Hi folks. Going to be trying something new with #askdumbflo. It turns out that 280 characters isn’t really suited for much of anything, but it especially doesn’t work for foreign policy, advice, and explaining the minutiae of important issues.

Rather than do a thread on Twitter, CITIUS MAG has been gracious enough to give me this space here to answer some of the more pressing or detailed questions I get that I really don’t have the space to answer on Twitter.

You can always tweet your questions at us or email us at dumbflotrack@gmail.com. I’m not sure how often we’ll run this and I have even less of an idea of how much this will help people, but I do hope we do some good here. Ultimately, I do want this column to eventually change someone’s life but for now, I’ll just be answering questions both running and non-running related.

Our first question comes from @Murphyfoshizzle who asks “Hey @DumbFlotrack how do you feel about a tide pod mile?”

This is sort of the next step right? The way the meme goes? Well to answer your question, I don’t feel great about it, but I feel pretty safe assuming no one will actually attempt this. It has now dawned on me that me saying that I don’t think anyone will do it is probably encouraging someone to do it. Let me reiterate: if you put a Tide pod in your mouth, you’re an idiot and you deserve what’s coming to you. That being said, even if someone attempted this and was able to keep the tide pods down, I’m not sure this would be that difficult. Tide pods are relatively small and easy to fit in your mouth. They look delicious…and suddenly I see the appeal of people trying these things.

This sort of ties into our next question from @KyleTwinPaulson. He asked us: “what’s more legit: beer mile or blue jeans mile?”

I don’t quite have the answer here, as I think both of them are pretty entertaining. Blue Jeans Miles are a bit more inclusive and don’t break laws depending on where you are. They seem to be relatively harmless and there is a certain novelty to them that is appealing. I think it’s really easy for someone to imagine running a mile in blue jeans. That’s sort of the appeal of track and field for the most part right? I think that it helps to have a sport where most viewers watching have ran at some point in their life. We know how fast a 4 minute mile is because for the most part we’ve run a mile. This is a little bit different for things like pole vault and hurdles that get a bit more technical and obscure, but it’s not that obscure for blue jeans. We’ve all been late for class or running through the airport to catch our flight and man are jeans hard to run in. That’s a big plus. I don’t know how restrictive jeans are though really. If sized properly and in the right fit, there isn’t too much of a barrier faced by running in them.

Beer miles are a bit different. They’re illegal in most places in the United States and you should only be doing them if you’re of drinking age (but this isn’t really the case) so there’s already kind of a shadow over them. Most people over the age of 21 have chugged a beer, so that’s pretty relatable, but I don’t know how many people have chugged a beer and ran. That makes it a bit more of a foreign concept to your average viewer. But rather than pole vault, which just looks badass as hell, beer miles just look like a circus sideshow. You sort of feel bad for the people competing, not unlike when you’re seeing the back half of the field at a marathon. I don’t know if the appeal of the beer mile is that it’s hard or it sucks to do, but I do know that some of that appeal is that it is kind of funny. It’s just funnier to see someone running in blue jeans though.

I’ll go with blue jeans mile.

@rrhettbutler asks “BTC vs OP vs OTC in a DMR?”

I think if we look at this being a standard DMR, you have to give the edge to the Oregon Project for the men. They’ve got the defending gold medalist in Matt Centrowitz, Craig Engels with a 3:35 1500 PR, Eric Jenkins who is ten-times a better runner than he gets coverage for (also a solid rapper), and that’s before you throw in Clayton Murphy who is going to break the U.S. record in the 800m in the next two years. Bowerman Track Club could roll out a solid line-up, with a bit more depth, but at the top end, Oregon Project has them beat. I’d be interested to see the line-up OTC would roll out, as they probably have the most flexibility of the three.

On the women’s side it’s the Bowerman Babes. I don’t think OP and OTC would be able to field full teams as the moment.

That being said, it’d be fun to actually see these races happen. I’d throw in the New Balance stable on the women’s side and NYNJTC for both genders as well. Heck, add the US Army crew, the Tucson group, and a few others I’ve definitely missed, I think there’s an interesting meet to be had with team scoring. Have the athletes represent their actual teams rather than cities they have no connection to, keep the meet short (800-1500-steeple-5k-DMR) and that might actually be something people want to watch. The hurdle to this is getting the shoe companies to agree on who is going to get the money for it, so good luck.

@TylerTLewis1001 asks “Not a question but an idea for a fun prank. Bring a gun with some blanks in it to a track meet and before the runners are on their last lap shoot it and watch confusion and chaos ensue.”

Hey Tyler, everything going okay at home?

@SonofDohetry wants to know who I would cast as Quentin Cassidy in a film adaption of Once A Runner.

The problem is that I don’t remember what Quentin Cassidy looks like, but I do remember that he’s supposed to be pretty close to author John L. Parker who stands at 6’4” and 162, according to Wikipedia. So we’d probably have to look at a tall actor. If I want to have fun with it, I cast Dolph Lundgren cause that’s the movie I want to see. Chris Hemsworth is tall, but he’s way too much of a beefcake to pull it off. He’s not tall, but I actually think the most realistic you’re going to get would be Ezra Miller. He could pull off the cockiness of Quentin Cassidy while maintaining the weirdness that defines collegiate distance runners. I thought about Miles Teller for a minute, but that was mostly cause he’s got such dead eyes. Not that that’s related to anything, just that guy gives me the creeps.

From @patrick_hays17 we get political cause he wants to know “if the 2016 election had been decided by a 5k, who would have won.”

Now I know a lot of you are tired of the politics by this point and to a certain point I get it. It’s kind of annoying that every medium we communicate on from television to print to digital has been engulfed by politics and sometimes it feels great to get away from it for a bit. The thing is that there are a lot of people who can’t afford to. Politics is everything. Choosing to ignore it is a political statement. So just deal with it. This isn’t even that long of an answer and chances are you’re reading this in a bathroom so just deal for a minute.

I think a 5k would only be a slightly worse way to determine the President than what we use now. That being said, Trump is straight up out from the get-go. Let’s get that out of the way. Monsieur, that dog does not hunt. I don’t think Gary Johnson passes a drug test, and I’m not sure Jill Stein would do anything more than line-up on the line so she could get her photo taken. Hillary would not do very well, but I do think she finishes. I just don’t think that’s good enough to beat Evan McMullin who as a former CIA agent is probably in pretty good shape.

Our final question comes from @mark4449_1630 who wants to know if he should use blocks for the 2 mile.

The answer is yes. I’ll tell you why.

Life is so short. You spend a third of it sleeping. You spend the first 30 years feeling like you have no idea what you’re doing and the rest of it pretending that you do. You’re going to have so many highs and so many lows. You’ll fall in love and you’ll meet amazing people. You’ll eat great food. You’ll see good movies and hear music that blows your mind. You’ll also have your heart broken. You’ll get sick and have bad days. The hope is that ultimately you have more good days than bad and sometimes it might feel like that’ll never be true. The important part is to hold out hope that it might become true. There are so many great things in the world and we spend too much of our time too self-conscious about what others think or second guessing ourselves that we miss out on what’s right in front of us at that moment. At the end of the day, it’s not that bad. Eventually, you’ll get over it and move onto the next thing. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to live to your maximum each and every moment of your life. Cause that’s what life is. You’re supposed to spend your life becoming who you are, but you’re going to get the most out of life on the journey to find out what that is. So yeah, use some blocks for the two mile. Fuck the haters and do your thing, Mark.