Apr 04: You Can Run & You Can't Hide

Story by Mike Maher Two years back for some silly reason during a moment of obvious weekness, I agreed to run a 1/2 marathon with a buddy. I'm not saying that my faculties were altered by mind altering substances, but I won'tdeny it either. Me and running is a bad combo. First of all I'm slow. Secondly and more descriptively, I run like a fat chick in snow shoes. But I've always had great respect for runners and he was a good friend so I reluctantly agreed. After bike season I started running and was up to 9 miles when in acompletely unrelated incident, I blew out my ACL and the dream /nightmare died. Or so I thought. 2 years later... That terrible feeling of unfulfilled goals came creeping back. So there I was on Saturday morning, 35 degrees and drizzling, standing at the starting line of a 10k wondering if a training race was really necessary. The brochure said 6.2 miles of gently rolling hills, a beautiful and rural scenic course almost sounded like fun....right? Well the gun goes off, the rabbits are GONE! Nothing like a bike race where I can always hang on for at least for a little bit. Not here. The wind is howling and I duck in behind a big dude. Hah! I know how to draft.The gently rolling hills turn into 3.1 miles straight down. At about 2.5miles I started to think how are we going to get back to the finish?Then I see the aforementioned rabbits running back up hill. Oh $hit! That was a LONG way down. I make the turn and the hill starts up. Not too bad though and I'm feeling pretty good. Then the hill turns steeper at mile 5 and the 30mph wind hits me head on. I work pretty hard into the finish and was pleasantly surprised to find I was 2 minutes under my best case scenario time... 5th in my age group. Not too bad considering the snow shoes! So all is good and on target for my 1/2 marathon in May. Wish me Luck!