National Running Day

Today is National Running Day. Imagine, an entire day dedicated to running—a sport I love. Millions of people will get outside and run; many for the first time in a long time. There will be balloons, water, music, laughter, and sweat.

As for me, I am not running on principal. The whole event reeks of corporate greed and Hallmark. Unless you have a scheduled run for a race you are preparing for, I suggest you join my boycott.

Now, my boycott won’t involve anything fancy like an official protest or rally at the steps of the capital, such efforts are too showy for me. My boycott is more likely to involve me sitting outside with my bullhorn harassing any NRD participants.* I expect this harassment to continue unabated until the pizza I order from my cell phone arrives. Also, I expect to harass every runner, regardless of their knowledge of NRD or not. If you can’t make it to the East Lansing area, I suggest you hold your own boycott.

So, join me and billions of others by taking a load off, kicking your shoes off and your feet up, and relax, you can always run tomorrow when—like me—you have a run scheduled.

* I would like to thank Nitmos, whose various forms to taunting his children have inspired this particular form of boycott.

Two Legs v Two Wheels

I’ve recently started running my 5 and 6 mile routes down MSU’s river trail. This trail basically cuts campus in half, and connects to a larger set of trails covering about 13+ miles. This path is great but can get congested with people. Worst of all, it can get congested with people on bikes leisurely pedaling along.

Last night, right after my first mile, some almost-teenager was just tooling around and taking his sweet time going nowhere. So, I pass him. Moments later he goes speeding by. About fifty meters in front of me he resumes his tooling around speed. I pass him again. And that little punk passes me again, but this time he maintains about a fifteen meter lead for the remainder of the second mile. Every time I made a surge, he sped up.

Shortly after mile two there is a split, and that stupid kid sits there and waits for me to pass him. Moments after I had selected the path I would be running on, he passed me. This happens again about a quarter of a mile later—he waits, I pass and go on my route, he passes me again.

Then the little punk puts some more distance on me. But at this point I’m thinking, this is my 3 mile turnaround kid, so later. I reverse, and start back. And you guessed it, almost half way through mile 4 the kid shows up again. Same story as before.

Approaching mile five he is now only two meters ahead, and I’m seriously thinking about giving a good sprint and knocking him down. Just as I decide I’m going to push him and his stupid bike into the river he looses interest and veers off down a street.

Hay little man, next time you try that crap with me I’m going to throw a packet of gu at you (then probably pick it up, that stuff is expensive for such an unappetizingly named product).