World’s Shortest Marathon

(N.B. – Mark and Jeanne: I’m not avoiding you, I forgot to tell you I was going on Vacation)

Hey, dig this – After a bunch of years of pretty much working and going to see family, we’re on vacation! A whole week up in Stowe, Vermont, with nothing to do but enjoy the mountains, and run, bike, and swim.

Actually, it’s breaking down kind of like this: Missy is doing a TON of running. Well, not a ton, but, as expected, she’s hewing well to the whole marathon training plan. Run faster with less.

The boys and I have been doing a ton of swimming. But by swimming, we mean fooling around in the condo pool. Diving to touch the bottom, playing “Monster”, and soforth. I tried a couple of laps, but jammed my finger touching the wall. Who’da thunk that those lines on the bottom could be so useful?

And I’ve been biking – one time seriously, and a bunch of times with the family on the bike path. Good stuff. Friday, during Missy’s long run, we’ll bike down to the river that runs through town and spend a couple of hours crawling along the river bed looking for trout.

Oh, and I ran a race: Each July 4, there’s a race from Stowe Center up to a bar at noon. 1.7 miles. Missy talked me into running it – I was pretty much just aiming to go out and meander for an hour or so, but sitting at the starting line got the old competitive juices flowing.

The course is up VT 108 from the covered bridge in the village center to Gracie’s Restaurant. It starts off with a decent grade, and then kind of levels off. The initial climb felt good – I started mid-pack in the 100 or so runners, and pretty quickly got to about #25 or so. There was a woman a couple of years older than me who I used to set my pace, right on the edge of really sucking wind but not really being able to recover to a one breath (In and out) every 4 steps sort of pace.

Life was good until she passed me by kind of cutting a corner. Not an illegal move, by any means, but I stayed in the westbound lane, and she cut the corner across the eastbound lane and passed me and accelerated. All was not lost – before the finish, I picked off a guy in a blue shirt who’d gotten up to 200 yards in front of me.

After the race, I decided to try to tack on another couple of miles, but it just didn’t feel right. After about another 1.5 or so, I knocked it off and walked back to the condo. Sprinted up the hill, but slowed when I thought I was going to chunder.

Need to run more…