If you’re old and the field is small enough (less than 100 runners for the marathon this morning), you sometimes get a plaque. Fourth overall, first in my age group. It wasn’t a BQ (a more than 13 minute miss), but it was good enough to pseudo-podium this morning out in Hurricane, UT.
I drove out last night at 9:30 PM — a six hour drive at that hour, albeit I lost an hour to Mountain Time… and will continue to lose it tomorrow with Daylight Savings. I’m a bit knackered and frazzled so just a brief note on the run and then the photos… which seems to be my new modus operandi for postings.
“For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky” is my favorite Star Trek episode title. Not my favorite episode, but that title — yowza. It’s a tale about an asteroid on a collision course with the sun that is revealed to be a spaceship carrying a society who believes their internal cave dwelling home is all there is in the universe… there is nothing outside, above, elsewhere. So prime directive be damned, Kirk kinda blows that up, at least a little bit. I have been and always will be a James T. Kirk fan.
What does this have to do with the Sand Hollow Marathon other than the “hollow” connection? Something about the desolation along the course kept bringing the words to me head… a mantra to keep me going, especially during a gnarly mile long uphill on the back half. As you’ll see in the photos below, it was a lonely course and while I enjoy those from a “loneliness of the long distance runner” self- reliance thing, it does take a bit of a mental toll to be out there for long stretches between seeing folks. Oh, and though we were promised bacon at the halfway turnaround point but the bacon wasn’t cooking yet when I got there. “For the bacon is missing and I have seen the lies.” A less well known episode of Star Trek fan fiction one suspects.
And now, the photos…
