Monday, November 20, 2006

Oh no you ditt’int!

Chris and Ed, you would have been proud. Not that were overly competitive, but…

So Friday morning, I was running along the Lakefront path minding my own business. Progressively I hear the footsteps of someone coming up fast behind me. I move to the right to make way as a sign of respect for this faster runner. This dude passes me, and I expect to see Chris Wehrman-like local running stud to appear. However, the guy who appears is some dude in his late 20’s wearing a white cotton long sleeve t-shirt he got in some 5K. Secondly, this backward hat wearing frat boy is swinging his arms wildly as he runs on ahead of me. I am just out for a recovery run, but “Oh, hells no”. The running pecking order had just been challenged. The “Dude Abides”, so I must respond.

I picked up the pace (maybe 6:45ish) for the pass. He immediately surges, but I counter keeping about 5-10 feet ahead of him. Now he’s hooked. I stay just within his reach enough to give him hope. I still feel pretty comfortable, but I can hear his breathing getting louder and louder. How long can I keep get him hanging in there? He musters a couple more surges which amuse me to no end and I can hear him seriously huffing and puffing now. This continues for only about ¼ mile, and then suddenly, I hear the relative quietness of only my own footsteps. He’s dropped. This may qualify as gloating, but I can’t resist doing the obligatory backward run for about 20 feet just to observe him walking and struggling to catch his breath.

It was a great little running pick me up.

2 comments:

Chris said...

Irresistable. I usually find those types try to grab a brief lead and then conveiently exit the path, leaving me to stop and beg for more.

Good work, my man.

Ed said...

Yeah, I had something similar happen yesterday at the beginning of mi 18 miler. except the dude would not drop, and I was forced to keep a ghastly pace for about 6 miles. When my "pursuer" finally dissapeared I proceeded to shuffle the rest of the run...