Take That Beach 6/17/10

I've always loved the thought of running on a beach. The tide laps at your feet. The ocean breeze lightly blows your hair away from your eyes. Music from "Chariots of Fire" plays as you bound effortlessly along in slow motion. As I found out in Crescent City, California on our recent trip, though, t'aint always so.

First, the lapping tide. Mostly it lapped over the eviscerated shells of crabs that had been picked over by various sea birds. Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud of them. All that remained were the sharpest, least edible crab parts. Dodging them added at least a half-mile to my run.

Second: the cold. Granted, we were in far northernest Cali, not San Diego, so what did I expect, right? Even though the sun was on full display, it was no more than fifty degrees, and the wind- Holy Chicken of the Sea, Batman!, it was an icy Mamma Jamma. Not only did it blow the hair out of my eyes, it blew the hairs out of my eyelids. I flossed sandsicles out of my teeth for days. And, if movie music had been playing, I wouldn't have been able to hear it, since my ear drums were beaten by Mother Nature the way the rest of me was beaten by Ron Smith in eighth grade.

On the other hand, I should say that running into that wind did create a sort of slow motion effect. Kind of like a mime going over the top on that "Man Walking into The Wind" routine.

So, I was nearly hacked to bleeding bits by dead crustaceans, blasted by freezing sand, and slowed to a pace that banana slugs would laugh at. I wasn't just going to sit in the motel and watch the waves roll up on the shore. Not running would have been out of the question in such a situation. We don't have beaches in Kansas, and who knows when I'll get back out to the coast.

Alright, cue the music- da-da-da-da-daah. Da-da-da-da-daah...

Thanks for reading.

Pop Goes Ploop

What would you do if you threw the chocolate blob at the end of your Tootsie Pop, stick attached, into a trash barrel, which was not a barrel filled with trash, but rather a barrel into which race volunteers dipped cups that would wind up in the hands of runners in the ninth mile of the Eugene, Oregon, Marathon and Half-Marathon. What would you do, if instead of hearing the "ssshhh-plink" of a Tootsie stick/blob sliding down a plastic liner and hitting a beer can, you hear "ploop," as your garbage breaks the surface of the water, and floats to the bottom of the now less-than-completely-fresh, life-giving substance your fellow racers will gratefully guzzle?

Would you instantly thrust your hand into the Hazmat Barrel, thinking that the Five Second Rule applies to acqueous violations as well, forgetting that you just wiped your nose with that same hand, the hand that was only fifteen minutes ago in a place where the sun don't shine, inside a thin coccoon of toilet paper, inside a Honey Pot (as they call them here), where you had to stop, because the crepes at Shari's had too many strawberries, and that impromptu crapador just happened to be out of hand sanitizer-SHIT! Shit, no! Don't put your hand-shaped germ-universe into all that water!

You should just turn quickly, and get away from the scene. Do not look back at the Aid Station Captain, who, hearing the "ploop," is watching the stick/blob settle to the bottom of a forty-gallon barrel of Cascade Mountain Spring Water helicoptered in by the Oregon Air National Guard at 3a.m. from the West Face of Mt. Hood, because, if you do, you will not be able to turn away in time to avoid locking eyes with him when he acts on that feeling we all have when someone is staring at us, and then he would know it was you who had ruined his Aid Station. You may mutter, "Sorry, Dude" under your breath, but take care, Pavarotti, that the sotto is very, very voce, for otherwise you would essentially be confessing to mass-poisoning of a public water source, which, in Oregon, is punishable by a minimum of fifty years in a sea-lion colony.

Just run away, Renee. Hustle your malfeasing little butt deep into the starting corral, and let your fear and shame transform themselves into an adrenaline rush that will propel you to one hell of a half-marathon time. And when all the Eugene TV stations put you on camera afterwards and ask how you did it, you can tell them it was all thanks to the thirteen cups of chocolate-flavored water you had at Aid Station Number Nine.

Thanks for reading.