It’s hard for me to award this dude the Mediocre Athlete of the Week since he was at the top of the pack for a big city marathon and is therefore a pretty bad-ass runner, but he lost the race when he inexplicably took a wrong turn 200 meters from the finish line and headed in the wrong direction. Thus, instead of being a mediocre athlete, he’s simply a mediocre direction follower. I guess that’s one of the drawbacks of being in the front — you don’t have anyone to follow. Sorry, dude. Better luck next...

Two weeks ago I unveiled a new regular feature on Mediocre Athlete, the Mediocre Athlete of the Week…and then last week I didn’t post one because I was busy. I know, I suck. To make up for it, for this week I thought it would make sense to roll last week’s nomination into this week’s post since they’re related to one another. Last week I was going to award the entire NFC West as the Mediocre Athlete of the Week, whereas this week the honor quite obviously goes to the Seattle Seahawks, so what the hell, YOU get crowned and YOU get crowned, Oprah-style. You know that when a...

I thought I’d introduce a new weekly feature on Mediocre Athlete, partly because there are so many examples of mediocrity in the world that I’d be remiss not to share them with you, and partly to motivate me to get off my lazy off-season ass and update the blog regularly. So without further ado, I present to you the first Mediocre Athlete of the Week, the New York Giants. If you watched Sunday’s game of the Giants vs. the Philadelphia Eagles, you saw a self-destruction of pretty impressive proportions. Up 31-10 with less than eight minutes remaining in the 4th quarter, it appeared as...

The New York Times recently wrote an article about the growing sport of triathlon and how older people are getting into it. At the end of the article there’s a blurb about a triathlete from Stamford named Eric Goodman: “Mr. Goodman agreed, though his main concern now isn’t how he looks in the mirror, but making sure that he isn’t ‘chick-ed’ at the next race — slang for being beaten by a woman.” Really, Mr. Goodman? You’re more concerned about being passed by a female triathlete than you are about how fit and healthy you are? You’re a fucking...

All of the Ironman Canada athletes received a little magazine that included a list of every athlete who was racing. If the athlete specified his or her profession when s/he signed up, it was also included in the list. I perused pages of athlete names and found a number of professions that stood out as amusing or unique in some way. Below are my 30 favorite athlete professions from Ironman Canada 2010: 1. Bev Smith  — Geriatric Whisperer I bet only her soothing voice and promise of Werther’s Originals and reruns of Murder, She Wrote can calm the elderly. 2. Sean Darragh — Corpse...