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Sunday, October 4, 2009

The Falling Circus: next day

I'm not dead yet!

OK, first things first. My feet are fine. The abrasion on my big left toe is a mere flesh wound. Apparently the feet are strong enough to kick immovable objects repeatedly for over two hours. No toes are broken, or even sore. The aches have ceased to be. That baffles me. Even my left ankle feels fine.

I do need to strengthen my quads and hips. That's probably why I tripped so much - it's hard to lift the feet when the lifting muscles are protesting like insolent college kids.

Other than that, I feel good. My official time was 2:14:20 for a 10:15/m pace. That put me 67th out of 181 runners, 19th out of 37 in my age group. I'm actually quite proud of this, since I was running (well, falling) not racing.

Don't get me wrong, I'll always want to be faster. But it's kind of nice to be a mid-packer. I enjoyed running with small groups, all of us working together to get to the finish in one piece, making small talk, placing bets on who was going to eat dirt next (the smart money was on me). I felt like we were part of a persistence hunting tribe, trekking through the wilderness. I wish I had a spear.

Wait, no I don't. I would have impaled myself.

4 comments:

  1. Man, brutal race report. Glad to hear you're healing well. Congrats on making it through alive and mostly intact. Cheers!

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  2. I'm feeling pretty good, and should be fine so long as I don't fall ag... Whump! Crash!

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  3. Ugh, sounds like a course of death. Glad to read nothing's broken, including your spirit.

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  4. I've done it before without much trouble; here are my excuses:

    1.This was a race filled with people, so I couldn't see the path very well.

    2. There were more leaves, which, since it's autumn, makes sense and is as it should be.

    3. I haven't gone long in about a month.

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