This Surfer Goes to Extremes to Be Nice

Athletes take working out seriously, but few take their conditioning as seriously as big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton.

His regimen, according to ESPN the Magazine, includes dragging a 100-pound railroad tie across the sand until it becomes unbearable. He then performs squats with the tie across his shoulders.

That’s followed by a four-mile paddle on a paddleboard and a two-hour ride on a mountain bike, through the Malibu hills, with 50 pounds of extra weight.

Why such a torturous routine?

“It makes me a nicer person at the end of the day,” Hamilton explained.

Ship shape: How fit is the 6-foot-3, 215-pound surfer? This month he stood on a longboard and used an oar to paddle 26 miles across the English Channel to France. He then rode a bike to Paris.

The two-day, 265-mile odyssey helped raise funds and awareness for autistic children.

Trivia time: What major league baseball team holds the season record for most strikeouts and how many did it have?

Trash talk: Miami Heat guard Jason Williams’ comments about the Dallas Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki -- “I personally think he’s the best white player in the world” -- prompted this from Jennifer Floyd Engel of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

“Why do we need the qualifier? And if we are doing qualifiers, does that make Williams the NBA’s dumbest white guy?”

A foolish ritual: The San Francisco Chronicle’s anonymous columnist, the “Betting Fool,” has learned to tolerate soccer, but he despises the sport’s version of the flop.

The gripe: “Every time I see some player flop to the turf as if he’s been shot with a rifle, followed by the dramatic leg grab [and] the open-mouthed wailing, I yell at the TV: ‘Get up you idiot!’ And he almost always does.”

Good question: Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News, in the wake of the Ben Roethlisberger accident, writes that riding motorcycles without helmets is not only legal in places, “but vital to film classics and shampoo commercials.”

As evidence: “If Steve McQueen had been wearing a helmet in ‘The Great Escape,’ how would we have known it was he?”

Fuming: The top golf story on the Glasgow Daily Record’s website Friday morning wasn’t Colin Montgomerie taking a first-round lead in the U.S. Open, but a rip on another golfer for lighting up a smoke:

“Just as well the U.S. Open isn’t played in a pub in smoke-free Scotland or Miguel Angel Jimenez would be slung onto the street and told never to come back.

“There were no butts about it when the Spaniard lit up a cigar and created a right reek as the U.S. Open got underway at Winged Foot.”

Trivia answer: The 2001 Milwaukee Brewers struck out 1,399 times.

And finally: Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News on the NHL finals: “Remarkable! They’re putting on a final series that precisely duplicates the spirit and excitement of ... last year’s lockout.”