Skunks & Running

I'm ramping up to run a 10k this Sunday in Plymouth, so I ran 4 miles yesterday morning and 5 miles this morning. My goal is to run the thing at a 8:30 mile pace, which would give me a time around 53 minutes or so. I'm getting there. This morning I averaged an 8:48 pace, thanks to another skunk showing up and making me run a faster 2nd and 3rd mile. There's something about a skunk crossing your path that gets your legs moving.

Anyway, I'm taking tomorrow off, Thursday we're driving to the actual course I'll be running & I'll run half of it or something, and Friday I'll get up and do some fartlek training, which is less gross than it sounds (I'll jog to one telephone pole, sprint to the next, jog to the next, sprint to the next & so on for a 5k distance).

The Pistons were inaction again (pun intended... sorry, had to) last night, losing once again, this time to Utah. Philly lost, giving the Pistons a little space, but none of the teams ranked lower lost, so for now the Pistons still sit in the 9 hole (draft-wise).

Brandon Knight went down with a serious sprain, which is good news for the Pistons' draft position but bad news for his development as a SG. He may be shut down for the year. At the moment the Pistons are without the services of Andre Drummond, Brandon Knight and Jason Maxiell. Knight and Max were starters, and Drummond was going to take Maxiell's starting spot and was one of the few players on the team who was truly enjoyable to watch. By the way, ESPN has video highlights of 8 of the top 10 draft prospects, and is the only place I've found a decent highlight video of Otto Porter.

Here's a breakdown of the Lions' cap situation (per Kevin Seifert at ESPN):

Cap Status: The Lions won't have much cap space to work with unless they can renegotiate/extend one of the two huge contracts on their books: quarterbackMatthew Stafford ($20.8 million cap figure) and defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh($18.2 million). According to the Detroit Free Press, the Lions are projected to have $6 million in space at the moment.

Strategy: There are plenty of needs to squeeze into that small amount of cap space. The Lions would love to find a speedy tailback to fill the role once envisioned for Jahvid Best, a profile that seems to fit veteran Reggie Bush. But with only two of their 23 projected free agents now under contract, the Lions could have needs for two safeties, two defensive ends, two cornerbacks and one outside linebacker. That's because defensive ends Cliff Avril, Lawrence Jackson and Willie Young are all pending free agents. The same goes for cornerbacks Chris Houston and Jacob Lacey and safeties Louis Delmas and Amari Spievey. A weekend flooding of the cornerback/safety markets could drive down prices.

It's not pretty.

Both Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay have new mocks out, but I find their mock drafts to be lacking in accuracy. I think they evaluate prospects fine, but they don't seem to have a handle on what the different teams want to do. Check out the NFL.com guys, I think they have better talent evaluators and seem to know what's going on. Mike Mayock amazes the crap out of me with his ability to call draft picks with accuracy.

Lastly, I have to talk about some art stuff. The poster for Mad Men season 6 is sweet!

The artist's name is Brian Sanders, who does kind of a more scribbley version of what Bernie Fuchs and Bob Peak did (he names Fuchs first among artists he emulates, as do everybody who worked in that era). I love this style of illustration, which is both highly gestural and highly detailed at the same time. Anyway, the poster fits the show really well, and gives me hope for illustration to creep back in areas that have been dominated by Photoshop.