Free Pain

Today, I joined two-thousand, one hundred persons and ran/jogged/walked/shuffled 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). I guess the fastest runner covered the event in about 30 minutes, which means that as I was crossing the two-mile mark, the finish line was in sight for the front group. When I crossed the three-mile mark, the winners were cooled off and deciding whether to stay for the awards ceremony or leave. When I crossed the four-mile mark, the organizers were getting ready to start the awards ceremony. When I crossed the finish line, the official time read one hour, nineteen minutes and some seconds.

I beat my goal of one hour and 20 minutes. I would even have celebrated one hour and 30 minutes since I had not trained and only decided at the last minute to register for the race last night. Thus, my late race entry means I don't have a posted race time this year because they had run out of "ChampionChip" timing devices - as I told the person at the registration table, my competition days are over and I'm just glad to have feet that can carry me 6.2 miles.

I weigh 30 pounds more than I did when I ran a marathon a few years ago. Where did the time go and how did I find all this weight? "Teacher! Teacher! I know the answer! You spent too much time in front of the computer screen!" Indeed, I did. Lifting weights for a few minutes every other day will not help you lose weight - in fact, I think it added a few pounds.

Last year my wife and I played spectators and cheered the runners. I snapped photos and shot some video of the event and posted a small tribute on YouTube. This year, I was the overweight runner and let others cheer me on.

In the running crowd, I saw a neighbor of mine, Linda Christian, a former coworker, Pete Engler (?), and a few familiar faces such as a fellow season ticket holder for a football team. She and I stood around a while and talked about the new head coach and what this season might be like. She also told me she planned to finish the 10k course between 40 and 50 minutes. A coworker of mine from my GE days, Bob Gustafson, sang a song before the start of the race. The new mayor spoke a few words and a local politician, Parker Griffith, stood at the halfway point and waved. I also saw a trumpet player who teaches music at UAHuntsville, Carolyn Sanders.

I saw thousands of happy, smiling faces, on shouting sidewalk supporters and even on those of us who dragged ourselves across the finish line after the throngs of supporters had thinned out.

Along the way, I was offered water by Boy Scout troops, frozen tubes of flavored ice by neighbors, beer and mixed drinks from some holiday revelers (who also offered to let me sit with them and drink a while - now why am I here, instead? hmm...) and cool sprays from water sprinklers. Members of the police department and medical emergency units stood in traffic intersections to keep civilian vehicles out of our way so I made sure I waved and thanked every one of them for using their holiday to secure the road for serious runners and casual joggers alike.

I spoke with a few runners, enjoying the roving party atmosphere, like moving from room to room at a social gathering, never spending more than a few minutes with any one person and sometimes running into the same person again 30 minutes later. I would have talked longer with a few guys and gals I met but our jogging/walking paces rarely matched up. One woman said many things to me but my tinnitus blocked much of what she said - life is full of missed opportunities and deafness cut out anything I could have learned from her. Oh well.

One nice thing about road races in town - I finished the race at 8:20, returned to the car at 8:25, walked into my house at 8:45, and showered, ate a snack, played with the cats, kissed my wife and got here by 9:15.

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I ordered five copies of my book, Are You With The Program?, to give to the five best students/customers in the spring quarter course I taught, Strategies for the Technical Professional. All the students/customers in my classes need to know they can do anything they set their minds to accomplish but I don't have unlimited funds so I've selected the top five in one class to plant the seed of success in them and hope they grow and share their successes with others.

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Time to rest, relax, drink a beer and enjoy this holiday with my wife! Adios, amigos!