"Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish."

~ John Quincy Adams, diplomat, politician, writer and 6th president of the U.S. (1767-1848)

I'm a new father and definitely in no hurry to see my daughter grow up. I just hope I can teach her the two hardest values I've learned in life (didn't quite set in when I was a kid), which are patience and perseverance. My grandmother used to make me sing that old song "Have patience... don't be in such a hurry." Know it?

SALT LAKE CITY -- Often celebrated as the best defender the United States has ever produced, Eddie Pope announced Thursday that he will retire from Major League Soccer at the end of the 2007 season.

I''m not sure what to say. I have to admit to being a little sad, and I'm not sure I can quite capture my emotions fully in this post. But the Pontiff is retiring. Definitely the end of an era.

Pope was the shy kid out of North Carolina who wore #23 in honor of fellow alum Michael Jordan. He was the rookie of the year and stand-out defender on a team full of more experienced and well-known players. Of course, he scored the header in stoppage time that won DC the first of their now four MLS Cup championships. And he famously, or at least for me memorably, turned down interest from Europe to stay close to home.

So many memories of my young adulthood are tied up with DC United and it's hard to avoid the sense that an era in my life is passing too. I'm no longer in DC, and no longer a young adult.  Pope is with Real Salt Lake (and to paraphrase ESPN's Sports Guy, "He never played for NY. Can we all agree that that just never happened?"). But I get nostalgic when my friend Neal text messages me from RFK as he did this weekend. And this news is a bit of a bolt out of the clear blue sky -- even though I'll always associate the Pontiff with the pouring rain in which he won his first two DCU championships, the second of which I was lucky enough to attend.

Okay, I'm officially babbling. Back to work, but not without one final chant of "Ooh ah! Eddie Pope! I said Ooh ah, Eddie Pope!"

Team,

It was a Triathlon Weekend here at Active.  The local Carlsbad Triathlon consisting of a 1K Swim – 25K Bike – 5K Run was held on Sunday morning.  We had 4 brave souls battle the rough surf in the mighty Pacific.

I will start according to how they did in their respective age groups.

ALYSON TYSON aka CHICKEN was no chicken in the S-B-R.  She had an overall time of 1:42:29 which placed her a very high 10th in the W 20-24 age group.  Great job leading the way for Active!

MAREA BLUE was another strong W 20-24 performer with a total time of 1:54:25; this placed Marea 16th in her age group.

A newer Active team member to the events team making her mark was SHANNON TURNER who had a fast time of 1:46:32.  Shannon is in the always competitive W 30-34 age group and placed 27th, this was also one of the largest Women’s age groups of the day. Shannon did say she is training hard for the AFC ½ and this was just a stepping stone.

AND last but not least is our resident Triathlon expert ERIC MCCUE who must have spent a ton of time training for this (yeah right!).  Eric’s time was a fast 1:33:08 but placed lower than all our girls in is age group at 35th.  We heard rumor he got spanked on the bike!

We did have another person run on July 4th I missed and that was JENNA CHABOT who ran the Scripps 10K in 58:25.

And I can’t wait to hear about the climb up Mt. Whitney this weekend by a few of our team members lead by VICKY EYDELBERG.

Way to stay ACTIVE!

Mike

A great tool I use to keep up on updates & news from my favorite sites without having to waste time browsing them constantly is RSS Popper - http://rsspopper.blogspot.com/2004/10/download.html

Simply install and configure it within Outlook so as soon as updates are made on your favorite blogs/sites that have an RSS feed you will recieve an email that contains everything that was on the post as if you visited the site (if full feeds are enabled).

This isnt a notification email rather something you can read now or store for later to read while never having to waste your time visiting the site to see if anything new is up.

You can use this for the Active Community blog here if you want to be aware of & see immediately any new posts or comments - simply copy the link of the Orange RSS button on this page next to your choice of Blog Post RSS feed or Comment RSS feed.

,Michael Martin