Miscellaneous Things

Yankees are now only 2 1/2 behind Boston and closing fast. Woohooo. Fall baseball; there's nothing like it. Now, I still think the Sox will take the division but I also think that we are in their heads. I do not think they'll forget about that Jeter home run for a while and I don't think they relish the thought of facing Chamberlain/Rivera combination. Next two weeks should be really interesting.
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Now that I have gotten over the pain of the half ironman phsyically and otherwise, I'm starting to think about my next adventure. At the moment, I am leaning towards the North Face Challenge, a 50k (31 miles) trail run that will be held literally around the corner from my house This is about as close to "home course" as I will ever find. I'm going to run with my coach Phil and I figure what the heck; may as well run this one for time too. WIth the exception of a flat 50k in Chicago, I've never really "raced" a trail ultra. Anyway, if any of you woud like to join me for part or all of this please let me know (follow the link here: http://www.thenorthface.com/endurancechallenge/sca_overview.html). Hear that Payro? Wiley? Dad? Speaking of you, Dad, we need you to author a column some time soon.
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Picked up a pretty interesting book the other day, Microtrends, by Mark Penn, who's President Clinton's former pollster and the current CEO of Burson Marsteller, a competitor of my company. Penn is the one who coined the phrase "soccer moms" back in the 90's. In this book, he examines about 50 other fast-growing but "unique" (for lack of a better word) consumer segments (i.e. moderate muslims, newly released convicts, surgery lovers, second home buyers and more) that could have relevance to politicians and marketers alike. I read a decent number of business tomes and I'm inherently skeptical of most, but this one seems interesting. Stay tuned for a review in a few weks.
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