The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

What a beautiful day for a race! Newport, RI was a great place to be today, unless of course, you were a beat up out of shape Tuesday Night Turtle. A few weeks ago over a few pints, one of our members decided it might be a nice idea to have a race for the ragged bunch of Turtles that are coming back from injuries or just not training much anymore. We set Mothers Day as the time and Newport for the place. For the record, it was the NPEF Mothers Day Road Race, but were calling it the Broken Down 5k, a race within a race.

We had 11 runners show for the race of which  7 were in the "banged up" class. There should have been more, i did not run because i tweaked my calf on Monday and hadn't run since , that is my excuse and i am sticking by it. Being Mothers Day, i figure the rest had prior

 commitments, or they were just plain chicken.

The race went off like all others, some guy from Australia took the lead and the rest followed. As the busted up Turtles came by, i thought i could hear bones creaking, but maybe that was just the 30 mph winds blowing through the trees. Coming up the final hill, we had Martin Tighe and then Dave Schaad come by before the first broken Turtle, Capt. Ken Kirejczyk came by. It should be noted that Ken only had a broken collarbone from falling on the ice in a race on New Years Day. Next up, Jenny Saunders, not broken and running pretty good followed by Pieter "Dutch" Snoeren, who is recovering from knee surgery. After this, the fun started. Who would be next? Who would be walking? "Cousin" Rich Northup was next in followed by the blazing Rick Curran and Mark "no knees" Mitsmenn. Finally we had Sir George Ross of Scotland and Mark Zartarian bringing up the rear. This race is sort of a run in to the Sir George Ross TNT Handicap Race and Barbecue in August. Today just gives us an idea of where some runners are in their training or lack there of. It also sets off the 8 weeks of trash talking that will precede the handicap race. If you are counting, that is only 10 runners, Iron Mike Darigan was 4 seconds behind Jenny, that makes 11. 

With my latest setback this week, i was forced to put off my run up Mt. Washington until next year. It is something i really did not want to do, but i really need to be in shape to run up this hill, and i am i such lousy running condition, i had to do it. I still may go up to cheer on friends that are running and take a few photos. It sucks, i was looking forward to doing this race, but i am so far behind in my training. I look forward to next year.

Later

Scott