Well, i knew it would happen some day, but i thought it would be a little further down the road, but chuck beat me in a running race. It seems his whole physical fitness at the academy, and playing a sport every semester, along with the fact that he has been running for the last three days here in Reno all combined at the perfect moment to allow chuck to blow me out of the water this morning at the turkey trot around the sparks marina. I blame it on the cold, the fact that TR thought we were running the wrong race (he thought the 10k people went out first, then the 2 mile people, we lost about 40 seconds because got off the course to wait for the 2 mile runners, only to realize that the people passing us were 2 mile runners and that we had just been really fast, and we had to pass Mr. Linton twice, and he made some snide comment about not paying attention to directions or something, typical) also that i didn't ride my bike to school on Wednesday (the first time this semester, it is because i had drug testing for shooting and it is really really cold at 630 in the morning. The funny part though is that seeing as how i am an old man, all 21 times around the sun and all, i was put into the old man bracket (21-30 i think) and seeing as how there was only one person in my age group ahead of me, i came in second place in my age group and i get a medal. I came in 14th overall, chuck came in 10th, and (i feel really bad, i can't think of TR’s little brothers name right now) came in 11th. TR was hurting quite a bit, so he was a little bit back. I think it was because we stopped and waited, it kind of messed all of us, but Chuck and TR’s brother both recovered really well, I hit that wall out at about 1.5 miles. Chuck actually ran a really great time and I wish I could have kept up, the only problem is he was 4th in his age group (no medal, so sad), so while chuck beat me in one sense, who came away with a medal?
Also, we thought people won pies for the top 5 in their age group, because that is what they did a few years back when TR ran it last, so we waited around, but then that whole reading directions thing came up again, and we finally read the little slip of paper in the bag they gave us and it told us there weren't any pies. So chuck went and bought a pie at Scolari’s to fool his parents into thinking he won one. It was pretty funny until his dad figured it out, or maybe he told him, i can't remember the specifics so well. All in all though, it was a good day. Maybe someday i will be in shape to do the 10k, it was only the slow out of shape people who did it, all the quick people did the 10k as well. Actually Mr. Linton gave us crap about that too. He is a hostile person, or maybe it is just because chuck was there. I just find that winter is too cold for running, about March or so is about the right time to start running. Actually TR might be the new long distance coach at Damonte Ranch High School and I told him I would help him out next season. His brother was the only person on the cross country team last season, so hopefully we can get a few more people.
Last i finally uploaded the mt rose pictures that chuck took from back in the summer when we hiked up rose in the dark. It pains me to admit that we didn't hike from the east side, but it was still a really cool trip.