Sunday, July 27, 2014

Canton Football HOF Enshrinement Festival Pigskin Run, or, Eighty percent of success is showing up

Woody Allen's quote, Eighty percent of success is showing up couldn't be more true than for old geezers like me who drag themselves to races.

I've never been in more pain than I have over the last week or so. I can't even explain it; it seems to be deep in my bones, especially my back and pelvis. As of yesterday, I stopped using the nitroglycerin patches on my Achilles tendon, thinking that they could be the cause. I'll give it a couple days to find out. Of course my Achilles pain is still there as well.

Just running at all is a problem. I spent almost the entire the week on the mill, with the thought that if I got to the point where I couldn't continue, at least I could step off the thing. But I still drove to Canton for this race that I'd stupidly pre-registered for.

It was warm and very humid - about like it was for my last race, the Johnnycake Jog two weeks ago. That one wasn't as bad as it could have been. This one was.

I did about 7:30 pace for the first three and a half miles, but then fell apart and  finished right around 39 minutes. The funny thing is that I placed third in my ancient age group. Not so awful for such a big race. I guess it helped to just show up.

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