A Fair Wind Doth Loom

No pressure. It’s liberating. Forecast says headwind. Who cares? When my competitive days are over (which they might already be, who knows?) I think I could enjoy this low pressure version of racing. Tomorrow is the Boston Marathon, and it just doesn’t matter.

It’s a good thing, because frankly, my legs feel really lousy. I’d been on some sweet anti-inflammatory meds since early March, courtesy of Dr. Foot Doctor. I’d started to think they weren’t doing anything anymore. Then I finished them up about a week ago. Hello. Guess what? They were very effective. And now they’re gone. And now I hurt. Oh, dear sweet meds, I miss thee. So, all the better that tomorrow is just for fun. I’ll start, I’ll go till I’ve had enough, then I’ll stop and I won’t care.

Allow me to explain all this to any new readers brought here by my devious Boston plan, about to be hatched. I started this blog last summer to elaborate on the adventure of picking this sport up again after a 20+ year break, thus the title, “The Second Lap”. Wander back in the archives to last August to read the blog intro. Then, soak up my running life history in a few phrases: ran in high school, took a long time off, started again in 2005, broke 3 hours last year, and again, and again, but the third time wasn’t a charm. Wander to October and see what happened at the Wineglass Marathon, then the surgery, the recovery, and tomorrow I’ll start at Boston just because, why not? Since I’ll be slow and don’t expect to finish, I’ve decided to have some fun and make people smile.

So what’s the devious plan? Just to close the circle on brewing some smiles. I blew a few bucks on a tiny camera, rigged it to my fuel belt, and plan to document tomorrow’s adventure. And since everyone likes to see their picture, I plan to hand out little laminated slips pointing to my blog to give out some photographic joy. I’ll try to post the half-decent pictures over the next few weeks. Just because. So if you were the lucky winner of one of those laminated slips – and you didn’t lose it – stay in touch and you will hopefully find your smiling mug or even an action shot. Enjoy!

To see if this would work, I took my photo-belt-thingy out for a test drive Saturday morning with my running club buds, and the “in motion yield” – see below – wasn’t too bad. Smile for the camera, Striders! You’ve made a major contribution to science! And by the way, watch for the guy in black, he’ll be out there tomorrow as well.

I’ll close now, time to catch some snooze, the alarm goes off way too early on marathon days, even when it just doesn’t matter. Good luck and safe passage to all in Hopkinton tomorrow!