In your face Jen T.

As some of you may know, at one time I was something of a runner. Not a great one, but I ran most of the local races and a few marathon's. One thing I noticed at running races was that the old people looked . . . well . . . old. Nasty bow legs, hunched backs, you get the picture. Then I'd ride with the local cyclists and I noticed that a lot of the older cyclists looked pretty fit, even normal as they got older. Since I was always a better cyclist than a runner, the change made sense. I've pretty much stuck to the bike for the last 4 years with very few running transgressions, excluding some training for CX.

A couple of weeks ago my wife asked me to run in the local 5K on the 4th. She caught me in a moment of weakness, no that that moment of weakness perverts. I think I was headed home from one of the Tuesday night races and a little delirious. In any event, I haven't run since CX season so I knew it was going to hurt. I got in two VERY easy runs just to make sure I didn't completely hurt myself and then it was off to the races.

Sadly my old running shorts are pretty short. Too short given my cycling tans lines, but what can you do. I planned on buying some new shorts, but ended up getting lazy and just let my freak flag fly.

I decided it was going to hurt whether I tried to run fast or not, so I just let 'er rip. That's a relative term since as I mentioned I'm not a very good runner. When I let 'er rip it's more like a 7:00 minute mile thing, not a 5:00 minute mile thing. An old high school buddy (Timmy O.) caught up to me on the first hill. He's in the middle of training for a 100 mile running race so he'd been running since 6am. We more or less chatted the whole run, but I was pretty close to my limit. He was running bandit and planning to run the 10 mile race right after the 5k. He swung off with about 100 yards to go and then I heard it. Some punk trying catch and pass me. I should have just held my pace and let them go, but the competitive side of me just couldn't do it. I heard the foot steps and the race was on. I gave it everything I had and barely held my place. Just as we crossed the finish line, I heard the person throw up. Victory was mine. For some reason, probably because I'm a sympathetic puker, I never even turned around, I just wandered over to the people collecting the chip timers. The first thing the guy taking my timer says is "apparently you ride bikes." Must of been the 2-3 inches of bright white skin with the dark tan line that tipped him off.

So off I went to get some water and a bagel. On the way out, my wife and I checked the results. I only ran a 21:15, but it was good enough for 1st in my age group. Apparently all of the fast 35-40 year olds stayed home yesterday. It wasn't until I got home that I remembered the sprint and thought I should see who was behind me. Turns out it was Jen T., the second place female finisher. There wasn't anyone close behind her, so it really was me against her. I guess all that's left to say is . . . In your face Jen T!

Just kidding, actually I feel kind of bad about it. Not that bad, but bad none the less. The good news for Jen is that I won't be running anymore races in the foreseeable future. I can barely even walk today for that matter. I rode a couple of hours and hit some decent hills today and the legs are definitely jacked up. We'll see how long it takes to undue the evils of running. If there's a message in this post, it's "don't run" and in the words of Bernard Hinault, The Badger, "no gifts."

Word.