The schedule for today said “Easy 10-11.” That’s miles. No problem. It’s sort of a rest week in the middle of marathon training to give the body a break before the stretch run here.

Easy means you feel like you can run at that pace all day. Again, no problem.

Until he passed me. It was about 12 seconds after I started, a guy about my height and my build flew past me on the trail. Just after he passed, a man going the other way asked me for directions. After dispensing knowledge to the wayward walker, I took off.

I’m not sure why I started so fast, but it definitely wasn’t “easy.” I think my body is just itching for a race and sometimes can’t be held in check.

And so it went for the first mile, I was cruising but didn’t see the target. Just as I was starting to think it would be a good idea to slow down and actually be able to finish 10 miles today, I caught a glimpse. I guess it doesn’t pay to be roughly 6’3″ and wearing a white shirt when someone’s chasing you.

Now I’ve chased down a lot of people on runs who had no idea we were racing. It’s actually pretty easy to do when they’re not in on it. As I got within 20 feet he could hear my footsteps. He looked back over his shoulder to check where I was. Again, and again he checked. At about the 2.5 mile mark there’s a steep uphill on the trail. Whenever I’ve run there before I always picture the moment in the Tour de France where Lance Armstrong stared down his top rival seconds before obliterating a mountain climb and demoralizing the entire field.

It was his “fuck you, this is my race” moment. This was mine, though I didn’t do the whole staredown thing. I just blew by the guy with enough speed to be sure he wouldn’t just pass me right back. After a mile of running about as fast as I would in a 3-mile race and not a 10-mile “easy” run, I thought I lost him. I peeked back after a straightaway in the woods and didn’t see him.

It was then that my wonderful brain reminded me that I had quite a ways to go and should slow down…so I listened. At mile 4 he caught me and passed me. My brain said, “ok, we had our fun, let’s not forget what our goal is today and that’s not racing this guy.” My competitive side disagreed and hijacked the legs into a chase-down plan. I got 3 feet behind him for the next two miles before he turned off in a parking lot. During that time he looked back over his shoulder at least a dozen times. He knew we were racing and that I had him.

But it’s a good thing he quit then, since my athletic ego and competitive nature wouldn’t have been able to do much more at that pace and happilly dropped back into a more normal pace for the final 5 miles.

Side note: Most people in Bangladesh don’t have last names. The story is about more than that, read it.

Side note 2: This is amazing. I would have killed 283 people if I was driving like that.

St. Patrick’s Day. It’s the celebration of everything Irish. Look for leprechauns, drink a Guinness, wear a green shirt and yell “Kiss Me, I’m Irish.”

This weekend I ran the Shamrock Half-Marathon in Virginia Beach, Va., a harrowing experience that has left me hobbled, in incredible pain and wanting desperately to do it again. Sick, I know.

But it was on the way to this race that my mind was stirred by a musical conundrum. Listening to a bagpiper on the radio, I thought, are there female bagpipers? I know I’ve never seen one.

The pipers are called to all sorts of official duties from parades to funerals, playing in traditional garb and blasting out the unmistakable blare of their instrument. They often play in groups, though a single piper is sufficient to set a mood.

And yet, women are so rare among those ranks that everyone I’ve asked in the last few days has never seen such a thing.

Thanks to the internet we know they exist, a relief in a world that has too much division for arbitrary or just plain stupid reasons. According to one site, there is a myth that women were forbidden from playing, and such an offense would mean the loss of fingers.

Depending on how true that may have been, and especially how if might have been codified may be a beacon into the situation itself. Women were barred from voting until a Constitutional Amendment gave them such a right. Not only was a barrier lifted, but the situation went beyond even “we’re not saying you can’t,” to “yes, please do.”

So I propose the next amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “No person shall be restricted from piping, bag or other, based on race, religion, sex, creed or nation of origin.”

What better way to spend earrrrrrly Sunday morning than running down Pennsylvania Ave? Well sleeping is cool too, but you can do that any day, while running on the streets of D.C. at other times will probably end with some sort of vehicular injury…depending on how quick you are at dodging cars.

So this morning I did the Thomas Labrecque Classic, a nice 5K (3.1 mile) run to get the blood flowing at 8 in the morning. My goal heading into the race was to break 22 minutes, a time I have sought after since the first 5K I did 2 years ago.

Now judging by how well I ran early in the year, that seemed like a bit of a pipe dream, but slowwwwwly but surely I cut into the time barrier and ran a few good races heading into today’s event:

Laws Run For Shelter: 25:34
GW Parkway Classic: 24:06
Vienna Elementary 5K: 22:25
Race For The Cure: 23:04
Greene Turtle 5K: 22:34
Thomas Labrecque Classic: 21:46!
(the winner was apparently flown in straight from Kenya, finishing around 14:30)

Which brings into question my training methods. Sure, at this advanced age it’s rare for someone to cut almost 4 minutes off of a 3.1 mile run, but I swear it was all natural. I was fueled by nothing more than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Propel fitness water, also known as the lunch of champions and the nectar of the gods.

Look for some sort of goofy mid-run picture to follow, they usually spring up in the days following the race and always catch you looking like a complete idiot 🙂

I must first apologize since I feel like I’ve left out a LOT of potentially good stuff from the last week or so, but I’m going to claim I was busy and thus couldn’t share it with you.

But I’ll make up for it here, with the scariest children’s item I’ve seen in a while. That’s on the side of the box of a giant chocolate rabbit I received for Easter. Now I’m not an expert in marketing and packaging, but last time I checked, frightening the bejeeezus out of little kids is not a good way to go when your business is geared towards children. Just a thought.

On the other hand, the picture does appear right about the nutritional facts, which could be a move to try to ward off some childhood obesity. The kids see the sad rabbit–OK, the obviously suicidal rabbit–along with the nutritional facts and say “hmmmmm, maybe eating this chocolate bunny will make me sad like the rabbit on the box.” But he is packed with 16 % of your daily recommended calcium if you eat the whole thing at once, so maybe it’s not allllllll that bad. (We’ll pretend like the chocolate rabbit doesn’t also have 140 percent of your daily saturated fat)…

At last weekend’s GW Parkway Classic 5K, my running partner for the day said her biggest fear at the start of a race was falling down and getting trampled by all of the runners behind her. This week I ran the prestigious Vienna Elementary 5K, which was preceded by the even more well-known Vienna Elementary 1 mile. It was that 1-mile race where that fear became someone else’s reality. One of the elementary school kids–I’m not sure which one since I’ve never been to that school before and there were 877689 of them in the race–where was I? Oh right, one of the kids fell, maybe have been trampled, and certainly broke his arm. Ouch.

So I might be addicted to doing races now, but whatever, most of them are for good causes. And now I’ve signed up for one of the best causes of all–the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and its National Race for the Cure. If you want to help out a cause that’s near and dear to too many people head to my donation page.

Want to join me in running, or want more info? Go here.

And because there aren’t enough links already…my story is here.