Fear and smaller me

Last weekend I went rock climbing with Ben and Sam and I have finally hit the inflection point where they are both starting to exceed me in physical performance. Not only can Ben now do slightly more pullups than me but he is an incredible rock climber. We went to the world famous Shawangunks in New Paltz, NY and he went flying up 70 foot cliffs with little fear while I quit after 4 feet. Too scary.

I have been off Creatine for four days now in an attempt to lose some bulk and get down to 170 pounds by the California International Marathon. In the past three years, I have begun to go slowly slightly slower on my habitual 8 mile runs; I'm not sure if this is the inevitable sign of aging or if the extra 10 pounds have made a difference. I'm about to find out in the next five months although if I lose the weight but don't gain the speed I am not going to admit it's age.

Hack and the Flack is going really well. Mike and I have had some kickass interviews recently - many of course focused around Lance in interviews with Bill Gifford of Slate/Men's Journal and Bonnie Ford of ESPN, but we also had Dan "Fake Steve Jobs" Lyons of Newsweek, Emily Bazelon of Slate and Ashlee Vance of The New York Times. It has been much easier than I thought to get relatively famous reporters to agree to do the program but they of course have egos and want to push their names. As I do but they are just better at it so far.