Sunday was Valentine's Day. Yesterday was President's Day. Today is Slap a Bus Day. If you see a bus, slap it. I did. I was trying to take it up a notch today. When I got to the CircleK/Day Laborers' intersection, this school bus was in such a big hurry to make a right-hand turn before the light turned red that it almost hit me. Being a man that honors his civic duties, I slapped the bus. I hope the driver heard it, but I know the bus driver right behind him or her saw it.
Time - 43:07 (avg. pace 7:43)
Splits -
1 mile - 7:44 - I had restless night's sleep with a bit of a cough and a sore throat, but when I started running, I was feeling good.
2 mile - 6:54 - this one's for you, Brent. 0.7 miles into this one is where the bus incident occurred. I was probably running an 8:30 pace up to then and then the adrenaline kicked in for the last 0.3, upping my average pace for the mile to 6:54. (Let me do the math on that. LOL! Yeah, 3:10 pace. 18.9 mph. It could happen.)
3 mile - 7:53
4 mile - 7:09 - another sub 7:15 for Brent.
5 mile - 8:34 - cool down
last 0.59 - 4:53 (8:17 pace) I stretched right afterwards, and I'm feeling, yep, you guessed it, great!
Here's a story about when I was young and I thought I was tough. I did not qualify for state my senior year in high school because I had the fastest kids in the state in my division. Anybody ever hear of the Martin twins from Page? My high school coach used to tease me about my running form. He called it my arm roll. I guess I used to bring one of my arms down like I was playing the drums. I probably still do it, but don't notice it. Anyway, I entered a 5k that year that was held on the same day as the state meet. I ended up taking 2nd place overall and first in my age division. That's a pretty good story that I'll have to tell some day, too.
The following year I was preparing to go on my mission, and I wanted to run that same race again. I now had to train on my own. As I was about 5 miles into my run one day, these punk 9th graders started making fun of my arm roll. At first I let it go, but the one kid started to laugh like Nelson on the Simpsons. So I turned around and confronted them. There were three of them. One was in his yard on the other side of a chain link fence. One was on his bike wearing a hat. And the other was standing there like Scut Farkus's little toadie, Grover Dill. He had yellow eyes! So help me, yellow eyes!
I asked Scut what that thing was he was doing with his arm. [Enter inappropriate comment for most age groups except for 9th graders.] "No. I wasn't doing that." Then I knocked the hat off his head and over the fence. "Well, I hope not" I said. Side note: If you're ever going to get in a fight with someone younger than you, jump all his friends, too. That way if you get beat up, you can say it took three of them to do it. If you get your butt kicked by someone four years younger than you, you'll never live it down. Back to the story. I thought I made my point, so I was on my way again. Then Grover did his Nelson laugh again. "Let it go, Burt. It's not worth it." Not wanting to be the guy to get beat up by someone four years younger than him, I did let it go. That turned out to be a great decision. Not a minute later a sheriff's car came driving down the road.
The moral of the story is, when you're a 160 lb. bean pole trying to go out and serve the Lord, don't act like a hot shot. You will get beat up and thrown in jail. | 