The Reason I Blog and not Vlog

This morning the herd (Betty, Edith, Elsie, her calf, Mik and I) did the End of Summer Fire Run as did fellow bloggers Irene and Lisa.

Irene, Lisa and me before the race

The Fire Run is a local, low key, event with no chip timing, and quite frankly, I don't think they get the non-chip timing very accurate. The "official" race results say I finished the 4 mile run in 47:23. My Garmin says 42:40...In fact, as I crossed the finish line, I saw the clock turn to 43:00. Now, I'm willing to concede some seconds or so since I started near the front, but five freekin' minutes? No Way!

So, the race report...the good thing about starting near the front is that I started off by running with all the faster runners and that inspired me to run faster (my first mile split was 10:18, which is almost a sprint for me!). The bad thing is that people were passing me right and left, but I refused to be demoralized by that.

In fact, I spent most of the first mile trying to catch Betty (who did NOT wear her green shirt today), but lost her in the crowd about the mile mark. She told me later that I passed her, but since I didn't see her, I spent the remainder of the race running as fast as I could thinking "OMG! Where is she?"

Mik, Elsie, and Edith ran awesome races too. Finishing in 33:55, 40:14, and 35:26.

On the other hand, who knows if any of these times are correct.

Anyway, it was not about the time. It was about the free beer! The best part of the run is that you get two free beers at the end (so yes, we were drinking beer at 9:00am), at a local beach bar called the PB Bar and Grill. I finished the race (thirsty and having to pee...WTF is up with that?), wandered around aimlessly for several minutes. Finally got some fluids from the VitaminWater peeps (THANK GOD for them because I couldn't find the water people), located Edith. Then Mik came up and said...come on, we're at the front of the line to get into the bar (well of course they were. Mik finished 10 minutes before I did).

So...all sweaty we headed into the bar to get our two free beers.

That's where we were, still sweating from the run, when a reporter from the local NBC affiliate, noting the brightness of our shirts asked if she could interview us. Betty (who loves to promote the hefferblog. I think she's thinking it will eventually lead to free stuff for us) told the reporter that I have a blog. I, of course, point to Lisa (who else am I going to drag under the bus with me) and say "she does too!" (you're welcome Lisa). So she interviewed us about that.

Lisa looks great. My clever answer for "what are you going to blog about?" should have been, "well this of course!" but I don't think that quickly (thus the reason why I only blog twice a week. These things take me for freekin' ever to think about and write).

Elsie just killed me with the reference to her calf. I love how it takes the reporter a couple of beats to "get it." Even after the camera guy turned off the camera, she was still laughing about it.

Anyway, the race was (as I reported...) muggy and sticky...Can you imagine? God what a dork I am...see if it were my blog, I could edit that out, or at least make it sound dirty, but my ability to do that off the cuff? Not. So. Much.

I had a great time hanging out with Lisa, who shared a breakfast burrito with me, and may have gotten more than she bargained for in hanging out with the herd. She told me that her original plan was to run the race, then run back to La Jolla. Of course, as we headed straight to the bar at the end of the race (can you see how I'm all glowy in the video? That's real running-sweat peeps, no hollywood fake-misting-sweat for this girl), I looked at her and said "I don't think you're going to be running back. Let's have a beer!

She was easily persuaded. Quite frankly, she fit right in.

Anyway, it was an oh-so-appropriately named race...end of summer, which today is for me. Great race, good friends, free beer...what else could I ask for?

Classes start tomorrow (which is what I SHOULD be working on right now).