Where: Veteran's Park (21st & Boulder)
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It’s Your Choice
Fall is in the air, which means it’s Race Season. But it can be a nasty affair, what with the trash talking, oneups-man/manetteship, a general overstatement of one’s own fitness for service and PR worthiness, and all at the sake of bettering thyself at the detriment of others. But this combativeness is rarely limited to one party or the other, as once it starts it almost guarantees similar responses and behaviors from the others. Season after season has deeply instilled the belief that the mental games waged between Race competitors can be more hurtful than the physical skills associated with physically outpacing all challengers. If you are successful in getting the others to flinch, especially when captured for You Tube expose’, then victory is nearly a formality for the numbers to bear out – that is, unless you flinch back or lose your pace or sense of direction.
Yesems, the positioning for the heralded positions of Fall/Winter Run Leaders is already shaping up, and the ugliness has already started. It seems to start a little earlier each year, such that by the time that the actual selection occur, nobody seems to care anymore other than to wish it was over already. I mean seriously, whether one initiates their stride from the left or the right position really won’t leave a lasting impression on the world.
One’s position regarding the tolerance for those who share the trails from the position of the seated, AKA “bikers”, is hardly the dividing issue that it is made to be. Why can’t we all just agree that the wheel brigades are simply annoying and leave it at that, as opposed to frenzying up the foot soldiers nearly to the point of regrettable and irreversible actions? So, as a voice of experience imagined, be especially cautious over the next few weeks of solicitous offers of gu sharing, bottle buddies, tune trading, and pace making that are not so clever disguises of vying for run and runnerette allegiances. And remember, once the results are in, we are quickly cast aside as last year’s 500 mile snarly sneaks – having done their time and advanced the leaders to their new justification for self-worshipping "blogs" (i.e., weekly run invitations).But the Domi-Noes and Domi-Nettes remain undeterred, as we have a more relevant goal within our sights. We Race for Marathons, the good kind, the ones that leave you gasping and in all sorts of pains in places that you never knew existed. (OK, that really doesn’t sound different than the political race outcomes.) This week’s rendition finds us in quest of a 13-mile training run, on a path that incorporates the middle chunk of the Route 66 Marathon Course – something to teethe on before the November Race.
We will once again observe our version of Runners World daylight slaying time
by starting at 5:45 AM’ish at Veteran’s Park, thereby saving the precious daylight hours for napping, goofing off, and generally justifying the postponement of any undesirable chores ‘cause we have to “recover” by cheering for our favorite teams in our snorefested stupor.Just to be clear, and to ensure that there are no unfair advantages, each of us is free to make our own biased decision on whether it would be better to be “governed” to “Fall In” or to “Ask In”. Either way, we have to get in, buy in, and be in to have our soles counted. (NOTE: This unpaid and understandably unsponsored announcement has been brought to you by the Heeled Union of Run Leaders in Training “HURL-IT”.)
At the end of the run, remember that It’s Your Choice.
Larry
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