Author Archives: Al

Give Me A Head With Hair – II

Class pictures from Kindergarten through third grade show me with very short hair, sometimes long enough to lie flat, sometimes bristly short. My father had grown up having his hair cut in his family’s ranch-house kitchen in eastern Montana during … Continue reading

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Give Me A Head With Hair — I

March  18, 2020…For a week, it had been one “WTF?!?” moment after another. Sports leagues shut down. Colorado abruptly closed its ski areas. The French stopped eating in restaurants, even on the sidewalk. Schools closed, universities sent students home. Microsoft and … Continue reading

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Blaming the Victims

Today’s Letter to the Editor. NY TImes columnist Thomas Friedman asserts that NATO and its eastern European allies are patly to blame for Vladimir Putin’s attitude and behavior. My response: Mr. Friedman is blaming the victims, the former eastern European … Continue reading

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Volume As A Training Tool

Outside of the 8-12 weeks prior to an A race, I believe the life-long athlete, specifically the aspiring successful triathlete, should integrate several non race-specific activities. Variety (including trying new sports), weight-training for general strength improvement, skill drills to improve … Continue reading

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Guns and Cars Both Kill People. And Yet…

Headline: Sandy Hook Parents win settlement in lawsuits against Remington Arms. One reader commented: “This means that every automobile manufacturer in the U. S. is liable for all the injuries and deaths they “cause.”” My response: Cars are not designed … Continue reading

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Valentine’s Day, 2022

Two years now since the first warnings of a novel coronavirus. We saw a plummeting stock market, runs on toilet paper and Lysol, canceled plane trips and the first US deaths. In March, 2020, I decided I would not go … Continue reading

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How I Met Your Mother

Squinting at her name badge, I asked, “GN. What’s that?” Six months into my internship, I’d seen hundreds of students – medical, nursing, anesthesia – parade through 5L, the cramped labor and delivery ward at LA County Hospital. She smiled. … Continue reading

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Zwift Racing: Alternative to Structured Workouts

I discovered the value of structured high intensity cycling workouts about five years into my triathlon career. Prior to that, I did not know what “work” was – I simply went out and commuted by bike, went for rides on … Continue reading

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WEEK SIX, HIM Training

With the shorter, colder days and loss of outdoor mountain rides, I’ve looked for a substitute on Zwift to build the same sort of cycling strength. Last three weekends, I’ve used several races/rides, all of which were in the range … Continue reading

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Love Poems

I’ve entered two of my poems from the late 1960s into online contests. I tweaked them a little from the originals I found in Nov 2019 in a storage box. LET’S NOT DEMAND SO MUCH OF EVERY SINGLE MOMENT Let’s … Continue reading

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