Thousands of us wait in the marathon starting corral, shuffling our feet and anxiously bobbing in place. I need to escape from the electric tentacles of this monstrous tension. I stare up at the sky, wide-eyed, for the early morning rays are but still emerging from their peaceful slumber behind the mighty protection of the Andes. There is no need to squint. I see everything with crystal clarity.
I lift my arms towards the gentle warmth of our Mother Sun and whisper a prayer: "Lord Jesus, I wanna win this motherfucker today. You help me and I'll stab a rapist later this afternoon." I lowered my arms and got my game face securely fixed in the "on" position, already psyched at the prospect of a potential mid-day stabbing.
After some chanting and counting in Spanish, I hear "UNO!" and the deafening bang of a pistol. "Ha!" I think to myself, "I'm not the only one who plays Uno for keeps!" I look around for my card-game-comrade-in-arms, but all the hyphens obscured my vision...plus, at this point, I'm running. I'm running for the win. Jesus is my running shoes. In case you wondering, Our Lord and Savior has a full-synthetic upper, a low-profile stack-height and a very modest drop. The Lamb of God is neither minimal nor gluttonous. He comes in a fairly rocking colorway, too...ah duuh.
This report will now shift to the vantage point of my hamstring:
"I hate Patrick and I want to be very clear: If I could ever manage to detach myself from his body and somehow implant myself into another person's body, I would do that and then I would use that new body to beat the shit and the stupid out of Patrick's fool head. Then I'd sleep for 2 days because I'd be so tired from such a mammoth physical effort."
Now, from the vantage point of my foot:
"Patrick sucks shit through a straw and can go fuck himself. Prick."
My foot is considerably less verbose than my hamstring, apparently.
So, yeah the race went. This lady with asthma passed me. Seriously. I think she finished around 3:05-ish, but still, I saw her using an inhaler.
Eh, I knew that if I could get to the start line without any major aches or pains, that I could get under 3:00 hours. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I held 6:45 pace for the first 10 miles and felt fine. Breathing easy and just trucking along. At around mile 11 or 12, my legs felt like they locked up. It was fairly painful and they weren't moving right. I decided not to worry about and just jog in. I think I had a couple 8:00 miles in there. We reached the start of a 10K descent to the finish line and my legs opened up a little and I began to hit a few more 6:50 miles. I finished the race while shouting Beatles lyrics along with the post-race cover band. I crossed the line after about 3:11:00. Oh well. It was a good time anyway.
Ran into Markus from the very well written and extremely well photographed runssel.blogspot.com in the marathon VIP lounge afterwards. We tried to meet up for some beers, but somehow couldn't cross paths. It was for the best, however, as I was inclined to start an all day drunk...and would have easily succumbed with slightest encouragement.
Week ending 3/25/12
-42 miles, 6:40:00. 6,000 ft. I didn't run Saturday and Sunday because the World Enduro Championships were being held in Talca. The first ever world championship of any kind in Chile and it was right here in little ol' Talca. I opted to spend those two days furiously hiking around the trails where I run, watching guys flip their motorcycles into trees.
Week ending 4/1/12
- 42 miles, 5:30:00, 1000 ft. ran only twice before the marathon.
I have really felt shitty for about 2 weeks, aside from the hamstring bullshit and this growing pain in my heel, right about where the achilles attached becomes the bottom of my foot. Yeah, in addition to these new pains, I have also felt totally wasted and run-down. We'll see what sort of mysteries this week holds.
Be healthy, ya'll.
2 comments:
My uncle is waiting to hear back about a liver transplant... granted, the man has had a Budweiser can permanently glued to his hand for about a decade. Family stuff like that always makes me think everyone is about to die of liver disease, or osteoporosis, or fatal familial insomnia or something. Fuckdaprions.
I want to run a bath for you or something.
i don't think i've taken a straight-up Bath (with a capital "b") in about 10 years. it sounds good to me right now. it sounds even better to not have to "start" a bath or "turn on" the faucet, but to have it "drawn" for me. i mean, that's lux. FFI is probably the most terrifying disease in the world. it's like horror movie scary, but, like, worse.
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