My first goal was to finish. My second goal was to finish in under two hours. And I did! Final time was 1:54:33.1 (they are apparently very precise about these things!)

A race like this is a field day for data junkies like me, especially when you jog with an iPhone app like RunKeeper. I had it going for the first 10 miles, before my phone ran out of batteries. Here’s the track and mile splits:

I must have picked it up after that — my pace over the remaining non-iPhone miles was 8:14/mile.

Some more stats and thoughts on what to do differently next time:

• My co-worker Jeremy suggested that a good goal for a first half marathon would be a “reverse split”: running the second half faster than the first. I did that, too! The first 6.6 miles took 61 minutes, so the second must have taken 53. I guess I should have run the first half faster!
• I should have charged my iPhone the previous night! More important than recording a track, it let me know exactly how far I’d gone: “6.34 miles” instead of “a few minutes past that six mile marker”.
• I should have brought a jacket with me to the start. The race started before dawn and it was very cold! They even transported stuff to the end of the race for the runners. Something to remember for next time.
• Running with a friend is great and can be good motivation. I ran most of the race with my friend Erica, who shaved a full 20 minutes off her previous half marathon time!
• Erica’s dentist (a former marathoner) told her that she should take a drink at every water station. This was good advice. The only drink station I skipped was the one serving wine samples!

The Healdsburg Half was very well-organized. They had full results (PDF) posted the day of the race. I finished 396/1438 overall, 234/496 amongst men and 40/76 amongst 25-29 men.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are facing off in yet another Grand Slam final. This time, though, Rafa is the #1 tennis player in the world and Federer is #2.

They both have quite a bit at stake. If Nadal wins, I think it’s safe to say that he’s completely emerged from Federer’s shadow. And given that he won both the French Open and Wimbledon last year, he’ll be a serious threat to pull of a true Grand Slam (all four majors in the same calendar year).

If Federer wins, he ties Pete Sampras’s record for most major titles (14) and cements his claim as the “greatest of all time”.

The match starts at 12:30 AM PST (3:30 AM EST) on ESPN. TiVo’s are recommended!

Yesterday alone saw:

• Andy Roddick lose to Philipp Kohlschreiber in a five-setter
• James Blake come back from two sets down to beat Sebastian Grosjean
• Fernando Gonzalez, last year’s finalist, lost to Marin Cilic, a player I’ve never heard of.
• Roger Federer eek out a 6-7(5), 7-6(1), 5-7, 6-1, 10-8 victory over Janko Tipsarevic

I managed to catch the last set of the Federer match, and it was fantastic. Both players played well. Federer had less trouble on his serve in the final set (he set a career high for aces in a match), but with each passing game it seemed like the chances of some random twist turning the match the other way increased. After all, the last time Roger lost here was in 2005, when Marat Safin knocked him out in a five-setter that ended well after midnight.

It’ll be fun to see if Tipsarevic continues to play this well. He seems like an interesting guy. He’s the only tennis player I know of who wears goggles on court, and he has a Dostoyevsky quote tattooed on him (“Beauty will save the world” from The Idiot). Frankly, I’m surprised that more young players don’t throw the kitchen sink at Fed like Janko did. It’s a great way to make a name for yourself. After all, people first started noticing Federer when he knocked off Pete Sampras at the 2001 Wimbledon Championships.

The announcers on ESPN pointed out an interesting fact about this tournament. It’s the first time in many years that a single tournament can decide who will be #1. Here’s how it works:

• Rankings in tennis are based on your performance in events over the last 52 weeks.
• Rafael Nadal has 5780 points
• Roger Federer has 7180 points
• At a Grand Slam you get 1000 points for winning, 700 for runner-up, 450 for semis, 250 for quarters, 150 for round of 16, 75 for round of 32, etc.
• Roger got 1000 points last year — if he’d lost yesterday, he would have dropped to 6225 points
• Nadal got 250 points last year — if he wins this year, he’ll have 6530 points

If Roger makes it to the semis, or Rafa doesn’t win the title, then Federer will remain number one. You can argue about the merits of the tennis ranking system, but it’s certainly predictable!

One final twist: if Rafa doesn’t pass Roger at this tournament, it will be impossible for him to do so for several more months. That’s because Rafa cleaned up during this time last year, while Federer kept losing to this guy. Rafa has points to defend, while Federer does not. You can see the full points breakdown on the ATP profiles for Federer and Nadal.

The first was that the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis was delayed until January. The space shuttle has been NASA’s greatest boondoggle in history: its $145 billion cost to date has passed the Apollo program’s inflation-adjusted $135 billion. The worth of the Apollo program is an issue for another time, but at least it had a clear goal which it accomplished. The Space Shuttle has languished into old age. Seriously, does anyone realize how old this program is? Here’s a video from the launch of the first space shuttle, in 1981:

For some context, the commander of this mission was John Young. John Young walked on the moon… on his fourth space flight! Here’s a plot of space shuttle launches over time:

NASA was accelerating launches through the start of 1986, when Challenger was destroyed. The first period represents the hopes and dreams of the shuttle program. Before Challenger, it really might have made space travel routine. The middle segment, from Challenger to Columbia, is the long working life of the shuttle. Expectations were capped, and so were results. The shuttle program should have ended after Columbia. But instead, it gets a third period to die of old age.

Shuttle missions these days primarily service the International Space Station, which exists primarily to give the Space Shuttle somewhere to go. Seriously, try reading the wiki article about the Columbus module being installed on the next shuttle mission and tell me what exactly it does. Hubble Space Telescope maintenance is often pointed to as something worthwhile that the Shuttle does. Fair enough. But how many Hubble’s could we have had for $145 billion?

The second story is genuinely exciting. It comes from the European Space Agency’s CoRoT mission. At $50 million, it’s a featherweight space mission. This telescope was launched last December and has been observing stars for the past year, looking for transits. This week, they reported that “CoRoT is discovering exo-planets at a rate only set by the available resources to follow up the detections”.

This is completely nuts! There are currently 268 known exoplanets. It’s possible that this number will double in the next month as the CoRoT group begins publishing their findings on December 20. Personally, I’d consider that a more significant achievement than anything the Space Shuttle has done in the last 25 years with its $145 billion.

Last night’s match between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer was the most hyped of the tournament. The result was no surprise. Federer won in straights. The messaging on this match has been spectacularly consistent: Roddick played brilliantly, but there’s no shame in losing to the greatest player of all time. I think this is crap. People need to stop going so easy on Roddick. He’s 1-14 against Roger all-time and 0-9 since 2004. He hasn’t taken a set off the guy this year. Maybe if people stopped patting him on the back after every loss and telling him how close he came, then he’d be forced to regroup and find a way to deliver.

One highlight of the match was Andre Agassi’s debut as an announcer. Great players often make great announcers, and John McEnroe is the best in the business. Andre didn’t pipe up too frequently, but everything he said was interesting. Here’s one exchange:

When Roddick stared down Federer and bellowed after a 138 mph ace to get to 4-4 in the first set, Agassi said: “There’s a fine line between getting pumped up and waking a sleeping giant, I assure you.”

Another great moment came when Andre revealed how he used to deal with Boris Becker’s. He picked up on a tell — whenever Boris stuck his tongue out before a serve, he was sure to go down the middle. What an edge that would give you! I wonder if Roger’s picked up on anything like that. Andy’s serve just doesn’t seem to phase him.

My picks — Justine Henin beats Svetlana Kuznetsova in the Women’s final Saturday. On the men’s side, Novak Djokovic beats David Ferrer in the semis before losing a close final to the man himself, Roger Federer.

It’s based on the famous photograph of the black power salute at the 1968 Olympics:

Although less controversial now than it was at the time, I was still surprised to see this moment memorialized as a statue. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.

First of all, why were the figures standing back to back? That’s not how medalists usually pose.

Second, and more important, my favorite part of that image was missing. Where’s that random white guy who’s in hopelessly over his head? Inexplicably, he’s been excised from the scene entirely. Where he would be standing, there’s an empty spot on the podium, as though he’s an embarrassment to the artistry of the moment. That’s never how I’ve seen the image. With the random white guy, it’s real life, which never works out quite so perfectly as you’d planned. Without him, it’s pure iconography.

Somewhat disgusted, I came home and researched the statue and the salute itself. I quickly learned that both of my concerns were largely misplaced.

Firstly, the positioning. Although it’s hard to tell from the canonical photograph above, Smith and Carlos are standing back to back. They didn’t make their famous gesture until everyone had turned to the American flag during the playing of the national anthem. This image, taken from a different angle, shows that the statue has the positioning exactly correct, even down to the bend in Smith’s legs.

The detailed story frustrated me even more at the omission of Peter Norman, the Australian silver medalist. Far from being the innocent bystander I’d read into the picture, Norman was an integral part. When Carlos forgot his black gloves, Norman suggested that he take Smith's left glove. What’s more, he wore a civil rights badge as a gesture of solidarity. He was ostracized for his actions in Australia, and was left off their 1972 Olympic team for his actions. There can be no doubt that he was part of this moment. He took a stand and paid the price. Leaving Peter Norman out of the scene was an enormous insult.

And so I felt until I read this fabulous review. Norman’s omission was the single most controversial element of the piece. But it had its purpose. His spot on the podium was left empty so that visitors could stand there to pose for pictures or to lead rallies. And so the imagery comes full cycle. Smith and Carlos created an iconic moment for the cameras. The sculptor turns this moment on its head, making it lend that iconic feel to countless future moments on future cameras.

If Peter Norman attended the dedication and gave it his OK, then who am I to criticize? The sculpture is part of the Speed City exhibit in downtown San Jose, which runs through November. It was created by Rico23, a Portuguese artist.

First thing I don’t get: How does an MLS team have $250 million to pay this guy? Does the entire league bring in that much money?

Second thing I don’t get: Why does anyone expect this to get American’s excited about soccer? Getting the World Cup in 1996 couldn’t do it, so how could one man? But there’s no arguing with the true believers.

The whole hysteria has made me very cynical today. If you want to get people excited about something, you don’t tell them how great it is or try to explain why they should be excited. No, you just act as though the rest of the country already is excited. I’ve often wondered if ESPN could pull this off with a lesser-known sport like disc golf. If they covered professional disc golf events on SportsCenter and brought in some talking heads for a “Disc Golf Tonight” show to analyze the week’s events, people would start to care about it.

The main story has been rain. It’s been so wet that Nadal wound up needing five days to finish his third-round match against Robin Soderling. The tournament got way behind schedule, so many players have been playing on back to back to back days. Men’s quarters were today, men’s semis are tomorrow, and the finals are the next day.

That makes for some really tired players, so we’ve been getting a few surprise results. A lot of matches have been one-sided at the beginning, then a player gets tired or hurt, and the match suddenly reverses. That’s what happened to Andy Roddick today. He was up two sets and a break on Richard Gasquet, but wound up losing a 6-4, 6-4, 7-6, 7-6, 8-6 marathon. NBC must be all kinds of pissed. Instead of getting a marquee matchup with an American, Andy Roddick vs. Roger Federer, they get a lopsided matchup with a player nobody’s heard of. Remember the tight schedules? After playing a four hour slugfest than finished after 8 PM, Gasquet has to wake up tomorrow morning and play Roger Federer at noon. It’s going to be a blowout.

The women’s final is also going to be a blowout. Venus Williams has been playing out of her mind, and Marion Bartoli (who upset Justine Henin today) has never played in a Grand Slam final before. There’s a fine tradition of choking in your Grand Slam final debut on the women’s tour. See Anna Ivanovic and Justine herself for reference. Expect more of that tomorrow.

The one interesting match is the Nadal vs. Djokovic semi. These guys will both be exhausted. They’ve both played several days in a row and had a few five-setters. I’m picking Nadal in five, but I’ll be rooting for Djokovic.

Another random note: Bud Collins, the veteran NBC tennis commentator, is retiring. Good riddance. This guy is like the Dick Vitale of tennis. Nobody likes him. His role now is mostly to do cringe-inducing post-match interviews with the champions. A sampler: Bud: “On clay, Rafa is el Rey!” Nadal: “hehehe, ahhmm” (awkwardly looks for anyone else to talk to). Way to go, Bud.

Update: An update doesn’t break my one-post limit, does it? I called all three matches correctly. Venus and Fed rolled, and Nadal won. I called five sets, but it only went three. Djokovic hurt his foot and had to retire in the third set, tied at one set apiece, presumably on its way to a thrilling fifth. =) I’m picking Fed in four tomorrow. The final is on NBC at 9 AM EST/6 AM PST.

With three convincing losses to Rafa in the last three French Opens, you’ve got to wonder whether Roger can ever pull it off.

In other, unrelated sports news, congrats to the Rice Owls on making the College World Series again. I regret not going to Omaha to cheer them a year ago. Hopefully they can do it this time!

How did I not know this? Joakim Noah, from Florida’s back-to-back championship basketball teams, is the son of Yannick Noah, the winner of the 1983 French Open. Crazy. (from this article)