The Nurturer of the People:
A Case of the Runs

For some strange reason, last December I decided to sign up for hell. Only in this case, hell was being misrepresented as the Mini-Marathon, a 13.1-mile torture chamber filled with 35,000 idiots who each paid $40 to spend a Saturday morning running. Sounds fun doesn’t it? Well, at one point I thought it did too.

I actually looked forward to this event for most of the year, that is until I noticed it was already mid April and I had yet to begin training. I had been running on a regular basis, but never any more than three miles at a time. With less than a month to prepare for this grueling task, I knew I was in trouble.

For a little back-story as to why I signed up for this, let me take you back to 2004. A friend of mine, also known as "Little JJ" (pictured below), convinced me to run the Mini with him. I begrudgingly signed on, and was completely overwhelmed. I was able to run about 4 miles at the beginning of the race, but then had to walk/jog the rest, and finished the 13.1 in a pathetic 2 hours 17 minutes. Right then and there, I knew I’d begin training for the next year, so that I could keep up with my friend and actually run the whole way. Well, a not so funny thing happened not long after the race, I severely sprained my ankle, which took over a year to heal. Unfortunately, that meant I was unable to run in the 2005 Mini-Marathon.

Moving back up to present day, I made it a mission of mine (after long months of suffering with a bum ankle) to once again get healthy enough to run. I took awhile, but I finally got to the point where I could run, and not feel any pain, so I signed up for the 2006 mini, full of excitement. But then I got sidetracked, and completely forgot about it. Damn you Bud Light! Or was it Miller Lite? It doesn’t matter.

So the day of the race finally arrived, and my buddy had once again come to town to run it with me. This time, however, he had brought his girlfriend along who was going to run in it as well. Now there was pressure. They had both run in the Mini the year before, and had finished in much better times than my first endeavor. I had trained a little in the three weeks after I realized the mini was coming up, but I had not run for more than 7 miles at a time, and I had only done that once. This race was going to be 13.1 miles long, almost double my previous high. Uh-oh. He and his girl were going to smoke me.

As I said before, I dreaded the event all the way up until I got there that Saturday morning at 7 am. My fear of being embarrassed didn’t dissipate at all upon hearing that both my friend and his girl would be starting well ahead of me in the field. You see, they start you in corals based on your estimated time of finish. They were both starting in coral M… I was way back in R. That’s right, almost everyone else in my starting position was wearing a helmet, was missing a leg, was 90 years old or looked as if they were only running because they heard there’d be a buffet at the finish line. To make matters worse, I had partnered up with another friend of mine (and cast member of the RRBS) and we were going to run together. She was supposed to be starting in Coral C, near the front. She was also a former cross-country runner and in considerably better shape than I am. This was not looking good.

But things didn’t end up as bad I thought they would. After applying some runner’s glide to my underarms, nipples and anywhere else I thought might chafe while running; I downed some energy goo (now don’t turn that dirty) and took off running. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good. From my position in the back, I started passing all sorts of people wearing “I run this Town” t-shirts (which evidently wasn’t true, judging by some of their 300lbs frames.)

I have to give my partner, Marlieta props; she kept me going in the early stages. Not only did she keep me at a steady pace, she also kept me from having to use my normal technique of motivation which is finding a girl with nice a nice ass to run behind.

Her technique of using a stopwatch to gauge our progress, though not as fun, seemed to work a little better. It was a long a grueling run, but we both finished without stopping to walk a single time. Speaking of time, we averaged about an 8 minute mile throughout, and finished in under two-hours. 1hr 50m to be exact. Well under my previous time, and lower than my friend and his girlfriend’s time too. A fact I pointed out repeatedly as we got trashed in the ‘Beer Garden’ after the race. Just goes to show, who needs training?

On a side note, there was something a little discouraging during the race. Mid way through the run, you get to jog around the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The track makes up miles 6-8.5. Near the beginning of the track, where you first come in, they have a jumbotron that is showing other parts of the race. Well, when Marleita and I entered the track, at around mile 6.5, we looked up and saw that someone had just crossed the finish line. That’s right, we were just approaching the middle of the mini and a woman in her late thirties, and a mother of 3, was finishing the race. She did it almost an hour quicker than we did. I don’t know if I wanted to quit right then and there, or speed up so I could punch her in the face. Her and those damn Kenyans. One good thing came out of it though. That experience helped me to understand what women go through during sex. They’re just starting to get into it when all of a sudden they look up and the man is finished, standing across the room smoking a cigarette.