Wussies

After hearing about YUTC from Tom and Kirstin last year, Kerry and I decided to give it a try. Bob Combs, Jim Harris and the rest of the Ohio crowd welcomed us to come out. Since they are always coming to the Massanuttens for MMT and the Ring, we figured it was time to return the favor.

We made the 4hr drive the night prior straight from DC/work and got a hotel in Poland Ohio, just a few miles west of the Pa. line. Poland is a nice small town that surprisingly is well equipped for any type shopping you might need coming from out of town. We were only 15 minutes from the start at Mill Creek Park. The start area is at an old log cabin facing Glacier Lake. The trails run around the lake area and I would compare the terrain to rock Creek Park. We were also surprised at how many of the Ohio crowd we knew from other events. Plus, Dan Lehmann showed up all the way from West Virginia for the event. There were some 60+ signed up for the 25K version and another 110+ for the 50K.

We all began at the reasonable hour of 8AM to crisp 60 degree temps. Bob Combs and Bill Losey just moved out to Evergreen Colorado, but they came back to help Jim Harris one last time as Jim is the new RD.

The run is a lot of fun, the Ohio group are the most friendly bunch you could run with and the swag and post-race food and drink in the old log cabin are great. I’d recommend this race to anyone looking for a fun event in September.

With only one day to go before the WUS Donut Run of Champions (DROC), it seemed that the WUSsies were living up to their name.  Robin & Kirsten had shown donut spirit, but no male freely dared to challenge Neal Gorman’s feats of sugary domination from last April: we assumed Adam didn’t have a choice, Sean was moaning about excess patent work, Doug was infatuated by his Ben & Jerry’s, and Keith was leading a rival run to promote sugary temperance.

But on race day the WUS responded to Neal’s call to arms (http://www.twitvid.com/61YZT). Jon L-D had run DROC’s sister run, UROC, just days before, and was nursing a bruised foot. It was not until the middle of the afternoon that he confirmed his participation in DROC. Sean was able to put aside the drill bit reviews for an evening of running and junk food consumption (which, truth be told, is a fairly standard evening for Sean). The ringer of the run, though, was Matt W, having had several weeks to recover from his dominating performance at the 100k world championship race.

Several donut run groupies gathered at the fountain in Dupont Circle, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first runner. Martha, Aaron, Ryon and Tom were joined by Kerry, who brought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, so Doug could take the ice cream option for the run, and several more pints in case anyone else chose to do the same (Keith & Mario swung by during their WUS Normale to dip into Kerry’s ice cream).

The first runners to arrive were Jon L-D and Neal, neck and neck.  JLD got an early jump on the donut eating, but Neal’s strategic use of the Semen Collection Cup helped his later donuts go down extra smooth and he left the Circle first.  However, the donut bitsies churned up some activity in Neal’s intestines on R Street and someone’s yard got a little present there, allowing JLD to pass and finish victorious in a new record of 47 minutes.

We had considered Matty Woods to be a strong contender, but he forgot his light and tagged along with Sean, whose decades of junk food consumption should have poised him to seriously challenge Neal & JLD (apparently some long nights in the patent office during the end of the fiscal year set him back a notch or two).  Matty recommended that we up the donut intake to 8 at least — 6 was trivial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adam was a gentleman and waited for his fiance Robin, who stole the ladies championship, redeeming last April’s beer mile spewfest.

Doug found his pint of Ben & Jerry’s to be considerably more difficult to scarf than he’d imagined.

Since Seanie hadn’t RSVPed and we hadn’t bought him donuts, we had to make an emergency return trip to Krispy Kreme to get Kirstin donuts, although this turned out to be fortuitous because Jeff Reed also late-showed and needed 6 sugary goodnesses as well.

Here is JLD during the post-race sugar high: http://www.twitvid.com/XMBL5 and Neal Gorman’s post-mortem, continuing to enjoy his beverage container of choice http://www.twitvid.com/MLHI2.

One course.  One day.  One champion.  Either your head is in the game or it’s not.  Either way, see you Tuesday.  Or not.

VHTRC Women’s Half Marathon

Manassas, VA

September 10, 2011

Apologies for the delay in this posting.  Last week I wrote a lengthy report on the Women’s Half Marathon, saved it 4-5 times as a draft on wussies.net and then Poof it disappeared.  I’m not going to try to reconstruct that detailed report again, I’ll just be frustrated that I can’t recall exactly how I crafted it, but I have a few things I’d like to say.

First, I’d like to heap some praise on the volunteers and people who were along the course – not just for the usual general things like hard work and generosity of time, but for something more specific: tone.  I had a bit of a rough day out there: I’m worn out and undertrained from weeks of travel (Nepal, China, Malta, I’m writing now from Minneapolis); I’m still dealing with a foot problem that isn’t too painful to run but is too painful to run normally, and it’s set off a cascade of troubles in other areas and muscles; and maybe, as Keith Knipling so put it, ‘I’m distracted’ by some pretty life-altering recent events.  Throw on top of that getting my feathers all ruffled by some new unexpected competition, and I think everyone could see on my face that I was troubled early in the race.  I welcome a good race, but it’s a whole different thing to get blindsided by totally unexpected competition of an unknown quantity, especially on home turf with some high expectations on a day when you’re not physically sharp.

Maybe it’s because the VHTRC has a lot of experience offering words of encouragement to runners who are not looking too good deep into a long ultra, but the ‘cheers’ I received along the course were so welcomingly subdued and calm.  I say ‘cheers’ in quotes because they were subdued, calming, reassuring.  Having run since high school through throngs of parents screaming ‘go get ‘er!’ I can appreciate this greatly.

One of the things I liked least about high school cross country were the ridiculous things parents yelled at the runners, parents who didn’t know a thing about running (fortunately my own parents were not bad).  I could never understand why people would shout things at me like ‘She’s right ahead of you!’ as if I had a field of vision that was limited to 3 inches.  Fortunately my team knew to yell things at me like ‘Go, Martha!  Smack It!’ that would get me to crack a smile and relax, which was far more likely to get me in the mood to hunt down the competition than ‘Use your arms!’  Other inanely unhelpful lines included ‘Use the hill!’ and ‘Time to go!’  I know there are some classics there I’m forgetting so if anyone else can think of any more, please add to my list.  I think the best cheer I’ve ever heard is Penn State legend coach Harry Groves yelling at one of his runners to move up on the runner ahead with the line, ‘Sniff it!  Sniff that butt!’

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some WUSsies ventured to the Netherlands to demonstrate how we do it. We have been unable to confirm whether this run was followed by 2-for-1 pizzas.

Mike W. – 6:42:49, 2nd Man

Amy S. – 8:10:11, 11th Woman

Matt W. – 6:50:23, 6th Man

Good jogging, all! Results are here.