Three (Martian Races) is a Crowd/Holy Crap, What Just Happened in Boston?

After surviving the Flushing Half unscathed, and even managing to put up a semi-average time, I was in the clear for this race.  The course was closed to traffic.  It was a cool day.  There were several hundred people for me to latch onto for pace.  Everything looked good for me to go in and put up another respectable Martian time.

With every pair of shoes I own having long entered the zone of "total crap" months ago, it was time to get something new.  Feeling guilty for leaving out the Reebok's in the March Madness of Shoes last year, I was pretty partial to them in the store, and came up with these.  I nicknamed them "The Rinzlers" (only Running Spike will get this) based on the look.

Friday night J and I went out to see some music downtown.  Our friends Arlow Xan were playing along with a couple other goodies like Brites, Champions of Breakfast, etc.  I've been on a huge local music kick lately.  National acts are just getting too expensive to see, and it's just hardly ever worth it anymore, so I've kind of backed out of the bigger shows.  It was okay to pay shell out more when you still had a chance of getting good seats, but the days of camping out and waiting at Ticketmaster and of getting the first few rows (now basically reserved for fans that shell out a ton of money to be in a bands fan club) are over.  So I've kind of given up.

So we stayed out for that until about midnight, and I got home to my wife....yadda yadda yadda....I didn't get to sleep until about 1:30 and I was really tired when I had to get up at 4:30.  Oh well, right?  Three hours is the perfect amount of pre-half marathon sleep. 

We drove down, and with the early start, we actually found parking easily and were actually pretty close to Ford Field for once.  We picked up our packets without a lot of trouble and headed back to the car to drop off the non-essentials, and ran into another runner we went to high school with.  I debated dropping my jacket off, but ended up keeping it, and we headed back down near the starting line. 

I ran into fellow blogger Ty.  Well, more like she came by me and asked if I was me, and said hello.  I was in some sort of tired self-loathing stupor wishing I was still in bed, and not getting up for another 3 hours to make breakfast and watch the West Ham game.  That was a first, though, getting recognized from here.  No pictures to prove we met, though.  My point and shoot is dead, and has not been replaced, so you'll have to take our word for it.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting around, the race was about to head off, and then we got word of another 10 minute delay.  I took the extra time to slip my "We Come In Peace" shirt over my jacket so it would be visible and I could stay in the race's festive Martian spirit.  Shortly after that, we headed off.

Half a mile in I started swearing at myself.  I didn't want that stupid jacket now.  I was too hot, and it was bothering me.  I was already kind of cranky, and this didn't help.  It's never very good when, right off the bat in a race, you're in a completely negative place, and I was definitely there.  My pace slowed pretty significantly, and mentally I just didn't want to be there.

It took forever for me to shake that feeling.  We headed off on a detour from the usual route, and you had some of the faster runners coming back at you.  I think I saw Ty like 3 or 4 times in those neighborhood turnaround jots.  Also saw my other two people, and I was in the middle of each of them.  I think it took until about mile 7 where I finally just told myself, "Yeah, you're too hot, but overdressing is a good way to drop some pounds, run it out, and consider it a training run."  That bounced me back a bit, and I finished fairly strong. 

I'm sure I lost a ton of time in the first half though, and by then it was just too late.  I caught quite a few runners from mile 8 on, despite the fact the new shoes weren't agreeing with me.  I cruised in down the final stretch pretty fast thinking that I had way too much energy left, and the clock time up ahead did not look very good to me 2:22 and some change.

I grabbed my medal, which was handed to me in a bag and not placed around my neck.  No matter, it was kind of symbolic for me.  Instead of a congratulatory, "Here's your medal, you are a champion" type of vibe that comes with getting a medal around your neck, I got a "Here's your medal, you're not special, you kind of suck today" hand off.  I probably deserved less.

I waited for J, figuring our other guy was already in his truck and long gone from Dearborn (I didn't see him).  Suddenly I was freezing, and, for the first time that day, was glad I had my jacket on.  When he came in, we went straight to the car, got on some dry clothes and went over to Buddy's for some pizza.  I've never been there.  It was decent.  I was much more interested in my Founder's Porter and the Bell's Oberon I had than my four-square.  After that, we popped into some place that was advertising cheesecake.  I'm not a fan of it, but I figured I could get one for the wife and continue to bank bonus points that will come in handy in the later years as I continue to become more and more of a wrinkled curmudgeon.  Unfortunately, the place had only one slice of cheesecake, so that plan was scratched.

We headed back to the car, waited for the hordes of cars in line to get out of the lot to clear while listening to the FA cup game between Milwall (boo) and Wigan, and headed back home.  I knew I was pretty close to having a PU (personal underacheivement), but J kept massaging my ego saying he was sure it took us multiple minutes to get to the starting line (which I didn't believe).  I checked the times later, and saw it officially, a 2:21:28.  Worst half ever.  I stink.  What I avoided in Flushing, came back in Dearborn.

Meanwhile, I'm still feeling some pretty harsh after effects.  My legs are extremely sore, and the bottoms of my feet feel like they've been pounded with a hammer, even two days later.  I partially blame the shoes.  It felt like I would have almost been better off wearing horse shoes out there.  I felt every step after about halfway through.  My left knee also has a nice click to it right now when I bend it.  I'm not sure what's going on there.  I guess this is what I get for naming shoes after a villian and not testing them on a long haul before giving them an official race nod.

Adding insult to injury, my homebrewed beer is not behaving itself.  I'm two weeks into bottling and the carbonation is weak as hell.  This is especially surprising, given the fact I was on the high end for the priming sugar.  Wondering if there's a possibility the basement location is just too cold right now (last batch brewed was down there in June), I've moved the kids upstairs hoping to wake up some yeast and get them attacking that remainder priming sugar.  If this doesn't work, I'm going to have to go through a semi-arduous process to save it.  The flavor's too good to give up on if it doesn't carbonate.  For now, though, I am just going to have faith that the move to a warmer climate will get the job done.
 
I'm hoping this all gets better soon, although my legs have been uncharacteristically sore for a while now.  Again, nobody to blame for that but me, because look what I put them through, and what they're force to lug around out there.  Anybody's legs would be getting burned out from that.  We'll see what happens.  All I can do is keep running, and be thankful I haven't joined the ranks of the injured.

...and as I'm just finishing this up (most of it was written yesterday) and getting home and I'm just seeing what just happened at Boston.  Two people dead and multiples of people seriously injured.  Who attacks runners?  This is bullshit!  Those poor people.  I'm sure we'll all be talking about this in the coming days.  Scary stuff.