent inspection agency. I’m led to believe that the penalty for quality infractions involves force-feeding of Kraft processed cheese slices. Good with port and, bizarrely, celery.


Well, I made a cardinal mistake last week. Ignoring my better instincts, I succumbed to peer pressure and got a flu shot for the first time in my life. Naturally, I immediately became phlegm-tastically, cough-er-ifically, I’d-prefer-if-you-slept-in-the-other-room, sick. Having not had the flu in six years, I find the timing unsettlingly coincidental and am forced to conclude that my previous blogs regarding the political sniping within the US Center for Disease Control did not go unnoticed or, it appears, unpunished.

So, I have done little in the last five days but wheeze, make bull-walrus-like barking sounds, and be generally cantankerous. With the current lung capacity of an asthmatic, chain-smoking guinea pig, running was about as likely as Barack Obama sweeping a landslide victory in Arkansas. Silver-lining: I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in a week and I’m making a point of staying hydrated. Also, my ab (for now, I just have the one) is sore from bouts of coughing so violent that I was walking around for a while with my lung hanging from my mouth like a deflated meat-balloon. I reckon that’s the equivalent of several hundred crunches.

So, since physical exertion wasn’t in the cards, I focused on marathon research...

HISTORY

As it turns out, the genesis of the modern marathon is a legend about a Greek named Pheidippides, a soldier at the battle of Marathon where a few hundred Greeks triumphed over thousands of Persians in 490 BC. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Pheidippides – referred to not-so-affectionately as “Dippie” by his comrades – was a young recruit and not a stranger to practical jokes. Well, apparently Dippie had irritated his superiors enough to be selected for the dubious duty of running all the way from Marathon to Athens to tell the Senate that the Persians had been defeated. There were plenty of horses around, mind you, but, the commander explained, they were “tired”.

“See how fast you can do it,” he said. “I’ll time you - go!”

I am also reasonably sure that his sandals did not have thermoplastic arch shanks.

Evidently, Dippie ran the entire distance, burst into the Athenian senate and declared “Masters, victory is ours!” before collapsing and dying on the spot in a fluttering shower of PowerBar wrappers and nipple-tape.

The senators had no idea who he was.

However, the news of the war sparked a raging debate between those senators who thought they should celebrate the victory, and those who thought the killing of the Persians was a war crime being perpetrated by the olive oil companies and that they should oppose the war but ‘support the troops’. Ultimately, the political rifts created by the debate over what color ribbon should be used to demonstrate solidarity would lead to the fracturing of the senate and the fall of the Greek empire.

True story.


BIOLOGY

Oh, and here’s an interesting little piece of science:

Runners use glycogen to fuel their muscles during the race.

The human body can store about 8 MJ worth of glycogen, which is enough to run 19 miles.

The marathon is 26.1 miles.

You do the math.