Warrior Dash 2012

I did it again. I ran the Warrior Dash one more time. I was in lousy shape, with a sudden onslaught of mysterious and frustrating injuries and pains that have come from out of nowhere and seeminly have no cause and no cure. Even Aleve didn't help.

Earlier this week I went to the doctor for a injured thumb that hasn't healed in over 6 months. "Doc, what's up with this hand not healing? All I did was plant some trees and since then my hand has felt like I hit it with a hammer. My thumb has felt broken. I didn't do anything to it."

X-rays showed a calcium deposit that could indicate a healing break. There is no way to know for sure what happened. So later that same day, it's 5 pm and I'm getting up from my desk to go home and exercise before the race. My left knee hurts like I've destroyed it. This is out of nowhere. I didn't hurt my knee. I was at my desk sitting on my butt all day. What is going on??

So, injured knee means I'm not going home to run. My road bike is still broken. So I pull out my mountain bike and ride that. Oh Lord, it has so many more gears than my old Bottecchia road bike and they are so much easier to use! I'm flying down the road.

After the workout I felt fine. I showered, ate, and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Friday, I get up to go to pack my truck for the race and then drive to work. My left ankle is killing me. "WTF?? I didn't hurt my ankle! I went biking! I didn't hurt my stupid ankle!!!"  I find some ibuprofen and take it. It has no effect.

At work my ankle still hurts. So does my back. OK, Wednesday I did legitimately hurt my back. It is an old injury, but I reinjured it while lifting weights. I take more Aleve. No effect.

Friday after work I drive to where I'm staying. The race is about 4 hours from my house. I'm staying nearby so I can just get up, head to the race, and go for it. Me, my ankle, my back and my seemingly broken thumb go to bed.

Saturday morning, the day of the race, I wake up. My middle finger on my left hand feels broken. But it isn't. I can't pick up anything with this hand without that finger screaming in pain. But I can grab the finger and press on it and it is fine. Just don't put any pressure on it or bend it. WTF???!!!! More Aleve, which does nothing. My ankle, meanwhile, is hurting again as if I have horribly injured it. I never did. I ignore it.

When I arrive at the race parking, which costs $20 just to park, I am quickly reassured that I did the right thing in driving my 4x4 truck to this event. It rained last night and the parking area is just a big field. After thousands of cars and trucks have driven down the specified paths, they are motorcross-worthy mud pits. Cars in front of me are struggling despite their front-wheel-drive. I drop down into 4-high and slide around a little, but keep moving forward. My back window quickly spackles over with mud splotches. I'm already having fun.

At the race, all around me are college-aged runners dressed as The Avengers (Thor ran the entire race with hammer in hand), Jesus and the Disciples plus 2 nuns, several Wonder Womans, a Tarzan, three guys in Spandex tuxedos with 2 girls in sequined uniforms, pirates, the most attractive 80s workout girl I've seen since the '80s itself, and lots and lots of tattooes everywhere I look. I'm boring. I'm just wearing a running shirt and some cotton workout shorts. And I have no tattooes. I'm dressed for a regular 5K race, which is just so wrong for so many reasons.

Last year we ran a full mile before we hit a single obstacle. This year the first half mile was filled with obstacles - out-of-shape people walking. There must have been over a hundred people who just stopped and walked the moment they crossed the STARTING LINE. They were grumbling about being out of shape. I heard one person say they hadn't run since the Warrior Dash last year. That's September of 2011. And they are surprised that they were out of shape 12 months later? People walking right in the center of the course are everywhere. Entire teams are walking and stretched all the way across the path so there is no room to pass. People are pushing through. No one fights about it or gets nasty, but it is truly annoying and selfish of them to block everyone else and not get off to the side.

I am stumbling along at my fabulously slow pace, shocked at all the ruts and holes in the path. I'm forced to look down almost all the time to see what I'm stepping into. Several times I step into a hole or rut and roll my ankle a little. Ironically, it doesn't hurt at all despite bitching at me for the past 2 days as if it were in ruins. In fact, nothing is hurting. Except my lungs. My lungs are really unhappy. It's a big pollen season right now and I have bad allergies. Ragweed and sagebrush are in full blast bloom and I'm sucking in all their toxic whatever with every breath. I feel like my lungs are going to swell shut and send me into an asthmatic fit. But other than that everything is going well.

I end up running at a steady pace behind a pretty woman in tight black shorts. We're doing the same pace and because I'm looking down so much I find myself hypnotized by her buttocks. I'm just staring non-stop at her butt. It's a nice butt. I can't look away from her butt. This is embarassing. Finally we hit an obstacle, a mud pit. Or rather, 4 mud pits in a row. They are 4 deep trenches filled with deep mud at the bottoms and you have to run down to the mud, leap over and climb up to the top of the next one. Then do it again through 4 of these pits. But there are a lot of us and we are all jammed in together. The hypnotic butt girl is ahead of me and I'm trying to make it through without running into her, or stopping and getting run into from behind. I'm going great. Then on the last mud pit, she stops short and stands there. Someone is blocking her butt. I mean, someone is blocking her and she can't get up the dirt embankment. I am already leaping across. She is in my way. I'm going to crash into her butt. I mean, I'm going to crash into her. I stop short, landing with one foot on dirt and one foot sinking up to mid-calf in pure mud.

The magnificent butt finally climbs up the embankment, making room for me. I try to pull my leg out of the mud. It pulls my shoe off and keeps it. I had that shoe double-knotted and tied tight. It didn't matter. It just came right off and is now somewhere down there deep under the mud. I can't go on without it. This is only the first obstacle and I'm not even going to consider trying to do some of the rougher ones without my shoe. So I have to step my other foot into the mud, bend down, and reach my arm as far into the mud as I can to look for my shoe. Once I find it, I have a hell of a challenge pulling it out. It really doesn't want to come out. Finally I got my shoe out, but now my sock-covered foot is in the mud and so is my other foot. It is extremely difficult to get both feet out without losing either my left sock or my right shoe in the process. I honestly don't know how I did it.

I can't tell you how difficult it is to stop running and bend down to struggle with your shoes while heaving and gasping for air. Your lungs want all your ribcage capacity available to them so they can fully expand. But when you have to bend down to struggle with a now solid-mud-covered shoe, it compresses your lungs to about half-capacity, if that. So there I am struggling with my shoe, unable to breath, about to pass out, and a race official asks me to get off the mud berm and move to the side while putting my shoe on. I'm barely conscious at this point from lack of air. I stumble to the side. Once I get my shoe back on, I am just totally out of air and energy. So I start walking on towards the next obstacle.

OK, so 1 obstacle down and I'm already muddy. And my feet are sliding around. So of course the next obstacle isnt far and involves climbing up a wooden stand, something particularly hard to do with mud-covered slippery shoes. So I'm walking, climbing very slowly, like an old lady who might cry "help! I've fallen and can't get up!" But I made it over and walked on towards the next one. At this point I was joining the legion of Warrior Walkers. There was no dash in me now. I even had to blow my nose in order to get more oxygen.

I am the only runner in any race I have ever seen who has such bad allergies that I have to carry a handkerchief in my pocket. Hence, the long cotton workout shorts with pockets. I look like a dork, but the alternative is to pass out in the middle of the race from snot-suffocation.

After awhile I got sick of walking and started trotting along again. Under normal circumstances I feel like hell for 1 mile and after that my body admits defeat and stops complaining. From that point on I get into a groove and can run for a long time. But the mud pit/shoe loss really threw me off my game. I never recovered. I spent the rest of the race trotting, climbing, walking, trotting, crawling through mud and barbed wire, walking, trotting - on like that again and again. I walked almost as much as I ran. This is unusual for me, but it is what it is. I just couldn't get my lungs to open up and let me breath and my body never got into a groove.

The obstacles weren't the same this year as last year. Some were, but there were some new ones. And there were more of them. Seeing as this race is mostly about the obstacles, that's a good thing. It makes it harder, but its the reason we're there so its fun.

At the end of the race there was a huge tower covered in a grid of rope that we had to climb up and over and down again. The up is fine. The down is fine. But the its the over and try not to fall on your head that's the real challenge. You are so tired at this point that your coordination isn't the best and you are about 3 stories high trying to get your whole body over a 2x4 while maintaining your balance and turning around backwards to get your feet down into a rope, all without falling or passing out from lack of air. A few people did have partial falls, where they slid until they became entangled and caught themselves. They hit their butts on 2x4s while falling and it clearly hurt. But they didn't die or break their necks or anything.

After the rope covered wall, you are back near the start area. People are all gathered at the fence taking pictures and cheering. Some runners stop to dance. There is a live band playing and you can hear them easily at the finish. I am a lousy dancer so I didn't stop and dance. I ran to the next obstacle, the two rows of fire. The wind was blowing towards us so before I ever reached the fire I got a face full of black smoke. I was already not breathing well so this was awesome. I'm sure I looked like an idiot, but I covered my face somewhat with my arm and ran through the smoke to the fire, jumped over it feebly, then on to the 2nd one and again over it. After that is the mud pit. The BIG mud pit.

Last year people ran and jumped into the mud pitt like a swimming pool. Some people did cannonballs. Some people did belly flops head first into the mud. There is a big sign that says "don't dive into the mud" but people ignored it. So this year they put up barbed wire BEFORE the mud, so that you have to stop, get down and crawl into the mud face first. Once I got into the mud I found that I had a problem. My cotton shorts seemed to fill with air and float my ass like a raft. So my knees weren't getting good traction. I was moving slow. People were passing me. It's the finish and people are passing me! I found that if I just stretched my legs out behind me and walked purely on my hands, almost swimming through the mud, I could move faster. So that's what I did, only my shoulders and head were out of the mud, but I was making up lost ground at least.

Something I noticed while in the mud was that for the guys, being mostly taller, we could keep our shoulders and heads out of the mud. But for the girls, being mostly shorter, they had to really get down into it. They were just heads bobbing along in a river of mud, almost fully covered.

After climbing out of the mud, I tried to run for the finish line. I passed 2 people who were walking/staggering. The ground was pure mud, too, and I was sliding all over the place. I don't know why I bothered to run. I didn't even see a clock showing my time and it wouldn't have meant anything to me even if I had seen what my time was. I can't remember my time from last year. And I don't know my time from this year. I never saw what it was. But I consider myself a runner, despite my jogging and walking and patheticness, so I ran across the finish.

After finishing, you have to walk all the way to the other side of the ... what do you call it? ... the arena? The big area filled with partying people in muddy costumes who already ran and the costumed people who are about to. You have to walk to the other side of the grounds to where firetrucks are located and firemen are standing on top of them spraying down muddy runners with firehoses to get the mud off. These firemen love their jobs and I'll tell you why. Everyone is so covered with mud that all sense of modesty goes out the window when it comes to getting hosed down and getting the mud out of crevices and cracks of the body that would otherwise hold onto it. Shirts are flying off. Women are pulling their sports bras out to get the water down into their tops and under their boobs where mud hides. More than once I heard women say "oh to hell with it" and just pull their boobs up so get water under them, showing the whole package to the firemen and anyone else who was looking. The firemen were VERY happy men. And most of the women are gorgeous.

Here is where I discovered the hazards of wearing standard cotton workout shorts in the Warrior Dash. No matter how much water was sprayed on me, there was always more mud pouring out of my shorts. The cotton had just soaked it up like a sponge and would not come clean. My upper half was as clean as a firehose could get it, but my shorts were continuously pouring mud down my legs and into my shoes. I almost took my shorts off and stood in my tighty-whiteys just so I could hold my shorts in front of the hose and wring them out. But I thought better of it and didn't. Eventually people shoved me aside and took my spot in front of the hose. Apparently they felt that I was clean enough. I didn't agree, but I was ready to give up on cleaning my shorts.

So here's the lesson I took from the Warrior Dash, which I should have learned the first time: wear some nice nylon or otherwise plasticky running shorts to this event. Don't wear cotton. It sucks up the mud and turns you into a walking turd despite the firehoses trying to clean you off. I took the shorts home in a bag and threw them into the washer, along with my underwear, socks and shirt. I ran it as a full load even though it was only those few items. When it was all done the shorts came out with dirt still plastered to the leg and a hankerchief in the pocket that was brown and full of dirt. I'm going to try running the shorts and handkerchief threw one more time and after that I may burn them.

If you see a chance to enter a Warrior Dash near you, I say go for it! It's a wild experience that you'll never forget. Next year I'm going to splurge and order the plastic viking helmet. Several people ran in their fuzzy viking helmet, but I kept mine as a momento. I'm dorky like that, I guess.

* I don't own any of these photos. It's hard to take photos and run at the same time. Some people have lots of friends who take photos of them while they run, but I don't have that luxury. If I have borrowed your photo and you don't like it, please let me know. I have no problem with taking a photo down.

Cotton Row Run / Limp

Monday was Memorial Day here in the United States. And Memorial Day is race day for me and everyone else entered in the Cotton Row Run. This is the race I had been trying to train for, but struggling with calf injuries. I've never had a problem with calf injuries in the past. This is something new to me. Apparently my calves wanted to make up for lost time with a vengeance because they've given me hell over the last 2 months.

Two months ago I hurt my left calf while training for the Cookie Dash 5K. I thought it was just a cramp so I kept on running. The next day my calf was in extreme pain. I tried to rehab the calf and continue my training, but the decision of whether to race or not came down to the day of the race and even then I was unsure. I started that race slow and remained slow for the entire course. I finished with a lousy time, but I finished without reinjuring my calf, so I called it a minor victory and basically a training run that just happened to include 499 other runners along with me.

2 weeks later, while running, my right calf started to hurt. "What the hell??" I stopped immediately, but it was still giving me problems days later. Throughout my training for the Cotton Row my calves were an issue. They just never seemed to be right somehow. Along with my calves, my left hamstring, right where it attaches at my knee, has been spasming like it wants to pull, too. It does this at the oddest times, like when I'm stepping over a pile of crap in my bedroom or something, rather than while I'm out running.

Monday at the starting line of the Cotton Row I was wearing a calf sleeve on my right calf. I considered wearing one on both calves just to be on the safe side, but I ended up not doing it. It was hot and humid, but not as hot as it was last year when this race nearly killed me. Overall I felt pretty good. I was planning to average not-so-spectacular 10 minute miles and try to come in as close to 30 minutes on the nose as possible.



I am in there somewhere

The start of the race was surprisingly disorganized. The race announcer never ordered the runners to get behind the starting line before the race began like they had last year. He also never warned the slower runners and the people planning to start out walking to get over to the side and out of the way of the runners who came to actually run and compete. Consequently, the race started with a significant number of runners ahead of the starting line.

Our race numbers included a strip containing a computer chip which records the exact moment we start and again when we finish, to make sure our times are precise. How they deal with runners who started ahead of the line I have no idea. Maybe they just use the official race start as their start time and don't account for the fact that they were 10 to 20 feet ahead of the line at that point? I don't know.

The start

Once the gun sounded, I was jammed into a pack of people trying to get moving. It was like crowding onto a subway car in New York City. There was no room to really move and get going. The people who simply walked at the start, I hate to say it, but they were selfish jackasses to be out there in the center of the road starting up at the front of the pack in everyone's way doing something like that. People tripped over them and while trying to get past them. If I had been injured trying to get past walkers at the start I might've been tempted to take a swing at one of them. Luckily that didn't happen. But getting past all of them, and there were a lot, was very frustrating. Every race has walkers, but this was the first time I'd ever seen walkers line up at the head of the pack in the center of the road like that.

The first half mile was nothing but runners trying to get away from the slow people jamming us all up. One woman next to me shouted in exasperation, "this is like a blood clot or something!" I knew exactly what she meant and I agreed.

Cotton Row Crash

The first mile I really didn't feel like I was running especially fast. I hadn't fully warmed up before the race because I was a little later than I intended getting there. I didn't have a good sweat going before the gun sounded. I ran the first half mile with my water bottle in my hand and continued to water up a little at a time while I struggled through the massive 'blood clot' of slow people and people who oddly chose to line up at the start only to mysteriously stop running at the beginning of the race and walk, causing collisions with the people running behind them who weren't expecting anyone in a race as big and competitive as the Cotton Row to walk within the first half mile. What is wrong with people that they never even think about all the other competitors who signed up for this race and paid their money to run while they, the novices, line up at the front and block everyone else? Is this the newest thing for passive/aggressive drivers, the newest frontier, to move into competitive races and try to jam everyone up out of a twisted desire to screw the world over?

Once I was past the majority of walkers and jog/walk/jog people, I began trying to settle into a pace where I felt comfortable. At the first mile marker they called out 10:15 at me as I ran past. I was shocked. Considering how many obstacles I'd had to fight through I hadn't expected to be on pace at all. But according to what the timers were reading out I was dead on the money. Losing a mere 15 seconds to people blocking me was a nice surprise.

During the second mile, as I was moving around slower runners and people stopping to walk, some guy moved over and tried to jam me up. There was no reason for it. No one was stopped head of him blocking his way, but someone was stopped ahead of me and he knew it. He just decided to slam into me and see if he could make me run into the girl who stopped in front of me. I managed to pass her on the other side as an opening appeared at the last second and then spent the remainder of the next mile dealing with him. He was a big guy, fairly thick to be a runner. In fact, he looked nothing like a runner. He reminded me of guys I used to play soccer with who only showed up to hurt people and pick fights. And he seemed to have a problem with me. We were side-by-side a lot, periodically changing the lead when one of us got ahead of the other. I was mad, and instead of thinking about my pace I was thinking about what I was going to do the next time he threw his elbow up at my throat one more damn time. About the time I had set in my mind how I was going to take him down to the asphalt and bounce his face on it like a hockey player, he fell off the pace and dropped behind. I never saw him again.

At the end of the second mile they read out 20:15 or so. I had run a good 10 minute second mile. I was right on the goal I had set for myself. If I could maintain for most of the third mile and pick up speed at the end, I might even have a shot at coming in below 30 minutes, like I used to do with significantly less effort. I began remembering just a short time ago when a time of 30 minutes or slower was absolutely out of the question for me. I never even thought about being slow enough to hit 30 minutes in a race. It just wasn't going to happen. 30 minutes for a 5K was a casual jog. But then my training had gone off into oblivion and my efforts to get it back on track hadn't been consistent. I'd had various injuries and illnesses to throw me off-track. I'd had other life issues that wrecked my training. And now I was dealing with calf cramps and pulls and a weird problem with my left hamstring. But today I was cruising.

And then my right calf went out on me. "Ow!" I started limping immediately. My right calf, the one with the sleeve on it to protect it and help it along, cramped and pulled. It was bad, too. I was forced to limp dramaticaly, going flat-footed on my right because I couldn't push off with my calf at all. I ran like this for awhile. It quickly began to exhaust my left hip to be running so crooked and awkwardly. I knew I couldn't go for another 1.1 miles like this. I was either going to have to stop and try to stretch it out or force my right calf to function even though it hurt. I hit a water station and grabbed a cup of water. I slowed to a fast walk while I drank it and poured it on my head. I tried to extend my stride in such a way that I could stretch my right calf with each step. I stretched it like this for several strides and then I resumed running, forcing the calf to work. It worked a little bit. It still hurt, but it was at least functioning partially now. I knew if I could just get the cramp out of the muscle I could probably force it to work long enough to finish the race. And then there would be hell to pay after.

Over 5,000 runners compete in this race each year

The last mile of the Cotton Row is annoying. It's a long straight stretch up a slight embankment. It's so long, in fact, that everyone begins to feel convinced that we're near the finish. I see runners pick up speed along here and I know that they're going to regret it and suffer. What I mean by that is, if a runner is in the same part of the pack as I am by this point in the race, chances are they don't have the strength or endurance to start speeding up so far from the end and still make it to the finish line. We're further from the end than it feels.

After an eternity we are directed to turn right and run a short distance down another street before making a sharp left and running down a slight embankment on a new street. It's disheartening for the runners who were convinced that we were nearly done before. You can see it in their faces as they sigh and either complain openly or simply stop and walk out of exhaustion. This new street is long and straight, too, every bit as long as the previous one that was so long as to feel like the final stretch before the finish. That road wasn't the final stretch, but this one is.

We ran for a long way in the blazing sun, with no shade and no more water stations, before we could begin to see a banner far off in the distance. But it's another agonizing illusion. That banner is not the finish line. And every year a significant number of runners see that banner far, far down the steaming sun-scorched road and begin to speed up, expending every last drop of energy in the effort to reach what they believe is the finish line. It's like being nearly out of gas and seeing what you think is a gas station far down the road, so you press down on the gas pedal and use up your last few drops because you believe you are about to reach your goal and refuel. Unfortunately for you, you aren't, and by the time you realize it your fuel is gone and you are doomed.

I repassed all the runners who sped up on the previous stretch, wrongly believing we were nearly there. I repassed the runners who waited until the final stretch to speed up and sprint for the banner over a half a mile down the road that looks so much like the finish line. By the time they were close enough to read it and realize that it wasn't the finish, but the starting line we were approaching, they had nothing left to carry them any further. So many people stop and walk as they approach this banner, ending their long race by walking defeatedly the last hundred yards or so to the finish line, which is further ahead beyond the starting line.

The problem with a 5K is that it isn't 3 miles. It's 3.1 miles. It's that extra .1 that causes so many headaches for races that are organized in such a way as to have overlapping start and finish stretches. The Cotton Row used to be laid out differently, back when there was no 5K and only the 10K race was offered. The start was on one side of a lake and the finish was all the way around on the other side, so that you knew when you were coming to the starting line again that it meant nothing and you should actually wait until that point to kick in your afterburners and try to sprint around the lake to the finish. With this new course people still aren't quite getting it, and the starting line, with its big white banner so easily seen from far up the road and blocking the runners view of the finish line banner so that it appears to be the only banner, is killing people at the end. It's like a race with a few tricks thrown in just to mess with your head.

Last year I was too devastated from the heat, humidity and my own lack of adequate training to sprint for what appeared to be the finish only to turn out to be the start. So the starting line illusion didn't affect me. I maintained my steady pace and just motored along as best as I could. I was dying last year by this point, but I had enough left that I could continue past the starting banner and hold my speed to the actual finish line, coming in just as the clock ticked 34 minutes, the worst time I had ever recorded in my entire life.

But that was last year. This year I was supposed to be different. This year I was in pain as I came to the banner where we had started and saw the finish line beyond it, along with countless runners stopping and walking in frustration because they had further to go than they had allowed for and had run out of gas. I was limping and tearing up my injured calf. And I saw the clock up ahead reading 30-something. Oh hell, I was a long way from that clock and it was already past my target time of 30. I started to speed up as much as I could. As I got closer I could see the clock more clearly. It said 32:something. Dammit, I had really blown my time on the last mile with this stupid injury! 33:00 clicked off and I was running as fast as I could for the finish and trying not to trip or collapse before I reached the end. There were two lines running across the road. Which one was the finish?? Which one had the sensor that was going to read my computer chip and record my time? Did I have to lean forward and throw my upper body across both lines? Why were there TWO lines????

Why are there two lines?

I crossed the line(s) at what felt like a sprint, but probably looked more like a normal, healthy runner's ordinary pace. Everyone was crossing the finish and then just stopping dead. I crammed into the crowd of runners at the end and came to a stop. I could barely breathe and I didn't want to stop. I needed to keep moving. I turned sideways and slid my sweat-lubricated body through the crowd of heat-stroked zombies until I came out the other side. Then I stumbled further past, looking for the water arch that they set up each year.

Invented for kids, increasingly used at races

Once I saw it, my only thought was to get to that arch and stand under it while the water sprayed over me. The water arch is just a bunch of PVC piple with holes drilled all along it and a hose attached to one end so that water flows through it and sprays out the holes, creating a wide showerhead that dribbles streams of cold water over about 6 feet and allows multiple runners to stand under it and rapidly cool off. I stood under the water arch for a long, long time until I was completely soaked. Then I limped over to a shady spot near a wall and began trying to stretch my calves.

My corrected time, which they posted on a wall, was something like 33:15. I can't remember exactly. It wasn't good and so it wasn't memorable. It was simply better than last year. But it was 3 full minutes worse than what I was aiming for. It's frustrating that I might have reached my goal if only my calves had held up for the full race. There is nothing I can do about that now, though. So at this point I just have to start rehabbing my calves and try to strengthen them significantly while I get ready for the Warrior Dash later this year. That race isn't until September, if I remember correctly, and it isn't the sort of race where time is really the most important thing. But even so, I don't want an injury problem ruining that one for me, too. Last year I was sick as a dog for the entire week prior to the Warrior Dash. I went to the race not knowing if I'd even be able to attempt it and yet somehow managed to complete it. I didn't do well, but I did it. That was my victory then. I'm hoping for something a little better than that this year, without injury problems or sickness to make it less fun.

So what did you do over the weekend?

Going the Distance, Going for Speed

So today was race day. I'd trained for all of 5 days with only 3 runs, only one of which was outdoors in the real world heat and humidity. Guess what?

That was a mistake.

It was 96 degrees Fahrenheit this morning with 51 percent humidity. Do you know what happens with 51 percent humidity? Well, I'll tell you if you don't know. Your body can't cool off. Sweating doesn't help, even though you do lots and lots of sweating. Your flesh is just stifled underneath this soggy layer of steam that prevents any cooling from taking place.

So I was shooting for a not-impressive series of 10-minute miles throughout the race. And I was concerned because I'd had knee problems and calf-cramp problems all week. I needn't have worried because the heat and humidity made my knee and calf problems the least of my concerns.

I ran a 9:30 minute first mile. Yay me. That's not impressive, but it was better than I'd planned. But I could already tell as I finished that mile that I was going to be in trouble for the rest of the race. The heat and humidity was KILLING me.

The second mile, several very attractive young women whom I had passed during the first mile began to pass me right back. I knew I was in a bad way when I glanced at their tanned and very attractive behinds striding past me and did not even consider trying to catch up. I couldn't afford to break my slowing pace or I would never finish. I ran a nearly 12 minute, gasping, steaming, God-its-hot 2nd mile.

Oh Lord, there's still further to go.

The third mile, an old man, hunched with a kind of shuffle, who was wearing ankle weights on both legs, I shit you not, passed me by. I was not happy. To be fair, I had a bit of difficulty passing him during the first mile, so despite his seemingly decrepit gate, he was motoring pretty good. But still, it was insulting. And I couldn't do a damn thing about it. I may not have raced in 2 years, but I know my limitations and I knew I needed to hang on to my ever-slowing pace as best as I could or I would be in serious trouble.

The last stretch of the third mile seemed to go on forever. We went up a hill, then over the top. And far, far down the slope I could see a big banner which appeared to be the finish line.

"Oh God, I feel like I'm going to slow to a walk. I am NOT going to walk on the last mile. I am NOT!" I struggled and ached and squirmed along in the heat, trying to straighten my back up a bit to ease the pain of my lower back and take some pressure off. I had apparently begun to hunch forward in the heat, so I had to force myself to straighten up and raise my head. Looking at the banner across the finish line helped. I tried to ignore the beautiful girls and hunched old ankle-weight-wearing men passing me and just focus on the finish.

Thank God no one pushing a stroller passed me or that would have been too much to bear.

Some runners, seeing the banner, began to sprint, or as close as they could to sprinting. I typically don't sprint until the final 100 yards, so I held on to my dying pace. Finally, I reached the bottom of the long slope. It was a very long, straight stretch to that banner with no shade and my body screaming "STOP! STOP AND WALK BEFORE I DIE!"

I began to feel the distinctive cold shiver of heat stroke hitting me. It was just the beginning. I had endured this before. But considering the terrible shape I was already in, and how close I was to slowing to a walk, it was bad news. I looked for any water stations where I could grab a cup of cold water to throw over my head. There were none.

Meanwhile, more runners sprinted past me towards that banner.

That's when I noticed the other banner beyond the banner I had been looking at. And then I remembered, at the start of the race, the race announcer had told us that the starting line is NOT the finish line. The finish line is PAST the starting line. The banner we had been running towards was the starting line. Oh shit!

If I had tried to sprint when I saw that first banner, thinking it was the finish, I would have ended my race in the back of an ambulance. There was a considerable distance to go beyond the banner for the starting line until you reached the banner marking the finish line, and in this oppressive heat, that was just far enough to kill me.

But I hadn't sprinted when I saw the banner, and it was a good thing. I stumble-ran underneath the banner marking the start, still fighting the urge to either slow to a walk or just fall on my face in the middle of the street and be trampled. I could see the true finish. I just wasn't sure if I could reach it before I collapsed.

Children passed me. Mothers passed me. People who thought the first banner was the finish line and had sprinted stopped to walk in utter exhaustion. But I did not walk. I ran at my horrible pace. I saw the clock marking the time at the finish line. It said 33:56 and I still had several yards left to go.

Then 33:57.

"Oh Lord, I'm not even going to finish in under 34 minutes!"

33:58

I tried to speed up. I just couldn't do it.

33:59

"Oh son of a ... "

34:00

I ran across the finish line, glancing briefly at the clock marking my time, groaning in disgust at the worst 5K time of my entire life, and then warned the runners around me that there was a distinct possibility that I may projectile vomit at any moment.

I immediately found a water station and started trying to cool myself down before any fluids forcibly escaped through my mouth and nostrils in the form of racers puke. I saw a PVC arc someone had constructed, which had a hose attached and cold water showering out of it for runners to walk under and cool off. Cool idea! I made a beeline for it. I walked under it several times, slowly cooling little by little. Then I stood under it like my own personal cold shower.

Teenage girls who had been giggling and playing in the water arc, performing a possibly illegal wet t-shirt contest, stopped giggling and looked at me. I was apparently interfering with their fun even though I was off to one side of the arc and not really in their way. I glared at them. They moved more to the opposite side and continuing playing and giggling. And then I went and sat down in the shade, exhausted, sunburned as hell, and soaking wet.

A 34 minute race! I ran a lousy stinking 34 minute race! Oh, the humanity! Oh the shame!
My only real consolation today is that apparently our racing numbers which we wore contained a computer chip. That chip is how they timed us. Since the start of the race is so crowded, only the front-row runners actually cross the starting line when the gun goes off and the main clock starts timing the race. But our chips alert the computer to the true time we crossed the starting line. Then the difference between the race start and the time we actually crossed the starting line is deducted from our final time to give the actual time we took to run the course. So I had 6 seconds taken off my final time, giving me the worst time I'd ever run a 5K minus 6 seconds. 33:54 - Yay me!

And also, I never puked.

I didn't puke