Tag: running

The power of 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[Warning: this post is about pooping.  You have been warned.]

Ever since my birthday, when I was absolutely waylaid by an ear infection, I have struggled with my running.  Prior to my birthday, I was in a very good groove, and I was routinely completing 5K runs under 30 minutes, which is my usual every day goal whenever I lace up my sneakers and go out for a run.

But ever since my birthday that I spent laid up in bed the entire time, and struggling to get over the ear infection and subsequent what I’m guessing was what seemed like rupturing my ear drum, I have not been able to get back to my old running speeds.  Perhaps it’s age actually starting to catch up to me in some way, shape or form, or perhaps the sickness really took a lot more out of me than I had hoped it would.  Maybe it’s a combination of both, but the fact of the matter is that since then I don’t think I’ve been able to log a sub-30 5K time since April, and I try to not get too down about it, because Father Time outlasts everyone, and from what other runners try and encourage to me is that my split times for my age are still above average.

I’ve lightly dieted and been experimenting with stride and pacing, but nothing seems to get me back to where I’m seeing a leading 2 on my tracker when I hit my stopping point, and even though I’ve been able to occasionally get my pace back to a sub-10 minute mile, my overall 5K times have always crossed the 30 minute threshold.

I don’t know why I typed this all out because it really doesn’t have anything to do with the main subject of this post, but since it’s all related to running I think it just presented itself to me as the best opportunity to get that off my chest without having to make a dedicated post about it.

But anyway, I was on a morning run recently, and probably the #1 biggest concern while running started to emerge near the midway point of my run: the mid-run #2.  All through my running life, I’ve always tried to be cognizant of my body’s status whenever it comes to checking off all of the mental boxes before going on a run, be it casual training or on a formal run or race.  Every runner does, no matter how much they might not want to talk about pooping, it’s just human nature, and everyone poops.

Either way, I actually took care of business prior to this particular run, but perhaps again, symptom of aging, it wasn’t adequate enough or for whatever reason, while I was in the middle of my run, warning alarms started going off in the body that indicated that something inconvenient was about to occur.  And believe me, this is the absolute worst thing any runner wants to have to deal with, because it’s not often where relief is ready at a moment’s notice, be it on the trail, on the course, or casual outdoor running.

Fortunately for me, I had relief available to me, and it was conveniently on my route.  There’s a little park that I pass twice on my usual route, and there happens to be a surprisingly clean little public commode at it, and as long as it wasn’t occupied when I rolled up, I knew it was going to be one of those days where as much as I didn’t want to stop my momentum, it was better than the alternative of risking another 21 minutes to get home and shitting myself along the way.

Thankfully, the facility was available and I was able to take care of business, and as inconvenient as the whole process of stopping, and doing the deed can be, the amount of relief and satisfaction at knowing that you basically saved your own life and completely neutralized the risk of one of the most miserable indignities of the world, offsets the negative.

And in the case of this post, not only does it offset the negative, it outright becomes a positive, because once the physical strain of managing a bowel movement is eliminated from the body, the body is now free to focus all of its energy at the original task at hand – running, in my case.

The thought crossed my mind while I was breezing through the remainder of my run, because I now use a fitness tracker as opposed to all the years in which I did not, I actually have the capability to check out the tangible results of physical performance before and after taking care of business.  I amused myself with this scientific hypothesis, and looking forward to viewing the data after the run helped occupy my mind while I was finishing up my run.

Once again, I did not finish in under 30 minutes, nor was my 5K split under 30 minutes either.  My pace was fortunately still under a 10-minute mile, but I’m still handcuffed from notching that sub-30 5K that I’d like to get back to, and I don’t think I’ll get there unless I simply run more than I do now, but that would come at the expense of lifting weights, which is something I also enjoy doing and harvesting the fruits of such labor.

But no matter, when I got home and checked the data of my run on my phone, I was tickled to see the heat mapping of my pace; I had assumed that my general speed was going to be better after the bathroom break versus before it, but the fact that a lot more green and blue (slower) pace before stopping, and almost entirely yellow-to-red pretty much the entire way back was absolutely hilarious.

The power of 2 is something truly stupendous, and I likened the bathroom break to my bros to being like Sonic the Hedgehog when he hits a springboard on a wall and it sends him shooting off at immediate high speed.

I wish I could be a police officer for one working day, vol. 3

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Considering it was about thirteen years between my first and second posting about wanting to be a cop for a day so I could ticket the shit out of everyone doing illegal things that chap my ass but the police don’t actually do anything about because they’re deemed not high enough priority and that they’re using the excuse of being perpetually understaffed, I didn’t think I’d be up to a volume 3 just yet, but here we are, barely a month later.

Bicycles.  I have a fairly contentious opinion about them, mainly that the vast majority of those who ride them are hipsters, tryhards, trolls, or all of the above, for a myriad of reasons, be it guilting motorists of harming the environment, take it too seriously and making others hate them, or clogging up the Silver Comet Trail by thinking the whole stretch exists solely for them and not the hundreds of people that actually want to run or walk on it alternatively.  Sometimes it’s multiple reasons, or all of the above.

But at the same time, I do recognize bicycling as a very good form of exercise, I acknowledge the environmental benefits to it.  I’m not above doing it myself, and whenever I go visit my brother and he takes me in bicycle rides, admittedly it’s extremely satisfying going into a jam-packed parking lot on the beach for cars who also have to pay to park, whereas bicycle parking is free and abundantly available.

And frankly, there are people out there who rely solely on bicycles as their primary mode of transportation, and if it’s the difference between being a lazy drain on society versus getting out into the world and being a contributing member, pedal away, friends.

However, I suppose I take for granted that all people know the general rule of bicycles in the open world, mainly the one that says stay the fuck off sidewalks.  Because as the weather here in Georgia has gone from fake fall to something mildly not quite summer but definitely not fall anymore, people have been outside more often lately, which kind of cramps my style since I walk and/or run outside regularly regardless of the temperature outside, and over the last weeks, while I’m out and about getting my general wellness in, I’ve had assholes flying past me on bicycles on the sidewalk, often coming too close for comfort of hitting me.

It’s happened frequently to the point where I’ve no choice but to use it as subject matter for a brog post, which is to say that it’s happened way too fucking often lately and I wish I were a cop for a day, so that I could grab a lot of these cocksuckers and yank them off their moving bicycles, pin them to the ground and give them tickets for illegally riding their bicycles on footpaths.

They’re called sidewalks for a reason, not sidebikes or sidebicycles.  Yes, you’d be pissing off motorists and/or putting yourselves at risk of danger by riding in the street, but bicycles are for lack of a better term, still classified as vehicles, and belong in the streets, and not the sidewalks.  It’s selfish to prioritize your own safety from automobiles by doing something illegal like getting on the sidewalks and instead jeopardizing the safety of walkers and runners.

Also, because society is getting lazier and softer with each passing day, I can comfortably say that 90% of personal incidents of bicyclists whizzing past me on sidewalks, are e-bikes, and not just regular, pedal-powered bicycles, and they’re going relatively fast as shit, definitely with enough velocity to do some harm to a human body.

So my general walking/running route is primarily residential, but there are two specific stretches that runs along thoroughfares that do have posted speed limits of 35mph, but usually drive anywhere from 45-55mph with regularity.  One of these stretches has a curve that often causes some obnoxious blind spots, so I kind of get why any bicyclist wants to avoid the risk in those areas, but again, avoid their risk, at the expense of others, and there’s no scenario where one party isn’t at risk by the driving talent of another.

However, the law is the law, and the law in most places, including Georgia, dictates that bicycles shouldn’t be on the fucking sidewalks.  And I’m getting tired of nearly getting clipped on sidewalks by people riding bicycles way too fast where they’re legally not allowed to be on, and if I were a cop for a day, I’d ticket every single one of these shitheads for the absolute maximum penalty possible.

White people know no bounds when it comes to wanting to be mad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was at the airport when I saw the yellow official Peachtree Road Race shirt for 2026.  I thought to myself, whoa cool, it’s yellow, seeing as how since Adidas took over the production of the shirts in like 2022, they’ve been peach, blue and red, so there really hasn’t been any hard rule on what color they were supposed to be.  And seeing as how I tend to favor the color yellow, mostly for ironic reasons, I looked forward to when I would get mine, since I’ve since been a mere virtual runner the last six years because no iota of my being wants to get up at 3:30 am to go wait at the Lenox mall parking lot to run the Peachtree in person anymore, when I can do it at my own leisure.

However, over the span of the last 24 hours, I’ve seen at least 5-6 posts fed to me from algorithm, of people I have no idea who they are, as well as local news outlets, all, for lack of a better term, talking or debating the yellow PTRR shirt.  Almost entirely fueled by hatred, by, unsurprisingly, white people who are completely bent out of shape over the fact that the shirt is yellow and not red, white and/or blue, primarily, in honor of the fact that this is the vaunted 250th anniversary of the United States of ‘Murica. 

The news outlets are obviously cleverly feeding off of this reaction, and are simply querying the masses, fully knowing that the negative engagement is still engagement all the same, and the comments sections that I can’t resist looking at, are almost entirely echo chambers of salty white people all saying the same nonsense about how it should be red, white or blue because 250, and a whole lot of people corroborating this opinion because most people with brains know better than to jump into these lions dens of poorly veiled racism and orange fuck supporters.

However, it’s to the point where I can’t just simply chalk it up as white people being salty and actively looking for reasons to be pissed off, but more that the reactions and opinions and choices of words seem to be so uniform, so echoed and so similar that I can’t help but wonder if these are all the actions of bots and AI, deployed by the types of farms that are designed and meant to incite and provoke, knowing that even negative engagement is still engagement, and engagement equals profit somewhere down a line.

All the same, if it really is that all these reactions and posts are genuine human beings, all consistently and collectively being mad over the fact that a run’s shirt is yellow, it goes back to the title of this post that white people truly know no boundaries when it comes to the innate desire to be mad about, anything at all.

It’s funny to me that this reaction did not happen when in 2023 the shirt was said to be peach, but is this weird sickly orange-y color that borderlines pink, but as long as it was called peach, it could be justified, seeing as how the name of the fucking race is called, The Peachtree.  But yellow probably makes the right white immediately think about the evil Chinese since yellow is the negatively connoted color associated to Asian people, despite the fact that yellow variations of popular ‘Murican muscle cars are oft-coveted, but it doesn’t matter because yellow = wrong.

All the same, I dig the yellow shirt, and I look forward to when I get mine.  The Adidas versions of the PTRR shirts over the last few years are all great, because they’re no longer cheap, Gildan-like cotton t-shirts that I wouldn’t really ever wear, but are mesh, workout-caliber shirts, that immediately go into my rotation of workout apparel, and get regularly worn.  The fact that simply wearing them on my own walks and runs is going to incite white people, will only be a cherry on top, aside from just liking the color and design in the first place.

Stay mad, white people, I look forward to observing what pisses y’all off next.

Happy trails, Jeff

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Runner’s World: Olympian, legendary runner, Jeff Galloway passes away at the age of 80

I know that most people would look at me and not think I’m remotely what they expected to see when I say that I’m a runner, but I can confidently say at this stage of my life, that I’ve been steadily running for nearly half of my life. 

I ran intermittently between the ages of 18-23, but around the age of 24, I’ve been running very consistently since then.  I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had a stretch where I did no running that was longer than a week, and one of them coincided with both my first daughter’s birth and the arrival of COVID.  I’ve probably run more miles in my life than Forrest Gump had in the film, despite the fact that I look like a pretty unimpressive schlub on account of the fact that as much as I exercise, I still enjoy food and it’s safe to say that I exercise so that I can, eat like a shithead every now and then, and not have to put too much restriction on the stuff I eat.

I’ll be honest, other than seeing the guy’s name on a local annual run, I wasn’t actually really that familiar with Jeff Galloway until then-mythical gf got into running and wanted to train up for a runDisney race.  It was training with her did I learn what the Jeff Galloway Run-Walk Method was, and mythical gf was living proof of its effectiveness, considering she was starting from a pretty bare starting point in her running journey.

As I got older and the mileage started piling up on my knees and legs, I began implementing a little bit of run-walk into my own methods, and when mythical gf wanted to go runDisney again, I joined her, and trained up to run the half, officially.  Typically when I got real ham into running, my goal was always to be able to run the Peachtree (10K) without needing to resort to walking, which I did accomplish a few times, and although I was adamant about not being so regimented to going run-walk from start to finish, my general policy was to run as long as I could, and once I began to feel the initial fatigue, switch up to run-walk.

Needless to say, in my first few forays into half-marathon running, I was able to achieve my goals of staying under 2:30 times, and someone as undisciplined as me probably wouldn’t have been able to without learning and implementing run-walk.

So all that said, especially as a runner, I e-pour one out for the passing of Jeff Galloway, a man who strived to make the world a better and healthier place by giving the community the knowledge of run-walk, and helping inspire thousands of people who thought they couldn’t ever run distances, the knowledge, support and inspiration that they too could.

Although I wasn’t that familiar with him originally, his knowledge still made its mark on my own runner’s journey, and without adopting his methods into my own, I probably never would have been able to achieve the longer runs I’ve done in my life, and for that alone, I am grateful for his existence, the knowledge he graciously shared, and the impact he had on the community of runners and exercise enthusiasts across the globe.

The world is a less fit and healthy place without him on it.

My feet are destroyers of gear

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of my least favorite feelings in the world is when you get that tacky feeling on the flat of your food from inside a shoe, and when the opportunity is there, you take the shoe off to check, and yep, there’s a hole forming in your sock.  Inevitably, this last gasp of my sock’s integrity happens when I’m at work, or out of the house and going to be out of the house for a length of time, which means there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it for at least several hours.

No matter the tech or innovation or special manufacturing methods done by today’s sock makers that claim to be more resistant to wear and promise to last longer than the package of boring ass tube socks you can get at your local Ross for 60% the cost of retail, there is pretty much no pair of socks that my feet are incapable of wearing holes through.  Most of the time, it is outer sole of my foot where holes begin because I grew up bowlegged and it’s clear that my weight applies more pressure to the outer parts of my feet, but I’ve had holes form near my heel, of course on the outer part.

Additionally, I have toes where the nails kind of angle upward, not to mention the fact that my second toe is long and sticks out further, which according to podiatry sources, is called a Greek foot, and if I do not be mindful of the length of my toenails, they basically become little blades that gradually saw away at socks, and holes will eventually form in the toes as well.

On that note, I was putting on my treadmill shoes in preparation for a treadmill session, and I noticed that the fabric on the big toe part of my left shoe had a hole in it.  I stuck my hand into the shoe, and apparently over the passage of time, the big toe on my left foot has worn a hole through the padding and now all the way through the fabric itself.  Which is kind of interesting in how the hole is very horizontally straight like it was stabbed through, because that means my big toe nail has managed to slice a hole through the shoe, which is made more interesting in the fact that none of the running socks that I use have sprouted any holes, so I guess this was some really concentrated friction in order to cause this breach.

Where I’m getting at is that it’s clear that I have some pretty fucked up feet that are complete destroyers of foot apparel.  Socks never last long before I eventually bore holes in them, which sucks because I’ve had to toss many socks with designs of patterns that I’ve enjoyed and been unable to find replacements for.  And it’s apparent that my feet are capable of ruining shoes in ways other than simply wearing out the soles.

Seriously, I like to believe that my feet would be some ASMR channel’s dream feet, as far as repairing them.  I need to get my feet out on the internet to entice one of these channels to do their magic to my feet, so that they can make some money on the content, but more importantly so that I don’t have to pay for it at all.

It’s one of those moments where I begin to ponder that my fortune should come from having footwear that is special catered towards people like me with brutal runner’s feet that seem capable of destruction, but if I actually took the time to research on the internet instead of assuming that I’m the first person in existence to ponder this, I’m sure there are hundreds of companies out there that already are doing it, and perhaps I should be looking to them to equip my feet, instead of settling for shitty plebe gear that can’t keep up any further.

What’s worse: leaving dog poop or leaving dog poop in a bag?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

These are the thoughts that go through my head when I go out for runs.  Because despite the snooty upscale environment my general area pretends like it is, there’s still a lot of white trash behavior underneath the thin skin of it all.  Like people who leave their dog poop, in bags, on the side of walking trails and sidewalks that inevitably never get picked up.  Which got me wondering, the title of this post, what people think is worse between leaving your dog’s poop behind out in the open, or taking the time to pick it up, bag it and then, leaving it behind. 

Saying you’ll come back for it later and most likely not, irrelevant to the query at hand.

And this isn’t even something that’s solely based on a single day’s exploration of the outdoors.  Whenever I’ve hit the Silver Comet Trail, I see bags of poop all over the sides of the trail.  Taking my kids on nature walks and mini-hikes, same deal.  It’s just disheartening to have seen such bullshit behavior now having crept into my own community, where I do my outdoor runs.

This is a case where no answer is right, and no answer is wrong.  Anyone who does absolutely anything other than picking up your dog’s poop, and relocating it into an appropriate receptacle, is frankly a piece of shit and if I were the lord and ruler of the world, this would probably be a three strikes and then the death penalty kind of thing.

Like, people who leave the dog poop are absolute cocksuckers in the sense that the act of them letting their dog poop on someone else’s yard or a public place, and then not picking it up and walking off is a combination of shithead behaviors – negligence, inconsideration, laziness and just plain being a shithead.  Few things get me fired up than finding an errant turd in my yard, because some asshole in my neighborhood was being an asshole, and short of setting up a camera to surveil my yard at all times, I have no idea who it is, no matter how much I want to return the turds to properties of the owners of the dog(s) who left them.

But I actually think people who bag up their dog’s poop but then leave the bags behind, are worse.  Because when they do what they do, they’re not only demonstrating all of the aforementioned shithead behaviors, they’re also adding deceit, lying, delusion and just plain being wrong, in thinking what they’re doing is somehow better than just leaving their dog’s poop out and open.  All topped off with the fact that these cocksuckers+ are making conscientious decisions to bag the poop and then leave the bags behind, where as those who don’t might sometimes actually be able to play negligence because most people who walk their dogs are also phone-addled zombies and may not have noticed a poop, but that’s a different gripe for a different time.

Let’s not even bother deliberating on the whole “I’ll come back for it later” bullshit – I don’t think anyone would believe a single person who claimed that they would come back for them later on the return leg of their walk, and even if there were paragons out there that did such, the world is so full of cocksuckers who don’t that shouldn’t be worth the fact that people are just going to assume you’re a cocksucking liar when you start bagging up your dog’s poop and leave the bag behind, regardless of your intention to, get it later.

At least when a dog turd is left out in the wild, it can and will inevitably break down, decompose, be food for some bugs, and be somewhat of a benefit to nature.  But if it’s left in a bag, maybe the bag itself might be biodegradable, maybe it isn’t, but the point is, the contents of that bag aren’t getting returned to nature any time soon, but the general stinkiness, grossness, and symbolic an asshole left this here message, remain as long as it takes for some superior Samaritan to take the bullet and clean it up.

What it all really boils down to is the fact that if people don’t want to do all the responsibilities that come with dog ownership, they simply shouldn’t have them in the first place.  If I were a dog, and even if my owner gave me steak and chicken tenders, played with me regularly, lavished me with fresh tennis balls, clean beds and all sorts of love and attention, there’d still be a ceiling to how much I could reciprocate my love if I knew that they themselves were still cocksuckers enough to be leaving my poop behind, and worse if it were still bagged up.

So frankly, I think it’s worse to be the assholes who bag the pool and leave it behind, versus those who don’t.  But make no mistake, anyone who does either, if it were up to me, I’d implement the death penalty for all y’all motherfuckers.  It’s not hard at all to bag up a turd to where the smell is minimal, and not so uncomfortable that it can’t be held until proper disposal.

Would you narc on a cop?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Context: when I go running, I run through the parking lot of a closed-down drugstore as my turn around point; over the last year or so, I have noticed that a police vehicle parks their car under the awning of the drive-thru.  This was not an isolated incident, and given the fact that I’m fairly schedule oriented, I have seen this cop parked out here at roughly the same time ranges, and I would go so far as to say that it’s north of a 50% chance that I’ll see the car whenever I go for a run.  And like I said “year,” this has been the case for the better part of the span of the last year.

One time, I saw the office sitting with his door open trimming a cigar, so it’s clear that the cop isn’t just hiding out to kill time or take a breather, but to be giving himself a little daily vacation on company time, fairly regularly.  The fact that I’ve run past numerous butts and remnants of cigars in the lot indicates that this probably happens more than he wants people to be aware of.

Now before I continue, I don’t know definitively that it is the same officer that’s doing this on the regular, but I do definitively know that it’s the same vehicle I’m seeing every single time.  I’m not in law enforcement so I don’t know if every officer has their own vehicle, or if they have to share with others, but if it is the former, then it leads to believe that it’s the same cop who’s loafing on company time on the regular.

Anyway, on this particular morning where I’ve decided to finally pose this question, I had the opportunity to get out and run early, and I decided to capitalize, because fewer things bring me joy like getting to knock out certain self-imposed daily tasks like Duolingo and exercise, so I was out of the house and running by like 9 am, before I would log into work on my weekly remote day.

Typically, whenever I see the lazy cop car, it’s at around 12-1 pm, when I’m either taking a lunch break when I’m working remotely, or the kids are in their rooms for quiet time, and I have the opportunity to get out and run.  And like I mentioned earlier, the rate in which I see the cop car when I run is pretty high, and frankly I’m at the point where I’m more surprised when I don’t see them.

However on this morning when I’m approaching my turning point at around 9:15-ish, the thought crossed my mind on whether or not I’d see the lazy cop car, seeing as how it’s nearly three hours earlier than I normally run.  But sure as the sun rises, there was the cop car, same five-digit vehicle number on the rear hatch as I’ve grown to recognize.  Door was ajar, legs sticking out of the driver’s seat, human being very much present and alive.

And this is where I began to ponder, if this guy is here at 9:15 am and often seen at 12-1 pm, is this cop just parking here and hanging out for his entire shift?  Is he coming and going at intermittent intervals?  Did I just happen to catch him completely coincidentally at an odd time?  Is this cop really that much of a lazy pig, completely complacent by the sheer lack of job accountability?

Which brings us back to the original query of this entire post – would you narc on a cop?

Full disclosure, I don’t hate the police.  I know I identify more as leaning liberally, but I don’t hate the police.  A few bad cops don’t paint the whole picture of the entire occupation of law enforcement, and sure I think that there are some places in the country where the police have too much funding and it could be scale back some, but by and large, I support law enforcement, and want to give benefit of the doubt that most cops are good cops.

But like I said, I’m writing all this after nearly a year’s worth of observations of what appears to be a singular cop taking way too many liberties with his job, and I’m curious to know on whether you, my non-existent reader, would narc on them or not.

And by narc, I’m thinking of taking pictures and putting up on social media and tagging the agency in which the officer works for, and pointing the finger, because most everyone probably knows that cops do have a culture or protecting each other, and I don’t imagine a phone call to a precinct would result in anything more than a good laugh from those on the inside, as well as a marking on the source, as, an enemy to law enforcement, for daring to take action against a cop.

Not like putting them on blast on social media wouldn’t result in the same risk of retaliation, but at least the intel would be made immediately public, and put the officer in question as well as the agency they work for in self-defense mode first, and muddy up the waters on how they’d be able to retaliate without there being any scrutiny.

And it sucks that this is where we the people are with law enforcement, where it definitively feels like engaging in a manner that is accusing the police would result in some form of retaliation, because I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that law enforcement has the resources necessary to trace an image, a post or a be able to scrape metadata better than most armchair sleuths and pretty efficiently be able to identify those who act against them regardless of how warranted it might be.

But anyway, no matter how much it irks me to see a sworn officer of the law behaving in a manner that’s anything but a respectable police officer, I’m not doing anything.  I try to operate my general life as low-key and devoid of any legal scrutiny as possible, and I’d rather there not be a note next to my identification that I’m some opponent to the police that deserves the book at the slightest infraction should there ever be a time, and I don’t want to increase the risk of that ever happening.

That’s just me though; would you?