Yeah, I was in about nine pictures, but not a single one was a decent shot. Ah well...when your best photo is the one where you're directly blocked by some guy without a shirt that should never be without a shirt, well...
Here are the free photos if you'd like to look through them.
And note, that I was wearing my AWESOME Blerch shirt from The Oatmeal. "I believe in the Blerch!"
OK, Corvallis Half Marathon. Let's discuss. Actually, let's discuss the week heading to the race.
So last Wednesday, Jen came down with a pretty bad case of the flu. Vomiting, diarrhea, the works. I, of course, teased her about it being great prep for the Half. Yes, foreshadowing.
Fast forward to Friday morning. I wake up with an upset stomach, but not feeling too bad otherwise. Yep, I’ve got the runs too. Oh boy. I still don’t feel awful though. So I’m shaving to get ready for work and am about to get into the shower when I suddenly feel like I’m going to throw up. I mean, it hit me out of nowhere. Super-fast. Sweat on my forehead – the whole works immediately. So I get down on the floor by the toilet and…
Yeah, I’m not sure if you know this about me or not, but when I’m really sick or dehydrated, I pass out. I’ve fainted probably a dozen times in my life, usually when I’ve got the flu or something similar.
…so I come to, and I’m not joking here, wedged in between the bathtub and the toilet with my face resting on the toilet plunger like it’s a pillow. And lord, I know where that thing’s been! Anyway, when I come out of a faint like that, it always takes a good few minutes just to remember where I am and what the hell is going on. But it eventually comes to me: I’m sick, I passed out, I should get my face off the plunger. Oh, and I’ll spare you the details, but did you know that some bodily functions, like vomiting and diarrhea, don’t necessarily stop when you’re passed out? Yeah, the bathroom and I were a god-awful mess.
So I get in the shower just to get cleaned up. Stumble downstairs and get into the floor of the bathroom down there…and proceed to do the whole damn thing over again. Vomit, pass out, diarrhea…in various combinations. I think Jen ended up doing about four loads of laundry just from me that day.
So after about two hours of this, I felt a little better and moved out to the couch. Since I weigh myself every day, I realized the next day that I had lost seven pounds in basically two hours!
So yeah, that was two days before the race. Saturday I felt about 60-70% back to normal and I figured I’d walk the damn Half if I had to – I wasn’t going to just skip it. Sunday, I was up to maybe 80% health. The problem was the illness and the weight loss just took the starch out of me. At about 8 miles, my legs were just jelly. There was an ambulance taking a girl off the course at about mile 12 (it was probably due to the heat – it was pretty warm) and I thought “there but for the grace of God go I.”
Yeah, so that's the short version about why I ran a 1:58 instead of a 1:45 or so that I think I was capable of.
If you're looking for results, check here or here.
For non-free photos, head over here or here.
There was a fair bit of controversy about the new logo for the race. Most people didn't like it. They did clean the final version up a bit and the logo on the shirts actually doesn't look too bad.
Sorry, didn't get a very clear shot on that one. Let's try again.
And the back.
It's one of those races where they give you a "finisher" shirt before you actually run the race. That's OK. I still ran it, even though the temptation was pretty strong.
They also tossed in a decent pair of racing socks with the logo, but I forgot to get a picture of the socks. Sorry about that.
The medal isn't too bad. Better looking than the previous few years, for sure.
So that's that. A very slow Corvallis Half. No biggie. I plan to be in shape - and NOT sick - for the Eugene Half on July 27th. Looking for a PR there.
See you then.
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