13 miles out in VF. Unknown pace--easy. 64 miles in 4 days. ----------------------------- One cool thing about Penn Relays going on today, combined with me living in the area, is that I get to meet runners who stop by Valley Forge on their way to the meet. I ran into Lee Cox, the manager of a local running store and fellow competitor at last Sunday's race. He had just finished up a run with an assistant coach at Providence College. To me, Providence College, then followed by running, conjure up images of tough Irish runners, as well as Americans: Patrick Moulton and Eric Beauchesne. The school is a distance powerhouse and it was a pleasure meeting one of their coaching staff. ---------------------------- Stung by a bee on the ankle in the last mile of my run; this of all days too. I forgot my socks so the bee crawled around in my foot for a while before deciding that the hardest, boniest area would do just fine. ---------------------------- Tomorrow is the grand spectacle. Tomorrow is when my B team makes a valiant stab to not get lapped by the Raytheon and Vanguard A teams at the distance medley. I am the anchor man and will flip-flap my tired legs 4 times around the oval to an audience of six folks. Cosby will be long gone. The echoes of my pained breathing will reverberate across the ancient U Penn stadium, being absorbed by the same brick and mortar that has absorbed a hundred years of toiled screams and shouts from a pantheon of brave and foolish athletes. I haven't stepped up on a track in competition in 16 years which can be proven by my coach asking me why the hell I thought my Brooks T-4s would suffice to race in tomorrow. No, I don't own a pair of track spikes anymore. However, I did keep one of my old spikes from the REM "Green" Album days. Caught up in the breeze of nostalgia, I found it in a memory box last night and pulled it out. I stuck my finger into one of its holes pulling out caked samples of Benicia High School's finest clay track surface from 16 years ago and even from today, since the Benicia Boosters would rather fund a digital Panther Pride football sign with a digital Super Mario kicking a ball rather than upgrade the track. There really is something unique about hopping up onto a track and I'm scared to death about the experience. Unlike the marathon, a race around a track is one short needle of death delivered in one profound stab, very fast, very painful, very overt. The consequences of mistakes are dire and there's nowhere to hide; you get lapped, you get elbowed, you have to jockey for position--yes, you are nothing but a damned horse, an animal in a primeval sport which is but a few evolutionary mutations away from flickering cave drawings, edible fleas and sabre-toothed tigers. ----------------------------------- Shared cubicle update: - It's 4pm so Manilow's Copacabana is playing over in menopause world to the left. Behind my wall, the 300-pound dude used to be a drummer and, while he's training some poor college girl who fell into his web of 4 cube walls with Gary Gygax centerfold pinups, he's impressing her by tapping on the desk in some sort of cadence to Battlestar Galactica's themesong. My desk is rattling to the beat and so I went into one of Clinton's purple fits, kicked the wall, and put this song on my thinkpad decible 10 to clear the air in this place and restore my silverback primacy as the leader of this band of gorillas. Help me.