Chesticles: Dispatch from the Field

So I tried running three miles last Wednesday and had a real hard time with my hamstring strain {Editor's note: "Strain" was formerly referred to as "total blowout explosion."} Tried running my 4.5 mile loop on Friday and actually ran pain free for the last two miles. So you know what that means...

I went to the race start at the North Central Rail Trail race to see my friend Father Christmas and her husband Jack in the Box off for their 2x13 mile relay. I was visiting friends in Baltimore a 15 minute drive away anyway, so why not? Since I had already paid up for the race in my healthier days, I grabbed my number and my nice soft white sweathsirt (or premium, as the hard-core runners call it) and then decided, what the heck, I'm going to run the 13 and hop on the relay runner bus to get back to the start. {Editor's note: A full list of Chesticles' paid-up entries from "healthier days" is available upon request.}

Of course by the time I got to the turn-around, my ham was feeling fine. {Editor's note: Witness accounts confirm Chesticles' rhetoric about the blown hammy decreased with each of 13 miles, the dead space being filled with increasingly out of breath exultations of Van Halen's Cabo Wabo.} Jack in the Box's yelling, "Wait, aren't you supposed to stop running now?" But of course, I'm thinking: there are only 13 miles left to go. I keep going. The cool part of the second half is I was able to talk a complete stranger through to break 3 hours. {Editor's note: Oh, nevermind.}

He was going for 32 of 50 states, 50 marathons, all under 3 hours. His batting average is something like .500, which makes this sound like a painfully expensive hobby. {coming from one who knows...} I talked him through a long line of 6:45s and then the inevitable 7:20, then the rebound 6:50 and then the precarious 7:50 and the dreaded 8-plus final mile. G-wad from Erie, PA, finished in 2:59:50 something and collapsed into a semi-unconscious coma. I miss my days of marathon pacing. {Editor's note: Apparently not. Also, the results show G-wad being dusted in the final 400m by Chesticles, something I think we all wish we had been there to see. http://brrc.com/brrc2010/NCR2010.txt }

That's a roundabout way of saying that I might be up for a long trail run over Christmas after all. Let's see how the hammie feels after the marathon soreness wears off. But Roxbury in two weeks is too crazy, even by my standards.

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