2:59.36

Lance Armstrong crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon in 856th place. Not a place you're used to seeing from Lance, but maybe one of his more impressive performances. He came in with nagging shin splints and having only run 16 miles as his longest training run. And during the 2nd half of his race, it appeared he wouldn't achieve his goal of breaking 3 hours. But in true Lance fashion, he found something at the end and achieved his goal, despite being in obvious pain as he crossed the finish line. If I would've known nbcsports.com had a live webcam on him throughout the race, I would've watched. It was great to see Lance out competing. With all the recent talk about former teammates doping and his supposed involvement in it, a performance like his yesterday makes you remember how much competitive fire he has and what a treat he is to watch.

Other weekend thoughts:

• I made the trip to Kalamazoo to watch Miami take on Western Michigan and again the Redhawks came up just short, losing on a late chip shot field goal 27-24. Western improved to 7-2, keeping their MAC West hopes alive while Miami is now 1-9. Once again, Miami had a chance in the 4th quarter to win the game, but another crucial mistake robbed them of victory, this time a fumbled handoff inside the Western 15 with 8 minutes left proved to be the turning point. But the 16 starters that will return for Miami next year are gaining valuable experience and learning great lessons. Miami football will be back.
• Ohio St. and Michigan got their wakeup calls this past weekend. Can both of them make it through one last game before The Game on the 18th. Ohio St.'s trip to Northwestern is a little tougher now after the Wildcats' win at Iowa. Michigan travels to Bloomington to face a fired up Indiana team trying to become bowl eligible and coming off a blowout loss at Minnesota. You can be sure Coach Hep will have his guys and Bloomington itself fired up and rockin, but will it be enough to pull the upset? These games are on at the same time on different channels, so there will be some flipping going on.
• Unfortunately, a lot of football fans are rooting for Louisville to lose so they won't play for the national championship. You can't blame Louisville for beating everyone on their schedule. They scheduled programs that were good at the time of the scheduling who are having down years: The U, North Carolina, Kansas St. All but one of their wins have come without star tailback Michael Bush, and some of them have come without star QB Brian Brohm. If they can run the table at Rutgers, vs. South Florida, and at Pittsburgh, they have every right to play for the national championship. And to all those SEC fans, play somebody out-of-conference!!!! With the exception of Florida/Florida St., Georgia/Georgia Tech and Tennessee/Cal, Arkansas/USC this year, your nonconference schedules blow. Sorry Auburn, Washington St. (I'd be impressed if you went to Pullman), Buffalo, and Arkansas St. among others won't get it done.
• I may have to go see this Borat film this weekend, I need a good, long laugh.
• Election Day is tomorrow which means the last day of political ads, woohoo!!!!! I will be voting after work.
• Current book I'm reading: Kennedy and Nixon. Written by Chris Matthews, it's very good so far (about 100 pages in). And yes, I'm very surprised I like a book written by Chris Matthews, although it would be hard to write a bad book about Kennedy and Nixon given all the subplots surrounding the two.
• And college hoops starts this week. And I'm more than ready.

Go vote tomorrow. Do your civic duty.