Hero takes a Fall

So… I was feeling pretty good about myself today… Ultra coming up this weekend… big mileage under my belt from the first 6 weeks of the year.

I had a nice easy run scheduled. It had started raining tho…. As I walked out of my office I asked a couple of guys from my staff…. “Who would want to run in this kind of weather” they replied “you would” (might have been a condescending tone… to me it sounded like admiration) =;-)

On my way to the locker room I ran into one of the runners from upstairs in IT… “You running in this?” “Yeah” I replied with a smile.

In the locker room I run into another guy who was staying inside… I told him “This is good running weather”. I was really feeling like badazz hard mofo.

As I start outside I see that someone else has decided to run today… it’s Barbra from accounting… In shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt… I’ve never seen her out running before… I assume she’s one of the newbies who signed up for the River Run 5k that our company is putting together a team for… She’s standing under the awning.. I walk outside and tell her “It’s not so bad after you get out in it”.

She immediately starts jogging away… saying “I like this weather” over her shoulder… then looks back over her shoulder a few strides later as if to say “Aren’t you coming Mr. Talker?”

So I decided to run along with the newbie a bit… and we ran and started talking…. I thought she was starting out a bit fast and figured, “newbie” and that she was just inexperienced… and would soon slow down and I’d be off on my own.

Well… not exactly… we swapped a couple of running stories… then she mentions something like “since I ran cross country in college” That was about the time I realized I might be in trouble…. Over the next 10 minutes I try to carry on a conversation without sounding too out of breath… I wish I could chalk up the number of times I repeated myself to her poor hearing.

The only time I dictated the pace was when we ran the trial by the railroad tracks that I run every day… and know route and potholes… soon enough, however, we were back on the road….

I was really having a hard time holding on… and was getting stomach cramps to boot… my only saving grace was that I’d told her early on that I’d intended to run 4…. Now early on I thought I’d run 5 with her but at 3.5 I needed an out and letting her go then do a ½ mile cooldown jog was just the ticket…

So I gasped "I'm...... gonna.... let... you... go... now.... I've... got... to... head..... on.... back...."

She replied over her shoulder.... as I was falling back like a stone dropped off a cliff.... "Maybe we can run again later this week"

With that I tucked my tail between my legs... so to speak..... dropped my pace a full 3 minutes per mile... and hobbled back to the locker room.

Needless to say I returned to my office with the knowledge that I’m not the toughest runner in the building… that honor goes to the little red haired lady in accounting.