Training is Cheap, & The Last Miles of Newport-Liberty Half Marathon

I have been riding my bike a lot, and I should do a duathlon or triathlon, but every time I look for one to put on my calendar, I say to myself, I can go out and run and bike farther by myself on that day, have a great time, and save myself a couple hundred bucks! I would have much rather gone running in the woods today than in Jersey City. A couple of weeks ago in Watchung Reservation I ran about 1/4 mile behind a fox.

Speaking of which, in today's Newport-Liberty Half Marathon, I finished the race with Laura S., who caught me with a 1.5 miles to go. What a racing animal - I had no clue she was so focused and she was catching me. I must have been slowing down and she probably ran negative splits. She said, "We are going to catch that guy in yellow!" OK, motivation for me besides thinking I had to run fast so the RVRR women wouldn't beat this old guy. The guy in yellow was about 50 yards ahead of us, with some others between us and him. Well, in the next mile we reeled in the others, but not the guy in yellow. With a bit less than a half mile left, I went harder to catch the guy in yellow, and I also wanted to make Laura run faster. I caught the yellow guy, and have a story to tell too. Races are cool like that sometimes. I ran 1:32:01 - about seven minutes slower than I ran just three years ago, but about seven faster than last year. Races are cool like that sometimes, too. I have learned in my old age not to take them as seriously as I used to. I like to think that any day I am out there running, I am one of the luckiest guys in the world.