(Hi, everyone. Remember me?)(For the few of you who don't know: He's hurt. He slipped on a patch of snow in February and injured his hip and then, based on some bad advice from people who should have known better and excessive optimism on his part, continued to train on it until he had all but crippled himself. He has an MRI on Monday to try to figure out what's wrong so it can be fixed so that, with any luck at all, he can try this again NEXT year.)
Here's the good news:
Because we were standing together at the 23-mile mark (instead of running somewhere in the midst of 26,000+ people and standing at the whatever mile mark watching for a single runner in the midst of 26,000+ people) on Monday, we got to watch Geoffrey Mutai and Moses Musap smoke their way past us en route to the fastest Boston Marathon finishes ever.
The top four men (including Ryan Hall, who ran the fastest marathon ever by a U.S. runner) all beat the course record set last year, and Mutai finished in 2:03:02 (!). (While that's the fastest marathon ever, it won't be recognized as a world record because Boston's a downhill course.)
We got to see three of the fastest women on the planet battling it out, too. Caroline Kilel of Kenya took the race at 2:22:36, while American Desiree Davila, who was in the lead as they ran past us, finished four seconds behind.
We got to see some old friends and make some new ones, too. I got to enjoy the fact that my MS-impaired gait was mistaken for post-marathon runner's gait (it is, in fact, remarkably similar) on Monday night and Tuesday. We had a great time.
Jef was a really good sport about it all.
But my heart broke every single time I watched him watch someone else limp by on Tuesday wearing a finisher's medal...
6 comments:
Some good news from the race.
A friend of mine and his girlfriend ran, he proposed to her at the finish line and she accepted.
I started doing half-marathons five years ago. I have yet to get a DNF or have to pull out due to an injury. Part of me is really curious to know where that "red-line" is. Part of me is really scared of the aftermath of finding it. But I'm very sure that if I never find it, I'll never do my best.
miss you guys. how's life?
Jef,
I just wanted to point out that the kid in Frazz (June 6, 2011) was right about the week before the last week of school being the "penultimate."The teacher was wrong!
Paul Baker
Jef,
Hmmm. It seems that I missed the point in June 6's Frazz. In the very next frame Frazz SAID the teacher didn't know that the word "penultimate" meant "next-to-last!"
Blame it on my paper's postage-stamp size comics.
Paul
No problem, Paul -- the June 6 strip was subtle. When Caulfield said it was the penultimate week of school, Mrs. Olsen said it WASN'T because there was still a week to go (meaning, she thought penultimate meant the same thing as ultimate)...
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