Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I went for a run this evening in my new shorts and shoes.  I may not be fast, but I was styling.  The shoes felt good, but I started to notice some pain on top of my foot after a while.  Was it the shoes or the fact that I haven't been running much lately?  Time will tell.  No Garmin.  My rubber handle has split, so I'll have to get that replaced.

In other news, I recently was asked to vote on the best marathon medals of 2011.  Apparently, some guy named Frank Shorter was asked to be on the voting panel, but he never got back to them.  As usual, I stepped in at the last second to save the day.

2 miles in the frigid 37° cold.

I am always self conscious on cold days when you can see your breath about passing gas.

Well, it's nice to know I can still run 10 miles.  I can't do it fast, but I can do it.  Glen the Gazelle and I drove together to the race this morning.  I really enjoy his company.  There were a lot of familiar faces.  Which means a lot of fast faces.  I knew I was not in race shape, so I told Glen that I was not going to get caught up in the heat of the moment and try to run fast, and that he should go do what he do.  (I love talking like that.) He beat me by almost 20 minutes.

Since I'm still waiting on a replacement handle for my Garmin I remembered the time Glen told me about how he downloaded a free app called Endomondo for his smart phone that works like Garmin.  So I downloaded it before the race.  Luckily I had my new shorty shorts (there not that short) with the zippers on the pockets.  I had my truck keys in one pocket and my phone in the other.  At times during the race I could hear my pocket talking to me, but I couldn't tell what it was saying.  At the 8 mile marker I pulled my phone out, and it said 8.25 miles.  Hmmm...piece of junk!

I was running with a group for a while, but they slowly pulled ahead of me.  In my mind I thought, "No problem.  We're all running slow.  I'll throw in a 6:30 last mile and pass them all!"  But my legs did not agree with my wild imaginations. 

The course was out and back.  We had to cross the street  right before mile 4.  That's when I saw the leaders coming back.  Holy cow!  That means they were already more than two miles ahead of me.  Then I started counting people.  Glen was in 36th place and looking good.  At the turn around I was in 59th place.  But I got passed twice on the way back.  I hit the wall at 7.5 miles.  How sad is that?  I hit the wall in a 10 mile race?  That's what a steady diet of holiday chocolate will do for you.

At mile 8 there was a bag lady pushing a grocery cart.  When I passed her, she said that we were all insecure.  Then when the lady behind me caught up to me, she told me the bag lady said to her that she better be careful because I was looking to punch someone.  So, I did punch her after the race.  Right in the knuckles.  At some point Endomondo stopped working.  Hard to say when because it wasn't recording the distance very accurately.  Oh, and there were a lot of bridges that we had to run under.  Every time we did I would hear people's Garmins going crazy.  But you would think if I lost satellite reception that it would measure it short.  Right?  Anyway, I'm not sure on my exact time, but it was in the general ball park of 1:33.  

Happy New Year everyone!