US Open begins today

The US Open gets underway today in New York. It should be an interesting one. Andre Agassi will be playing in his last Open, and he should have a challenging draw. He could potentially face Marcos Baghdatis in the second round. I just hope Agassi can survive all his matches without injury. Overall, I pick Federer to win. No surprise there. Roddick is in the opposite half of the draw, so there is the potential for a Roddick-Federer final. Nadal also lurks in the bottom half, and I have no idea what to expect from him. If he starts playing consistently well, he could make it to the final. We'll see how things look after the first few rounds.

Rogers Masters

Back before Wimbledon I made the claim that Rafa Nadal, while an extremely talented player, lacked the consistency to be declared an equal to Roger Federer. After this week's Rogers Masters in Toronto, it looks like I won't have to eat my words. I think Nadal is is a great tennis player. I would even go so far as to say that, on clay, he's right up there with Borg. All of which goes to show how highly I think of Federer. Sure, he's never won the French Open, but he is undoubtedly the second best player in the world on clay. And on every single other surface, he's number one. By a huge margin. The guy hasn't lost a match this year to anyone other than Nadal. And he beat Nadal at the Wimbledon final, proving that Nadal's previous domination of him had more to do with surface than overall ability. Today the Fed goes for another title in Toronto. Unfortunately, I won't be able to watch the match because it's on ESPN2, but I fully expect Federer to win.

Too much heat for Bix

On Saturday I was out in Iowa to run the Quad City Times Bix 7. I had initially set a goal of under 50 minutes, but I quickly realized that was not going to happen because of the intense heat. The temperature was 80 degrees at start time with high humidity. I started off at a very easy pace and felt good for the first half of the race. But the heat took its toll, and by mile 4 I was almost completely drained. I hit the 4 mile mark right around 30 minutes, which is still pretty good. But I had to walk to get some water in me, and I started up again at a much slower pace. I finished with a time of 56:08, a lot slower than I would have liked, but I can't be too disappointed. My body is very inefficient in dealing with heat. Maybe it will be cooler for next year's race. I hope.