Carthage, Mississippi United States Mississippi Track Club 80F / 27C Sunny

Total Time = 26m 48s Overall Rank = 67/99 Age Group = 40-44 Age Group Rank = 7/8

Woke up at 5:00ish. Screwed around on BT for a while, doing a few inspires. Then ran around like a chicken with its head cut off getting ready, and getting the children ready to go with me. I keep forgetting that if you're taking your kids to the race, add 1/2 hour to the time to leave.

So, instead of heading out of here at 6:45, the wagon train didn't leave until almost 7:10. This Was Bad. Why? Well, Carthage is about oh, 30+ miles from the house, and the race started @ 8:00 am. Fortunately, there's little traffic heading NE on MS 25 at that hour of the morning on a Saturday, and Carthage is pretty small, so I kicked the truck into Worp and risked getting busted by a MSP on the way up, white knuckling and nervously glancing at the clock, speedometer (doing 80+ at some points, it was OK, its a four-lane road, right?) and nervously looking like a Fremen for Pig Sign (instead of Worm Sign, fortunately, the pigs were busy eating donuts and worried about international terrorists this morning).

In the meantime, Davis and Meredith are in the back, eating muffins, but still about half passed out from getting up so early (I don't think Meredith even looked awake until after the race). I'm smacking my lips, all thirsty because I'd shoved a PB without J sandwich in my gullet on my way out the door.

Got to the race location, bolted out of the car. Now, you'd think the packet pickup would be easy to find, but noooooooo... they had it stuck inside one of the Heritage Bank buildings, so I'm scrambling like an Area 51 pulse detonation plane squadron after a real UFO, looking at my watch, grabbing the packet, trying not to trip and fall on a decorative brick sidewalk. Fortunately, the children's mother had agreed to come along and was watching them, I think I'd have gone totally apeshit if I'd had to deal with sitter issues this morning. And since I'm about 98 percent of the way to totally apeshit to begin with, its not going to take much to push me into the 'animal friendly' zoocage with all the plants and rocks and fake waterfalls and fake plants and shit and stuff to make me think I'm still in my mountain gorilla habitat to push me into tossing my feces at the touristas...


I gulped down two pitiful cups of WARM (WTF was it warm... we do have ice, running water, electricity and toilets down here) orange gatorade, and jogged lightly around the starting area. Jogged around what there is of downtown Carthage (its actually quite nice for your basic Mississippi Dirt City downtown). OK, the field was small today (I'm guessing < 100, but the official time report isn't up yet) but I recognized some of the Usual Local Running Studs (as this is my 6th race this year and all the dudes were there, as well as dudettes) and Studettes kicking around, shaking hands and bullshitting each other to have a great race when they secretly wish that their flipping hearts would just SEIZE UP and they'll die right there, heels kicking the asphalt in a 7/8 castanet tempo...

Once again, my stupidity - er, lack of good judgement kicked in when I decided to figure out where to stand to start. Decided again that RIGHT UP FRONT would be the best place (look at my BT blog, I put up pictures from the day there, I'm too lazy to do it again here - at least right now, I've been trying to find time all day to write this report for you, my loyal empire of sportsfans minions, so, the kids are fed, the pony is fed, the dogs aren't barking and here I am, still stinky from the Trace Ride I just got back from) to start.

Well, I'm ready for my 100 yards of glory and I'm all warmed up perfect, just ready to cross the line of scrimmage when the Gun Goes Off like a NFL wide receiver on at least four or five highly illegal performance enhancing substances, when they decide to have a prayer. OK, this is the first race they've done this at, but it is small town Mississippi, so I jog in place and get all hyped up right at "Amen" to light the candle and then somebody starts SINGING the NATIONAL ANTHEM.

Again, nothing wrong with that, but its not getting any cooler as the sun begins to tickle our noses like a heated up cat o' nine tails and I've got my eyes closed, I'm focusing, right, and they've got this al capella (sp?) singer and I'm thinking I'd really rather hear Joe Satriani playing the National Anthem so I open my eyes thinking the singer might morph into Joe (or, if I'd just chewed a mescaline blotter, perhaps it would at least SOUND like Joe) and its some prepubescent kid who sounds like a chick singing. Really. He did a pretty good job, and then The Guy That Has The Gun for the MS Track Club (and about a thousand band-aids on both arms, I'm kind of worried about him, he does NOT look well) bangs the trigger and your boy oneword tears off like a pack of wild dobermans is in hot pursuit and I lead 'em for about 100 yards again before my legs start telling my brain "Dude, No F'ing Way, you're going to SEIZE UP and end up dead on the pavement, trust me" so I slow down and the usual gaggle of everybody, young old thin fat in shape out of shape male female not quite sure passes me until the scrum stretches out after the first mile.

Oh, that's more than the Event Warmup, but hell, I blow my wad in the first 100 yards of these things so it might as well be the warmup, OK? :)