Chicago Marathon 2010: Tsegaye Kebede vs. Sammy Wanjiru

Sammy Wanjiru

While Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya and Liliya Shobukhova of Russia were repeat winners in the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, and two runners from Michigan topped the Americans who ran the race, the best news is there were no mishaps like the ones that damaged the image of the 2009 Chicago Marathon.  But the talk was about the battle between Sammy Wanjiru and Tsegaye Kebede.

That event was held in record temperatures for the marathon. It was 89 degrees and 90 percent humidity, leading to a number of runners not finishing or in the case of a 35-year old man with a heart disorder, passing away after collapsing.

This year, the temperature was a much cooler but still warm 68 degrees. Sammy Wanjiru said it was his favorite weather. According to Running Competitor, Wanjiru beat Tsegaye Kebede from Ethiopia, but it wasn't easy. Kebede would take the lead, only to have Sammy come back and catch him. Later, Kebede would observe "He get recovery he come again" in talking about running against Sammy Wanjiru. Wanjiru would post a time of 2 hours, 6 minutes, 24 seconds, 19 seconds faster than Kebede.

Having personally observed Wanjiru at the 2009 Bay To Breakers, Kebede's right.  This blogger has never seen anyone run so fast for such a long stretch of distance, as Wanjiru did over the last mile of the 2009 Bay To Breakers.  When the temperature cooled as the runners approached the ocean, Sammy kicked it into another gear.

Wanjiru, truly an amazing runner, has a technique he says he developed at the Beijing Olympics. It's a series of surges after rest periods along a run. Apparently it worked. Wanjiru set an Olympic record of 2:06:32.

Chicago Marathon Won By Sammy Wanjiru For Third Straight Time

Sammy Wanjiru, the winner of this year's San Francisco Bay To Breakers for the second straight year, just won today's Chicago Marathon for the third straight year as well.

In the 2010 Chicago Marathon, Wanjiru was in a battle with Tsegaye Kebede of Ethiopia.   Read more about it here.

In 2009 Sammy set a course record.

Here's the account of the 2009 run according to Chicago Marathon Blog:

CHICAGO — Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya won today the Chicago Marathon with the fastest time on American soil, finishing in 2 hours 5 minutes, 41 seconds.

Sammy Wanjiru set both American and course records but missed the world mark in the 2009 Chicago Marathon. On a chilly fall morning – 33 degrees at the start – the Olympic gold medalist in Beijing pushed the pace impatiently and won the race.

With temperatures hovering just below the freezing mark, Wanjiru turned in the best time in the U.S. and beat by one second the mark of 2:05:42 set by Khalid Khannouchi in Chicago in 1999.

He got US$75,000 for winning and $100,000 for the course record.

In the final agonizing feet before he hit the tape, Wanjiru nearly missed that record and a lucrative payday by waiving his arms in premature celebration. He nearly made a mistake in waiving both arms too quickly, but recovered just in time.

The world record of 2:03:59 is set by Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie in Berlin on Sept. 28, 2008.

Abderrahim Goumri of Morocco made a late push to finish second in 2:06:04, with Kenya’s Vincent Kipruto in third (2:06:08).

On the women’s side, Russian Liliya Shobukhova won a much-slower paced race in 2:25:56.

American Amanda McGrory set the course record by more than 4 minutes in winning the women’s wheelchair race in 1:39:46.
Australian Kurt Fearnley made it a three-peat on the men’s wheelchair race in 1:29:09.

List of Chicago Marathon female winners
1977: Dorothy Doolittle, United States
1978: Lynae Larson, United States
1979: Laura Michalek, United States
1980: Sue Peterson, United States
1981: Tina Gandy, United States
1982: Nancy Conz, United States
1983: Rosa Mota, Portugal
1984: Rosa Mota, Portugal
1985: Joan Benoit Samuelson, United States
1986: Ingrid Kristiansen, Norway
1988: Lisa Weidenbach, United States
1989: Lisa Weidenbach, United States
1990: Aurora Cunha, Portugal
1991: Midde Hamrin, Sweden
1992: Linda Somers, United States
1993: Ritva Lemettinen, Finland
1994: Kristy Johnston, United States
1995: Ritva Lemettinen, Finland
1996: Marian Sutton, United Kingdom
1997: Marian Sutton, United Kingdom
1998: Joyce Chepchumba, Kenya
1999: Joyce Chepchumba, Kenya
2000: Catherine Ndereba, Kenya
2001: Catherine Ndereba, Kenya
2002: Paula Radcliffe, United Kingdom
2003: Svetlana Zakharova, Russia
2004: Constantina Diţă-Tomescu, Romania
2005: Deena Kastor, United States
2006: Berhane Adere, Ethiopia
2007: Berhane Adere, Ethiopia
2008: Lidiya Grigoryeva, Russia
2009: Lidiya Grigoryeva, Russia
2010: Lidiya Grigoryeva, Russia

Sammy Wanjiru - more than Kenya itself, which is what Americans talk about when the conversation of long distance running comes up - has come to dominate the sport.

Oakland News: Oakland Unemployment, Mayor's Race Coverage

The talk is about how ABC's Diane Sawyer focused on unemployment in Oakland, California, but rather than in a negative light, did so with a positive light. The blog OaklandSeen has a good take on this, but overall it's more of the same for our city.

Oakland gets headlines for its negatives all too often, and for good reason. There's little to offset a near-20-percent unemployment rate.

Think about that.

It means one of every five adults you pass by on the street is without a job. Plus, it means that the other 30 percent may be just scrapping by. That's a tragedy. Tech can help save that - starting an online business - but many don't have the know how, and it's even harder to teach people and hope they get it.

But it's got to be done. More on that later.

Oakland Mayor's Race Coverage!

On the matter of the Oakland Mayor's Race, The East Bay Express and other publications are finally giving all of the candidates attention. That's worth celebrating.

As stated before here, anyone who is able to get signatures and get on the ballot to run for Mayor of Oakland is to be honored with media attention. The point is to let the people decide who should be Mayor of Oakland, not the media.

Room 389 Gets Golden Bear Praise

While out in San Francisco at The Balboa Cafe, this blogger ran into Norm, who was a popular bartender at The Golden Bear, what's now called Room 389 (for 389 Grand Avenue). Norm had high praise for Room 389 saying "They've got the right mix of people to be successful." In other words, it's not all one color of people but well-integrated. Moreover, it's the kind of place were you see people from the neighborhood, much like The Golden Bear. Room 389 fills a social void on that part of Grand Avenue that's been ignored for too long. Pay a visit.

The one wish from this space is that they do a deal with the Chinese Food place next door called Golden Lilly. The family that runs the place has consistently good food and service. Bringing Golden Lilly service to Room 389 is the missing ingredient.

Oaktoberfest Today

If you're not into Fleet Week, or can do both, head over to Oaktoberfest in the Diamond District at Fruitvale and Mac Arthur for fun and food.

Councilmember Jean Quan's Newsletter Skirts Law

Oakland District Four Councilmember Jean Quan's latest newsletter comes close to being an ad for her run for Mayor of Oakland. This because of an entry about a mailer by the California Prison Guard union and on Rank Choice Voting.

Quan should have used a separate mailer to address those issues because she's running for Mayor. Otherwise it looks like she's using taxpayer dollars to finance her own campaign. In her newsletter, she states her own take, which is just like Quan would do in a newsletter for her run for Mayor, if she had one.

She needs to establish a newsletter for her campaign, and if she's done so, inform the media.

Zennie62 Growth

Finally, sorry about my lack of posts, but this blogger has worked to overhaul Zennie62.com to where it is now: as a major provider of online news. The last round of code changes has done the trick, search engine placement is perfect, and the next step is to expand the code fixes to the overall Zennie62 blog network.

Much to the surprise of many, one can take a blogspot.com blog and turn it into a competitor for online space against The LA Times, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and yes, SFGate.com and The SeattlePI.com.

And all of the code changes are not "black hat SEO" but obvious in-your-code-face fixes that blogger's do not write much about. In fact the last few changes were done on a hunch, not the result of research on what others have done. The hunch worked. Now, back to SFGate.com.

I continue to post at SFGate.com and The SeattlePI.com, because The Hearst Corporation has been a good organization to work with.  Indeed, in the digital space, The Hearst Corporation properties have high potential.  What really upsets this blogger is that SFGate.com and The SeattlePI.com can be, but are not as large as The Huffington Post.    That's an issue.   An issue I took up in a different way.

My nature is to be both entrepreneurial and scientific in my approach to media. The only way to show any media organization that there's a different, better way to do media, is to just do it.   Google has been a major supporter here, by providing a fantastic platform in Blogger.com and great support.

What drives me, to a degree, is the fact that in the past newsrooms were closed to blacks, minorities, and women. Now, some want to save the same culture that discriminated against us for so long. It's time to destroy it and move on to a better, more democratic and meritocratic system.

What's holding back progress are the journalism schools teaching the old way, pushing stupid-assed ideas like "hyper-local" which is hyper-stupid, and not teaching students about the revenue side of the business. Perhaps because the J-School people don't know about it themselves. If they did, hyper-local blogs would never have been considered a good idea.

Why? Simple. By restricting news to local areas, the publisher reduces the level of potential revenue that can be made. Period. The rule in media is that big stories pay for small ones. You can't have a successful business with small stories paying for each other. The reason is that local blogs eat each other for attention, and so can't muster enough money to pay salaries.

Yet, Oakland North, and The Bay Citizen.org are with us. In the case of The Bay Citizen, which is the feature of this video...



...it will burn through the $5 million it got from Warren Hellman and that will be that, because it's hyper-local. I don't know who wrote their business plan, if it exists, but I'll bet it didn't factor in the increasing number of blogs in The Bay Area.  The only factor that saves The Bay Citizen for now is the fact that the other blogs don't work with each other for some of the dumbest reasons.  This is especially true in Oakland, where Oakland North is part of the scene.

In Oakland North's case it's the product of the Berkeley J-School and produces no revenue for itself to pay its student reporters. (Really, it's not worth a mention.) So students don't have to figure out how to sustain it, because the Berkeley J-School does that. The result is the students come away with an unrealistic view of media and no business experience in it.

That's the fault of the Berkeley J-School.

Jenn Sterger Playboy And Brett Favre Knock Down Rick Sanchez

The twin combination of Minnesota Vikings Quarterback Brett Favre's alleged sexting of his privates to Jenn Sterger, and the revelation that the New York Jets sideline reporter that she is, is was also a Playboy model has worked to dominate search trends, at least on Google, and knock Rick Sanchez and CNN from the popular search ranks.

What's interesting is that neither topic has been talked about as much on television as on the Internet. Little by little, Internet search trends are becoming separated from television. That's only anecdotal, not a scientific analysis.

But the observation is that as more and more people turn to online sources for news, and as television news becomes more and more fragmented, the trend will continue until television's role as influencer will only be in the case of big national and World events watched by millions, like The World Cup, or The Super Bowl.

What it also means is that more, not less of the time, sex and scandal on the Internet will rule the search trends of the day.

Jenn Sterger Playboy Rules Search

In the case of "Jenn Sterger Playboy" and "Brett Favre," those terms have been repeated with different combinations of words and winding up repeated six to eight times on Google Trends hot searches over the last three days, or since the Jenn Sterger Playboy and Brett Favre issue got hot.

It will only intensify, and keep Rick Sanchez and CNN off the pop search grid, or at least way down in it. If you remember, Rick Sanchez was fired by CNN last week for saying that Jews ran it and the media. For most of the week, until Wednesday, Rick Sanchez was the most consistently popular topics online.

Stay tuned.

Mark Zuckerberg, Make Your Own Movie Called My Social Network

Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly not happy with how he's portrayed in Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network. Moreover, some tech observers have said the movie fails to tell the real story of the development of Facebook.

Heck, do a search for "The Social Network accurate" in Google and you'll find a number of articles and blog posts claiming it's not, and some saying it is.

With all this, Mark Zuckerberg should make his own movie and call it My Social Network.

The Social Network Not The First Silicon Valley Movie

Wired's Fred Vogelstein says Mark Zuckerberg should like The Social Network because it brands him officially as the creator of the World's Largest Social Network. Moreover, he says it's the first movie about Silicon Valley. (Where he's wrong. The first movie about Silicon Valley is called Pirates of Silicon Valley and was made in 1999. Yes, it was for television, but Vogelstein didn't qualify his statement, leaving himself open to correction.)

Hunger For Movies About Commercial Tech People

While The Social Network isn't the first movie about Silicon Valley, it is the first major movie about an Internet company that grew out of Silicon Valley. It's success proves that people want to see movies about the people behind the products they use. That's why Mark Zuckerberg should make his own movie: what better way to communicate his thoughts than via movie form?

While Mark's got the money to do it, spending a lot on the idea that the return will be bigger than that for The Social Network, is stupid. An even better play is to do a documentary-style flick that's in-your-face with Mark looking at the camera and setting the record straight. Not for the whole movie - no one would sit for that - but at least for some scenes.

Don't Like The News...

The point is, if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. Mark should know that, being in the Internet business of helping people communicate their message. Now, it's time for him to do it for himself.

Sesame Street: Smell Like A Monster (Old Spice Commercial Parody)

The Old Spice Commercial has spawned a ton of copies (including one by this blogger) but none are funnier than Grover of Sesame Street in "Smell Like A Monster."

Grover strips down to his towel and also rides what he thinks is a horse - it's not. (Actually, it looks like Miss Piggy.)

Then he has a set of tickets in a clam as a gift for you, but the clam bites him on the nose! Poor Grover.

The video contains a number of totally funny missteps and is not to be missed. Here it is":



Oh, and don't forget to watch this blogger's video thanking the Old Spice Man for, well, check it out:



Stay tuned.

Brett Favre Gets Randy Moss To Get Over Jenn Sterger And New York Jets

Oh, and before we forget, Minnesota Vikings Quarterback Brett Favre will get former New England Patriots Wide Receiver Randy Moss to help him get over Jenn Sterger and his Monday Night Football foe the New York Jets.

After Tom Brady's contract was renewed and upgraded, Randy Moss complained that the New England Patriots didn't appreciate him and that 2010 would be his last season with the team. Moss continued to play for the Pats, but wasn't interested in being there.

Finally, this week, the New England bye week, Moss got his wish, and was sent to the team he started his NFL career with, the Vikings. And just in time for Monday Night.

Moss Versus Darrelle Revis

New York Jets Cornerback Darrelle Revis will face Moss, but not at 100 percent. Revis, arguably the best cornerback in the NFL not named Nnamdi Asomugha, said he strained his left hamstring against the Pats, during their victory September 19th.

Now, after not playing, he comes back to face Moss - if Revis plays at all. As of this writing, it's not clear he's got permission to hit the field as of this writing. Revis is missing valuable practice time, so the only idea is that he would go strictly man-for-man against Moss if Revis is cleared to play.

Can Revis Island shut down Moss?

Stay tuned.