Did Pappas and the PPA Just Shoot Full Tilt Players in the Foot?

Last Friday, Poker Player Alliance (PPA) executive director John Pappas wrote an editorial for Forbes.com calling for Congress to enact legislation authorizing online poker. The Pappas editorial was headlined, "The DOJ Has Spoken: It's Time For Congress To Legalize Online Poker", which seemed rather strange following the recent $731 million dollar settlement of the DOJ's forfeiture claims. But the headline was not misleading; Pappas in fact asserted:

The hidden gem in this settlement agreement, however, has much larger stakes for American poker players as well as online poker more broadly. In the agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office very clearly left the door open for PokerStars, and it’s now-owned Full Tilt Poker, to become licensed online poker operators as soon as the United States decides to license and regulate this great American pastime.

This sends an important message to Congress. The Justice Department could have very easily banned PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker from the United States forever. Yet it chose not to. It chose to clearly recognize that online poker can and should be a viable industry in this country. Now the question is, will Congress listen?

In legal writing, a good rule of thumb is that any statement or contention that uses "clearly" to describe a factual or legal conclusion is likely highly contested. Let's take a quick look at the Full Tilt settlement agreement. In paragraph 7, there is a standard clause stating that the settlement agreement is not an admission of fault. And in paragraph 10, the agreement provides that Full Tilt and its affiliated companies (which would include PokerStars as its new owner):

are precluded from offering online poker for real money in the United States until if and when it becomes permissible to do so under relevant law.

The DOJ press release announcing the settlement contained similar language, as well as a rehashing of the criminal indictments and civil forfeiture claims it had filed, in all their illegal gambling, bank defrauding, money laundering, and Ponzi scheming glory. Certainly nothing in either document contains any indication that the DOJ "chose to clearly recognize that online poker can and should be a viable industry in this country."

In advocacy, it's certainly permissible to argue for a conclusion that rests on an inference drawn from incomplete premises. Here, however, Pappas has crossed the line and falsely insinuated both that the DOJ has taken a position with respect to a thorny and contentious political question, and that the DOJ is in favor of legalization of online gambling despite its recent high profile prosecutions of the major online poker sites.

Blatant misrepresentations like this only serve to undermine the credibility of whatever information or point of view an advocate is attempting to convey. Perhaps Pappas and the PPA felt that their little bit of sophistry would score some easy points with a public unfamiliar with the details of the DOJ-Full Tilt settlement, and was worth risking the PPA's credibility. Even so, Pappas' misrepresentation was a stupid and unnecessary rhetorical gamble.

It's not just the general public tracking the ongoing fight over online poker on Forbes, after all. A much more likely audience for Pappas' article is the DOJ itself. Considering that the PPA is lobbying the DOJ for full repayment of Full Tilt player account balances, it seems foolhardy for Pappas to poke—and probably provoke—the DOJ by publicly asserting the DOJ wants to legalize the very conduct it has just spent years investigating and prosecuting in a high-profile manner. It's certainly not the smartest public relations strategy.

Of course, the PPA probably has little or no credibility with the DOJ in any event. It is no secret that the PPA pre-Black Friday funding came predominately from Full Tilt and PokerStars, the PPA's current funding comes predominately from PokerStars, the PPA's primary founders and directors were owners of Full Tilt (Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson, who both remain subject to DOJ forfeiture actions), and the PPA's congressional spokesperson was a shill for Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker (Annie Duke). Given how the DOJ views that poker rogues gallery, the DOJ's granting the PPA permission to submit a letter on repayment of Full Tilt players begins to feel like a classic case of "You'll be given a fair trial and then shot."

Pappas' article in Forbes is simply the latest in a long line of amateur hour moves by the PPA. Poker would be better off if sometimes the PPA just shut up.

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ADDENDUM (16 August 2012):  Today, Shamus over at Hard Boiled Poker took a look at the Pappas op-ed in Forbes, and as usual shared some interesting insights. Give his blog a read every day for great poker commentary.

Earlier this week, Chris Grove at Online Poker Report posted a thoughtful contrarian response to my commentary. First off, I find Online Poker Report to be a consistently solid source for poker news and commentary, and encourage poker players to check it out if it's not already in your regular reading. Second, I do have a few responsive comments, but Online Poker Report apparently does not accept comments, so I will post them here.

Starting with one of Grove's last points, Grove and I are in agreement as to the weakness of Pappas' contention that the DOJ has endorsed the legalization of online poker:

It’s not a great argument.   It’s not even really an argument at all – more just two ideas in proximity.  There is a big, big step between the DoJ leaving the door open for PokerStars / Full Tilt Poker in a future, regulated US market and a full-throated DoJ endorsement of that market.

However, Grove doesn't view Pappas' contention that the DOJ "chose to clearly recognize that online poker can and should be a viable industry in this country" as a misrepresentation. "Instead, Pappas is offering one possible interpretation of what one might read in the tea leaves of legal language – a pretty common pastime that rarely gets you called a liar."

As I noted in my initial post, there is simply no evidence to support Pappas' contention. Let's call a misrepresentation a misrepresentation. Although I understand Grove's instinct to be charitable as to Pappas' intentions, Pappas wrote the piece not as part of an everday run-of-the-mill BS session, but as an op-ed in a major business publication in his role as the leader of an advocacy group which is currently engaging and presumably plans to continue to engage in dialogue with the DOJ. As a lawyer, I am in front of administrative agencies regularly. If I or someone from my company started publishing false statements about key agencies, I would fully expect to receive a cool reception next time I had business in front of that agency, and my company would rightfully hold me responsible for creating tension in the relationship between my company and the agency. Pappas similarly owes a heightened duty to the PPA's members not to provoke the DOJ, particularly when the PPA is actively lobbying the DOJ on an issue considered important by many of its members.

Finally, Grove points out what he feels is an inconsistency in my concerns—how can Pappas' comments affect the PPA's credibility with the DOJ if, as I contend, the DOJ already has a pretty low regard for the PPA?

Well, which is it? Is the DoJ parsing Pappas’ every word like a starstruck schoolgirl triple-reading Tiger Beat? Or could they care less?

My guess, for what it’s worth, is that they treat the PPA just like they treat any lobbying organization interacting with the agency during the course of official business (heavily weighted toward general indifference). I’m sure this isn’t the first time the DoJ has dealt with backed by tainted money.

Perhaps the problem here was a lack of clarity in my initial critique of Pappas and the PPA. It is entirely possible for the DOJ to view the PPA with skepticism as a general matter, and for the Pappas article to further damage the PPA's credibility with respect to the pending remission issue. Look, as a lawyer, I have had numerous cases where my client had credibility issues. In such a case, the last thing I want to do is something that adds fuel to the fire. Here, the PPA was given the opportunity to present the views of its members to the DOJ. Even though the PPA's close connection to Full Tilt and PokerStars likely gives the DOJ a certain degree of uneasiness, the DOJ will still give at least some consideration to the points raised by the PPA. Why on earth would Pappas think it was helpful to achieving the PPA's goals to jab the DOJ by misrepresenting its position in such a public manner? What possible good can come of it?

The Pappas article may in fact ultimately have little or no impact on how the DOJ considers the points raised by the PPA on the Full Tilt remission issue. My point is that Pappas was foolhardy to even take a chance on provoking the DOJ with his ill-advised commentary.

The Hypocrisy of the New Jersey Sports Gambling Lawsuit

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full."

~Matthew 6:5 (New International Version)

Today the NCAA, NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL joined forces to file a lawsuit in federal court seeking an injunction to block New Jersey from implementing its plans to legalize sports gambling. Although the complaint itself is short and straightforward as a matter of legal pleading, it nonetheless drips with hypocrisy.

The sports leagues assert that legalization of sports gambling in New Jersey will "irreparably harm amateur and professional sports by fostering suspicion that individual plays and final scores of games may have been influenced by factors other than honest athletic competition." OK, point-shaving and game-fixing are bad; fair enough. But then we get to the sanctimonious pièce de résistance:

[T]he proliferation of sports gambling threatens to harm the reputation and goodwill of Plaintiffs [the sports leagues], and to adversely affect the way the public views amateur and professional sports. Plaintiffs cannot be compensated in money damages for the harm that sports gambling poses to the character and integrity of their respective sporting events. Once their reputations and goodwill have been compromised, and the bonds of loyalty and devotion between fans and their teams have been broken, Plaintiffs will have been irreparably injured in a manner that cannot be measured in dollars.

The integrity of the game issues are certainly valid—Major League Baseball, professional and collegiate basketball, and boxing have all had well-publicized point-shaving and game-fixing scandals (not to mention similar scandals overseas for sports like soccer and cricket). But this issue is really a red herring for the current lawsuit. Sports gambling is already a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States, most of it conducted illegally, but still with multiple billions of dollars wagered legally every year in Nevada. [FN1]  Within this system, crooked gamblers have already found ways to influence players and officials to put in the fix on individual games. The mere fact that New Jersey will offer an additional outlet for legal gambling will have no pragmatic effect on the incentives for gamblers to seek an unsavory or illegal edge.

Also, legalized, regulated sports gambling might actually reduce the incidence of point-shaving and game-fixing. A number of collegiate basketball point-shaving scandals were initially detected by legal sports books in Vegas, where smart bookmakers noticed large bets against heavy favorites in otherwise obscure and lightly bet games. In an era where sophisticated computer software can detect anomalous behaviors in large data sets (e.g., the SEC using computers to detect insider trading and other illegal stock market activities), legal wagering actually offers protection against the actions of shady gamblers betting on fixed games. Finally, encouraging more gambling to be done legally at casinos instead of illegally with shady bookmakers deprives those illegal bookmakers of the money and incentive to attempt to fix games. So, if the sports leagues really wanted to guarantee the integrity of their contests, more legal sports gambling, not less, is the proper solution.

As for the sports leagues' more generalized concerns about the public perception of sports being damaged by legalized sports gambling, well the good ship "Sports Integrity" sailed several decades ago, and it was promptly sunk by the sports leagues themselves. The leagues act as if sports in the United States are stuck in a Rudy-esque time-warp fantasy world that probably never existed. The sports leagues bringing this lawsuit are pretty much the entire who's who of multi-billion dollar sports industries. The NCAA makes billions off of the sweat of supposed student-athletes, most of whom in the revenue sports of basketball and football are often students in name only. The NCAA's recruiting and other regulations are widely viewed by the public as toothless, with a running joke occurring every football bowl season and basketball Final Four as to whether the eventual champion will be sanctioned with the empty gesture of a vacatur of its title. The coverup of child rape by Penn St. officials (including venerated coach Joe Paterno who openly traded on a reputation for moral integrity) to protect its football cash cow seems less a freak outlier and more the inevitable consequence of a widespread and morally corrupting dependence on football revenues. For years, the NFL made big money promoting smashmouth football and glamorizing hard hits, while denying any connection between the game and long-term concussion related injuries to its players. MLB turned a blind eye to steroid and other drug use for years, while cashing in on the public's appetite for monster home runs and offensive record chases. The NBA has its own history of rampant drug abuse. All of the sports leagues routinely receive widespread publicity for the off-field misconduct of their players and coaches, ranging from murder to assault to rape to drug use to drunk driving to financial problems to child support issues, and even to, yes, gambling.

But the final bit of chutzpah in the sports leagues' lawsuit is the ultimate hypocrisy—sports gambling is a fundamental cornerstone of the sports leagues' financial success. The NCAA basketball tourney isn't popular merely because of small school upsets; it's popular because it gives even casual sports fans a chance to wager on the outcome of the tournament (via popular brackets contests and more esoteric variants) as well as wagering on the games themselves. Fans in all of the sports leagues watch games because they have money wagered on the outcome; gate receipts and ratings—and the attendant revenues—would plummet if only fans of the teams playing attended or watched games. There's a strong argument to be made that the NFL is currently king of the sports world in large part because of the popularity of gambling on pro football games.

Of course, even though the sports leagues know they have ridden the sports gambling tiger to great profit, they nonetheless also have a public image to sell. So, they sue to protect the "character and integrity" they long-ago sold off for 40 billion pieces of silver. Truly, they have already received their reward in full.

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[FN1]  ADDENDUM (12 August 2012):  For perspective, in 2011, Nevada sports books reported winning nearly $141 million off of nearly $2.9 billion in legal sports wagers. Prior to the 2007 recession, Nevada sports books won $192 million in 2006. The American Gaming Association estimates that $380 billion is wagered annually in the United States, almost all of it illegally. Assuming illegal sports books have a similar hold to Nevada sports books (~5%), illegal sports gambling revenues are approximately $19 billion per year.

A Touch of Grey for Full Tilt Players?

I see you've got your list out, say your piece and get out.
Yes I get the gist of it, but it's all right.
Sorry that you feel that way, the only thing there is to say is
Every silver lining's got a touch of grey.

~The Grateful Dead, "Touch of Grey"

The big poker news of the day was the announcement that the DOJ and PokerStars had reached a deal to settle the federal forfeiture proceeding against PokerStars in exchange for PokerStars paying off Full Tilt Poker's players in full for the money stolen/mismanaged from them by directors Ray Bitar, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Howard Lederer, and Rafe Furst. Obviously this is welcome news to the tens of thousands of Full Tilt players whose funds have been frozen (or been gambled or spent by Full Tilt shareholders) for over fifteen months. But for some of those players, the check they get in the mail might be a little lighter than they anticipated.

A key provision of the settlement agreement provides that the DOJ will be paid settlement funds from PokerStars to reimburse U.S. players, while PokerStars will reimburse foreign players directly. The settlement agreement also provides that PokerStars will provide the DOJ with player account records to facilitate the reimbursement of U.S. players. Although the DOJ has not yet announced reimbursement procedures for U.S. players to follow, the involvement of the DOJ raises the interesting question of whether some players will receive their entire account balance.

What could possibly prevent a full refund? Well, it seems almost certain that players will need to file some kind of paperwork to the government to submit their claims, and that paperwork will almost certainly include basic information such as names, addresses, and social security numbers. Most likely, the government will also issue a Form 1099-MISC or a Form W2-G with any player reimbursements. Consequently, there are a number of legal issues that might arise that would affect the reimbursement of certain players, including:

• Federal & state tax debts:  Players owing tax debts will likely find their player accounts garnished.
• Delinquent child support obligations:  The federal government is actively involved in enforcing child support withholding.
• Divorce & bankruptcy court proceedings:  Players who have filed asset inventories in divorce or bankruptcy proceedings might find that attorneys for their former spouse or creditors have developed an interest in determining if a poker account refund is in the works.
• Civil judgment and criminal fine garnishments:  Players who have unpaid civil judgments and criminal fines may face garnishments of their account funds.

As a practical matter, the tax and child support debts are more likely to affect players, as the government is more active in seeking out funds to satisfy those kinds of debts, and those types of debts are fairly easy for the government to locate and garnish with the straightforward exchange of data (e.g., names, addresses, social security numbers). Divorce and bankruptcy proceedings, as well as civil judgments and minor criminal fines (e.g., traffic or parking tickets) are more likely to fly under the radar unless and until an interested party catches the whiff of money in the air; remarkably, this happens a fair percentage of the time.

However, even players who don't have any current outstanding debts are not immune from potential financial issues related to their refunds. Players with significant refunds due will likely find themselves facing tax withholding, as well as potential audits of prior tax returns (remember, the DOJ will have full access to all past Full Tilt accounting records for each player account). Every player receiving a refund will also need to pay taxes on their refund proceeds. If players have kept good records, they may be able to deduct poker losses to reduce or eliminate their taxes owed. But players who haven't kept good records may well find themselves paying taxes on the full amount of their refund.

I'm happy for all the Full Tilt players who now have a good chance of recovering their funds which once seemed lost to yet another online poker scandal. If some of those players have a portion of their funds garnished to satisfy child support, tax, or other legal debts, well, every silver lining has a touch of grey.

ADDENDUM (31 July 2012):  After I hit publish, I found out via Twitter that tax attorney Brad Polizzano (@taxdood) had also written about the tax implications of Full Tilt refunds. Check out his post!

ADDENDUM (1 August 2012): To follow up on a series of questions and comments on Twitter, I want to clarify that it's not a guarantee that the DOJ would issue a Form 1099/W2-G with any refund. The federal regulations related to remissions in forfeiture cases are silent as to tax withholding, but do provide that the DOJ can impose procedures and conditions for remissions. So at the very least, there will be some kind of paper trail to tie remissions to players, and that paper trail at least creates potential tax implications for players.

Also, normal tax rules will apply to any remissions. So tax would only be owed on the profit/gain, and not on the deposit portion of the player account. Assuming players paid taxes in prior years and have good records, they may well owe nothing further (unless they declared a casualty loss for theft/loss of their account funds). Players who did not pay taxes, underpaid taxes, and/or lack appropriate records to document wins/losses may well find themselves with tax issues. Depending on the records available to the DOJ and PokerStars, the DOJ might be able to document deposits and wins/profits for player reporting purposes, but I'm not certain the DOJ is going to want to go to that kind of trouble. As Brad Polizanno wrote in his blog (see first Addendum above), it would be a surprise if the DOJ and PokerStars have not already thought out most of these sort of logisitics.

Bally's Tower of Babel

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

~Genesis 11:1-9 (NIV)

If you spend much time in poker rooms on the Vegas Strip, you quickly discover that foreign players are a common sight. On one December trip a few years back, I kept track and found that I played poker with folks from more than 30 different countries over a six day period. Although it can be fun to talk to players from around the world, language and cultural barriers can crop up in unexpected ways, as foreign players struggle to adjust to American norms for proper poker procedure and etiquette.

One of the most common problems arises when two or more foreign players are playing at the same table and begin chatting in their native language. Of course, this violates the "English only" rule that is generally enforced to prevent players from sharing information or otherwise colluding during the play of a hand. Enforcing this rule can be difficult, as a poker dealer might not want to jeopardize tips from players by asking them to stop conversing. The rule is also awkward for foreign players who are not fluent in English and find themselves shut out of the casual table chat. The WSOP with its influx of foreign poker players only exacerbates the situation. A couple of summers ago, I nearly quit playing in the Caesars Palace poker room during the WSOP because the dealers essentially ignored the English only rule, and permitted foreign language conversation even among players with live hands.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I played a few sessions of poker during a short trip to Vegas with the sig other. I was playing at Bally's one weekday afternoon when a female dealer rotated to our table. The dealer appeared to be in her 40s, and was Asian with a distinct Asian accent, but she spoke English well and could generally be understood, with occasional moments when her fast speech patterns combined with Bally's general background noise required closer attention to understand what she was saying.

The other characters in this melodrama were the gent in Seat 10 and a young gal sitting behind him, sweating his play. The gent was also Asian, mid-50s, and had a thick Asian accent on the rare occasions he spoke. His gal pal was Hispanic and appeared to be in her late-20s; she had a noticeable Hispanic accent. What could possibly go wrong?

For the first 20 minutes of the Asian dealer's down, nothing notable happened. The Asian gent and his Hispanic gal would occasionally chatter with each other, usually when the gent had folded. But they began talking during one hand while the Asian gent was debating his action when facing a big bet. The dealer turned and said something to the Hispanic gal. The Hispanic gal looked confused, then said something back to the dealer, who replied, this time more loudly, "English only, please."

Uh oh.

Hilarity ensued.

Hispanic Gal: "What do you mean, 'English only'? I was speaking English!

Dealer:  "You can only use English during a hand."

Hispanic Gal:  "I was speaking English!"

Dealer:  "It didn't sound like English!"

Hispanic Gal:  "What's wrong with how I speak? I was speaking English!"

Dealer:  "It didn't sound like English to me."

Hispanic Gal:  "Are you saying I can't speak English?"

Yes, two individuals for whom English is a second language were arguing about which of them was at fault for their failure to communicate. And they were both visibly upset by the situation.

The dealer to her credit, ended the discussion and finished out her down at the table with no further comment. The Hispanic gal, however, clearly was not interested in letting the incident go, and stalked off to corner the floor person. He accompanied her back to the table, where the dealer explained her side of the situation. The floor patiently let the Hispanic gal vent, then said, "I'm sorry, there seems to have been a misunderstanding. I'm not going to reprimand my dealer for trying to make sure our rules are followed." The Hispanic gal took offense to the floor's comments, and went off in a lengthy diatribe about how the dealer had insulted her by not understanding she was speaking in English. Finally, the floor offered another apology and moved along, while the Hispanic gal resumed her seat, clearly fuming.

Poker has truly developed into a global game, which creates inevitable cultural and linguistic complications. Balancing the need to enforce an English only rule with the common presence of foreign and foreign-born players and dealers at the poker tables is a difficult task at best. Hopefully everyone involved will recognize the need to handle the inevitable misunderstandings in a diplomatic fashion with grace and humor.

The Tower of Babel (image source).

My Garmin & Me

I have been a recreational runner / addict for much of my life (but more about that in a future post). Every serious runner needs a good running watch, and for my high school and college days, I had a classic Timex Ironman Triathlon watch, probably the most successful sports watch in history. Late in my law school days, my first Ironman watch died, and I upgraded to the then-cutting edge Ironman watch with "IndiGlo" backlighting. That watch lasted from roughly 1995 through 2010, seeing me through a marathon, dozens of other road races, and near daily runs with only the occasional battery replacement.

Classic Timex Ironman watch with "IndiGlo" lighting.

(Photo from Wikipedia.)

For a variety of reasons (primarily injuries, apathy, and a decision to stop running road races), I never got around to replacing my Ironman watch. But, I have continued to run, even as age, injuries, work, and family life have conspired to make my running habit less regular and less intense. Still, it felt weird not having a watch to track my pace as I ran.

Last Christmas, my sig other got me a new running watch, a Garmin Forerunner 405, a watch my brother has raved about for several years. Let's just say that technology has progressed a bit since my law school days. First and foremost, my Garmin has built-in GPS tracking capability, enabling the watch to give me precise distances run, along with elevation changes. Also, the GPS feature frees a runner from the boredom and strictures of adhering to a few set routes where the distance is known; instead, the runner can explore new routes and trails and simply consult the watch to determine distance run. The watch also calculates calories burned based on age, weight, and gender data entered by the runner. Runners can also use the watch to track actual versus planned pace of run, and to craft workouts. The watch also has an optional heart rate monitor feature (which I do not use).

Garmin Forerunner 405, available on Amazon.

But the best feature of my Garmin watch is that, after every few runs (or even every run), you can upload the detailed run data from your watch to your computer via a wireless USB antenna. Once the data from your watch is uploaded, Garmin exports the data to a personal fitness webpage where you can keep a complete record of all of your training runs and road races. Your personal Garmin webpage lets you view a detailed report for each running event, with interesting data such as your pace at any point on your route. Below is a report for a typical solo run on my standard "long route" which is roughly five miles long (depending on whether I remember to start my watch as I leave the driveway or shortly after, the route can vary from 4.9 to 5.1 miles on the precise Garmin GPS measurement). If you follow the "View Details" tab, you can see additional information, such as my "splits" (time and pace for each mile segment), elevation changes (this is a generally flat course with a long gradual slope throughout Mile 3 and a small hill near the end of Mile 4), and my "moving pace" (pace after factoring out pauses for street lights, dog misadventures, etc.).



The report above was for a pretty good running day—temperature in upper 50s, moderate humidity, light wind—call it an 8 out of 10 for running conditions. My runs during the heat wave over the past month have generally been at a much slower pace, usually around 9:00 to 9:30 minute/miles over this same course. Frankly, the high humidity is tougher for running than the heat, making it impossible for the body to keep cool, not to mention making it feel like there is no oxygen in the air. But my moving pace of 8:22 per mile in this report is probably a pretty good snapshot of my current running level during good weather conditions, and right now I would expect on most 10K (6.2 mile) courses to knock out pretty steady splits around 8:15 to 8:30 minute/miles. It's a far cry from my prime running days, but I have plenty of time for serious training before tackling a possible 5K road race during Mastodon and running the Vegas Rock 'N Roll Half Marathon with Santa Claus on my birthday (and probably during WPBT—scheduling details have not yet been released).

Below is the report from a typical run with Berkeley on the same long route, back when the weather was more suitable for boxer fitness training (depending on humidity, Berk can't run with me when the temperature is above 60-65F). Click on the "View Details" tab and you will see the detailed pace chart which reveals where in our route Berk read or sent "p-mail", took care of his "bizness", slowed to check out another dog, or waited with me to cross a street. Kind of fascinating what modern tech can do!


I love my Garmin watch, and certainly recommend the Garmin watch line to all serious runners. Similarly, the Timex Ironman watch line has also exploded into a myriad of Ironman watches, most with fancy new technology options such as GPS location, run pacing, training records, and heart rate monitoring. If you are a regular runner or biker who wants to make the most of your fitness training, you owe it to yourself to look into getting a good quality training watch.