Pride And GU Packs

2 years ago I had the brilliant idea of running the Capitol 10K. It seemed like a reasonable endeavor considering my long and glorious history as a high school Junior Varsity swimmer (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, the 100yd breast stroke is JUST LIKE running 6.2 miles). And with my recent victory over the aliens living inside my xbox, I desperately needed to direct my perpetually competitive energies elsewhere.

Normally when presented with the option of playing sports outdoors or on a television screen, I’d select the latter, but this time my lesser judgment got the best of me and I signed up for a 3 month training course to prepare for the race. …which it turns out happened to be a great idea because I ended up running the race in a respectable 52 minutes with only a post-race heart murmur or two to show for it.

Fast forward 23.5 months.

Alan: “Hey Tim, what are you doing today?”
Tim: “Probably just going for a run.”
Alan: “A run?”
Tim: “Yea, I’m going to run the Cap10K in two weeks”
Alan’s (Inner monologue): The Cap10K! I did that once…AND I did it in the respectable time of 52 minutes! If I ran it, I could certainly beat him and then…(song cues up) “We are the champions”
Tim: “We are the champions?”
Alan: “Oh you heard that?... Forget it. How about I run the race with you… y’know as a show of support!”
Tim: “Golly what a grand idea” (he didn’t really say that… I think it was just “cool”)

So armed with my Nike Air 360s and topped off with a full tank of pride, I began my 2 week crash course training regimen:

Day 1: run for 20 minutes
Day 2: look for socks with better “wicking” technology
Day 3: Think about race
Day 4: Think about race some more
Day 5,6,7: Weekend! Take a well-deserved break.
Day 8: Huh? 11 am already?..better get up now…(5 hours later) run for 20 minutes
Day 9: Create “Alan’s Ultimate Race Mix” of high energy race music. Transfer to iPod.
Day 10: Run for 20 minutes (in order to test out the first 5 songs of Alan’s Ultimate Race Mix)
Day 11: Reorganize songs on iPod to enhance motivational properties of Alan’s Ultimate Race Mix.
Day 12: Contract cold virus
Day 13: Sickness worsens
Race Day (at 3am): Realize that I shouldn’t get out of bed because I’m sick as a dog AND can’t sleep due to my unfortunate decision to take a 24 hour Claritin D (now with extra pseudoephedrine) 5 hours before.

But pride… ah yes pride. It can do quite a number on you.

So I gulped 3 GU packs, chugged a vitamin water (cause its packed with. Y’know. Vitamins) and chomped an extra Claritin for good measure before **bang** the race begins.

Pain, thy name is Cap10k. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, let’s just say it was ugly. Apparently there is a very good reason why our intelligent designer designed us to sleep once in awhile and/or heal before intense physical activity. No less than three imaginary heart attacks, 2 desperate attempts to refrain from vomiting and 62 minutes later, I crossed the finish line.

Humbly I congratulated Tim on a great race. For the record, I’m pretty sure his victory was due to him taking advantage of one of my imaginary cardiac episodes about 4.5 miles into the race… …or maybe Alan’s Ultimate Race Mix still needed some fine tuning.
…or 4 GU packs instead of 3?
...or Red Bull instead of Vitamin Water?
…or maybe because I had to pee starting .5 miles into the race which was really distracting.

But it was certainly, absolutely, positively NOT because Tim was better prepared and flat out whooped me.