It's Going Down For Real

For the 5th straight year, a group of us headed out to Westminster after work on a Wednesday evening in April to run a mile, downhill, as fast as we could.

The Westminster Main Street Mile became an immediate team-favorite and over the years we've seen some massively impressive performances from the likes of Ed, Jubb, Berdan, Diane, and others. Last year just 4 of us made the trip and this year, which yielded the slowest winning time in the years we've been going. This year would be even slower.

Indeed, when your team consists of 3 slow dragons, a kid who just ran the marathon of the century 2 days earlier, and three others dealing with minor injuries, you can't expect to light the streets up. Add in a stiff headwind and a weak field and poof - you have a high school kid winning the race in 4:26.

But what you can always count on with this group is a fun time, hard effort, and being the first to consume our ice cream sandwiches after the race.

Snake Hill Bandits enjoying their post-race ice cream sandwiches

So here's how the evening went:

Graham and Christa rode the Metro to Owings Mills. Props to both of them, especially Christa, who rode it end-to-end. In all my years I believe Brennan is the only one who's done that. Me and Bish met them in OM, and we drove through some rain out 140 to Westminster. The sun came back out and dried up the roads, but it was definitely a cool night, and we saw that we'd have a headwind in the race.

We met Jon, PJ, and Meg D, and warmed up - as a team - around the McDaniel campus. A quick stop at the cars and we were off, up the hill, to the start. Up there we saw former Falls Road employee, Rory Jenkins, who just happened to be home. The initial drop is pretty steep, which is where I hobble down the hill and watch the race unfold. I had a good view of the women's race. Susan Hendrick of GRC took it out hard, a tactic that worked for the win, as the distance that Meg D had to try and close was just not manageable. Susan took the W in 4:51, with Meg D in 2nd at 4:57. Christa was just off her time from last year, taking 3rd in 5:09. At the awards, they announced that a Kyle Grimm, alleged 27 year old female, had won the race. We (I) stomped up to Nut Hall and said there was no way unless Kyle was pulling a Bruce Jenner that was the case. Upon video review, results were adjusted.

Since I get dropped like one of the cluster flies in my house from the initial downhill, I can't really see what's going on up front, but after the race we heard Rory finished 2nd to the high schooler, in the slowest winning time since prior to 2011. In 3rd was Timothy Snyder, from Frederick. Our first finisher was Steve "Bish" Febish, in 6th at 4:37. Graham, who trotted down the hill and, despite marathon soreness, could easily have gone faster, ran 4:47. Jon ran 5:01 and PJ finished at 5:04, before yours truly huffed and puffed across the line in 5:08 - the same time I ran last year. Graham and I then hustled over to the gym to be the first ones to get our ice cream sandwiches, which we consumed before anyone else even got there.

Then it was awards time, and with Meg D and Christa generating positive cash flow, it was a pretty good day already. Febish and Graham were 2nd and 3rd in their respective age group so they got medals (although technically Kyle Grimm should have then bumped Graham, but we're taking him out of the equation for foolishly saying he was a girl). Then it was the best category, Men 30-39, which we swept.

Thug Life

Before we left we each had another ice cream sandwich, then Graham dunked a piece of paper on a 10 foot rim. We got back to Canton where we had a late-night dining session at La Tolteca, which I paid for the next day.

For next year I hope more of you come out. I've got to say, it was more fun when we had a ton of people there and everybody did fun things and was cool. There's not a lot of that going on these days. C'mon people, loosen up!