Ogden Newspaper 20K

I promised a post about my race in Wheeling so here it is.

I traveled back to my hometown as a surprise to my father for his retirement party. Because I'm one of us sick runner-types, I spent significant time looking for a marathon to run while I was home that weekend. I couldn't find one anywhere near my home but I did find a 20K in Wheeling West-by-God-Virginia. As I investigated more I learned that this race was a companion to the 1/2 marathon that is run in my hometown. You get a special T-shirt if you run both and we all know that we run for T-shirts!!!

I convinced my mother to join me in this endeavor which really didn't take much convincing since she still loves her little baby very much. We got up at 5:30 and she drove me to Wheeling. I had only driven through the town on the highway so this would be my first visit to Wheeling. It's a nice town, bigger than I thought. We parked, got registered, and hit the porta-pottie. Typical pre-race steps.

I noticed as we were lining up to start that we were starting directly into a hill. Nice. Luckily we turned before we hit the hill. Yea! I settled into a nice easy pace and was taking in the scenery when I came upon a nice gentleman who noticed my Oklahoma shirt. He casually mentioned that he was taking it easy preparing for the 29th street hill. "Oh do tell", was my response, hill? What hill? He laughed. Alot. "You've never run this race before have you?". Ha ha ha, you're so funny Mr. not-so-nice-anymore gentleman.

It was a big hill. It was a long hill. It kept going. Up. Turn. More up. Turn. More up. It hurt. There was a band and large crowd at the top. "You've made it over! Way to go!". Bite me, screw you, you suck. Oh crap that's a steep downhill. {sound of knees screaming in horror}. Ahhhhhhhhhhh (Willie screaming in horror).

There that's my race report. Repeat that last paragraph a couple more times and that's the race in a nutshell. Only thing to add is that the last mile was all downhill which was really cool. I figured I had already done permanent damage to my knees anyway so I let it all hang out. I got under 7 for that last mile. It was really cool to have Paula register a sub-7 minute mile during a race! Just to keep Willie from getting too big a head though, the running Gods saw fit to have a young, f-ing shirtless, headband-wearing, punk-ass cherub (RBR term) pass me, like I was standing still, about 100 yards from the finish. Oh yea, and my mom just happened to catch a great action shot of the moment too! I look like I'm really moving except for the blur that is streaking past me. Just had to ruin a good picture didn't he?















Willie sending laser beams into a teenager's back

I ended up running 1:40:31 which was surprising considering how slowly I ran some of those hills. That's an 8:06 average. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Afterwards I got a great massage and some wonderful coffee from a local gourmet shop. My mom and I had a great day together. BTW, she was 12th out of 30 in her age group in the 5K walk. Go mom!















Happy Willie

Thanks for listening