No, he doesn't usually spend Sunday mornings in the park with hula dancers. At least I don't think so. But when they pulled him out of the line to catch the bus back to the start area at the race over the Coronado Bridge last Sunday, he didn't have much choice. He put up a protest but the dancer wasn't taking no for an answer. And that is how Greg became part of the morning's entertainment. He did pretty well. I think the practice on our trip last month paid off, even if his wiggle came more from his knees and less from his hips.
Seriously though, I can mock away but Greg delivered a pretty solid running performance. I'm not sure how he does it but Greg doesn't seem to need to train for running. It just seems to be something he was born with. He may not be made to dance but he is made to run.
A few months ago I posted about how Greg registered for this race with some guys from work, intent on winning the team division. But then a calf injury that has been bugging him off and on for the past few years flared up and that was pretty much it for his training. Being the team player that he is, pulling out of the race wasn't an option, so he did the next best thing: bought some fancy "healing" tape (I suggested he try compression socks but he wasn't keen on becoming one of the "sock people"), and he just didn't run so that the calf could at least handle the 4 mile course.
Seemed it handled it quite fine. 25:33 fine. 1st place in his age group fine. 1st place by 2 minutes fine. And this was a gigantic race with 8300 entrants. People get pretty excited about the opportunity to run over the Coronado Bridge.
But Greg didn't win his age group b/c being part of a team disqualified him from the age group competition apparently. So the slow poke who took more than 27 minutes to finish the race was the winner. Greg and his team came in 3rd. "We Fix Submarines" were beat by some team called "The Elite Five."
Greg was 33rd overall. Wow. I was around 600th overall and 20th in my age group which had over 500 participants. I'm still annoyed b/c the race results have my time a minute slower than it actually was....seems there were some lost/corrupt shoe chip files. My GPS said 35:25 but the race results have me at 36:26. I'm annoyed that I'm annoyed by this. B/c it doesn't matter and in all my years of being a weekend warrior, I don't think my results have ever been wrong before. #letitgo. Wow. I just used a hashtag (is that one word or two?). I have never, ever done that before. I don't think I will ever do it again. I just wanted to try it out. It was weird.
Here is the photo I took mid-race. Yep, I actually stopped. I had my phone with me b/c we had a babysitter and it just didn't feel right to be disconnected, particularly when we were going to be essentially stranded on the other side for awhile. But it gave me a good excuse to take a few breaks when I felt stitchy during the race, which unfortunately happened more than I would have liked. But it was still a fun date morning with Mr. Speed and we got to listen to the Navy band.
I'm really, honestly not making fun of these folks. They sounded pretty good. But it is strange to see people in their Navy-issue whites gyrating and rocking on and pointing at the audience like they were the Scorpions. (Yes, I am a child of the 80's).
Now Greg has been mumbling something about finally getting around to doing a marathon. Seeing as that'll take him about as long as it takes me to get groceries, I think he should go for it.
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