My Experiments With Life
Courtesy of all my blabberings in social media outlets, Bryant Weathers got the wind of me acquiring a new pair of skis and shot off this email on a balmy fine Friday in January. I tried ignoring it for a while but it seemed to have some serious haunting features and just wouldn’t go away. With nearly every skiing mile in my life ahead of me, it wasn’t easy to make the decision — to take my skiing talents to Ashland, Wisconsin, let alone on to the frozen Lake Superior for a 10k.
As noted in my looking ahead post posted several weeks ago, I had registered for several running events in 2014. I even made plans to procrastinate less and continue running through the winter in preparation for the 2014 running season. But old habits die hard, I suppose. I could blame the end of semester activities for sinking much of free time towards the end of 2013 and early first few weeks of 2014 but fact that I made time to enjoy more than several brewed beverages would invalidate any such claim to blame.
Making up mind to sign up for this race was the least painful task: last of the organized racing events for 2013, opportunity to travel, meet good ole friends and share some laughs, participate in my maiden half marathon outside my home state of Michigan and the first of its kind in a big city with hundreds (if not thousands) of fellow participants, run a little and earn some bling, take stock of the 2013 running season, eat some good food and may be even drink some — just some — beer … made the pleasurable aspects that much more pleasurable compared to a little pain. And the mind was made up a little less than two months ago. Exchange of few texts over a short period of time saw my dear friends Nils, Chelsea and Kevin sign up as well – the last two for their maiden half marathon attempt.
Yet another of those events — organized by dear friends, Josh and Nancy — that I had managed to find an excuse for its previous editions but was eagerly looking forward to participate in 2013 for more than one reason: opportunity to not make an excuse, (a short-ish) run for fun with many a colleagues, familiarity with the course (as a result of my affiliation to Lake Linden Wild Goose Chase), and the finish line being mere steps away from the Lakes Lounge / American Legion Post 90.
