Mid-Week Break

The work week has come to an end and it's time to get the party started...well not technically until tomorrow night. I head up to Attitash tomorrow night for a day on the slopes Sunday. I just hope the weather decides to warm up past the 1 degree that it made it to today. Pray for me!

Since I am outie for the weekend I thought I would take this opportunity to update my log of workouts from this past week.

Sunday I did in fact hit the dreadmill for 60 minutes of hills at the gym and if it weren't for a few unmentionable moments during those 60 minutes it would have been an almost perfect run. I would have also been able to determine how far I actually went.

Monday night it was back up to North Hampton for my weekly soccer game. We thought we had it in the bag, but for some unknown reason we lost. The untouchable team was actually taken down. We all had a hard time dealing with this one. On a more positive note, I have to say it was one of my best sprint workouts though! I also scored two goals and had a couple of assists, but in the end we lost by 1.

Tuesday was a late night at work and just came home to crash.

Wednesday was another run at Nike Town. I know I pointed this out in an old post, but I feel it needs repeating. This running group is pretty cool. With exception to one girl (and yes, of course it is a girl) everyone that runs is so laid back and friendly. There are no attitudes, it is free, running around the charles is gorgeous at night, it is free, they provide food and water, did I mention it was free? I just found out during this run that you can earn free stuff and win free sneaks! Next week is this months raffle and as long as you run that night you are eligible for the prize. The odds are pretty good too...about 30 to 1. Not to shabby considering all you have to do is show up.

Thursday ended up being an off night. Met up with some friends at the Pour House for dinner and it was on to King's for a night of bowling after that.

Tonight even in the 1 degree weather I packed my bag and headed to the gym after work. Although it was only a 30 minute run it still counts.

Oh I forgot to mention that I actually learned something about the "adidas"(pronounced "adi-das" and not "uh-de-dus" - I actually learned that in high school from one of the German exchange students) and Puma brands while doing our stretches before the Nike Town run. Sibling rivalry goes a long way in this case and if you are from or know anyone that is from Herzogenaurach, Germany than you know where I am going with this. The Adidas name was not actually created until 1948. It originally started out as Dassler shoes and was created in the 1920's by the Dassler brothers, Adolf better known as "Adi" and Rudolf. They started the company out of their mother's wash room.

Anyhow, sometime after World War I or II (I keep getting conflicting time frames when I do the research) the two brothers had a falling out that was irreversible. They had a history of not getting along and with the war their arguments became more intense. The fact that one of the brother's formed a closeness to the Nazi cause didn't aide the situation.

In 1948, the two brothers finally parted ways to form their own companies..."Addas" and "Ruda". It didn't take long for those names to change to "Adidas" and "Puma". If you can't see it, the name Adidas is Adolf's better known name combined with a portion of his last name. Where "Ruda" came from is beyond me.

This is the part where the story gets good. No, they didn't happen to have a life altering moment and decide to put it all in the past with a big warm fuzzy hug. Instead they actually have a town, country and history changing moment.

You see, not only did their seperation cause a change in the company, it also caused a change within the town. After they split Rudolf headed across the river to start Puma while Adi stayed put. What were the town members to do you might ask? Even though it was post-war and this was the striving business of the town loyalties and politics ran thick. It was easy for the brothers to avoid each other because they were separated by a river. But as I noted loyalties and politics ran thick so believe it or not this town was also split in two. This is a statement from Frank Dassler, the grandson of Rudolf,:

"There was an Adidas butcher and a Puma butcher. If there was a chance to avoid being in the same class as another Adidas person, from the Puma perspective, then we certainly tried to avoid this. Certainly, the restaurants were split, so there was a typical Adidas hotel or Adidas restaurant and the other guys didn't want to go there"

Crazy isn't it? Well, it is not the first time I have seen such a huge rivalry between brothers, the Telemachus brothers to be exact. If you are from the New England area you may have heard of the two grocery stores "Market Basket" and "Demoulas". In this case, the two brothers had no arguments or ill-will toward each other and it wasn't until one of the brothers died (1972) that family fights ensued. Some of the history can be seen at Wikipedia