5 mile shakeout up and down the fractal route. 5 x 100m downhill striders during the run. 83 miles in 6 days. ------------------------------------- Josie and I rolled on out to the expo today to play the parts of the wandering runners who are succumbed by a tidal wave of gratuitous capitalism and shady snakeoil. I am so weary of these things now. I think I prefer the two old dudes in a stuffy Knights of Columbus hall, sitting behind the table with the bent leg, over looking your name up on a billboard that resembles the Vietnam Memorial. I went from bib #12,XXX to bib #34 after a few winks from Josie's beautiful brown eyes. The woman in charge of seeded assignments eagerly handed me my new number and told me as we left that it was nice to see dads who could run near the front. Naturally you have to pass through the same gauntlet of hawkers to get your tee shirt; Josie wears a small, so that's why we did it. The expo was a who's-who of the Philly distance-running scene. I caught sight of him, wearing a nametag, shoving shoes into a bag and running a credit card through a machine; I saw him talking to Mike who happened to sell me a pair of cheap minimalist shoes that nuked my feet somewhere in the Coconut Grove. He walked over to the balloon man where Josie was having the finishing touches put on her flying dog. Some guy on the outskirts of the medicine show sporting an Elvis pompadour and talking on a cellphone, was selling shirts and tights that are supposed to heal your back problems and your ass problems and your everything problems. That was enough for us to call it a day. ------------------------ Someone needs to give away Chuck's Steakhouse singlets for races; they sure as hell beat swoosh this and swoosh that. In honor of it all, I think I'm wearing a gray, 2-504th PIR PT shirt tomorrow. There really is something to Amby's attire that we need more of these days. ------------------------ How do you react to someone that tells you their sole goal tomorrow is to beat you? And you are tired, your legs are weary from some long runs and you just want it all to be over?

How do you react when your daughter tells you that the lyrics in Luna's song "Rainbow Babe" are completely inaccurate because 2 and 2 is not 42; 2 and 2 is 4!

------------------------- I'm not sure what it is, but I'm bothered about a few things right now. I am very sensitive to begin with and when a few verbal comments come my way about things that grate me, I usually react so here goes. I was chided, mocked, laughed-at, whatever you want to call it, for not doing 'striders' or a 'warmup' or sufficient preparation before Penn Relays. I am supposedly an injury waiting to happen and I probably could have run faster if I bolted down the U. Penn campus, pumping my arms like a fucking idiot for 5 minutes. I also don't 'look' like a runner. The little things don't matter to me--the little acts and rituals and shenanigans before a race. I've never been a pre-race 'strider' guy, or a pre-race anything guy besides walking far away from the bullshit and putting a hood up or looking down at the ants and the blades of grass growing up through the cracks in the asphalt. I don't stretch or pump my arms while moving my legs quickly in place. I'm more folded hands in the peace of a good song than violent explosion and extroverted theater. I am growing very tired of some of running's quirks and the 'must dos' and the drama with the required lines and the fancy one-act plays. I also grow tired of the immaturity and the name-calling while on runs, of being one of the 'boyz' and waxing sexual braggadocio about those damn objects: women--while putting down others who don't happen to be there. And lets throw single fathers in the mix too... It's sophomoric, idiotic and not me. But it's so typical of this sect of fuckheads that think they rule the world because they run 'kickass'; it's the barbarism of letsrun out in the fields and on the trails where I run, and in the end, I prefer to be alone and lonely over being stuck with a flange of knuckledragging baboons.