Non-Runner Reactions To Runners

If you're a runner, people have all sorts of reactions, whether they're runners or not. I think I heard them all this evening, because tonight was my company's annual Christmas party.

Once a year the owners have a party in Monterey, and fly people out who work in the various offices across the country. Many of us only see each other once a year.

This year was a little different in that they produced a slideshow of things people had this year that were significant or were proud of. In my case, I included the Sac Bee photo from my CIM finish.

This morning I was coming in from my 3 mile run and ran into two guys at a coffee shop across from our hotel. One works in the Austin office, the other in the Boston office, and they were enjoying their coffee with their wives. I've talked about running with the guy from Boston before, he's a great supporter but a little removed from running. He asked me if I was going to come out to where he is and run the Boston Marathon, but he didn't realize that you need to qualify.

As I walked up (I'd finished running by this point), the guy from Boston said, "There's the marathon man!" So we talked for a little bit. The guy from Austin started going on and on about how he'd run 3 marathons in his life, including the Marine Corps Marathon, and that his best time was a little over three hours, etc., etc. Now keep in mind, this guy's well over 6 foot tall and weighs about 350 pounds. I don't mean to be rude about it, but he's lucky he can even walk, given the size of his gut.

So I asked him, when did you run your last marathon? His answer: 1990.

Then tonight at the party, someone came up to me and asked, what have you been up to? OK, I thought, I'll bite, and quickly said that I had run a marathon last Sunday. This was one of those non-runner conversations that I just love. Oh really, she asked, and how far is a marathon? 26.2 miles, so are all marathons that length, or do they have 5 mile marathons? How long does that sort of thing take? 5 hours and 21 minutes, wow, I couldn't imagine running for that long.

I also managed to have a decent conversation with the girlfriend of a coworker who ran CIM last year, and who is planning to run San Diego in 2010. She even suggested I run it, but I think that's a little bit more money than I really want to spend right now. Between race fees, travel, hotel, and child care, it would just be too difficult.

Finally, I got a huge congratulations from a woman whose daughter had won 2nd place in last year's Nike Women's Half Marathon. She only found out I'd run CIM from my picture in the slideshow, and remembered how I'd lost weight while she had been away from the company (she had about a 3-year break where she'd left the company). I thought that was neat, since it was entirely unsolicited.

As I mentioned earlier, I ran 3 miles this morning. It went fairly well, but afterwards while walking through Cannery Row, my legs were feeling sore. I'm not exactly sure why, except for the fact that I'm still recovering from CIM, but 3 miles seems an awful short distance for that to happen. I also went and forgot the Garmin strap this morning.







Splits
Mile 1: 9:25
Mile 2: 9:37
Mile 3: 9:38

3 miles, 28:41, 9:34/mi average, 441 calories burned