Due to spotty, shoddy, persnickety, pfrustrating (the P is pronounced) internet access, the daily write ups will be short and sweet and a full write up will be posted after the fact once I’m in a First World place.
Short, short version is that Day 2 was an exceedingly early start due to a later night at the Philadelphia Opera but I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything. On top of seeing “The Elixir of Love,” a really accessible “gateway” Opera staged beautifully as taking place in a WWII Italian village, it was a great thing to do with my brother.
Steve and I don’t see each other nearly enough and I love him like, well, a brother. But I also like him, which can’t always be said of family, ya know? I’m incredibly lucky to like both my mom and my bro — we are a small family, but we are mighty!
So when my alarm went off at 3:40 this morning, I kinda just wanted to curl back up under the covers. But I rallied and made the hour drive to Fair Hill Stables and the park area that I only had GPS coordinates for from Mainly Marathons. It’s a little known fact that you can cut and paste GPS cords into GoogleMaps and get directions that way. (I’m trying to make progress toward Cliff Clavin status; how am I doing?). I was a little worried as I pulled into the gravel drive by the spitting drizzle that had most definitively NOT been in the 0% chance of precipitation forecast. Thankfully it quickly subsided but as the day wore on the gloomy grey clouds never seemed to part or depart.
Today was an 18 loop course. They apparently made a late night audible decision to adjust the course to keep us out of the muddiest sections and this may help account for the distance being a bit long; unlike the London Standard 26.2 miles derived from the 1908 Olympics, it was longet even the Antwerp Olympics of 1920 which ran 26.75 miles (Is my Clavin showing?). My Garmin said I ran 27.4 miles but some of that may have been Millennium Falcon-ing back and forth, zig zagging from wheel rut to grass on the course as I tried to find my footing.
In the end I put up something like a 3:51 and change time, which apparently put me as third overall. I’ll have to double check the official results later but that’s what I think happened.
Post race I took a detour south to the Decoy Museum. I took a snarky attitude to it, making jokes to myself about the place being a fake but I suspect A LOT of people have made the joke. While it wasn’t my thing, I appreciated the care and curation of their exhibits and felt like it was a fascinating insight into a subculture I know little about save perhaps playing Duck Hunt in the late 80s on the Nintendo Entertainment System in my buddy Rob’s basement. I felt sheepish about my attitude… Until I tried to leave Maryland. In order to get out of Havre De Grace, MD, I had to take a bridge that had an $8 toll. Eight dollars! It wasn’t a long bridge; it wasn’t even an impressive bridge. It certainly wasn’t a bespoke bridge. It was more of a pret-a-bridger, ready to bridge plans taken off the rack and built. Hell, for all I know it was a used bridge they picked up on the cheap from a neighboring town! Eight dollars? You want to take about a decoy drawing in prey only to have a hunter kill that prey? Maybe the Decoy Museum did EXACTLY what it was supposed to do!
