I dare not say...

...the way I feel
about your inability to
suck it up and win the race


Good news and bad news from this year's Crescent City Classic. The good news is that I got into any shape to run at all given the degree to which I had allowed myself to lapse over the preceding months. I've only been back on a regular training schedule since the beginning of March. And prior to Saturday I had only run six miles once this year. March 19 I made it in 47:48 according to the Tweeter Tube record. But in those few weeks time I had gone from congested suffering and chronic knee pain to feeling pretty good at the end of a run so it's not time for my athletic career to go the way of the Favre just yet.

The bad news is Saturday was harder than I expected. When you're not in peak condition, your body notices things like a drastic change in your run from 6:00 PM to 8:30 AM. On a day that you give it no breakfast, your body seriously misses the previous week's training diet of peanut butter chocolate eggs and wonders what it will use for fuel. It begins wondering this around mile three right after you pass the guys standing on the sidewalk in their high school band uniforms offering you a choice of light beer for free or water for $4.75. By mile four when you pass the guy dressed as the devil offering you hot dogs, your mind is too whipped to form a sentence much less a friendly comment. Failing to form the words, "One with yellow mustard, please" you offer a pained grunt and trudge on.

I've been running this race since I was a teenager and I've been in pain by mile five before. But this is the first time I've actually had to stop at that point and walk for a minute. I had made the five miles in 41:20 so I was running a pretty good pace. (At or about last year's pace, in fact) Given my lack of training, I was probably pushing it a bit too hard. I felt bad. And after walking about two hundred feet I felt guilty so I sucked it up and finished the race on a jog. 55 and a half minutes total (really not bad after having stopped for a few minutes).

As always it's worth the struggle for all the free beer and Chee Wees waiting in Tad Gormley stadium. But while I've managed to rationalize it in several ways here, I can't help but feel like this race was a setback. Nothing a good 12 months of penance can't fix, though. Next year I want a poster.