TRAINING AND RACING = TAXED LEGS

Yesterday, I met Pat Murphy and Zach Britton down at the Capital Crescent trail in G-town to run a 20K sponsored by the DC ROAD RUNNERS. Among the famous and not so rich, was Bob Marino, another one of the "old guys" who, back in the day, would battle Moeser and Hage for local bragging rights as the area's best runner. Typical of his era, he showed up at the race looking even more un-cool than me. Sweats, 70s style headband, a sweatshirt stamped with the label US NAVY on it. Totally old-school and awesome.

Anyway, Ted Poulos was there as were many other faces that looked familiar. The race is so low key, that nobody knew, including the race director, where the start line was. Eventually he found it and boom, the race started. Right from the get go, some kid from the US Navy, bolted out like a piston. He had a huge lead. Well, myself, Britton, Murphy, Marino and some other dude, settled into a pack and slowly reeled him in. As we ran we hit several big patches of snow and ice. These slowed us down quite a bit as we had to really dodge and dart away from the ice. At the 6.2 turnaround, Murphy who had a slight lead on me, said way to go Max, or something similar, and as he said this and I began to make my turn around the cone, I wiped out and slid to the ground. I felt like a marine doing some sort of combat routine. Anyway, I bolted up, shook off the stinging sensation that resonated down my elbo and decided to not let those guys run away.

1 mile passed and we started to get strung out. Murphy and Britton really started to race and pick up the pace. They caught the lead guy and moved ahead. Being the old man that I am, I held back and back and slowly reeled in the #s 3 and 4 guys until it was just Murphy and Britton in front of me. At some point Britton made a move and Murphy decided not to go with him. I caught up to Murphy and in his always pleasant demeanor, he simply said, I have had it or something similar. With 3.5 miles to go, I decided to put a little more speed on and see if Britton would fade. Just when I thought I would get him, at mile 2, he put a surge on. I did too, but not enough to reel him in and he ended up running a strong finish to get the victory.

In all, it was a good, hard run with some tactics and adventure thrown into the mix. My end time was 1:12.57. If I had not fallen and there had not been snow and ice, I say my time, as everybody else's, would have been 1 minute faster.

As for today, Klim, Dylan, Christiam, Bain, Tanner, Murphy and Reaves and myself ran a solid 18 miles in the frigid cold out by Old Angler's Inn. It took my about 9 miles just to warm up and get the legs to feel alive.

We did a solid pace with a little speed thrown in at the end. After, we went to starbucks and talked smack.

Klim, is now claiming that if Giuliani loses he does not have to wear a dress at a race. I forget the specifics of the bet he made with Dwyer a few weeks back, but I could have sworn, Klim, wearing a dress, was part of the deal.

After two pretty high mileage/intensity days, my legs are tired. Time to rest a bit.

FYI---Please look at the most recent Running Times. In the section where Master Runners are ranked, Moeser is the #2 guy in the world(i think). for his age group, 55-59.

Happy Martin Luther Kind Jr. day. MLK was the MAN