E Tu, Brutus

March 15, 44BC

Emperor Julius Caesar is undone by the hand of a faithful friend, leading to the proclamation "Beware the Ides of March."

No truer words have been spoken, as Caesar's curse would become our own plague on Saturday. Many of our friends fell at the hand of trusted compatriots, namely hops, barley and malt. Seriously, I can't even explain what was going through my head when I entered 1288 Riverside on Saturday at 4pm and saw Ben "sleep" on the couch. I immediately took out my phone, took a picture and uploaded it to Facebook. Apparently the multitude of Guinness and Dogfish Heads at Kooper's weren't enough, so he washed them down with 2 40s of malt liquor.

Arjun fared even worse, at first, succumbing to the Evil much earlier in the day and taking a porcelain nap. Ben would fall, albeit later, and Kris and Stanford made valiant efforts to return to their homes unscathed, although they had to literally run away from the demons.

Needless to say, it was probably the sweetest day/Pub Run of all time. Kudos to Jim and the Falls Road staff (Will, Pete, Kelly, Becca, T, etc) for pulling off a fantastic event. Safe to say it was the most fun I've had running in a long time. And it was great we were able to have some out of town friends join in, like Julia and her brother, and Ruth and Lynn from the midwest.

Oh wait - there was an actual race today. Shamrock 5k took place at its customary 1:15pm start time. It was a much smaller, and very different crew of racers than last year, so the event felt like it paled in comparison to yesterday's fun. However, the results that it yielded were probably more impressive than last year, and I'm happy to share them with you after that incredibly long introduction!

Mike Prada led the way for Falls Road with an awesome 7th place finish in 16:26, just a few seconds off his time from last year when I thought he was in considerably better shape. Amazing how he just finds his legs for this distance. Rodney "44" Timpson was right behind, and then yours truly managed to find some short distance legs to finish 14th at 16:56.

Running an incredible 12 second personal best and finishing 2nd among all women, Christine Ramsey showed that her winter absence has not been for lack of running. An even more impressive 50 second performance increase was the result for Mike Zero, whose 17:17 was the first time he's ever broken 18. Yes, you read that right. Not far behind Z was Matt Stanford, who rocked an almost unbelievable PR at 17:27. His previous best was apparently over 20 minutes. That's in the running for sandbagger of the year!

Next up was Tom Stott, running just a few seconds slower than last year, at 17:44. I found it interesting that the only people that didn't run personal bests today, or at least faster than last year, were me, Mike and Tom - the Terps - but at least our team did make it to the Tournament.

Tom Stewart and Joel Brusewitz (running as Bobby Van Allen) were just a second or two apart, running 17:58 and 18:00, respectively. For Joel, that was his first race in nearly a year and a half.

Orla and Claire, who finished 8th and 10th, both ran post-collegiate PRs, and Jen Koshy nailed an actual PR, which is amazing because I didn't even see her finish - but I know she was there. Patty Sweeney also recorded a best, I think from what she was saying, and Sara Spears, practiced her tradition of going out hard the night before, ran 18 seconds faster than last year.

It's always great to see amazing results, particularly after a hard day and night of binge drinking. Almost makes you think we could be good if we didn't do it, or that maybe we're better because of it. Hmmm...

Anyway the impressive results made it really difficult to select a Purple Drink Athlete of the Week. We had so many PRs and impressive performances, I had to base it on expectation of performance and goals - so with that said our PDAW for the first time in his career...

Mike Zero!

Great job buddy, you certainly raced beyond well today and we're all really psyched for your success.

The week ahead - don't forget we have our friend Brennan Feldhausen running his first ever marathon on Saturday in DC (Ben is running the half) so if you can make it out to cheer, you should, and if you can't, send him some love. The temps are supposed to pick up a little this week and there's some rain the forecast, so it could be good racing conditions.