Last Thoughts At 45

Maybe I'm getting slap-happy and putting the cart way ahead of the horse...but as I round back into shape while rehabbing from my heart attack, I find myself perusing the "Upcoming Races" section on the various Georgia running and track club sites. Back around 2001-02, I was running a ton of races around town. I've even got a desk drawer full of trophies and plaques to show for it. All of my top finishes (including three age-group wins) came in the 34-39 age bracket. Then, a funny thing happened. I turned forty. The first race I entered in the age 40-44 bracket, I got SMOKED. Those guys were blowing past me like I was Tim Conway's little old man character from The Carol Burnett Show. And I was posting almost the exact same times as I did the year before...when I was consistently top five or so in my class. Check it out next time you see a group of serious runners. I guarantee you the guys over forty will so be lean and sinewy that they look like they're constructed out of Slim Jim. Something about turning forty, I guess. Maybe that's the magic number that triggers guys to take that internal inventory and figure out what they need to do if they want to live a little longer. If so, I'm late to the party...but I'm finally there. Racing is still way down the road. Hell, I haven't even timed my mile since I've been back out there. But, watch this space. The road beckons.

Slava Kozlov wuz robbed! Seriously.

Kurt Angle: Intensity, integrity, and intelligence...oh, and also intoxication. It's been a rough week all-around for pro-wrestling world champions as earlier this week WWE champ John Cena tore a pectoral muscle on RAW and will be out of action for 6-8 months. Nobody likes to get hurt...but the timing might actually be pretty good for Cena. As big a fan of the guy as I am, even I admit that he was in danger of becoming the most overpushed and overexposed WWE champion since Hulk Hogan. Some time off of TV and pay-per-view will give fans a chance to miss him and the inevitable, built-in "comeback storyline" when he returns (somebody else will be wearing the belt he never lost in the ring, after all) will give his character some edge and purpose. Right now, WWE fans are eager to embrace Triple H as a babyface. So why not put the belt on Randy Orton, who's white-hot as a heel right now, and let HHH chase him for a few months?

Water rationing? No already-promised-to-Zoe snow at Stone Mountain? Lord have mercy...I wish it would rain. (Preferably at night and early in the morning...not when I'm out running.)

Finally...Tomorrow's my 46th birthday, bitches. Shower me with your best wishes in abundance. To the left is what my mother-in-law got me. A Sandisk Sansa e260 4GB MP3 player. Pretty sweet little gadget, huh? I'm not an iPod guy. I can't stand the idea of having to rely on iTunes. The Sansa, which works seamlessly with Windows Media Player/Center, holds over a thousand songs, displays album art while playing, and I can also put video on it...even though trying to watching something on a 1.8-inch screen for more than five minutes would probably turn me into Migraine Boy. I've also uploaded a ton of family photos. In fact, I've damn near maxed the thing's memory out already. But here's the cool part...the memory is upgradable using microSD memory cards. So that's next on my shopping list. All for under a hundred bucks. Highly, highly recommended.