The Tale of Two

The Tale of Two

QIC: Cobra

Date: 02/05/2018

PAX: Van Pelt, Cobra

There’s a movement out there taking place. It’s a typical #Dashstrong movement entailing an 8-week training for those hoping to PR a 5k in March. Am I a part of said movement? Sure, I HC’d. Am I doing the training? Well, that depends on your definition of “doing the training”. But yeah, I’m looking to PR at the St. Leo’s 5k in March. And that shouldn’t be too hard for me seeing as I’ve never been fast to begin with, so I’m bound to #BreakSomething, right?!? At any rate, I almost forgot that I had Q for #RnG today, but being the stellar Site Q that @BoutTime is (mind you, he’s been out of commission with a broken foot), he fulfilled his duty in reminding me a couple days out. And how, or more importantly WHY, I had agreed to Q anything the day after the Super Bowl is beyond stupid, but again – I’ve never received a PhD in doing smart things; rather, my PhD is in the totally opposite category of doing smart things.  However, I will hold myself accountable as I expect to be held accountable by my F3WinstonSalem brethren. So after stuffing my face with tastes-so-good-but-will-haunt-me-later foods and libations while watching a Philly team make history, I laid my head down on the pillow resigning myself to two facts:  1) tomorrow morning is going to hurt, and 2) I will most likely hurt all by myself (reference the aforementioned movement thingy going on through March, and it’s the day after the Super Bowl). As luck (not the good kind) would have it, the sleep was restless throughout the night, which resulted in a not-so-glorious 0400 wake up call. So off to Speas Elementary I trekked for a warm-up run consisting of two extremely slow and uneventful miles. Upon my return to the parking lot, ‘lo and behold another vehicle sat idling with a passenger awaiting the Q for #RnG. And that passenger was none other than the #SmokingKing himself, @VanPelt. We waited in the lot for a few minutes exchanging similar grumblings of the tastes-so-good-but-will-haunt-me-later foods and libations consumed the night before, and once we realized it was just going to be us, we jaunted off for the Run portion.

So a quick story about the route we ran:  this route was run last May or June when @Closer was the Q, which also happened to be the route I was running when my calf issues decided to make themselves known and further make my life miserable for what ended up being the next several months. Now, if you’re the superstitious kind of person (which I am from time to time), you’d be saying to yourself, “Self, why in THE hell are you tempting fate by choosing to run the very route that set you back for several months?” And if you talk to yourself (like I do all of the damn time), you’d say, “You see, self, it’s really simple. You don’t have a PhD in doing things smart. You have a PhD in doing things the opposite of smart. And besides, you need to stop being superstitious. Oh, and stop being a pussy and just go run it.”

So there we were, me and @VanPelt, just chugging along. And like men do, neither of us wanted to be the “slow guy”. Nor did we want to make excuses (did I mention we ate and drank a lot of crap the night before?). So we found a nice, respectable pace. And then we hit a hill that I had forgotten was there (probably that selective memory thing going on). And the hill sucked. But chugging along we continued and eventually found ourselves back at Speas. It was then that @VanPelt made a respectable bow-out because the tastes-so-good-but-will-haunt-me-later food was knocking on his door. And let’s be honest – we’ve all been there, done that, and probably ruined a bunch of t-shirts when we didn’t heed Nature’s call. And away @VanPelt went.

That left me with two very distinct options:  1) continue with the Gun portion all by myself, or 2) implement the “Who will ever know if I left now?” policy. So I went with Option 1. Why, you ask? Because no one likes a quitter. Especially me. And so I gunned for the remaining 15 minutes. And I did the CoT by giving thanks to Him for the opportunity to get out of bed and sweat out the tastes-so-good-but-will-haunt-me-later food and libations. And also for having @VanPelt with me during the run.

And that, friends, is the Tale of Two for today’s edition of #RnG.

PS – I’ve been haunted like a son-of-a-bitch today. But it was worth it.