Rude Retro’s 1200KM Challenge

Whoever follows @RudeRetro on Twitter must know already that I have been running since the summer and you may also know that today I created a challenge on the Nike+ website. That challenge is to run 1200km in one year which 100km a month and just less than 25km a week.

I am not a fast runner. Nor do I have a lot of stamina but I hope to change the stamina situation. To be honest, I was never much of an athlete. It’s not that I didn’t like sports but I was a bit lazy in my school days and a lot lazy after I left. For years I used to tell the joke: I went for a run once, I didn’t like it. The fact it though, it wasn’t a joke. In my college days I got up early one morning and without stretching or preparing in any way I headed out for a jog. It was refreshing. Later that morning I went to class and half way through the day my body started to ache. The next day was much worse and I didn’t go for a run for about 15 years. That was last year.

I lived in Australia for two years and worked mostly in construction so I was able to turn my skinny frame into something more muscular. I had never been so healthy in my life despite having a hectic nightlife. And I am talking hectic. One time after work on a Friday (I got up at 6am) I headed off to a weekend rave with my friends and didn’t sleep until Sunday afternoon. Anyway, I diverge.

After Australia I moved to Japan where I now reside and didn’t exercise much after the first year and even then it was just a few sit-ups, push-ups and dumbbells while watching TV.  Well, gradually I started putting on weight and gradually can be a lot of weight over 8 years. When I left Ireland I was about 62kg and now am closer to 75. Still I am not terribly fat. I had a checkup recently in Japan and the doctor didn’t mention my weight and they are quite strict here. That said I have soft stomach and a double chin, both of which I want to change and that is why I am running. I loved when I was fit and healthy and I want to return to that form. I also want to look good for my wife. She looks amazing even after having a baby.

I use the Nike+ system as it is a great motivator. I have always been interested in improving my ability and checking my progress and the Nike+ system makes it very easy. I had already been considering it when I read this article in Wired and that just decided it for me. Check it out: The Nike Experiment.

I started running last year but I ran only on the running machine in the gym and then as some of you might remember I took part in the 10km race of the Yokohama City Marathon.　Going to the gym was a bit of a pain in the ass. I cycled there and then spent a few minutes changing and then cycled home. I liked the fact that I could measure the distance on the running machines though and as I mentioned that itself is a motivator for me.  It just consumed a lot of my day. Running is different though. I start running outside my house and turn around when I get half way so when I am finished I am home. Nike+ records my time, speed and distance on my wife’s pink iPod Nano. Then I transfer it to the Nike+ website via iTunes. It’s a great way to keep track of your runs. You can check my Nike+ profile here: http://my.nike.com/Rude-Retro

This is surely my most personal post on the T-Shirt Review and I didn’t even mention a t-shirt but anyway if anybody wants to join my challenge or friend me on Nike+ that’d be great.

Rude Retro’s Tweet Cloud

I came across this cool little time waster today. You can check out various statistics related to your tweeting but the tweet cloud is the most interesting I think. As you can see I tweet about tees alot and Threadless aren’t you lucky.Click on the image for a closer look or head over to TweetStats to check it out there.

You can see by the following graph that my tweets have been increasing steadily (July was an anomaly) so that means I am getting quite a bit of t-shirt info out there so be sure to follow me on Twitter (@RudeRetro) so as not to miss out.

I’m Not Pussyfooting T-Shirt

It has been a very long time since I promoted one of my own t-shirts so give me a break. Actually I haven’t had time to design many tees recently and to be honest, when Cafepress reduced our commissions to 10% I lost a lot of motivation. Of course this is at Zazzle who are great. I hope to start designing for them again soon but don’t worry I won’t post all of my new designs here.

Earth Day T-Shirt – Small feet are sexy

Carbonfund.org have teamed up with Cafepress to produce and sell this pretty sweet tee designed to promote environmental awareness. Here is the blurb from the tee page:

Celebrate Earth Day with a carbon-neutral AnvilRecycled shirt. Proceeds benefit Carbonfund.org, which certified the shirt CarbonFree. View Carbonfund.org’s other products at Cafepress.com/carbonfund

Certified CarbonFree^® by Carbonfund.org’s Product Certification Program, the high-quality, pre-shrunk AnvilRecycled^® T-shirt features 69 percent pre-consumer recycled cotton. This tee has been released just in time for Earth Day so you to can help spread awareness. Below are a couple of Rude Retro’s environmental awareness t-shirts which you can purchase in a variety of styles at Zazzle.

Unscheduled Hiatus

Well, I took a break. Don’t worry. It wasn’t because I was bored of talking about t-shirts. My wife just had our first child and things have gotten pretty hectic.  As you can imagine, I may not be posting as frequently as I did before but once my wife and child are both home from the hospital I may have a teeny bit more time and I will try to keep you posted on what’s happening in the world of t-shirts. I have been keeping an eye out. Here is some of what I have been observing without having time to write about. I hopefully will be able to write in more detail later though.

Artist and designer, Jimiyo, has taken a job with Design by Humans. I hope he continues to submit designs to the various contests in his spare time. His design was recently sold on a shirt.woot tee and I just recently received my very own Jimiyo t-shirt from Uneetee.  More about that later.

Speaking of Design by Humans, they are holding a Quicksilver design contest and the second of the DBH music series. This time it is the more hip than Fleetwood Mac, Kings of Leon. I hope the designs are better than what I have seen of Fleetwood Mac.

Spreadshirt scored €10 million investment capital and have added some cool and cute stuff to their site. I imagine we will see more and more dramatic changes over there now that they have some spare cash. I will probably talk about it at my relatively new site: POD Helper rather than on the T-Shirt Review. More about POD Helper later.

Oh, and T-Shirt Hell didn’t close down after all. It was a prank. Owner, Sunshine Megatron, says it was a strategy to generate income. Read more at T-Shirt Hell be warned, it is not for the faint hearted.

Yet another contest site will be opening up soon called Teextile. Sorry guys. I didn’t have time to check you out. I will keep an eye on you though. I came across another new t-shirt contest site, a Christian one, but I may have lost the link.

They guys at Zero Boutique sent me a couple of tees to review which I received this morning so that is something to look forward to.

I also came across a picture of the love of my life, my darling wife on a t-shirt blog. It was a bit of a surprise. She is wearing Uneetee’s King Leo. Shirts on Sale if you are curious about the mother of my baby. (Edit: The pic was changed and no longer features my wife.)

Well, there was more and I will tell you about it in more detail later.

PS. For people who have emailed me and haven’t gotten a reply I’ll try to get back to you very soon.

The T-Shirt Review Update

I started this blog a little over a year ago and although I didn’t really start blogging regularly until March, there have already been 358 posts which I am pretty happy about. Google awarded my efforts by promoting me to Page Rank 4 a few days ago and I just found out that I have exactly 100 subscribers to my feed. (If you haven’t already subscribed, now is  good time to make sure you don’t miss out.)

If I keep up this pace I should have no problem doubling the number of posts by the end of the year and hopefully I can double the number of subscribers too. In celebration, I have opened a new area in the forum where you are free to post and promote t-shirts and t-shirt stores. You can post pics and links. Enjoy.

Forum: Check out my Tees

Yokohama Marathon T-Shirt

A couple of weeks ago I participated in the 28th Yokohama Marathon. To be fair though, the Yokohama Marathon is not really a marathon. They have a tendency in Japan to call anything longer than running to catch the train a marathon. The Yokohama Marathon is a half marathon but I didn’t even run in that race. I ran in the 10km race. I know that 10km isn’t very far and I didn’t run very fast but I was happy enough with my performance. I had never before in my life ran 10km in one day, as far as I know. I mean I played rugby and hockey in school and we had to do a lot of exercise in training and participate in other sporting events too but it is a little different from running. I finished the race in just under 56 minutes. I was hoping to finish in less than an hour so I was pretty pleased. I hope to get better time or perhaps participate in the 21km next year though.

At the end of the race we all received t-shirts (pictured above). They are not something I would really wear when going out, or even to the shops for that matter and it is not because I don’t want to be seen as a braggart bcause that doesn’t bother me. I am proud of my achievement and I don’t mind telling you how great I am. It’s simply because it is not the coolest t-shirt. The design is nice enough but it simply looks like a Yokohama souvenir at first glance and I live in Yokohama so that would be pretty ridiculous.

The t-shirt is nice quality though, made by Adidas and has an Adidas logo embroidered on one sleeve with the Yokohama Port Opening 150 year Anniversary mascot printed on the other sleeve. (At least that’s what I think it is. Somebody told me what kind of animal it is supposed to be the other day and I would never have guessed. I have already forgotten what he told me it was.) The blue print on the front is a simple graphic containing recognizable depictions of Yokohama landmarks.

You probably can’t get your hands on one of these as I expect the tees change each year. I am a fan of souvenir tees and used to collect (and wear) band and event t-shirts but I have been trying fairly successfully to stop doing that recently. This though is a sign of my achievement though and I am happy to have it. Next year I will show it to my daughter (she is due in March) and she will look at it and poop her pants. There may be no connection between the pooping and the t-shirt though, but I have heard that babys poop their pants a lot.

Upgrades

I know. It has been a few days since my last post. I’m pretty busy at the moment but I hope to have a few new posts soon. I am also currently working on a POD review which is taking longer than I had expected but it will be comprehensive. Stay tuned.

This is just to let you know that as of today I have upgraded my forum to the latest version of Wordpress (very sleek) and also updated the theme. Most of the changes are behind the scenes so you shouldn’t notice any real differences except for the fact that we now have threaded comments. That’s right. You can comment on other peoples comments. Pretty cool right. There might be a few bugs though so if you notice anything that doesn’t seem right please let me know. Thanks.

Mr. Rude Retro T-Shirt

This t-shirt came up in a search for Rude Retro t-shirt and I was a bit surprised to find that it wasn’t connected to me. Of course this Mr. Rude t-shirt is retro, rather than it being a Rude Retro t-shrit. I do like this shirt though so I thought I would share it. Unfortnately it is sold out. You can find out more about it at Burton.

Obama Yes We Did T-Shirts

In my life time I don’t remember such excitement about a new President and this excitement still continues today. Of course Barack Obama doesn’t officially hold the title of President yet but it is just a matter of months. I saw this video this morning on youtube and it inspired me to make a post about the new Obama T-Shirts that have been produced (some by me) since his election victory. These are all from Zazzle and there are many more to choose from but these were some of my favorites.

I think that we can thank Will.I.Am for his contribution to the campaign as his two previous songs in support of Barack Obama are surely to thank for getting young people out there to vote. You can check out those videos below.

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