So over a taco plate last night Mrs. last Tri tells me the local 10k is this morning. I think "cool, great workout and check to see how my 10k time is these days on a flat course." I show up this morning and there is maybe 50 people, of which 5 are halfway serious runners. This is a no frills race. No starting banner, course marking (I'll come back to that), mile markers, aid station with Gatorade Endourance etc. Grass roots baby! So I am trotting around warming up sizing the competetion and it is about 8AM the official start time. I don't see a starter so I jog about 100 yards down the road and a horn goes off not even near the start line and everybody is off with me 100 yards back. So I am in a dead sprint for 200 yards to catch the pack. So much for pacing. First half mile we are weaving through the downtown, my heart is starting to stabilize. Guy half block ahead cuts a block too early and everybody starts to follow so I start yelling "next block" and nobody listens. So I cut along with everybody. There are no markings on the course so I can see the confusion. Within 3-4 blocks the leaders catch us and start giving us crap for cutting the course which I absorbed because they were right. So I am setting into my pace now (guessing 7:30 since there are no mile markers) and starting to stabilize targeting a guy ahead of me I plan on reeling in. Then I start getting that funny tick in my achilles and I thing"OK, I'll just run through this and it will loosen up." I doesn't and goes code red on me so I half to shut down at 1.5 miles and walk back to the starting line.

But on the postive side I got a really crappy race t shirt for $25!

HAVE A NICE DAY! :-)

---

_________________________________
I'll be what I am
A solitary man