Steve in love

Chuck's & Rock and Roll
Also: True love and things to avoid on a first date
Steve Rider

So this morning I got up at the obnoxious hour of 7:30. This motivation could only be derived from two of my favorite activities that coincidentally both are four letter words that start with F. That’s right, Free and Food. By 10AM, I had run a free race, got a very nice breakfast including all the Gatorade I could down, a free t-shirt, a coupon for a bike tuneup at ???, and a dinner for two at Chuck’s Steakhouse. Oh, and I also gained the invaluable experience of running on the beach in the morning, for those that might get the wild idea that I’m materialistic. Anyway, for those who aren’t detectives, I did Chuck’s Beach run this morning and in exchange for all their loot that I jacked, I figured I ought to write up a little recap of it.

First off, this was a terrific event and kudos to all the sponsors and people that volunteered. Seriously… what is wrong with these people? They get up early on a Sunday to setup this premier event with timing, guys sweeping the beach, and people serving food. Where’s their incentive? I swear I’m not materialistic. So if you know any of those bizarre nice people that helped, give them a handshake, buy them a beer or do something because they really deserve our compliments.

Okay so I didn’t even have to drive to this race. I walked out of my new place on Barranca, which means my official rate of return including travel expenses was infinite. No really, I’m not materialistic! I register for the race, did I mention it was free? I scout the competition, and I don’t see anyone whose name rhymes with BLARIN’ or BUSTY so I figure I have a chance at getting the grand prize of dinner at Chuck’s. It’s on now. Yesterday most of my competitors did Vicki’s 3k which I tired myself out by watching.

Gun goes off and I move towards the front. There is one character with gloves on who darts out in front. If the gloves weren’t enough, his form delivers the unmistakable message that this man has mistaken this race for next week’s State Street Mile. He disappears after maintaining an authoritative lead for about 300 meters.

A pack of three of us form towards the front. One young kid who looks like a high school senior, the other I don’t recognize which makes me nervous. It always confuses me on why people jump in front of me during races. Especially when they don’t accelerate. I’m 6’3 and would seem like an excellent candidate to sit behind and use as a windbreaker. But these two guys elect to run one step in front of me, so I tuck and use them instead. The high school guy makes the mistake a lot of people do in that they don’t run in straight lines. This baffles me on how runners, often very good ones, make decisions that cost them several meters. I’ll bet one could lose 25-100 meters on this course by not running in a straight line. Granted my race was not won by a couple meters, but the women’s race was! UCSB runner Jeff Gardina ran the majority of a 10k in lane 2 which cost him a trip to the NCAA championships. When racing, I don’t like to give anything away and I don’t understand why other runners would. It’s not hard to run straight.

Nearing the turn around point, this crazy dog seems to be out to eat me. I’m guessing my number one fan Mariann Thomas has trained this monster to kill me. He seems to know to ignore the other runners, and wants to bite my leg. This strikes me as a good time to try to mix things up a bit so I throw in a surge. I almost get the dog to run into a rock, but he sees it coming at the last second and pulls up. This is an old trick I used to effectively employ on Long Beach State runners.

The increase in pace is enough to disassemble the pack. The high school kid makes an effort to maintain contact, but I keep applying pressure. It’s always nice to have the lead during an out and back race. Lots of people cheer for you and you can give them a polite thumbs up in thanks. This race was no exception with lots of good people out to support me in my quest for free food. I take a couple looks back and the gap is holding so I grind home the win.

After the race I sorta lurk around and chat with some of the crew. Unlike me, most of these people have lives and so they’re hanging with their family and friends. This town has a real void when it comes to people 24-30 I think. All the college kids leave. So basically I’m walking around with that same dejected look you’ll see me have at Q’s and Madisons on a Saturday night. Eventually I sit down with Rod who has escaped family life for the morning and we chat it up. Rod is almost as modest as I am, and we chat about how he holds the record for a run up the steps from an obscure beach and how he’s really good at winning raffles. Little does he know, and I hope I'm not being too boastful here, but I earned a varsity letter in raffle-winning in high school. Once I collect my first place gift certificate along with Leah Etling’s free bike tuneup (which anyone including Leah can have if they email me), it was time to draw the names. Sure enough, Yours Truly scores a free t-shirt (before Rod does) to cap off the morning hording of free stuff.

All right well there’s not much else to type about other than this being a very fun race. The lack of accurate distance turns it into strictly a race against other people since the clock is pretty much a non-factor.

I think this is a little shorter than last year’s recap and since I’ve been getting requests for a marathon recap, I’ll deliver an abridged version. 2 weeks ago, I ran the San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon again. I’ll save all of you some reading and say NO I didn’t eat any Vaseline. I did see Rusty Snow setup with a video camera by a station hoping to win money on America’s funniest videos by catching someone repeating my debacle from last year.The race is a spitting image of last year. Cloudy morning with thousands of people all over the place. Again I shamelessly pranced around Team in Training flaunting my Corral numero uno to anyone who would look. And again there were people who had missed the extra digit in their number and should have been 10 corrals back. I see one guy I know at the start line and he becomes the 1,000th person to mention some joke about what not to eat on the course. Everyone's a comedian.

Gun goes off, here I go again. The lessons I learned from last year you'd think I would have learned from someone else's experience. Don't go out too fast, relax on the downhill, respect the final 6 miles of the race. I had established the arbitrary goal of holding 6:20 pace for the race, and immediately go out in a 5:54. It felt incredibly easy, so maybe in the last 4 weeks I've gotten myself in better shape than I anticipated. I try to tone it down a bit, so I settle into a 6:10 pace but these damn downhills are so fun!

I roll along and the fateful last 6 miles finally arrive. Unlike last year, I was ready to hit the wall. Sort of like a jet arriving on an aircraft carrier… it’s a controlled crash landing. The pilot cringes and everyone around sorta stares sympathetically but is grateful that they aren’t you. I thought I was doing all right, because with only a 10k to go, I needed to run 42 minutes to crack 2:50. At 3 miles to go I realized I was still right about on pace to break 2:50, which means that if I slowed down any more, I’d be over 2:50. With 2 miles to go I know I couldn’t do it, so I just relaxed and trotted in. My underlying goal was to qualify for Boston which I had no trouble doing.At the end of the race, they have these same type of weirdos that are volunteering on a Sunday morning with no thought of reward. They have some people whose job is to usher runners away from the finish. I am conveniently pawned off to this beautiful young girl who is nothing but complimentary towards my effort. A side note here: I think finishing a marathon is one of the few ways you can get truly sincere compliments from people. In bars, waitresses’ kindness has the small incentive of tips. In the corporate world, people are nice because they don’t want to get fired, when in truth they may hate you. Unlike me, people are so materialistic! Anyway, so I’m walking with a girl who in my alert state of mental capacity, I vow that I’m going to marry. She is very sweet, even takes my hand and gives me a small backrub while we’re walking. I figure she’s definitely going above the call of duty with the backrub, so I start to try to engineer the conversation topic towards getting her to move to Santa Barbara. Unfortunately my brilliant plan came to an abrupt halt as after drinking about half a bottle of water at the finish, I threw it all up over my feet and dangerously close to the new love of my life. This was a bit of a mood killer and the dang medics saw my behavior and dragged me away from my lady and held me in the first aid tent.

In the tent, they ask what’s wrong with me. I said I’m not sure. I ran 10 minutes slower than last year, I felt good, and I didn’t eat Vaseline, but am in a lot worse than last year. They made me eat pretzels and water for awhile and then sent me away.

If anyone knows the 5 minute love of my life, send her my love (she was Asian, about 5’3, and fast on her feet when foreign bodily fluids approach the ground near her). Tell her I’ve got a free dinner for two at a fantastic steakhouse restaurant.