1st overall. Delaware Smash 5k. 16:42. 2 mile warmup. 3 mile race. 3 mile cooldown. 8 miles for the day. Pic of Barry (2nd overall) and myself at the end. Pic of the top finishers. ---------------------------- These words are going to fall mostly on blind eyes; I'm not happy with my race. I haven't run this slow of a 5k in a while. With all the quarters and the long miles this is nothing short of a major disappointment for me. The blind aren't reading this; those that are, you can relate and understand. Here's the rundown. The damned wind returned today. I heard it whistling through the trees and whipping down the street as I rolled around my bed at 5am this morning. This damned wind! It's been everywhere this year. It sits on my shoulders when I sleep and it comes back into my face when I race. Go away, ok? Today was nothing but a scramble and a blue haze. I did a lot of yelling; Josie yelled back. She was late to school and I was late to work. Socks were never right and pants were too cold. Her lunch had to be PB and J and her hair was as perfect as a raven's nest. I pushed my greenhouse-gas-hypocrite-mobile down the road at 1mph in the largest sea of humanity East of L.A. and North of Washington D.C. People are reading papers; women put makeup on while easing their VW's forward; thick Pennsylvanian men with padded vests and large hats sit in impossibly large pickup trucks with American flags and contemporary "Remember the Maine"-equivalent stickers, picking their noses and pulling out large tufts of jet black nosehair. My ipod plays and plays. The tape deck adapter is on the edge of collapse and hums and squeals as the plastic cogs reluctantly turn. Everyone's ipod plays in their one-person bubble of peace and sanctity--a parking lot of individuality. It's the American way. Leave us the fuck alone and let us all consume and drive to the same place at 1mph in our little ipod worlds; let us shuffle and shuffle until we get our music in harmony with how we perceive our life to be at the moment. It's Manifest Destiny--2006 style. Over there, a happy woman who just got engaged plods along in her Mini Cooper shuffling to Coldplay--something from the Parachutes album. Behind her, dad's pushing his rusty minivan thinking of his MRI today and he wanders over to Johnny Cash--San Quentin Cash. Reznor's way back in the line. He got a late start with a tumultuous morning and he gets shuffled over and over and over again.... At 4:30 or so I realize that it's cold outside and have packed only a tee shirt and shorts for my race. So I visit the company store and buy a company sweatshirt from the jaded, company cashier who hums along to Christopher Cross' song, "Sailing" while she rings me up. She tells me that her daughter's getting married next weekend. She takes my credit card and tilts her head up to catch the refrain. She tells me how much she loves this song: "Sailing...Takes me away...to where I've always heard it could be....just a dream and the wind to carry me...and soon I will be free." I take my card back, nod, and walk out to my car. The $19.99 sticker still hangs delicately from my left shoulder. While driving down I-95 to Wilmington, I get into a very contemplative mood. I'm near the end of Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise when Amory is totally alone and completely disillusioned. His transformation from the selfish egotist to the poor ascetic is near complete and I stare up at the sky and think of the brilliance of the novel and the brilliance of its author. You must read it some day. You are a damn fool if you disagree with Fitzgerald. Because we can all think back to the times of our youth when our dreams were so big. Nothing was impossible. We could be anything wanted and do anything. We hadn't been told 'no' yet; we hadn't witnessed the fallibility of our heroes. Time was a large, incalculable number. Age and its inevitable conclusion, death, held its feet fast. Government worked. Religion--omnipresent in my upbringing--swiftly ordered everything into simple, repeatable, unquestioned dogma. Black drifted to the bottom; white always rose to the top under the infallible, magnetic laws of innocence. I drove on and looked up at the sky. Today has been one meteorological oddity. I drove Josie through a blizzard on the way to school and by the afternoon, chilly, 30mph winds parted the skies giving way to sunshine and then quickly advanced hulking sections of thickening clouds across the horizon. Shafts of light protruded downward touching the rusting sections of industrial Delaware. To me, today, they represented instead beams and trusses shooting upward--barely holding the sky together; shaking and flickering under the weight of mortality; eventually giving way in a thundering crash as soon as the starter's gun went off. These shafts, offset by the walls for clouds, reminded me of Paul Nash's wonderful painting of a World War 1 trench moonscape, "Menin Road." I arrived. I parked and registered. I got my bib and sat in my car listening to some of my pre-race favorites in my little bubble. Yo La Tengo's "Last Days of Disco" was perfect for me to catch the wave of the moment and ride it out to the starting line when everything explodes and the bong hits of peace give way to the lactic violence and clinging death of a race. A man with a traffic vest appeared at my window, shattering my little world. He rapped on the window with a tennis racquet and told me that I can't park here. Me: "Why not? It's the bank. I can park in the bank lot, just not the steakhouse lot." Man: "Sir, this is the steakhouse lot." Me: "It is? Where's the steakhouse?" Man, gesturing with his tennis racquet at the sign in front of me, "Right THERE." Me: "I'm sorry." I then reparked and did a course recon. The course was an out and back that winds around some stadium on the waterfront. The waterfront contains a few Joe's Crab Shacks (read: upper scale McDonalds chain restaurants with a few hidden microwaves in the back) that play Jimmy Buffet 24/7 from rusting speakers out on the deck. You are supposed to dream about blue skies, white beaches, and Margaritaville while you slurp oysters on the half shell. Instead, this place has a view of a cylindrical oil tank that is painted to look like the wetlands. The whole place has been preserved or envisioned or something by a man named Russell Peterson. his bronze statue, cast with him holding binoculars, stands near the start. I gaze at it and think of it as the Audubon equivalent of the West Point Patton statue. Free birds over here, dead Krauts over there. The wind. It whips up and blows in my face. Me to myself: "Hmm...wind blows West to East....running out...first mile...wind sheltered by Joe's Crabshack....damn look at that fucking oil tank...what the hell are these people thinking!...Mile 1.5 past discount shops selling high-end kitsch that will end up in the basements of Legopeople in Legoland... and now into the teeth of the wind...worst part of the race.....around the AA baseball stadium with 1,000 seats occupied by probably 100 people during the height of the season.....mile 2, tailwind finally....mile 2.5 crosswind....sheltered again by the shack and there's the tank again...hot damn..what the hell?....mile 3...home stretch...bouncy boardwalk...cruising." We saunter to the start at 6:30. The gun is a bullhorn emergency signal. It barely crackles and we are off. A thousand kids bumrush the start like they always do; they are those flushed squirrels from yesterday and they wave goodbye to me and another guy, Barry (eventual 2nd place finisher). Barry looks at me and laughs, "they'll be coming back to us soon." Mile 1. 5:10. I'm in the lead. 5:10? This hurts. This feels fast. 5:10? This is going to be a long race. What the hell is going on? I am the quarters man (NOT). I expected an opening mile of 4:59. Damn. Mile 2. Into the wind and out of the wind. Turns here and turns there. I'm in the lead. 10:33. Mile 3. I'm really hurting. I don't look back but I realize my lead is sufficient for the win so I ease off. Were I not honest, I'd now write that I just cruised in and called it a 'training run.' Bullshit. I gave it all I had and I was spent at the finish. I had troubling issues nearing the finish that I care not write about (all above the belt). Barry rolls in about 10 seconds behind and slaps me on the back. We shake hands and pose for the camera. He' s an incredibly friendly guy who's training for his first Ironman. We do our cooldown together and we are a typical bunch of serious runners with endorphins still surging; we are a coffee buzz and a constant chatterbox of everything from life to marathons. We finish our run just in time for the awards. I hate the fucking spotlight. I nod, shake, and get my gimcrack--a clock and a tennis racquet-- and step away. But I get called back for some more claps and a question by the race director: "Do you play tennis?" My mind races and correlates random, recent facts: tennis, disillusionment....BAUMER. I look down and smile, "No, I don't play tennis. But my daughter does."...my daughter. She isn't jaded yet. She's still dreaming. The world's black and white to her; titans, heroes, yes--her dad--walk tall, confidently driving demons and monsters from her midst. I leave and drive down 95 with the sun setting off to my left. Its rays are now barely holding on under the immense weight of the darkening sky. The sun finally gives in; night crashes down. I have to drop Josie's bag off with her mom. I ring the doorbell and my daughter opens the door, "Hi Daddy! How did you do?" "Hey Josie. I got first place. I won you something." I hand her the racquet. She smiles and palms it, holding it up in the air making imaginary volleys. It's hers now.