Bicyclists who are pedaling in A2A3′s second annual Stadium-to-Stadium Rivalry Ride get set to roll towards Lansing. Game start today for the UM vs. MSU football game is 3:30 p.m. Like all A2A3 activities, the ride raises money for ALS research. Weather: 43 F and light but steady rain. [photo]
Update at 4:23 p.m. They arrived safely in E. Lansing. [photo]
Editor’s note: The monthly milestone column, which appears on the second day of each month – the anniversary of The Ann Arbor Chronicle’s launch – is an opportunity for either the publisher or the editor of The Chronicle to touch base with readers on topics related to this publication.
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How fast can you eat a Twinkie?
I’d like to begin this month’s milestone column by sharing some good news about one of The Chronicle’s writers – Jennifer Coffman, who covers the Ann Arbor Public Schools board of education for us. Last week she gave birth to a baby girl: Eleanor Olivia Coffman. So she’s on a break from The Chronicle for a while.
Until Coffman returns, Eric Anderson will be providing The Chronicle’s AAPS board coverage. Eric grew up in Ann Arbor and is a graduate of Hope College. His experience includes work as a reporter at the Hillsdale Daily News and an editorial intern at the Washington Post Express. He’s planning to attend graduate school later this year.
Coverage of the AAPS board has become part of the meat-and-potatoes reporting provided by The Chronicle, along with reports on the Ann Arbor city council, the Washtenaw County board of commissioners and many other public bodies.
But not everything published in The Chronicle is meat and potatoes. I think it’s a relatively small portion of our overall corpus, but some of our material is probably more like a Twinkie than a piece of meat.
Many of the Stopped.Watched. items, for example, might be analyzed as more like Twinkies than a T-bone steak. Which, I think, is fine – for Twinkies, like T-bones, are also food. I wouldn’t want to make a meal out of Twinkies, though.
The Ann Arbor Active Against ALS Twinkie Run, which took place on April 1, serves as a nice analogy to the way we think of The Chronicle material that’s more like Twinkies.
On Friday evening in Gallup Park, the 271 runners who competed in the 5K race were presented with a choice on each of two laps through the park: (1) Take the time to eat a Twinkie and earn a 1-minute deduction to their finish time, or (2) Just keep running and take the straight-up meat-and-potatoes time. The annual run was observed last year as a Stopped.Watched. item. [Full Story]
On Sunday morning, the traffic roundabouts leading to Skyline High School off North Maple Road were littered with piles of slush, as the snow and freezing rain that began the previous day continued to fall. Undeterred were around 40 masters swimmers, who navigated to Skyline’s natatorium to participate in a new event on the swimming schedule: Ann Arbor Active Against ALS Holiday Relays.
Swimmers just after the starting beep for one of the A2A3 Holiday Relays. (Photos by the writer.)
Meet director Amanda Mercer told The Chronicle that the A2A3 Holiday Relays, which were sanctioned by Michigan Masters for U.S. Masters Swimming, will be an annual fixture on the swimming calendar. The inaugural edition featured standard swimming relays, which took full advantage of the electronic timing pads at Skyline’s pool: A new pool record of 53.23 was established for the 100-yard backstroke.
But the relays also included some non-standard races, including one where the relay “baton” was a T-shirt that had to be peeled off one swimmer, then donned by the next one in sequence.
Participants included a former Ann Arbor planning commissioner, and a former Olympic swimmer.
The Holiday Relays are one of several activity-based fundraising efforts by A2A3, which is a nonprofit that was formed in 2008 by friends and neighbors of Bob Schoeni, who has been diagnosed with ALS, a fatal neuro-degenerative disorder. A2A3 raises funds specifically for research to find a cure for what’s commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Schoeni was on hand Sunday morning to cheer on the swimmers.
The relays were sponsored by several local businesses, including: Probility, Health and Fitness Center at Washtenaw Community College, Jolly Pumpkin, Grizzly Peak, Blue Tractor, Barry’s Bagels, and Pizza House. [Full Story]
Emma Silverman executed a 1,000-pound leg press. Well, okay ... she was the 50 pounds that completed the 1,000-pound total.
“Can we do it again?” asked Emma Silverman after her dad, Ken, had just completed a 1,000-pound leg press at the One on One Athletic Club on Thursday evening. The “it” was a ride on the leg press sled.
And her dad didn’t say no. He gave her a few more repetitions on the sled – but not before removing some of the 20 45-pound plates hanging off the 50-pound bar. The plates and the bar totaled 950 pounds.
Emma weighs exactly 50 pounds based on the pre-event weigh-in at the club, and it was her “live weight” that brought the total to 1,000 pounds.
It’s not a common father-daughter activity, not least because 1,000 pounds – as Silverman’s trainer, Roger Bowman, put it – “That’s a lot of weight.” Bowman, who’s worked at One on One for four years, confirmed that it’s not common to see that kind of poundage go up and down the leg press sled at the club.
So what motivated Silverman to begin training five months ago in December 2008 for his half-ton effort? It was to raise money for Ann Arbor Active Against ALS. [Full Story]
