Anonymous

Thanks all for the congratulatory comments about UROY. Based on a few private emails I received yesterday I wanted to clear up something I said in my previous post. I am not any less proud or honored to receive this award this year as I was last year. If fact I'm probably more proud and honored than I was a year ago. Defending something like this is almost always harder than winning it the first time around. Defending it for another time in 2011 is looking (based on some of the race schedules some of the other top runners are putting out there) to be even more challenging, a challenge I'm getting really excited about. What I was trying to convey in my previous post was simply that the actual announcement of this award didn't have as much of an effect on me this year as it did last year. I'm sorry if this sounds cocky: but I kind of expected to win it. I don't think this was me being cocky, I think this was me being informed and realistic. I think receiving every single first place vote shows that I had reason to expect it.

As to the obnoxious anonymous comments about a whole range of other random things on my previous post, I agree with most of you who responded to those comments: some good entertainment, but not a whole lot of substantive value. I have had these type of "feather ruffling" comments in the past. A few times in the past I've even allowed them to get under my skin a bit. I have however never taken steps to not allow anonymous comments. Despite being sometimes totally out of line, I think there is usually some value in what everyone has to say. I'm a big fan of listening to everyone's opinion. I think sometimes I even learn some valuable things from some of the most obnoxious comments.

This said, I have thought about this a bit in the past day and have decided to no longer allow anonymous comments. I have no desire or intention to limit what people say on my blog, I just no longer am willing to allow them to fire away anonymously. I've tolerated this kind of thing in the past, but I have decided to draw the line at people using my blog to throw inflammatory, anonymous comments in the direction of other people. I think it's really obvious to most everyone reading these comments that this person is obnoxious, ignorant, and likely quite envious of Tony. In trying to define Tony as foolish, they have of course made themselves the ultimate fool. I hope the readers of this blog can be mature enough to avoid making these kinds of comments in the future, but if you feel the need to you will no longer be able to do so anonymously. At least this way we can all know who we are laughing AT.

Sorry to those of you who post constructive and reasonable things anonymously just because it's easier than setting up an account and logging in. I don't want to keep people from sharing their thoughts. The process of setting up an account and logging in each time is really quite simple. Less than 5 minutes of your time.