Flashes of Panic

For the first time in my career, a significant amount of my work at a major event is going to appear on line more or less unfiltered, as soon as I write it. As far as the internet is concerned, this may be the most thoroughly documented—and observable—“vacation” I’ve ever had.

So here’s how to follow it all:

• Obviously, subscribe to the feed for this blog. This is where I’ll carp about my lack of sleep, getting locked out of the hotel, and how hard it is to run in the middle of a major metropolitan area.
• Get the feed for my Flickr photo stream as well. Hopefully my camera will hold up better than it did in Fukuoka and if I get anything good, I’ll upload it to Flickr.
• My primary job, the IAAF competition blog, doesn’t have a feed, unfortunately. However, my next responsibility, the Runner’s World Osaka 2007 blog, does. The IAAF blog will read like a marathon mile-by-mile; it’s going to be something like the meet announcer, where I describe the races, the progress of the field events, the intricacies of decathlon scoring. I’m given some latitude for commentary and opinion, but this is the IAAF and this is their meet, so I’m on a pretty short leash there. Anything that’s outside that short leash goes into the RW blog, from long jumpers getting struck by stray javelins (I hope not) to my (hypothetical) fascination with Japanese mass transit and any encounters with local flavor. (Den-Den Town is on my list.) That’s my place to be an out-and-out track geek. Subscribe to the RW blog’s feed; check the IAAF daily.
• I’ll have five to eight reports in the Running USA Wire. Those will be straight run-downs of the distance events with a heavy emphasis on American performances, particularly those of Running USA athletes (e.g. Jen Rhines, Deena Kastor, and Katie McGregor, I think.) No feed for that, I guess.

Anyone talented enough with Yahoo! Pipes to put together a pjm in Osaka feed?

Now Playing: Plea From A Cat Named Virtue from Reconstruction Site by The Weakerthans