IT'S SAD

Well it’s sad; another Grandma’s Marathon has come and gone. At least it looks like I dodged a (weather) bullet by not running. For the second year in a row (maybe more) conditions were perfect on Sunday. Unfortunately, the race is run on Saturday. Temps were in the low 60s at the start, the sun was beating down hard on a course with basically no shade until it’s too late, and there seemed to be a fairly steady cross wind.

It turns out I basically provided no coverage for DtB. First off, it’s hard to do much when the athletes don’t come into the Media Tent because they “forget” or they get carted off to drug testing. Plus, it’s a whole new experience for me. My “reporting” consists of taking as much time as necessary to come up with good questions. I’ll have to be a little quicker on my feet in the future. Anyway, it was still a great opportunity.

It might seem strange that someone with a site of interviews considers himself an introvert and doesn’t really enjoy being around people – or at least large groups of people. One of the goals I stole from my friend Eric is to meet at least one new person at each race. Seeing that Grandma’s is different than most marathons because people actually stay and party Saturday night, it was easy to meet a lot of new people. I’m always amazed at how many great people there are within this sport and how cool their stories are.

It’s not every day you get to meet an Olympian, as in the half marathon's namesake. I even met an Australian Olympian (hopefully I can work an interview out of that). Plus there was Aaron, Bobby, Charlie, Gregg and his wife (who probably thinks I’m crazy), Katie and her husband Jess, and even Jimmy from Montana, who only recognized me because I look like Brian Sell - or at least my feeble 'stache looks like his. Besides meeting new people, I got to hang out with some other cool people too, including Tony from my Saturday morning group. When we decided that the youngest person had to buy the next round of beer we found out we were born on the exact same day – and year. Someone not named Chad or Tony claimed to have already known this, but I’m not buying it.

A couple other comments; it was nice to see the half marathon increase their prize money structure this year. It brought out a lot of great runners. And I’m all for Masters runners winning some money too. It just seems odd when the 8th guy overall only gets $150, which was less than the third place Masters. I mean we’re talking about a professional runner. I hope he gets more money for his articles than that.

This weekend I learned not to stop in Hinkley on the way up. A quick stop for gas and a burger turned into a 30 minute or more stop. The gas station and burger joint are right off the Interstate, but there are about 4 of each, 2 stop lights and 100,000 cars. I'm sure you can do the math.

Quote of the day;

“Greed is a terrible thing; I wanted to get faster and faster.” – Alex Ratelle