Snake Oil & Viagra

Best blog comment I ever got was from Scott yesterday:

You have an awesome blog! Keep it up! I have snake oil and viagra here, guaranteed to put you in the money in Rosemont.

Had I seen the comment earlier, I may have taken him up on the performance enhancers. I could have used just a little boost.

Before I get to my self-absorbed little world lemme just say that Scott must have taken some performance enhancers for his writing yesterday. His (Oct. 1) blog entry left my mouth hanging and my soul colored with more than just a tinge of jealousy, as he uses his running to write about Philadelphia in dimensions I've pursued to in numerous blog entries, but have yet to capture as well as he does here.

So I take small comfort in that I can still run faster than he can :-). Which brings us to Rosemont. Fun little race, put on by a Catholic school in an old leafy suburb on a campus where you just want to say "and you're holding a fundraiser 'cause you need money for what?" The whole family, plus KF (who's becoming a part-time family member on race days) trekked out there, M & C doing the 1-mile fun run at 8:30 and KF, T and myself lining up for the 5k.

The more I write these reports the more they all sound the same, so I'll just stick to the basics. The race quickly pared down to four of us: two old farts (me and KF) and two college cross country boys; three of us who would get a payday. The course was all up and downhill and mile 1 passed in 5:19 with me worrying about further screwing up my achilles and really not feeling like competing. It didn't help that I was in fourth place at the time. However I downshifted on an uphill, lumbered past KF and one of the boys, and suddenly the other boy was about 100 yards ahead of me and I heard no sign of anyone behind me.

That was basically the race. The next miles went by in 5:26 and 5:29, and somehow the last 0.1 went by in 50 seconds (either a long course, although USATF certified, or the mile markers were short). Final time was 17:06. Time was slower than it could have been as at about mile 2.9 a cop who was supposed to clear a major intersection for runners stood by and watched the cars pass, forcing me to stop for a second or two and lose my rhythm. Collecting triple time for that. . . WTF? But the delay didn't make a difference in the finishing order as I got second, sandwiched between the two XC boys.

My favorite part of racing with T is then cooling down and retracing the route backwards until I meet up with him. This occurred a little before the 2-mile mark and KF and I ran him in. He was looking strong although he had a hard time on the hills, but fooled me with a big kick to finish in 37:30 (again I'm jealous). I was going to take the opportunity to take a bite out of the cops ass on the way back but he was out in the intersection stopping traffic and a car just blows by him (if it were a cartoon he would have been spun around and left in his underwear). So I figured probably not the best time to mention the previous incident.

I got a $75 payday for my finish, most of which I subsequently blew on breakfast for everybody. Why is it impossible to find a diner on the Main Line? Legs feel great, maybe because a 5k and a few mile warm up/cool down amount to an easy day these days. How sad is that?

KF and I then spent most of the afternoon watching the last weekend of baseball. I'm disappointed, but nonetheless proud of the Phillies. They did what they had to do and almost got some help as the Cubs took Houston to the final out of the season.

There's an integral part of Philadelphia that Scott didn't mention: how our sports teams constantly take us to the altar and jilt us, and each season we come back for more.