Bush be gone, goal complete, proud of Patrick, MIB 3 blows

I picked up Patrick from the airport mid-day Friday for his surprise last minute trip to SW Fla.  I had seen Pat back in mid-January when I did my western Pa road trip to my dad’s place.  I picked him up in the SSR since Patrick had never been in the truck before.  I did a few hard and loud accelerations for fun.

On Friday evening I suggested to Pat we head down to Zookies for dinner, the place I hung out with my dad a couple times during his visit.  When dad and I went, the parking lot looked pretty full yet there was still a decent amount of tables available as well as space at the bar.

When Pat and I pulled in the parking lot looked quite full and this time the inside was packed as well.  There were probably 20 people waiting, there was not an open table or bar stool available.  Pat said he was fine with just eating at the bar as was I.  Eventually a single seat opened up in the one corner of the bar.  We grabbed it and then a second one came open maybe 15 minutes later.

As we scanned the place it was wall to wall old people, next to Patrick, I may have been the youngest patron there.  We were after all there at prime old person feeding time, 6pm.  We had an older couple to our left that we had some conversation with.  We found out the husband was retired from Raytheon and was an electrical engineer as Pat is.

I noticed the wife had band aids on her one ear, I asked her if she had some skin cancer cut out since I am familiar with the signs.  She said she did indeed.

Pat and I were keeping the conversation alive with them when we ran into an awkward/uncomfortable moment.  The woman was describing something and came out with the phrase “n-word babies” (no I am not a fan of the term).  Instantly it was like a big wet awkward blanket was thrown on top of Patrick and I. He feels the same way I do about people that throw that word around as a normal part of their vernacular.  We sort of each gave each other a quick “did she really just say that” glance, and clammed up.

You could tell the woman picked up on the fact that her racist adjective did not sit well with either of us.  She tried to change the subject and restart the convo in another direction.  Pat and I kept most of our responses down to a few words from that point on.  I was relieved when they packed up and left.  Nothing will turn me off more to a person than if they pull back their veil and show me their inner racist. Well, animal cruelty is at the same level I suppose.

Pat and I had identical dinners, enjoying the Friday night special fish dinner.  We both opted for the much healthier blackened version instead of deep fried.   We also both imbibed  on the same draft beer, called Zookies Red.  The first few sips were a bit rough on my taste buds but after that it smoothed out enough that I had a total of three.

It seemed all in all, despite the unwelcomed racist bar conversation, Patrick enjoyed the Zookie’s experience.

I told Pat ahead of time I had a race to time Saturday morning.  I gave him the option to just sleep in as opposed to rolling out the door with me at 5:30 am.  He was fine with tagging along, Patrick is much like me in that he isn’t real comfortable just sitting around.

When we got on the race site it wasn’t long before our volunteer coordinator scooped Patrick up and put him to work which he didn’t mind.  First he got to work the timing chip hand out table and then he was out on the course being one of the traffic control volunteers.  My part of the race went smoothly, there weren’t any major timing snafus.

When we got home I had all of my post race crap to do.  I asked Pat if he ever saw Walking Dead before, he hadn’t.  Well I had a treat for him.  I fired the show up on the Xbox via Netflix.  We wound up spending a large part of the day watching WD episodes, they are so good I didn’t mind watching them again.

I had asked Pat if he minded helping me with ripping the remains of the palmetto bush out of the ground.  To most people this would seem like a ridiculous request, having family down to visit for a couple days and enlist them to do a home project.  And normally I would agree, but not with Pat, he likes to do stuff, even if the stuff is physical labor.  I am much the same way, I have pitched in with projects that my dad has multiple times during my visits to his various homes the past 6 or 7 years.

Thankfully, my neighbor had agreed to come over with his large tractor to assist in the removal process.  His tractor has a front shovel and a box blade in the back.  When he first hit the palmetto roots, they hardly budged.  I was worried that the tractor wasn’t going to be as much help as I hoped.  However my neighbor doesn’t give up easily and he also has a lot of tractor skills.

He used a lot of back and forth action as well as using the hydraulic lifting power of the bucket to rip the huge  root system out of the sandy soil.  The 4 wheel drive tractor was digging into the yard deeply, leaving huge ruts as the tires tried to get traction.

The bush was right near the fence line and one of the buried sprinkler lines.  As my neighbor was rocking the tractor back and forth he was getting close to both.  I had visions of the box blade ripping through the fence line or one of the huge rear tires snapping a pvc pipe.  Luckily neither situation occurred thanks to his tractor handling ability.

It took a long time but after close to an hour of tractor work my neighbor had the stumps torn out.  We loaded up the bucket with the remains and he drove the tractor back to the fill pit to dump them.  I thanked my neighbor for all the work and promised a case of beer for his efforts.

After he left Pat and I got out the hand tools to smooth out the area.  As we did we noticed some hard spots just below the soil.  Evidently there were a few rogue roots lurking under the surface.  Well there were actually quite a few subterranean roots.  Pat and I utilized a shovel and post bar to get them out.  It was tough as hell getting them to release their grip on the soil.  I could not imagine what I would have gone through if I tried to pull out the entire root system by hand.

I was a bit annoyed that during the digging process I tweaked my bad right knee while trying to drive a shovel into the ground with my foot.  I could feel some swelling in it Saturday night, not exactly what you want with a half marathon scheduled for the following day.

Earlier I had picked up the dogs and brought them out to the house to hang with me and Uncle Patrick.  They had fun hanging outside while we worked.  Ali came out later to pick them up and downed some pre-half marathon pizza with Pat and I.

So for the second day in a row Pat and I rolled out of bed super early.  As predicted, the temps were cold, in the upper 40’s.  We got up to the race site around 6 about an hour early.  Patrick, despite running in much cold weather in his native Pittsburgh, was quite cold, just like me.  When he runs up north he has a lot more clothing on than he had on Sunday morning.

After getting our numbers which I thought were kind of interesting, 696 for me and 878 for Patrick, we headed back to the truck to hang out.  We saw some of my GCR buddies there and I introduced Pat to them although he met a number of them helping out at the race we did on Saturday.

About 20 or 25 minutes from the race start Pat and I did a couple laps around the parking lot to try to loosen up a bit.  Even Pat’s parking lot warm up pace was tough for me to maintain without considerable effort.  With about 10 minutes to go we merged into the river of humanity that was heading towards the start line.

The PA system they had at the start line was woefully underpowered.  Despite being only about 10-12 people away from the start line, I could hear nothing.  I didn’t even notice someone was singing the national anthem until the last verse.  After some more talking by someone I could not hear, an air horn started the race.  At least we could hear that.  I wished Patrick good luck as we took off, knowing he would soon be well out of my sight.

I stripped down to shorts and my long sleeve Under Armour cold gear top to run.  Although it was cold, at least the rain that was in the forecast never developed.  That would have been pretty damn miserable.

Early on I tried to keep my pace decent but I was very conscious of having a lot of miles in front of me.  Since in my training the most I ran was 10 miles I was even more worried about bonking if I went too hard too fast.  Early on in the race there is a lot of changing of the human scenery.  I was passing a lot of people and a lot of people were passing me as runners got established in their pace groups.

After about a mile or so the deep chill I was feeling had subsided as my internal furnace was now cranking away.  I checked my pace occasionally as I went along, for the most part it was around 8:30 which would easily put me below my goal of beating last years time of 1:55:17.

I took a little different approach to the water stops this year.  In other races I never would allow myself to stop for even a split second to drink, I always tried to awkwardly continue to run slowly while drinking.  More often than not that results in my choking and getting very little of the water into my body.  This time I decided that getting hydration was worth the 5 second pause it required.

I knew overall my pace during the first half of the run was pretty strong however I was surprised when I saw my half way split was 56 minutes flat.  This was nearly three minutes faster than I did the first half of the race last year.  If I could maintain that pace I would finish in 1:52 which would be incredible (for me).

Well shortly after the halfway split you get to tackle the toughest part of the race, the back and forth trek over a long, high bridge.   The bridge was not fun.  The optimism I felt after the halfway split was soon replaced with frustration of the painful and slow climb over the bridge.  I saw Patrick pass me as I was heading out (he was coming in) and yelled whatever supportive words I could between my gasps for breath.  That bridge sucks.

So as I finally hit the last downhill on the bridge I knew this was the grind time.  I had roughly 5 long, flat and straight miles to go till the finish.  Shortly after the bridge I felt a bit of a second wind, inspired that the most physically difficult portion of the run was behind me. However now I had the most mentally grueling portion staring me in the face.

The past two years I did this race I had managed to latch on to a couple of fast women to help pace me during this part of the run.  This year I never managed to find that pacer and it definitely put me at a disadvantage.  Last year it seemed like by the time we hit the second half of the race I was hardly passed at all, I did almost all of the passing.

This year it was much different.  I was passed, a lot, during the last 5 miles and I didn’t like it one bit.  It made me feel slow and frustrated.  I glanced at my GPS periodically and most times it showed a pace right around 9 which wasn’t going to get me home ahead of last years time.

With about 3 miles to go I was at about 1:25, I knew I needed to go if I wanted to cover the last 3.1 miles in less than 30 minutes.  I was now in no man’s land, farther than any training run I did.

I used every trick I could think of to take my mind off the physical discomfort.  I got my pace down to the high 8’s but still felt like I needed to go harder if I was going to beat the clock.  The last mile seemed to go on forever as we looped around the Edison Mall parking lot.  My legs didn’t feel like they could move any faster so I just tried to make my stride longer taking advantage of my very long legs.

As the finish line and clock came into focus I saw it had just crossed 1:54.  I pushed the pedal down as far as I could and “sprinted” to the finish, crossing the line right around 1:54:45, around 30 seconds faster than last year. Whew.  As I leaned down my head to receive my finishing medal  I came within an inch or two of inadvertently using the Hooters girl’s bosom as a pillow.  My balance was shaky.

I was thoroughly exhausted.  I went over to a nearby temporary fence and leaned on it, trying to catch my breath.  Patrick found me as I was gasping for air.  I asked him how he did.  He killed it, running a lightning fast 1:33, wow.

I quickly made my way to the stands to grab a bottle of Gatorade and a couple bagels, I felt like I needed to eat something asap.  Pat had finished long enough ago that he had moved on to the complimentary beer and even tried some of the free wings.

We had a funny moment when we headed over to the finish line to see if we would catch Ali finishing.  All of a sudden we hear the PA announcer call out “Patrick Duffey from Pittsburgh” , we were like, what the f?  We wondered if there was some sort of timing device mix up where someone else got Pat’s bib?  Then a few seconds later, the PA announcer says in a confused voice, “Patrick Duffey, again?”

Then it hit me.  We were standing about 15-20 feet away from the timing mats used for the calling of names.  Normally that is far enough away to not be read, but for whatever reason, Pat’s timing device must have had a longer than normal reading range and was getting picked up.  We stepped out of the area. 🙂

We actually missed Ali’s finish, she had come across around the 2:08 mark, shortly before we headed over there.  We caught up to her and others in the running club group to hang out.  We saw in the results that Pat was like the 50th overall person to finish, wow.  Later I went back up to check the results, I thought that Pat might have placed in his age group.

According to what I could determine, he looked to have gotten 3rd place, quite the accomplishment.  I told Pat the news and said I wasn’t 100% sure but based on what I saw, he would be getting up on the stage.

It turned out he did indeed net 3rd.  Ali and I cheered for him as he got his award of a stuffed Hooters Owl and a cool inscribed glass beer stein with his 3rd place accomplishment.   Although Pat isn’t one to admit it, I could tell he was proud that he placed as was I of him.

After getting his reward we said our goodbyes to the group and headed out.  Pat’s flight back was mid-afternoon so we didn’t have much time to spare.

As I reflect on my race I am proud that I beat last year’s time by 30 seconds but I was a bit frustrated by how I got there.  Last year I ran a negative split, running the second half of the course faster than the first.  This year I ran the first half significantly faster than the last.  I could look at several things as the reason for the second half issues like not having a running partner to keep me on point or perhaps the 8 or 9 extra pounds of body weight I am carrying around this year compared to last.

In the end the goal, was to improve my time, which I did.  You can’t ever argue with setting a PR, at 45.

Ali hitched a ride with us back to her place.  She gave Pat a quick tour of her apartment which he thought was very nice.  He then helped us walk the dogs a bit around the lake.  Despite Ali and my marital status it didn’t really affect the interaction between anyone which was cool.  Pat gave Ali a hug and the dogs a goodbye pat on the head.

By the time we got back to the house Pat had time to shower, eat lunch and take in one more WD episode before we shoved out in the SSR to the airport.  I thanked Pat for coming down and again congratulated him on his race result.  I told him he was always welcome to visit.  He’s such a good kid.

Sunday night I watched my first dvd utilizing my new Yamaha surround system.  It sounded great, too bad the movie I was watching was not, Men in Black 3.  I heard from many sources the movie was bad, the latest of which was Pat.  Despite the warnings I threw it in my Xbox.  The movie was just dumb.  I found myself totally uninterested in what was going on.  I had no issues pausing it repeatedly to attend to household chores.  It is time to let that franchise die. I’d give it a solid C.

I am pleased how I came out of the half marathon physically.  I am walking without a limp although of course I can feel a degree of soreness and stiffness in my right knee.  It’s a way better aftermath than the Tough Mudder that left me with an immobile right leg for several days.

Today the pool deck is finally supposed to be painted.  Friday was scuttled due to the rain earlier in the week putting the painters behind schedule.  I am hoping the payoff will be worth the wait.