Easter With the Fam and April Fools Runion

Sorry for the delayed post on this one. Yes it is Tuesday. And yes I did promise posts by Monday, but it was Easter Weekend and my family was in town, so you’ll have to give me a break. It was a big week last week, so there is a lot to update on.

I had a race, a tough workout, and some serious PowerBar eating, so all in all it was a pretty good week.

The race wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done for what we were trying to accomplish this weekend. I was supposed to make sure that it went pretty quick from the gun. This way I would get some lactic acid buildup and remember what it felt like to rig home the last hundred of a race. So, this meant that I was going to straight lead a race for the first time in a loooong time. The problem is, my first step isn’t crazy quick, and I was out the back the first 100-meters. But I could tell people were settling so I rolled through the next hundred and found myself in the lead at the 200 mark.

Yikes, it wasn’t that much fun to be in the lead. You notice the wind more, you notice the speed more, its tough. But it was definitely something I needed to do. I came through 400 in 54low and then rolled around the 600 in 1:21low. I tried to hold off the field around the turn and a runner went by me with 120 to go. Now normally in that situation I would throw in the towel. But I fought my way through the last 80 and even started catching the leader with about 40 to go. Alas, the track ran out of room and I found myself in 2nd, but a 1:49.82 opening 800 leading the whole way will have to do for now.

And looking at what else what down this week in terms of training I was pretty happy with how it all turned out. Tuesday was a 5xmile workout with the last mile at 4:30, so I ended up being pretty tired heading into Friday’s race. Got in my 72 miles for the week and now in the midst of another big week. With Some big races in Cali coming up, we’ll cut down the mileage a little bit, but the season is still very young, so there’s a long way to go.

As a special treat, enjoy this April Fool's Runion! article. It’s a nice little piece I drew up back in the day. Remember also to check out the Runion! archives to see any of the other pieces.

Let’s Go!

Addendum: For footage of my Stanford 1500 Opener, check out:
http://www.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?do=videos&year=2010&pg=1&event_id=57&video_id=22793&folder_id=1430&offset=3#video
Thanks to Columbia grad John Sun, for the email!

Another Runion Weekend

Life has been good in DC lately. Getting into a routine of running and working and school, and I cannot complain. I realized that my season is only 2 months away now, so excitement has started creeping in. Indoors is going to be a very fun time for me with lots of racing and lots of training. There is no real plan out there yet for as to exactly what races I’ll be running, but that will come once we see how I’m running.

Then, in terms of the rest of this post, I have some actual homework to do, so you will once again be given a glimpse of The Runion. This particular article is the one that almost created stardom for the start-up website. It was after Tiger Woods won the US Open on a bum knee, and I wasn’t too impressed. So, I wrote an article with a few likenesses to the situation. The article was featured on SportsIllustrated.com’s “Hot Clicks” (a compilation of fun sports links) and the numbers of people checking the site sky rocketed.

I had promised that if I ever reached 10,000 visitors in one day that I would jump into the Hudson River. Well at 11am the amount of visitors to the site was up to 2,791. “Oh dear God!” I remember thinking.

However, it was at about this time that it was revealed Tiger Woods was going to be getting surgery on his injured knee and his accomplishment was actually pretty impressive…well as impressive a golfing accomplishment can be.
The link was removed, the visitors for the day stopped at 2,791 and The Runion returned to anonymity.
Here was the article:

RUNNER INJURES PINKY; STILL EAKS OUT A WIN

PEACHTREE, GA — Brushing aside any doubts concerning his injury, Lionel “Lion” Forest fought through unbearable pain to win the second major race of the Peachtree, Georgia Amateur Racing Series (or the PGA Racing Series), the Utley Supermarket Open 5k (or the US Open 5k).

Forest, the twenty five year old accountant, suffered a paper cut on his pinky only two days before the race. Attempting the Grand Slam of the PGA Racing Series, Forest had already won the Slam’s first leg in convincing fashion. However, having taken two days off to tend to his pinky, there was worry that he would falter on the challenging US Open course. That worry quickly turned to jubilation as Forest once again crossed the finish line in first, holding up two fingers as he broke the tape.

“I was ready for anything out there today,” said Forest, who blew away the field in the last 400 meters, winning by 4 seconds to keep his hope of winning the Grand Slam alive. “But let me tell you,” he continued, “that cut really stung once some of my sweat seeped through my band aid.”

Now, having won both the US Open and The Masterbators (which is put on by the sperm clinic in nearby Augusta), Forest’s attention will move to getting healthy for the British Bakery Open next week before the final leg of the Slam, the PGA Racing Series Championship in two weeks time. He will be applying Neosporin and Band-Aids on the hour every hour in preparation for his next run.

“We couldn’t be prouder of Lionel,” said PGA Racing Series Director Jonathan Newman. “He is what racing is all about in the PGA. There is a stigma that members of the PGA aren’t as tough as the rest of the sports world, but let me tell you, these guys go through a lot. I mean a paper-cut and this guy is out there competing? You show me another sport where someone is doing that!”

With comparisons to Tiger Woods’ performance at the Professional Golf Association’s United States Open, Lion Forest was not so quick to place himself in the same breath as the great golfer.

“Are you kidding me?” he replied when asked if he thought his performance was similar to that of Woods’, who had knee surgery eight weeks ago. “Tiger’s a pussy. I had a fucking paper cut! A PAPER CUT! You know how bad those sting?!”

miles and miles

I am going to be very tired for the next three months of my life. I am going to run a lot of miles. And then I am going to run a lot more.

A meeting with Coach Henner after 5th Avenue put things into perspective for me. He didn’t even mention the race in particular, but instead focused on things that I need to be doing now so that the same thing doesn’t happen this year that happened last. I need to be a stronger runner. And that means that 70 miles a week doesn’t quite do it any more. It means that my 3k and 5k workouts need to be stronger. It means that I need to Man Up. Which is exactly what I’ll try to do.
In good news, to break up the monotony of running cross country-esque workouts the rest of the fall, I will be flying out to the Bay Area at the end of October to run another road mile. Since I am now down to a 1-2 record on the street, hopefully I can even out the score.

And now, since this week wasn’t the most eventful for me, I’ll leave you with a treat. My senior year at Columbia I had the brilliant idea of making a fake running news website a la the “Onion” and I called it the “Runion.” Although the writing was spot on and the humor hilarious, the “Runion” has ceased to exist after a catastrophic event involving Tiger Woods (a story that is for another time). But now, in weeks that I am more of a boring person, I will post a “Runion” story or two to pass the time. This one was written by my good friend, Mike Smith, and, grotesque it may be, it makes me laugh the most of them all…
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Runner Achieves Mythical “Running Boner”, Has Brush With Teammates
ATHENS, OH – Will Tremble felt the first stir around mile five. He was on a long steady run with a tight pack of his teammates when it began. “At first I thought nothing of it,” Tremble told The RUNion in a phone conversation. “This type of thing just isn’t supposed to happen on a run.”

But what began as a stir quickly developed into a full erection. “At first I didn’t say anything…It all happened so fast. I was confused,” he continued. “I mean it went from limp to half-mast to full-out boner in something like a minute.” The silence then turned to recognition and then commotion.

Junior Heanly Adams described his first reaction in a personal interview at the University food court: “At first I didn’t believe it was real. [Pointing to salad bar] I thought he stuffed a pickle or a stick in his shorts…When I found out it was real, I suddenly felt as if ‘the pack was closing in’ as we normally say, but in a much different way.”

Most runners believe that getting an erection on a run is impossible. Nevertheless, stories circulate, rumors pulse, and contests, popularly called “the boner race”, are held nationwide to see who can achieve the mythical feat. It’s rumored, even, that one team held a pot of $200 dollars that would go to the first to produce a “persuasive boner.” When asked how he finally managed the feat, Tremble couldn’t give a definite answer. “I can’t say for sure. I wasn’t trying to get one or anything. I don’t even remember what I was thinking about at the time.”

But some of Tremble’s teamates are beginning to speculate on how he did it. Ray Haystacker, a redshirt freshman, suggested that Tremble flooded his thoughts with “sexy fantasies” to force himself into getting an erection. “Orgies even” Hackstacker goes on “…girls’ team, guys’ team, pin-ups, farm animals…candles and hot wax, lace pillows everywhere…That kid’s got a dirty mind.” Others on the team think it was “something else”, suggesting that Tremble got a lift from substances that are banned in the so-called “boner race.”

“Will wants so bad to be the first [to get a running boner],” Senior Kent Halloway wrote in an e-mail, adding, “He would do anything: raid his dad’s Viagra stash, chew hand-fulls of Spanish fly gulped down with ginseng tea…I even heard he was touring all the local truck stops looking for goatweed. He would just stuff his pockets with quarters, hop in his car, and come back with all sorts of brown bags that he would stash in his locker.” Epimedium, or “horny goatweed”, is a plant species that is believed to be a highly potent aphrodisiac, and carries with it legends of its mythical power to increase virility and sensitivity. Its use in the boner race has therefore been controversial at best.

The allegations of cheating have caused discord between Tremble and some members of the team. Runners from around the country have stepped in to take sides, flooding discussion boards online with heated debates on the issue. Meanwhile, Tremble denies the allegations, calling them “baseless and rooted in jealousy.”

“I would never take a lift,” he issued as a final plea, “I’m a simple, honest guy whose head just so happened to pop into famedom.”