Leeds United are among the most storied teams in British football. They're also the team I've followed since 1972 when I watched the FA Cup final on ABC's Wide World of Sports. I had no idea the world of pain I was opening myself to at the time, but I decided to root for the team in the white kit. Leeds United FC. They won the Cup that day, and my life as a soccer fan, which began with glory of the mildest sort (FA Cup? Soccer? Huh?) continues to this day in a fair bit of sporting pain.

Ipswich Town 2, Leeds United 1.

Five games into the season, and Leeds has but 4 points and a goal difference of -1. For the second time in those five games, a man sent off and the game subsequently lost. This would be maddening if it were not for the comforting fact that the season continues through May.

In other words, it's too early to give up. Winning today's match would have put Leeds in the top ten in the League Championship; the loss puts us in twentieth. Way too early in the season. Things are very volatile, and teams are still developing. Games like this, and the Southampton and Middlesborough losses, are not encouraging, but the draw at West Ham shows the potential to do a lot better.

It's way too early. I remember several seasons back, Leeds' first in the First Division. Punished by the FA for going into administration (ie, bankruptcy) with a 15-point deducation to start the seasons, Leeds came out winning six in a row. No one could touch them. They simply torched everyone in their path. But by the end of the season, they'd cooled off, way off, and they were unable to win promotion that season. The hot, fast start simply got them out of danger of being relegated even further.

It's way too early.

Yes, I'd love to see a few more wins, or even draws, by now, and the play of some of the players isn't encouraing. The team's owner appears to have as little to spend as the Dodgers (I sure know how to pick 'em) but the players we have can at least stop getting red-carded! That's a matter of being smarter, of not getting in the position of making a foolish play. But until I see the team 15 points out of a playoff spot with a month left to play, I'm not going to give up. Get a run of results going, start working your way up the table (as other teams work their way down; it always happens), and the EPL for next season is not out of the question.

But only if they stop getting their asses red-carded into defeat.

The Timbers lost in Houston tonight, 1-2, which wasn't terribly surprising. The Timbers usually lose on the road. The two goals conceded were both crackerjacks, the first a 35-yard blast of the type that, ninety-seven times out of one hundred, goes high and wide. Instead, with no pressure on him and able to set the ball up as if in practice, former Timber Adam Moffat put the ball in the upper-right corner. It was a beaut. The second was a lovely give-and-go that only was possible because Sal Zizzo let his man, Brian Ching, go free. Zizzo made up for that goal in the second half by starting the Timbers' one scoring play and he had a number of other opportunities that were snuffed out by excellent goalkeeping or poor finishing.

The memorable part of this game for me, apart from the two Houston goals, was the defense played by the Dynamo. In some circles, their defensive strategy is known as "second-degree assault". It was brutal, ugly and well-disguised. But at least one play was caught by replay (and uncommented-upon by the Houston play-by-play guy), with Hinnault putting both forearms into the back of Eddie Johnson's head. Time and again, Portland's smallish skill players were forcefully bundled off the ball by Dynamo defenders, a tactic made possible by a ref who took "let them play" to the extreme. It took about an hour, by which time the game was a bit past saving, but the Timbers finally got hip to the fact they would not catch any breaks for being shoved in the back or shouldered off the ball. To their credit, they began to hold tough on the ball and to make quicker passes, to avoid losing the ball by being stampeded by a larger Houston player.

It was ugly soccer. Physical is one thing; thuggery another. In the end, a typical game: one side got some breaks, the other side didn't, and the Houston keeper was the man of the match. He was the difference between the Dynamo's 2-1 victory and what could have been a 3-2 Portland win.

Only 3 weeks left in the WPS season. Teams have four-to-six games left, and, at this point, only the Atlanta Beat appear to have no chance to qualify for the four-team playoffs. The playoffs reward final record, both with playing fewer games (a bonus for the women who went to the World Cup) and home field. Western New York and Philadelphia are the two contenders for top spot, with WNY having a game in-hand. So it now becomes two teams fighting for the top seed, and three teams fighting for two spots. Should be fun.

Ok, that said, I know very little about this league. It’s had a tough time surviving to this point, but there is a definite post-WWC bounce in effect. Games are drawing large crowds, and Fox Soccer Channel has broadcast a number of these. Fans are discovering that each of the six team has quite a few World Cup players. Almost every American player is on a WPS team, and some of the world’s best also play in the WPS, Brazil’s Marta and Japan’s hero Sawa in particular. Those lucky enough to live near the six teams in the WPS — located in, Boston, Philly, Western NY (Rochester), Atlanta, Piscataway, NJ (!) and southern Florida (the magicJack, which plays at Florida Atlantic Univ in Boca Raton, about 45 miles north of Miami) — are discovering they can head to a game and see some of the brilliant stars from Germany. That is PR elixir for this league.

The next immediate step, of course, is to ensure the playoffs receive media coverage. If Fox is not locked into the WPS, get the four games on ESPN. Get the national media there. Make sure the champions visit the White House. Book the league’s stars onto as much national and local tv as possible. (I’d love to see Megan Rapinoe with Craig Ferguson; I think they’d have a great time.)

And pounce for expansion. Not a big move, but another two teams at least. And not necessarily the “big” markets. The WPS has already failed in Chicago, Washington, St Louis, Santa Clara, CA, and Los Angeles. Perhaps one or two of these cities can revive their franchises following the WWC, but I think a better option would be to look for markets that are not saturated in sports and entertainment options and that have communities that love soccer. Salt Lake City, Seattle and Portland come to mind. Kansas City has a great new stadium. These cities give great support to the MLS teams which suggests that as the WNBA built itself on a marketing connection to the local NBA franchise, the WPS should seek to do the same. A Portland team branded in the Timbers’ image; my suggestion is relocate the magicJack (horrible name; after a phone device) to Portland (bringing former UP star Rapinoe and Abby Wambach here) and name the “Timber Jacks” or, hell, Herons. (There are people better at that stuff than me.) I think you’d find a lot of the Timbers Army would be at those games; after all, the TA is made up of soccer fans (most follow the world game) and many are women. A Portland WPS team would be a winner, and I think SLC could well follow suit.

a PR by 3:35. i didn't try to "pull" my stride back; instead, i focused on running upright and landing on the balls of my feet. and then, with a mental focus of trying to stay light on my feet, forward momentum took care of the stride. i ran the first mile a bit too fast and so fought oxygen-debt the rest of the way. but it was just so nice out, and i felt so good that first mile. i even blasted up a short hill at about mile 1. but i need to remember to keep it a bit slow and save some for later. better to use any "excess" energy at the end, or have it for a tough spot in the middle.

i had a big glass of pinole & chia about 20 minutes before running. that might have added energy; it's what the Tarahumara drink. not the funnest thing to drink (takes way too much water to chug down, so i may need to drink it less dilute). i think i prefer to add it to my oatmeal. it does bake up pretty nicely — some people online suggest it could be considered "cram"! i think i need to find a way to use it as a morning muffin or energy. drinking it is less unpleasant than flax seed oil, but not much.

a stupid blog title. but i've always hated writing titles or captions. they're labels, and labels always deceive. they're never true.

i'm about to head out for a 5-mile run. big whoop? not for me. it's been just a short time since i began to understand that i can run more simply and more effectively. Christopher McDougall's amazing book "Born to Run" is a big part of this, but before that, listening to the audiobook of Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" really made a huge impact on me. Murakami is a writer, and for him, running is not about getting in touch with the true and ancient roots of being a human being; it's about staying fit and sane enough so he can keep writing.

for me, of course, it's about both. i am an essentialist (there i go with a label). my goal is always to get the core, the heart, the (little-t) truth of things — the essence. i want to become strong, fit and sane so i can become the writer i know i can be. i always want to run the way humans evolved to run. and yesterday, for the very first time, accidentally, i did just that. i ran on the flats of my feet and not the heels (although i'm now going to try to be a bit more "correct" and see if i can land on the balls) and i ran upright. for the first time ever, i ran with my breath unobstructed. i ran fast and easy. it was wonderful. by repeating this, day after day, for weeks and then months, i will soon be able to run, to write and be free of limits and criticisms i have spent a life nourishing.

later.

how did i chop 1-1/2 minutes off my 4-mile pace? hell, this was only my 3rd run in the past week. i haven't run at this pace since i did 3 miles almost a month ago. what happened?

i ran like the Tarahumara. and like a yogi. who are really two aspects of the same idea: hold your body correctly and breathe correctly, and everything else you do will follow naturally.

i can't go into depth right now, but in listening to "Born to Run" and having read about "barefoot" running, i've been trying to find a better way to run. i love to run, but i'm excellent at not running. and now that i have been running regularly for about 2 months, i've been frustrated to see my times hover around the 12:40 mark. it's not the pace; it's that the pace shows how difficult running has been. and my biggest problem is breathing: i simply couldn't get enough air in.

i know how to breathe correctly. i started doing yoga over 30 years ago, and the first thing you learn in yoga is how to breathe. and yet no matter how hard i tried to breathe properly while running, it just wasn't working. i figured i just had further to go to get into shape, not to mention i need to lose the 20 extra pounds on my torso.

but today, setting out to run 4 miles, i was determined to watch two things as i ran: that i landed on my whole foot — not the heel, not the toe, not the ball — so that my foot could absorb the shock and pronate naturally. the second thing was to run upright.

and that's the trick.

in yoga, you're never told to keep your back straight; that's an unnatural, harmful posture for the spine. what you are told to do is, as you breathe in, is to lift your chest. it's almost an exaggerated motion: breathe down into the diaphragm and, as your lungs fill from the bottom-up, you literally lift the sternum up and out. at the same time, your hips/pelvis face forward, and you sort of tuck your tailbone up — nothing extreme, just a very slight rolling back-and-up of the hips to maintain the S-curve of the spine.

do this when you run, and you run like a Tarahumara.

for me, it was nearly miraculous. suddenly, i realized what i had been doing wrong. somehow, as i had been run the previous weeks, i had been hunched over on myself. not a lot, but just enough to cramp my diaphragm and prevent myself from breathing fully. it was as if i had a constrictor band around my belly. today, with my body straight and my inner mechanism uncramped, i could simply breathe properly.

and i roared forward. it was so great!

the foot-strike part will be harder. i've been practicing the breathing for years; today i just made a slight adjustment that came easily. unlearning a lifetime of wrong running: that's going to take a while. but at least i'll be able to do so with enough breath in me to keep going.

i dropped my damn keys somewhere, so had to double-back to look for them, never did find them. it was too hot to be running, but i did ok. same pace as Thursday's 4-miler, so that seems good. i made my own electrolyte drink that i carried with me. did it help? i'll just assume it did, with the oj in it & sugar/salt. i'll just assume it did.

i think i'm going to switch to alternate day running. i'll aim for one long run each weekend, similar to what the Higdon plan has. but since i don't have weekends, as such, i can wait til Monday to run 13 miles. no reason to do it tomorrow. i'll just build my own plan to develop the miles and get in the 20-miler, or 2, by14th or 15th week.

ugh. horrible. had to walk almost half. not sure if it was a carb-heavy breakfast, 4 cups of tea & 2 of coffee, fatigue or what. just could not get my breathing easy (still isn't). from Chavez/Clinton back, i ran ok, however. i have no idea what was missing. electrolytes? protein? just one of those days?

i read that an ice bath after running (for the legs) is very healing. i didn't do ice, but i ran a cold tub & sat in that. it hurt initially, of course, but then felt good. i will definitely do after long runs. some ice baths just for my feet would be a good idea, too.

i think maybe the 5-1/2 hrs of sleep might be my big problem. gotta start getting to bed early.