I got this invite as we were ramping up towards “Run Like an Idiot”:
LESS THAN 2 WEEKS 'TIL THE 3rd ANNUAL THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY WEEKEND VIRTUAL FATASS
Start organizing your event now !
Run, Walk, Waddle
Scurry, Scuttle, Scamper or Sprint
Trot, Trample, Trod
Trudge or Shuffle
25 or 50K's
Around the Track, On the Trail or In Traffic
Yer The Boss !!
Event runs from Thurs Nov 25th through Sun the 28th
NEW THIS YEAR
The 50 MILE BADASS FA
Who's in ??
* Reminder - This is a weekend long event. You have 4 days to complete your race and the only competitions are for The Best Race Report and The Best Photos. Details forthcoming depending on interest.
To which I replied “I’m already running a 20K on Friday, I SHOULD be able to find time to do another 5K”
Yeah -NO20K = Success25K = DNFNo biggie
Planned Start Time – 11:00PMREAL Start Time - 9:40PM“Dammit! I’m getting myself an Energy Drink!!!” I cheered and opened a Victory Prima Pils at 6 o’clock
I’d been at this for 12 hours now, and had been doing everything [mostly] according to plan. Now, much like an expectant Mom, I just wanted it to be done with.
It was now time for dinner, and not wanting to make a WHOLE meal, I whipped up a batch of fresh gravy [we don’t save it] following a recipe I’d seen on Rachel Ray’s new show “A Week in a Day”
Maple-Worcestershire Gravy
4 tablespoons butter
1 shallot, finely chopped
2 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves finely chopped
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups chicken stock-in-a-box
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup dark amber maple syrup
Lots of coarsely ground black pepper
Add the butter to a medium sauce pot and melt it over medium to medium-high heat. Add the shallots and thyme and sauté for 2 minutes, then add the flour and stir 1 minute. Whisk in the stock, Worcestershire and maple syrup. Season with black pepper, to taste, and reduce the mixture until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 10 to 12 minutes.
I threw a bunch of leftover turkey in it and stirred around … “Dinner’s ready,” I shouted to D’Kid, “Make what you want.”
Again, I was getting that twitchy feeling; I just wanted to go.
‘This must be what any athlete who performs in “heats” must go through. I guess that makes me an athlete’ I rationalized. Not being of the same caliber of Michael Phelps and having my own Green Room to put on an iPod to chill out and prepare for “the next round,” I put on the TV … again … this time we had “The Sandlot” which D’Kid had never seen before. It was a pleasant diversion.
“One hour and forty minutes” she reminded me at 9:20.
“I dunno if I’m waiting that long” I answered her “Ten o’clock might be good enough.”
“It doesn’t have to be EXACTLY six hours, does it???”
I was tempted to explain the whole 4-5-6 sequence and the spirit of the thing, but …
“No, not really.”
After she had eaten and gotten caught up with her emails and Facebook [around 9:30] D’Wife announced “I gotta get a walk. I had a mind-numbing day, I’m feeling a little stiff and I want to get outside. I’ll be back before you do your next ‘thing’ … Eleven, right?”
“Yeah … I guess”
“Mare, you wanna come with me?” Mom asked, as she bundled up. It had gotten pretty cold since we’d been outside last [it was now below 40°].
“No, thank you” D’Kid answered.
“Okay, fine” and she was out the door.
It was barely five minutes later that I had an idea.
“You know what??? Let’s go NOW! We can catch up to Mom and I can finish my last three miles with both of you”
“Don’t you have to run it???”
I made an Executive Decision as Commissioner “At this point? Not really.”
I quickly asked D’Kid to find my phone and to call her Mom; firstly to tell her that we’d changed our minds and were coming out and to find out approximately where she was. Mare told her to “Wait for us” but that wasn’t happening; we’d have to chase her down.
We got ourselves bundled up as well and headed out to the other development that Mom likes to walk in. We ran the first half mile, but stopped after that, since D’Kid isn’t used to running that far at once, especially on a cold dark night, and pretty much past her bedtime.
When we got to the first “decision point,” I asked, “Straight or left? Which way do you think Mom went?”
“We could call her”
“Good idea, give me the phone”
Yep, we left it home.
So our back-up plan became: walk about a mile and a half, constantly scanning the neighborhood for the flicker of a flashlight, then turn around, perhaps to meet up with D’Wife on the return. We reached our pre-determined turnaround point with a glimpse nor a sound of her [I figured that since it was pretty much silent out there, we’d be able to hear the rustle of leaves or crunch of gravel generated by anyone walking near us within a couple hundred yards or so] We didn’t give up entirely, however. We stopped and looked down each cul-de-sac we passed by, in the hope we’d spot her.
Just as we were descending the last dip out of the development and heading back to our own, D’Kid halted turned around.
“Is that a flashlight?” she asked, pointing behind us.
Sure enough, a single, small flicker danced rhythmically toward us.
“You guys are nuts!!!” she shouted to us with a laugh as we backtracked to rejoin her.
D’Kid gave her mom a hug and we strolled home, chatting about not much at all. We were almost all the way home when she asked me …
“So … when’s your next race???”Final words in The Epilogue >>>
Start: 5:00PM
At this point, the challenge had become, “refuel and rehydrate when you can, but not so close to the next leg that your tummy bothers you.”
In other words “How many bagels with peanut butter can you eat today?”
It didn’t seem like we had been back from the Dentist very long before the sun was down and we on our way back up to the High School. The temperature was now 48° … Ten degrees colder than when my day started. This lap would be done in sweatpants, with a short sleeve cotton T-Shirt over a poly longsleeve. The sky was clear; the wind had scrubbed the clouds away and thankfully subsided to a comfortable breeze. As we drove up the street [the High School is a mere mile and a half away] I wondered:
“Are there lights on the track?”
‘No, there aren’t’ as it turns out, merely the ambient light from the orange lights on the parking lot, a few utility lamps around the school and some super-bright lights at the used-track and trailer lot next door. The darkness didn’t seem to deter a half dozen or so OTHER souls who were already looping the track when we arrived.
I – again - set my bottle down at trackside, it almost the same spot as lunchtime. I left the keys with D’Kid, fearful I’d lose them in the dark. I quickly crossed myself and started off again.
It didn’t take long for me to get on another runner’s shoulder. In the dark, I couldn’t picture an age on him, but he had the same “old school” outfit as I was wearing. I gave him a few yards on me, just for politeness and my own security; you never know how a person will react when a stranger decides to run beside him in the dark. I also wasn’t sure if, perhaps, these were an organized Friday Evening Running Club, and I may have been jumping into their gig, unannounced, uninvited and unsponsored … Localism, remember??? It COULD happen on a track, just as easily as on a beach [surfers] or a trail [MTBers].
Eventually, he kicked away from me and finished his run for the evening. That left only myself and a woman I’d seen who I reckoned to be on the other side of the track from me, but travelling at an unknown pace. If she were going faster, she’d pass me eventually; if I were the quicker of us, I’d catch her. However, if we were going the same speed, or very near the same speed, we’d never meet.
Such is life.
Left Brain was pondering the math of this while Right Brain was following some light in the air above us. It’s not unusual to see helicopters out here; there are commuter flights, traffic spotters, MedEvacs, and Army / Marines flying around all the time. But they don’t usually circle around like this one was. They also don’t have Police and Fire equipment rushing up to where they’re circling around. I didn’t see any accident-like activity on the highway nearby, so when the Firefighters lit some flares in the parking lot area behind the bleachers [and AWAY from where we had parked, I could only assume it was some sort of Emergency Landing / Take-Off practice.
I was at the far end of the field/track the NJ State Police S-76 began its approach, thumping and whirring to its landing spot to my left.
‘I’d better let M know what I think’s going on, when I get back to the car’ I thought to myself.
I was one lap too late to come up with that idea, as I saw a little shadowy figure running onto the track toward me.
As I suspected, she’d been watching the DVD in the car with her headphones on and hadn’t noticed any activity until she saw the helo come down. She couldn’t see across the field in the dark and had no idea what had become of me. The poor little miss was pretty shaken.
The girl I’d been “chasing” was there also, and she had no idea what the hubbub was about either. We all figured that if there had been something very serious, the Police, Firefighters and Helo Crew would be doing something far less casual than the “not much” they were doing at that moment … OR, they would have had the courtesy to chase us away.
“I’ve got another mile to go,” I semi-invited the runnerette.
“No, I think I’m done for the night,” she declined.
“I’ve got two miles done, sweetie” I comforted D’Kid “Would you like me to walk with you for the last four laps”
“Let’s run!” she cheered through what was left of her tears and took off, her UGGs galumphing on the rubberized surface.
We Gallowalked the next 1200 yards together, before she allowed me to run the last lap by myself.
We were into the Home Stretch. This leg felt the best of the day; hit 2 miles in about 16 minutes without much of a push, maybe having someone to “chase” helped, or perhaps the “six-mile warm-up” had something to do with it
Sadly, no one asked about the custom bib. To their credit, it WAS dark and the bib WAS black.
On to the FINAL Leg!!! >>>
Start: 11:00AM
A little extra challenge was added to my day, as D’Kid had a Dentist Appointment at 12:30. The plan was then to shuffle the schedule a touch and do: 6AM > 11AM > 5PM > 11PM.
HEY!!! I’m “The Commissioner!!!” I can do that!!!
After we got D’Wife off to work at 9:30, we chilled out a little and impatiently watched the clock. I had a bad feeling about this … I knew that once I finished the first leg, I’d want to get to the second ASAP [there’s a dog joke in there someplace, I’m sure].
I resisted as best as I could, killing time in front of the TV. Somehow, while channel surfing, I discovered “Fanboys” on Encore. It had been recommended to me by a Dad dressed as Buzz Lightyear on Halloween, after I told his kid in the Boba Fett costume that “Han shot first!”
D’Kid and I were enjoying it, but at 10:45, it was time to get ready and roll out. We only saw up to the part where Zoe bails the dudes out of jail, so … NO SPOILERS PLEASE!!!
The cold was coming in strong and the wind had seriously kicked up; there would be NO bike-pacing today. We switched to Plan B: D’Kid would sit in D’Car with D’Laptop and watch “Alice in Wonderland” while Dad ran 12 laps and change around the Winslow High School track. I had already done my pre-run warm-up routine for Leg One, so there was no need to repeat it, as I had kept myself busy and mobile for the morning.
“Good luck Dad,” D’Kid wished me, “And pace yourself.”
I stepped out of the car and gust nearly took my 20in24 hat off my head. I laid my water bottle and car keys down at a random spot by the side of the track, stepped out of my sweatpants and started off. 11:13AM. Another gust DID take my hat off, but it didn’t fly far, so I grabbed it and put it back on, backwards this time.
That didn’t help, since once I made the turn at the far end of the track, the headwind became a tailwind and flipped it off again. I dropped my hat on the pile and continued, knowing that an ice cream headache was in the works.
As I finished Lap Two, I notice the headlights were still on, so I took a detour back to the parking lot. I turned them off, gave D’Kid another hug, was reminded again to pace myself and got back on the track. My bib rustled in the seemingly near gale-force winds. I tucked my hands in my sleeves, since dumbass me forgot my gloves. My legs were pinking up and warming in the chilly wind, but my toes were going numb.
After Lap Four, The Voice started her crap.
“This is stupid. What’s the point??? You’re SO Undertrained. There’s NO WAY you’re doing all 12 miles today. You’re gonna get sick, you know. Stop now, who’s gonna know? No one else is doing this … Any idea WHY??? Because it’s pointless!!! Idiot.”
I just let her talk and ignored her while I counted the laps, completing one just about every two minutes
“Six done … Six left”
“Seven … and Five”
“Eight laps … two miles … One mile left … Four Laps”
“Three …”
“Two …”
“One …”
“… and DONE!!!”
11:40 … just enough time for us to shower up and head off to the dentist.
Bon Jovi started playing in my head: “Ahhhhh-ah!!! We’re halfway there …!!!”
On to the Third Leg >>>
Start: 6:00AMJust as The Weather Channel had predicted, it was warm, wet & windy when I woke up at 5:20AM. Shorts, T-shirt and Team Tania socks would work fine. It was pretty dark and foggy, so I put on the Reflecto-Vest and Team Tania blinkie, to be safe and to be seen. I couldn’t count on what traffic there was to be very attentive to the little dude running around on Black Friday, as they would probably be cursing themselves out for getting to WalMart so “late.”
My choice for my first course route was easy; I had to run past our Church, so I could see The Blessed Mother: say a Hail Mary; give extra thanks for my family, friends and relatives; and ask for to watch over me on this silly thing I was doing. I wasn’t racing for time today, so what was a minute or so, right??? [even on days when I have raced this course, on my own, just for fun, I’ve always stopped there, too, so …]
I reached the mile and a half turn in 13 minutes or so. I wasn’t running for time on the day, but I still wanted to keep myself around a 9-minute mile pace, for clock management’s sake. I cruised down the street towards Chocolate Pretzel Heaven, and passed the spot where a few months earlier, the first rumblings of what would become “The Big POING!!!” in my calf came upon me. It was there that Left Brain calculated / recalled that we reached 0.7 miles left to go in THIS LEG, we would have run EXACTLY 500 miles for the year. That’s nothing compared to what some of marathoning friends do, but pretty impressive [I must say] for a dude who runs for - essentially - no reason whatsoever.
I rounded the final turn into the development as the 6:26AM train whistled at the crossing about a mile away. I refrained from throwing any kind of a kick or sprint in at the end; we still had a long day ahead and had only reached the first “virtual water stop”On to the Second Leg >>>
