Altra Zero Drop Sale; Sex in the Village; Sierra Slack Life

Tell me, did any of those titles catch your eye? We'll get to that one shortly ... which is among the random odds and ends that are buying me some time to put the finishing touches on a product review slated for later in the week ...

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First, I’ve made mention of the fact that my wife is a big fan of zero-drop - but not necessarily minimalist - running shoes, and that one of her recent favorites is the Altra Intuition (which I reviewed here).  If you’re like her, or if you’re a fan of Altra’s more minimalist stuff (like the Adam or the Samson), here’s a great sale for you:

PlanetGear.com currently has a great lineup of Altra shoes available at up to 40% off.  You can get the Adam or Eve for $48 (regularly $80), and the Instinct or Intuition for $65 (regularly $100).  The sale lasts through July 24^th, but there’s no telling if inventory will last that long – so if you want to grab a pair, get going.

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One of my first articles to make a big splash on the Internet was a reformulated version of an old Monterey Herald article from 2005 on the topic of sex and athletic performance.  Among other noteworthy points was the fact that nearly 90,000 condoms were distributed to athletes in the Olympic Village during the 1992 Albertville Games.  You read that right: nine - zero - THOUSAND.

In light of that, I was amused to see this ESPN.com piece last week on sex in the Olympic Village, which I suppose can be considered an updated version of the topic I first explored almost seven years ago.  There’s no telling whether the author used my piece as source material, but I’m sure there’s no shortage of interesting stories to be told on this subject.

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On a little less racy note: remember all the times I’ve mentioned how cool it would be to work for the CLIF Bar company?  Well, if for some reason you still don’t believe me, check out this article and tell me if your employer would do something similar.

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Finally, here’s one of the many signs that I was in full-on vacation mode last week:  I spent more time slacklining than I did running.

The good news is that I can now walk about 40’ on a slackline, which – considering how dreadfully I sucked just a few months ago – honestly kind of amazes me.  The bad news is that as far as I can tell, this has absolutely zero carryover to my running, overall fitness, or for that matter, any other redeeming merit in any aspect of my life.  (The other bad news is that the only photo evidence I have from last week captures me without a shirt.  For the love of God, please don’t click to enlarge.)

And yet, I’m absolutely hooked on this crazy sport, to the point where I have slacker dreams just as often as I have running dreams.  And sometimes when my daydreaming gets the best of me, I get lost in the exploits of the truly amazing slackers, such as the guys in the video that follows. 

I probably have a whole series of posts about the slack life in me at some point, but, you know … I guess I’m kind of a slacker when it comes to actually writing about it.  In the meantime, enjoy this clip by a dude named Clark Grubb, which also features perhaps the most fitting background song for slacklining: David Bowie’s classic “It Ain’t Easy.”  Indeed.

“Slacklining – Moab” by Clark Grubb (click to play):

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