Happy Cinco De Mayo

I just ran Tucson's Cinco De Mayo 10K. It was a nice pleasant run over gently rolling hills in the south of Tucson. Nick from work met me at the starting line and ran the race as well. Even though he is younger than me, I came in before him. In the line for the post-race breakfast, I asked him: "How did I beat you?" He started into some long winded explanation about how I've been running for a lot more years than him, etc, so I cut him off: "Do you believe that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in _this_ place (gesturing at the world around us, for emphasis)?" Then I asked him, as if to drive the point home, "Do you that's _air_ you're breathing?" Nick has a heart of gold. Literally, his heart is made out of solid gold. He pretended he thought I was suffering from oxygen depravation. But I had always wanted to ask someone those questions, so I am grateful Nick ran the good race with us today.

Here is evidence of my run. I'm 50th overall. Nice round number. Not as nice as the number 5, but still nice. Really, everyone who went out there and ran is a winner. Just not as big a winner as the people who won the thing, of course. But still winners.

After the race, I even got to meet my nemesis, Salkowski. This guy is a machine. He's the one that came in 5th. While sitting on the grass eating my Mexican breakfast, I heard the race director point him out in the crowd, mentioning him by name. So I introduced myself and let him know what an inspiration he is to me. Ever since I got my Garmin, I've been uploading my runs to MotionBased. It's great fun to play around with the charts and graphs, to get a feel for how well one is progressing along one's intended training goals. One of the things MotionBased lets you do is find similar runs by other people in the same general geographical area. This is how I came upon Salkowski. As you can see, he's the kind of runner that does 20 mile training runs at a 6:37 pace. I can't even do a measly 10K (6.2 miles) at that pace.

Such is the near infinite continuum of awesomeness in the sport of running. This continuum exists in any activity humans have chosen to undertake. Since I am a runner, I happen to think it is most elegantly evinced in the art of running. Here's how it works: You think you happen to be doing alright. You push yourself and keep pushing, and you can see gradual and measurable improvement taking place. And then, in this place, you happen to see people stronger and faster than you could imagine. This is a beautiful thing to experience. We see that we have been suffering all these years from of a failure of imagination. And we see that it is indeed possible to demolish that failure, and re-imagine something completely new. This is why people like Salkowski, who are out there pounding out the long hard and fast miles day in and day out, for years and years, with little or no monetary benefit, and little recognition outside of a small community, can be considered true heroes.

Never stop running.

today's number

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0