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Envirofest 5k East Nantmeal Township, Pennsylvania Saturday, May 3, 2008 Well, it was good to do a race today, my first competitive event of the year, the start of my 16th year of racing. And, though I don’t normally bother with reports for “short” activities, there are some things I want to get out, so I’ll cobble together a few words. This may be a bit disjointed, so read along at your own peril. It’s been kind of a trying 2008 so far. I had a hernia repaired on January 2nd. That’s a little story unto itself that I might as well throw out here. Jeff, my surgeon, is a fraternity brother. Heck, I’ve known him longer than I’ve known Renate. He has me come into the office the Friday before Christmas for an exam. I get there a few minutes early, as I do for everything, and there’s a handful of folks sitting in the waiting room. I check in with the receptionist and get the forms to fill out. I didn’t even get my butt back into the chair when Jeff bangs on the glass partition and waves me in. I feel the stares of the other patients as I walk through the door. Where Jeff’s assistant promptly says, “So, let’s see it.” I’m a tad confused. She adds, “The secret handshake. Don’t you guys have one?” Ok. It’s a relief that she doesn’t want me to drop trou right here to show her my hernia. We do some juvenile white boy thing that passes as our “secret” handshake. It turns out that I do, indeed, have a hernia. Jeff is going away for the holidays, down to some island, but he’ll rearrange his schedule and have me be his first operation when he gets back after the New Year. Oh, boy. He’s either going to still be drunk or suffering the hangover from hell. Do I really want him slicing me open? The surgery went well, but I didn’t run until February 1st while waiting for it to, slowly, heal. Then I was too stupid and I did too much too soon leading to a batch of patellar tendonitis in my right knee. My rationale for having weekly totals of 10, 25, 37, 55, and 76 miles over the course of five weeks was that I was hoping to be able to get ready for the T-3 gathering at the Eugene Marathon in Oregon. Which is this weekend, as a matter of fact. The tendonitis resulted in another couple of weeks of recovery. To give myself something to do, I started making a little pond. We have a spring that runs in front of our house, midway between the house and the road. I found what appeared to be a good spot and started digging down and around, piling the muck and rocks up as kind of a dam. It’s really just a few steps above a mud puddle. Any self-respecting beaver would take a look at my dam and snort “man made, that’s for sure.” But, the puddles as I have taken to calling them, have been holding water and the dams have survived two pretty nasty thunderstorms, and lots of frogs have moved in. It’s given me something to do and it’s been a bit therapeutic. Which is good. Because, on April 10th, my Mom passed away. I spent ten days up in Rome with my Dad and my siblings and assorted relatives and in-laws. Though it was an extremely painful time, I think we laughed more than we have in years. I also think we cleaned out all the Guinness in town. The Guinness folks are going to look at their sales data and wonder what the heck that spike in mid-April was. Well, here’s a note to you Guinness people. The same thing will happen in July when we all get back together for the Boilermaker. The spike shouldn’t be quite as high because some of us will consume too much free Saranac after the 15k race. Also, we won’t be in town for as many days. And, everybody will probably show up with a case. So, never mind about that July spike. Anyway, as I mentioned, I’ve been using the puddles as therapy. Kind of just being a boy again, playing in the mud. Getting ready to hear Mom say something like, “You’d better not be tracking all that mud into the house.” As with most things, there have been good days and bad. Sunday, the 11th, is going to be a bad day. But, I’ll worry about that next week. Back, again, to the running. After getting the diagnosis for patellar tendonitis, I’ve been going to the Village of Eagle Physical Therapy clinic. Oh, I also have a batch of tennis elbow in my right elbow, but, since I don’t play tennis, I think it’s more a case of beer drinker’s elbow. Or, maybe, mouse elbow from too much computer time. No, it has to be beer drinker’s elbow. Anyway, the physical therapy has gone well and I’d have to say my knee is 100% (massive knocking on wood). The elbow is still troublesome, but, as it interferes with neither my running nor my beer drinking, I’m not overly concerned. My weekly running miles have gone from 10 to this week’s 35 in conservative increments of five miles per week. Next week will be 40 miles and I’ll get to go from four runs per week to five. What fun! (That's a Mom-ism.) I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. About a week after we returned home following Mom’s funeral, Laramie, one of our two 12 year old black labs, started having issues. Mostly, he wasn’t eating well and . . . Well, there’s really no need to go into detail. I took him into the vet where the doctor thought it was a bug of some kind and prescribed antibiotics. After a week, Laramie was getting worse and now he wasn’t sleeping well. Renate and I recognized that it was probably close to the end for him and, on Thursday, May 1st, it was back to the vet. So, the damn dog goes sprinting out to the jeep and is jumping all around and is happy and is back to how he used to be. Ok, let’s see what the vet has to say. The physical exam doesn’t show up anything negative, nor does the blood work. I ask for an x-ray. I knew as soon as the vet assistant came back to get us with “Mr. and Mrs. Noone can you come with me . . .” that something wasn’t good. Suffice it to say that there was a bunch of crying and lots of hugging and petting. Reassuring Laramie that he was a good dog. That he was loved and that he would be missed. Man, that was a tough drive home. Lots of extra attention for Jackson, Laramie’s brother. And I got totally and completely drunk. Which turned Friday into a recovery day. Because I drank all of my Fat Dog Stout yesterday, I had to venture out to the beer store, which happens to be right next to the vet. More tears welling up in my eyes as I drove by. At the beer store, I found some Black Dog Ale which seemed kind of appropriate. I wasn’t planning on drinking anything Friday, but I had to go down to the puddles and drink one for Laramie. I’m sure Jackson understood that I wouldn’t be drinking one for him until later today. Now, it’s time to get to the reason for this report. So, today I ran the Envirofest 5k. It’s a local race, predominantly in our lovely township of East Nantmeal. In fact, the course goes right by our old house. As far as I know, the first occurrence of the event was back in ’05 and Renate and I participated. Renate, joined by Jeanne, her training partner and our neighbor, walked and I ran. I was fortunate to come in first overall, with a time of 18:23, and I won a lovely heating pad. The three of us also did the race in ’06. I slipped to second overall even though I was 15 seconds faster, finishing in 18:08. I don’t think first place broke 18 minutes, but if he did, it was just barely. This year I had no idea as to what to expect. I was hoping to break 19 minutes, but, with my very limited training and no hard running, I wasn’t too hung up on that goal. Like in ‘06, I ran over to the race site from our current house. That’s about a six mile warm up run. I struggled with it, being unsuccessful at keeping my heart rate under control. Probably still some aftereffects from Thursday. That had me a little concerned about how the race would go. Renate and Jeanne had driven over (they would walk the six miles back home while I drove) and registered all of us. I had about 20 minutes of time before the race, but I needed to transition my shoes and pin on my bib. A quick shake out run and then it was time to head to the starting line. I’d say there are 50 to 75 people with numbers on their chests (or other body parts). I didn’t really scope out the competition, but I’m right on the line, pretending to be Kenyan. The siren goes off and I ease up to speed. Two sub-15 girls (that’s age, not time) go sprinting and shrieking down the road. I’m not worried about them. A young guy, maybe a high school cross country runner I think, moves on ahead, as well. That might be some competition. I keep waiting for others to go by, but nobody ever does. Still, it’s way early and they may just be stalking me and the young kid. I know the roads well because I’ve logged lots of miles here. I know where the hills are and how high they are. The girls are soon dispatched, their shrieking quickly ceased after about ten yards, and it’s just the kid up ahead. Half a mile into the race, I’m running side by side with him. I’m working pretty hard, maybe too hard, but I keep my breathing quiet and steady. He’s making a lot of noise, both with his breathing and with his running. Good. We’ve crested a small hill and now there’s a bit of downtrend. I gently press on the accelerator, I don’t want to spin the tires, and open up a gap. I can hear it growing, as the sound of the kid’s slapping feet fades. Now it’s an uphill and I make sure to attack it. It feels good to be running hard again. It’s too much hurt for this early in the race, but it’s good. What’s happening behind me, I don’t know. No sense hanging around to find out. Like digging in the mud, this fast running is helpful with giving me other things to think about. Might as well keep at it. There’s a left turn and I take a quick glance behind. The kid is still within range, but I don’t think he’ll challenge me. The first mile mark and I get a 6:15 split. That’s not gonna get me sub-19. Still, it’s been a mostly uphill mile and I know the second mile has lots of downhill. Maybe I can pick up enough to get on track and then some. Because the third mile is back to predominantly uphill running before finishing up the race mostly flat. There’s a water station set up in some guy’s driveway, about the half way point of the run. Nothing for me, but I thank the folks for being out. Another left turn. Another glance back. Ok. This is my race to lose. There appear to be about four or five folks kind of close to each other, but none that stick out as being able to cut into my gap. Past the farmhouse with the three dogs held in the yard by an invisible fence. Man, those dogs are going to go batsh!t when the batch of runners goes by. There’s the two mile mark and a 5:57 for the split. That’s good, but it’s not going to cut it. Because I get to start the third mile with the steepest climb of the day. Now, I’m not talking Everest-like climbs (according to my GPS, maybe 80 feet in a quarter mile for this one), but enough to make for some heavy breathing and slower running. I figure if I can hold form and maintain some semblance of pace, I shouldn’t have an issue with getting caught. I run past our old house. It’s for sale. So are two others near by. There are only nine homes on this stretch of road, I think, and three are for sale. Random folks are out and about, clapping and cheering. I always try to express my thanks. Then it’s the last hill of the day. The thought process is to get up this with lunch, or breakfast as the case may be, intact. At the top, guts staying put, a quick glance at my watch shows that I’d have to work pretty hard to break 19 minutes. I’m not sure I have it in me. I set it on cruise a little and make the turn up the main driveway of the finishing property, another little bend and a slight uphill, on grass, finish. The clock says 19:09 when I cross the line. My slowest 5k ever. (I’ve only run nine of them over the years. Well, not including a handful of triathlon and duathlon 5k’s.) Still, I got the win and I was able to run hard with no ill effects. The photographer people (the race is part of an environmental festival and they have folks running around taking pictures) are all out of whack and I have to go back and stand in the chute pretending to have just finished. Ok. I can do that. It takes another thirty seconds or so, maybe to right around 21 minutes of race time, for second, followed quickly by third and fourth, to cross the line. The young kid ends up fourth, right behind his competition. I congratulate all of them and head over to the jeep to change my shirt and shoes. Then it’s back onto the course to take a few pictures of the ladies. They finished in 37 minutes, achieving their normal goal of being faster than two times me. There’s the usual wait for the awards, but Renate and Jeanne fill up the time talking to anyone and everyone. Finally the winners are called, starting with the old age groups and working down towards the overall winners. I get a nice medal, just like everybody else’s, and an envelope with a gift certificate for a Road ID. I already have one, the Road ID, and I’m thinking to whom to give the certificate. I look inside the envelope just for grins. Hot damn! There’s a $50 bill in there. Good thing I didn’t just hand the envelope to somebody. If I were in Eugene, I’d be buying beers for my teammates. So, that’s how things went. I miss my Mom and I miss my dog. But, I know they both would be proud that I’m out running, even if I wasn’t doing so well. Actually, Laramie wouldn’t have cared. He wasn’t a running dog. He would have just wondered when he was going to get his next biscuit and when somebody was going to drop some food onto the kitchen floor. And Mom, though never a runner, I think she just got a kick out of everything I did. I know she really liked the race we did out in Wyoming last May, Renate and I and Roger and Mary Ivy and Jeff, and the gathering we had with her side of the family in Cheyenne. I’m sure she was entertained – What a hoot! (Another Mom-ism.) – how all my siblings, along with a couple of spouses, have gotten into this silly running thing. Though, half of us coming home drunk at noon on Sunday, after the Boilermaker, probably caused a bit of eye rolling. But, Mom, we did have designated drivers. (Thanks to Jeff and Lori for that.) That's about all for now. I may, eventually, include a few pictures, but, right now, I think I’m going to go get a beer. Or two. |
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Thanks, everybody, for reading. If anybody has any comments, queries, suggestions, corrections, etc., please pass them along.
Return to Noone's Saloone & Golf Club. Originally published on May 4, 2008. |