In case you haven't noticed, if it isn't American male distance running, it probably isn't going to get written up by ben or Jeremy. (Excepting, of course, easy-on-the-eyes female runners of any discipline... RRRRarrr... "discipline"....) So in an effort to broaden our coverage, we are pleased to give you urbane traveler-of-the-world, Jake Krong, of Lets-Krong.com, and his "WEDNESDAY WEEKLY WORLDVIEW WITH WJAKE WKRONG." Jake's final dispatch from Costa Rica is after the jump.
This is not the track where elites train; possibly because the surface is asphalt.When my last column went to press, I was in Costa Rica working on the Nery Brenes profile. I wasn't having much luck locating him, or anyone that knew anything about him, so I switched up the game plan and set off in search of 2:17 marathoner Jose Luis Molina. My big mistake was putting that information in the public domain. The "Costa Rican Bob Kennedy," it turns out, wanted nothing to do with me.
They wouldn't let me go inside these gates!Less than three hours into my journey to the country's high altitude region, I was robbed and lost all my possessions. The dream of meeting JLM was over.
Who was behind this international crime of passion? There are three possibilities:
- Ben - he was clearly upset that I scrapped the Nery Brenes project, and there's no better way to get back at your new guest columnist that to hire a group of Columbian rebels to jack his passport, clothes, and money in a 3rd world country.
- Bob Kennedy - In 2004 I met Bob Kennedy several weeks before the NYC Marathon and wished him good luck. He tallied a DNF and has been plotting his revenge against me ever since.
- Alberto Salazar - he didn't want me to find out about his secret brother
After bumming around for a few days, I finally got a new passport and was able to fly back to the USA. While waiting in the San Jose airport, I picked up a copy of the local newspaper and saw the following headline: "Four Tico Athletes Headed to Olympics in Beijing." All the information about Brenes I needed was right there in front of me, in an article by some jerk named Peter Krupa. Calling Brenes "the most renowned among Costa Rica's Olympic hopefuls," Krupa reports that Nery's training includes 10 speed sessions per week (that's 1.428571 PER DAY!) and his coach is named Walter SALAZAR (which probably means he has access to some type of upside-down underwater anti/ultra gravity treadmill). It also turns out that Brenes' training location was about 15 minutes away from where I had spent several days. Perhaps I should have picked up a newspaper at the beginning of my trip.
The volume of speed workouts and a coach named Salazar have forced me to reevaluate Brenes' chances in Beijing. I'm going to make my first LTOB Fearless (Guest) Prediction and declare that Nery Brenes will finish in the Top 8 at this summer's Olympic Games.
If he gets there.
My spanish is a little dodgy, but according to the article, Costa Rica doesn't have enough money to send all FOUR of their athletes to China (they also have someone in triathlon, rifle shooting, and taekwondo) , and they are currently looking for sponsors. Hey, feel free to contribute all that cash you bastards stole from me to the fund!
With my Costa Rican voyage complete, I received my next assignment in the mail yesterday:
Jake Krong is a LTOB columnist and the creator of Lets-Krong.com
1 comment:
By the way, I've unilaterally decided to dole out punishment to whomever is convicted by this jury of his peers. Expect justice to be swift, come when least expected, and generally be Chinese in nature.
In other words, this justice will star Richard Gere.
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