Worst blog ever

No you didn't mess up your counting. It really has been exactly 31 days since the last GWMD blog post. And if we're being honest with ourselves, it wasn't even much of a post. Some rubbish about amateur film making and the Spanish Civil War and probably some Hemingway thrown in just for good measure. Big surprise. The comments veered into some interesting territory touching on Jim Grant's great creation, but beyond that this website could clearly use some spicing up. Let's start with a countdown and an official proclamation.

352 days and counting. On August 20th, 2017, in Merchants' Harbour (better known today as Copenhagen), I, George Pemulis Jr., will complete an Ironman in under eleven hours! Impossible? Almost definitely. But since essentially nobody reads this blog (I know because Google Blogger provides me with detailed statistics of its readership [don't worry, nothing sinister; just things like name, age, address, household income, arrest record, blood type, childhood traumas, recordings of your last dentist visit, other innocuous things...]), I can guarantee pretty much anything I want and even though it most likely won't happen there aren't really any consequences so why not? Anyways, back to the point: Sub-eleven is what it's going to be. That means I'll have to take 90 minutes off of what I did in Kalmar 4 years ago (it will be the same weekend as IM Kalmar and so will take place on the 5 year anniversary of that particular race). No biggy. How will I accomplish such a feat? Stay tuned in the following 352 days to find out...

The Pemulis family recently returned from an extended stay in the Socialist Haven of the Kingdom of Sweden. Baby Helga learned that she really likes small dogs; we learned that Joelle's sister has become an elite athlete who has somehow managed to attain a negative body-fat percentage composition; her and I joined the TSM Running (Stockholm Running Club) official interval training program for one night and Joelle-Sister was unsuccessfully recruited to give up her Canadian passport and compete in the next World Championships for Sweden in all track-and-field events, swimming, cycling, and triathlon; thereafter I (having not been attempted-to-be-recruited) drowned my sorrows in high-priced rare Scotch whiskey with my friend Thony's parents; and Joelle learned that pickled herring comes in a multitude of flavour combinations, containers, and forms of preparation.

The P Family will shortly be receiving visitors. In circa two weeks time the brother of Joelle (let's call him Larry for now), Larry's wife (we'll call her Kara), and their daughter (Magdalena) will arrive in Munich likely expecting to be staying in our apartment. Expect a world of hurt for all involved parties. The PF can't even handle a single child running loose in this apartment, and all of a sudden we'll have two crazed fully-mobile babies, and 4 adults in a single-bedroom dwelling. During said visit, it will however be the happiest time of year here in Bavaria. Obviously I'm talking about Oktoberfest. Though I'm fairly sure they gave up on this blog along with several others somewhere around early to mid 2013, if they do happen to glance an eye at this particular entry, I have some words of advice: start training your beer drinking ability. Beer drinking ability is like any other muscle; you can make it stronger, but you have to practice. Even if Costco doesn't carry cases of Hacker-Pschorr, it will be worth your while to use the extra gas to make it to the corner of Erb and Ira Needles (or your closest liquor dispensary, wherever it may be) and prepare thyself. For Oktoberfest is coming for you, and you never know when she'll attack next. (or something)...

Races: besides the long-term Ironman Copenhagen boondoggle (we can't eat for the next month for example because we used all of our disposable income on registering for that infernal race), there are also some shorter-term races coming up on the calendar. Though things obviously died down for a while with the arrival of Baby Helga, things are now starting to pick up again. It all begins tomorrow with the Craft Women's Run here in the Munich Olympic Park. When Joelle first participated shortly after our arrival in this here city in 2013, it went by the much cooler name "Power Frau" (power woman). That year, out of 900 women, Joelle finished 10th. The next year, in 2014, things weren't quite as exciting as they got a big sponsor (I guess) and changed the name to the Craft Women's Run. But, Joelle vastly improved her placing and out of a similarly-sized field, she halved her placing from 10th down to 5th!!! If she had raced last year (didn't due to pregnancy, I believe) and if you follow the trend-line that ML methods would suggest, she would have placed 2.5th. Since she skipped last year though, we'll have to do some extrapolation from the data and say that she should finish in 1.25th position. Since we're only able to use integers though, our model suggests she'll win the whole thing. The model does not, however, correct for having a baby, missing last year's race, or not running at all for a little over a year. Getting more data tomorrow will be great for the model's future accuracy, however. Following that we have Joelle's big Tegernseelauf half-marathon on the 18th (we better figure out how we're going to get there), and then the weekend after the world-famous (at least GWMD blog-famous) Oktoberfest Run takes place. Look out competitors.

Food for thought before bed: when Erdinger removes the alcohol from their Weißbier to make Erdinger Alkoholfrei, what do they do with the alcohol?