Double-Crim and Title Defense

I know it's been a while.  I've been missing on canoe trip and many other things.  Long story short, rivers are really low, but we only were tipped by the 1000s of obstacles once, which made my wife and I very happy.  I lost my sunglasses for the 3rd year in a row.  High five for consistency.  Plenty of the homebrewed Oktoberfest was consumed, we got a bottle of the Sam Adams Infinium (which, though a commercial disaster, was pretty decent to me...though overpriced, no doubt), and there were numerous Oberon and Yuengling bottles lying around.  For the river trip (given glass is disallowed) we had Sierra Nevadas, Blue Moons, and Magic Hat #9.  Finding MH9 and Sierra in cans made me very happy.  Blue Moon, well, that was for my lady.  Lots of eating of brats, and much sadness for the loss of Ma's Girls Cafe, which is now closed somehow, even though the breakfast was awesome.  Not as awesome a trip with less people, lower water, and new owners at the campground, but we managed.  It might be time to change things up next year, though.

After the canoeing, we did our usual Tawas stop to see our favorite hippo.  Ignore my Hawaiian shirt and horrible Metallica Load shirt, I purposely dress awful for vacation.  It's my thing.  The townies make fun of the fudgey tourists so much that I feel the need to be an in-your-face stereotype of it.  The man to my right in this photo, who is from the North ensures me I'm doing a good job of that.  I can hear you thinking, "Yes, but you still bought that hideous Load shirt in the late 90s."  Stop it.

Wednesday J and I ran the 10 mile Crim route, back-to-back (and some change).

Start

After Crim #1

After Crim #2

If 20+ miles weren't enough Wednesday, I chased it down with an 8K race earlier today (yesterday now, since it's 2am).  I had an age group title defense @ the Ophelia Bonner (don't say it too fast or it sounds dirty).  I was a little tired from the long run, so I was a whole 12 seconds slower than my 8k PR last year.  Cut me a break though, because I did defend my turf....against the only other 30-34 guy that bothered to show up and run the 8K.  Had he ran the 5K (or either of us, for that matter) it would have been an automatic 1st.  Where is everyone?  This race has everything (best Stefon voice)...trophies, pissy people from my neighborhood mad about traffic keeping them an extra 10 minutes when they're trying to get home, student volunteers from Flint Northern that cheer you on with really good enthusiasm, watermelon and bunches of grapes afterward, stinking up and sweating all over U of M property, and human parking cones.  I guess I can keep winning this thing the next 2 years if you guys don't want to show up.  All I'm saying is, that you just have to beat a chubby guy running a little over 9min miles to get the 1st in 30-34....

They even match

Anyway, just thought I'd stay up way too late and update.  I haven't even put mileage into daily mile either, so I don't want some sort of worry about my running and/or living status while I'm ignoring the existence of the internet for the next 7-10 days.  Chances are you won't hear from me again until I finish the 2012 sequel of Warrior Dash, and I'll probably even have a race somewhere "Up North," before then.

Toodley Doodley

Huckleberry Hustle

Nope, no nifty word play again, just citing the name of the race.

Pre-Race Stuff

While I'm bored to tears at work, I might as well give you the setup leading into today's race.  First off, I'm going camping this weekend, and haven't done anything to get ready yet, other than go to Almar Orchards and buy a case (yes a case) of two varieties of organic hard cider (Scrumpy and Solstice).  If you're ever in Flushing, MI, look them up (also see Koans and McCarrons orchards, because they all offer something different).  Anyway, that's the extent of the preparation I've done for the 2nd Annual Canoe Trip, other than making a half-baked checklist of very unimportant things not to forget. 

The canoe trip came about last year because we missed Nick3's (yes I number them, their name is too common not to at this point) 5th of July party.  The 5th party was a summer fixture until his family sold the place on the lake, and we never really replaced it with anything.  We'd been talking about a canoe trip for years, but things kept interrupting it.  One of the years when we actually had it all put together.  It was abandoned because our friend suddenly wanted to move to California, and we had to send him off that weekend instead.  Besides, he was our planner person, anyway.  I'm still pretty sure none of us would have got this thing rolling had my girlfriend, now fiance, just called and set it up last year. 

It was really fun, minus the two boat flips Jessi and I had, which weren't just nice "oopsy" flips.  They were "owww rocks and I can't hold the boat still enough to get back in" flips.  The root causes of the flips are still up for debate, because I haven't learned those four magic words ("yes dear, you're right").  We also had some comedic neighbors last year.  The mixed UofM/MSU group next to us was pretty rowdy until their 8 hour canoe trip wiped them out the last day.  There was also the crazy Canadians that out-partied the entire camp leaving an unending trail of beer cans (which they did pick up in the morning).  They even took a La-Z-Boy  chair that someone threw out on the adjacent road and sat it next to their fire for a few nights.  They then burned it the last night they were there. leaving only some smoldering scrap metal in the fire pit.  As I said, they put our "party" to shame.  Hopefully we'll get a chance to redeem ourselves.  We'll have at least 10 people this year, where last year we only had 6.  I will try not to throw at baseballs at anyone's head, and bring some Sun Chips for the raccoon (see 1st Canoe Trip)

Anyway, the Huckleberry Hustle is a race out at Crossroads Villiage, which is a small park run by Genesee County that has a mid-1800s theme.  I don't believe I'll be in period dress for the race, but I hope that isn't a problem.  What may be a problem is the 6 tacos that I had for lunch ("I love them little tacos.  I love them good!").  That's a lotta taco.  The race is at 7pm, which is right smack dab in the middle of when I should be getting things ready tonight.  Our tent smell awful, so I absolutely must put that up tonight to air out.  If not, I need to find where I can buy some new cartridges for my respirator mask.  I don't see taking the race too seriously, and I want to take a few photos as I go.  That may change depending on how well I digest and if I feel like actually running hard.  I doubt it.  Anyway, updates on the race later tonight...if I have time.  If not, I'll get it with all the "non-running weekend" camping/canoeing stuff when I come back.

The Race

Let me just begin with stating that the streak of me finishing ahead of Jason is over.  He darted off at the start, and there was just no catching him.  I'd like to blame the tacos, that we just had a distance run and my body's still thinking long distance, or the fact that it was a trail run...well no I don't like to blame race performance on anything really.  I was just slower today, and he was faster.  Still well within the usual margin of error though, and with a 5K average that's still sitting around 32:00, I'm not going to complain about a 27:05?...or something like that (finally checked...27:03 officially).  I forgot to take pictures (because I forgot a camera), but I did relax and enjoy the run, despite trying to catch a skinny man with a blue shirt and yellow stripes.  Yeah, I could see Jason up there, but he was a long ways away.  Honestly, I think it will be best for both of us if we actually have a little back and forth for a while.

As I said, it was mostly a trail run, with a little bit of gravel road through Crossroads Village.  It was closed by the time I got there, so there weren't any old timey people around except for a few people dressed as train conductors.  If I had that outfit, I'd just wear it all the time.  Another woman and on of them was addressing us over a P.A. before the race and saying a bunch of things that I'm pretty sure nobody heard at all.  Loud doesn't really help when clarity is completely lost.  Other than just enjoying the charms of the old buildings and town, there were a few animals there (goats, a calf, a donkey, and alpacas), every runner got a free ride on the old carosel (which I skipped out on...they're constantly restoring that thing as it is, I don't need to go all human waterfall on it and erode half the paint off), and they were giving out some berry blue after (which is my official Detroit Lions Kool-Aid...but never seems to do any good).

All in all a pretty good race.  My apologies for no pictures, I'm just not the shutterbug in this household.  Anyway, it's time for me to pack vacation shirts.  Yep, that's right, it's time to find the ugliest shirts I still own and wear them publicly just to prove I'm on vacation and don't care.  I can already picture Jessi shaking her head.