I spent New Years Eve hanging sheetrock and working toward completing one of many projects around our house. When the alarm went off at 5:30am New Years Day I couldn’t move. Hanging sheetrock for 6 hours is quite a good full body workout. After hitting the snooze for an hour I finally got going and headed off to Kingwood to support friends who were running the Texas Marathon.
It was a perfect day with cool and clear temperatures. Steve and Paula Boone put on a really nice event. With this being a 50 States Running Club event there are many runners who have done hundreds of marathons and yet, if this was your first marathon you were encouraged and supported by everyone as if they have known you for years. It’s a very cool atmosphere.
There were several TWRC members and many friends who ran this weekend. I finally met James Dykas and more importantly, I saw his Mini Cooper. I ran in with Jon Walk when he finished, 26.2 miles for Jon and 100 yards for me. The performance that will be of interest to the other Texas Independence Relay Teams is that of Andrew “Wrong Way” Perry, one of our speed burners who will hopefully keep us in front of the Bloggers.
The Texas Marathon is four 6.55 mile laps. At the end of lap one Andrew was in third place overall. At the end of lap two he was in first overall and having done the route twice without getting lost he was looking pretty good for a run for the win. When the leaders came in at the end of lap three Andrew wasn’t among them. Several minutes and several runners went by and no Andrew. Did he get lost? After what seemed like an eternity (maybe 10 minutes) Andrew came jogging in running in only his socks and holding his new Newton racers in his hands. His new shoes were hurting his feet to the point that he had to take them off. He quickly changed shoes at the start/finish area and completed his fourth lap for 10th place overall, a very good effort but another thing to worry about for the relay. I have this new vision of Andrew lost and running in his socks in the middle of the night somewhere west of Houston.
After visiting at the finish for a while I headed home, stopping at Home Depot on the way to pick up one last piece of sheetrock to finish up the ceiling I was working on. I then did a little 3 mile jog, run, shuffle on the new trail along Cypress Creek about a mile from my house. Hmmmmm….maybe Spring is ahead of The Woodlands with at least this one new trail. I’ll have to bring my camera for the next outing.
After my run I headed up to the track to run some of the WoodlandsFit runners and Kim’s triathletes through a short track workout and tell them of Andrew’s shoe mishap earlier in the day and mention the importance of breaking in shoes before you run a marathon in them. (We like to tease Andrew a lot because we like him so much.)
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