betcha i can!

there's this place i like to hang out online. i like the banter, the camaraderie. sometimes we have serious discussions. sometimes we just talk smack. sometimes someone leaves in a huff, never to return, and when they inevitably do return we give them a really hard time so they'll know how we really missed them. there are dorks and sycophants, math geeks and word geeks, personae and Real People, boys and girls. most of the folks there are fairly smart, and they're both quick witted and good humoured. able to give a joke, and also able to take one.

the thing that draws this group together is that we're all distance runners. some of us run longer distances than others, some of us faster than others, but in this group everyone's run a marathon. or, more likely, multiple marathons. the sorts of things we take for granted other people would never imagine. people in this group don't run dozens of miles every year. they don't run hundreds of miles every year. they run thousands.

generally, you don't run thousands of miles a year just for the hell of it. generally, you would have a goal - a race or series of races that you'd plan to run. you'd fit these races into a schedule and build some training around them. me... well, i am more the hell-of-it kind of girl. alls i want to do is go running, as far as possible, as often as possible. does the racing schedule justify the running or does the running justify the racing schedule? is the race the end, the culmination of the training... or is the race just the means, something society can comprehend, is the race merely the excuse to go running crazy far?

anyway.

when you've got a race schedule and you're hanging out online with other folks that also have one, and oh by the way, you all started hanging out in the first place on account of the obsessive running which is the basis of the racing schedules, well, you are going to start comparing results. it's natural.

leaning towards the hell-of-it side of the spectrum, i don't generally get into the racing talk. it seems so pointless to run against a clock and then compare your results to someone else's. even if you ran the same event, you weren't racing, not truly. i don't know... i don't think i will be able to explain it well, but to me, racing is me and joey warnock tearing across the playground to the swingset. mano a mano. that's it.

i am not fast enough to go head to head with anyone from this group i hang out with, but i thought of a way (besides bionic legs) to change that. what do you do when you're on the playground, and you're fixing to race some kid to the swings, and that kid is younger than you, and smaller, and slower. what do you do?

you give him a head start, that's what you do.

so, here's what i am thinking. i can race you, and you, and you, too -- i can race all of you, if i were to get a head start. you'd have to find the right race event, probably a 5k, and it would have to be chip timed, and where they leave the start mats open, and probably where the start and finish aren't shared. i'd take off first, and after like 5 minutes, then you could start, and after say 6-1/2 minutes, well then you could start. after maybe 8 minutes, you go. then - you would go last. you'd have to wait like 10 minutes, at least! that's why it would have to be a chip timed race - so that you would get your fair shot at having your speedy time recorded appropriately.

anyway, see what would happen is that if it all goes according to plan, if we all run our butts off, then we should all end up coming down the home stretch just about the same time, see, because we were racing each other the whole way, just some of us got a head start. then, in the final yards, we're actually neck & neck, pounding it out, straining for the finish -- because whoever crosses that line first is the winner. the winner of our race within a race.

alls you'd win would be bragging rights, of course, but c'mon... what could be sweeter?