Open Letter to AJW,
Since you asked, in the comments in my last post, how or why I use you as motivation to push hard and hurt on the track each week, I would like to share with you how our ten year bet ends in my dreams.
Gotta Catch the Jiz
I have whittled away at your 5-hour lead (currently only 2:28 now but you increase that this June in year 6) in years 7, 8, and 9 so we’re tied going into the 10th year (2013). We go back and forth all day in 2013, a hot year with lots of snow, and we’re together on No Hands Bridge. Unfortunately, I take a bug to the back of the throat and puke right there on No Hands Bridge (but outside the aid station). You being a good sport, and a loving, giving friend, stop and console me as I repeatedly wretch. I tell you to go on but you wait for me. Good sportsmanship. Too bad your kids aren’t here to witness this, but I digress… So we run together to the switchbacks, then walk up to Robie, past the houses (where the parties are all wrapped up for the night because we’re friggin’ slow by year 10), and you put a move on me on the downhill. I know I can’t run with you on the downs so I fake another puking episode and stay back biding my time. This time you don’t stop and continue pushing to the track. In fact, you actually push a little harder to really gap me. Probably a good thing your boys aren’t here to see this, but again, I digress… Your pacer, Bryon Powell, keeps looking back, telling you that we’re not back there. We, being students of the great Tommy Nielsen have turned our lights off so Bryon can’t see us. You and Bryon get to the track and, with cameras rolling, you start doing your finish dance like you did in 2007. Celebrating and waving to all the AJW fans – ok it’s only Shelly because your boys don’t come anymore as they are bored with your 100 milers since this is now your 56th – you completely forget about me. I calculate perfectly my move and when I hit the waterfall start of the 1500 I let ‘er rip, catching you totally surprised. My last 250 on the track: 40 seconds. I win.
That’s why I keep running hard on the track. Or maybe I just made all of this up just now.
Train hard my friend,
LB
LB,
That, my friend, is a great dream. And, if it did happen that way, I’d be psyched. Of course, that is provided the fact that we actually get in the race for the next four years!
I’m heading to Auburn tomorrow. I’ll miss you over these next couple days but, at the end of my Finish to The River and back on Saturday I’ll see what it feels like to run a 250 in 40 seconds (without the AJW victory dance:)
Jiz