Explain the name you post under

Hmmm I am a citizen of and compete for a Baltic country and am a babe LOL :)

Google Sifl n Olly.

Because where's the scientific proof?

Because I am Rupp.

It's an homage to the average letsrun poster.

I just really really like pizza

My full name with no space between my first and last names. You guys should check out my law blog.

I made my handle during my freshman year of HS back in '02 (for the Michigan HS track and XC forums at mlive.com). At the time I had three major goals in running: Sub-16 for 5k, sub-2 in the 800m and sub-4:30 in the 1600m. Hence, 162430

Use this for complete anonymity.

SCIENCE! wrote:

I'm REALLY excited about SCIENCE!

and capital letters

There was a fast runner from Australia who came to be known as "The big Mzungo". I am neither as fast nor as big.

I believe I started using the handle in a thread referring to the relevance of the size of one's balls.

Baltic Babe wrote:

Hmmm I am a citizen of and compete for a Baltic country and am a babe LOL :)

Which country?

Tessie Hutchinson is the ill-fated "winner" in "The Lottery." And yes, one of the story's themes can pertain somewhat to running.

Tessie's plight is a perfect one to illustrate blindly clinging to a ritual which is so long-standing that most people don't even know when it began, why it's used, what the details are for, or what the rules are really supposed to be, yet they stubbornly retain it because "that's the way it's always been done." They even insist on rigidly adhering to certain insignificant minutiae of the ritual while randomly discarding others for no good reason other than convenience or as some hollow form of token "progress," which underscores the fact that they have never paused to ask "Why?"

Of course this is relevant to running. Sometimes the old ways are the best ones and trusting them is golden, but thoughtless trust is shortsighted, often resulting in stagnation. It's best to closely investigate why things work as they do and to perform this scrutiny periodically so the perspective is up to date. Questions always worth posing include: Which aspects of the traditional methods are the effective ones? Which aspects might be extraneous or even an impediment and therefore able to be abandoned? Which ones have some elemental value but might be modified for better results?

Changing inured minds is a lengthy tug of war, and new concepts sometimes have to be introduced one at a time, which leaves people temporarily in limbo with a hybrid of old and new ideas, or a mixed bag of effective methods interspersed with downright moronic or barbaric ones. It's no coincidence that the date of "The Lottery" was June 27, which is midway between the summer solstice and American Independence Day. The former is a date of long-established pagan rituals of sacrifice, while the latter commemorates a new era of freedom, civilization, escape from overbearing government, and working together with newfound sensibility. Some of the townsfolk's chatter in "The Lottery" indicated the stirrings of a movement to break away from the savage old ritual and move forward toward rational enlightenment, but town fixtures like Old Man Warner "warned" against giving heed to such harebrained, newfangled gibberish lest the people regress to an earlier, even more primitive state. In the brutal and chilling end, tradition, fear of change, and mob mentality won out for at least another year.

fisky was my old dog's name.

Pretty self-explanatory, but in case other track teams don't use these classifications... our HS and college workouts were divided by sprints/jumps, mid-distance and distance guys. I was always a distance guy.

nickname of ivan denisovich (fictional character in a book)

I created the earth. Won an award for Norway.

You were responsible for the little crumbly parts around the fjords?

My name is from Ducktales, the passphrase that caused Gizmoduck to assemble.