Friday, June 11, 2010

Ball You Discreetly

I've had a few things I've been trying to sort out this week, so I didn't really get around to typing up the blog version of the email. But I figured before the weekend hits, I'll get something on here.

Dreaded Druid Hills

The gang put on the fabled DDH10k on Saturday. Times were...slow. Indicative of the hard course. Meg McNew got the win in a pretty quick time of 42:41. She's been on a tear lately! The times are all on the right side of the blog and once I update the spreadsheet you can see them up there.

Caribbean Scholastic Invite

Matty Blaze was invited down to this race, and owned the 1500. He won by 6 seconds. Two hours later it was 800 time, and the conditions were pretty hot and humid. Placed 9th but wasn't psyched on the time.

Bel Air Town Run

Dave Berdan got the win in the impressive time of 14:57. Megan DiGregorio got the win in 18:37. Pretty standard day of winning.

North Face Endurance Half Marathon

Tom and Patty found out that apparently this is a very challenging half marathon. If Mike Wardian only runs a 1:30, I would say it is!

Old Dominion 100

Well I'm sure by now everyone's heard about this race, or has at least gotten the highlights. It was a pretty amazing event to be at. You can check out Alyssa's take over on her blog. Melissa, Jen and Arjun made up the greatest crew team ever. Arjun and Jen are old pros at crewing, and Melissa ran a superb 12 miles with Alyssa from miles 75-87, on the trails, in the dark. It it just such a lonely race when the hours get late. After it was dark, runners are just following some orange ribbons tied around trees or telephone poles, indicating they are still on the right path and when to turn. With rare exceptions, you are by yourself. Your mind is playing tricks on you. Everything hurts. It hurts so bad that it doesn't even hurt anymore. You're so tired you're awake, but you're also so tired that you're loopy.

Now I will probably never have the opportunity to do a race like that, shoot, may never do any sort of real racing again, but I've gained a sense of the "why" people would do it. You're pushing yourself in a completely different way. You're surviving. You're living. It's raw and amazing.

So when Alyssa came through in 21h43m, nearly 7 hours faster than her time at WS100 last year, and finished in 2nd place F but 8th overall, it was awesome. Her time would have won the women's race the last few years, and she killed a bunch of dudes that looked like they should have walloped her. At one point she was on pace for 22h30m, but pulled back a ton of time in the 70 mile range. Really impressive.

With that in mind, Alyssa earned last week's Purple Drink Athlete of the Week, and her crew earned themselves a KC Masterpiece Award.

So far this week we've had a great track workout (Spence showed up!) and this weekend is the hottest weekend in June for the races. Survivor 7, Eagleman and Bay Swim make up the big races. I'll be expecting awesome results.

2 comments:

THE KRIS said...

best post title in recent memory.

RM said...

Hey man, just trying to bring something fresh each week.

And also have it show up on other people's blog rolls.