I hate passing up free beer.

Dear Furry Man with Fuzzy Shoulders,

Please do not wear tank tops or running singlets anymore. Especially to events where you are going to sweat. It is not sexy. In fact, it is pretty gross. It makes the rest of your fellow runners uneasy at the crowded starting line because we are afraid that you will inadvertently touch us. And, by the way, I know you're the man who gets all nasty sweaty at the gym and then doesn't wipe off the weight equipment when you are done with it. That's gross too. You're gross. May I suggest you find a skilled hair removal specialist in your local yellow pages? Thank you.

Best,
Claire

Question: When was the last 10K I ran?
Answer: Sometime in the spring of 2006. I was living in Barcelona. I still smoked. I had a hangover. Joolie and I got lost on the way to the starting line and missed it by 8 minutes. Once we got close and realized that everyone had started already, we just started running. I set a PR somewhere in the high 50's.

If I signed up for a 10K I was pretty much guaranteed a PR. No matter that I'd already ridden over 130 miles this weekend, there was pretty much no way I could miss a PR. So I decided to switch out my Thursday tempo run for a Sunday 10K PR at the Malden Irish American 10K. I didn't even have to drive far to do it. Malden is only 2 towns away.

The race started at 11 a.m. How different from the races I've been doing the rest of this year! There were kids walking around with race numbers; also different from my usual trend. Most people were standing around in cotton t-shirts. Refreshing. I only paid $20 to enter (what a welcome change!) at the coat check of the Irish American club (a place that smelled like it had had a few too many Guinnesses spilled on its function hall floor over the years), and then wandered around watching everyone smiling, laughing, checking out the giant course map (a mapquest map printed out on a huge piece of butcher paper), doing cartwheels, anything but warming up. You can find more Massholes at an Irish event than pretty much anywhere else in Boston, and the Boston accents don't get much thicker than the ones I was hearing around me. Usually serious runners tend to be a dweebier, more white-collar crowd and don't tend to have the accent. I don't know if I heard an R all morning.

I showed up early. I got bored.

Half an hour before the start I went for a short warmup. I felt sluggish. I let my body pick the pace, and the pace it picked was 11-minute miles. Eight tenths of a mile later I was back and still not feeling warmed up.

I saw a chick stretching out wearing a pink top, pink shorts, pink socks, pink shoes, and a red Red Sox cap. I vowed to beat her. She looked stupid, and she didn't look that fast.

After some confusion over where exactly the starting line was, we lined up and they set us off exactly at 11:00. I was impressed at the organization, how they were able to set us off at the right time, and that the mile markers were dead on.

Running I felt like hell, but I figured I'd try to fake it. I'd set my watch to beep if I went slower than 8:00 miles. I might get tired, but I'm tough, I could handle it. It was only a 10K, a distance so short it almost seemed silly to run it. I followed the people around me, and after a couple of blocks I looked down to see that I was running roughly 7:15 pace. Oops. Better slow down. But it's hard to slow down when everyone around you is going so much faster than you're supposed to be. I consciously let people pass me, but I was still running too fast.

The majority of the first mile was uphill. I ran it in 7:44.

The next mile was mostly downhill, and I did a little bit of a better job of controlling my speed, mostly because it was already catching up to me. This was going to be messy. I ran the second mile in about 7:56. I'd hoped to run 8-minute miles, at least I was on the right track.

The third mile was flat, and I finally managed to get my speed somewhat under control. This was mostly because the first couple of miles, and all the miles on the bike this weekend were really starting to catch up with me. God, it was hot. It felt like it was about 95º (actually, only 80). I felt like hell and felt like I might shit my pants, but it was only a 10K. I could fake it for another 3 miles. I ran the third mile in 7:58, right where I wanted to be.

And then...

KER-PLOW!!!

Pieces of Claire went flying everywhere as I blew up into a million tiny little pieces. No matter what I WANTED to do, my body was going to make me slow down. NOW! No faking it anymore. We were running on a flat out-and-back section, and I saw the stupid-looking chick in the pink. She was about half a mile in front of me. Fuck.

I hit the turn-around and felt the wind in my face. I was thankful for it, since it was cooling me down, but did it have to be so damned STRONG?! For most of the back half of the course we had a 14mph headwind that gusted at times up to 22 mph. I ran the 4th mile in 8:23, exactly enough to undo all the extra seconds I'd bought myself with my overzealous start.

The 5th mile came and went. I alternated between yelling at myself to hurry the fuck up and wanting to go back to those 11-minute miles that my body wanted to run so badly. I ran it in 8:38. It was a compromise.

The sixth mile was more of the same. I ran it in 8:54. The red shirt that I'd been trailing since mile 2 pulled away and I felt like a failure.

In the last .2 miles a bunch of stupid punk 8-year-old kids decided to run out and run right behind me. Nothing makes you feel shittier than a bunch of 10-year-olds sprinting around you like you're a joke. I wanted to punch them. I wanted to push them under a car but there were none around. Then a lady that didn't LOOK like a runner passed me and I couldn't pass her back. And the stupid kids started saying to each other, "Are you still running?!" "My legs are tired." Stupid fucking kids, you've only run 3 blocks. I hope your legs are so tired that you DIE! Right at the last turn they had a bagpipe player playing a song that sounded like a hysterical dying duck. I felt like I was dying too. I averaged 8:00 miles for the last chunk. THAT's what I call a final kick?!

I came into the finishing chute all by myself in 50:37. My garmin said I had only run 6.13 miles for 8:15 pace; they say I ran the full 6.2 in 8:10's. I was over 5 minutes behind the bitch in pink. Whatever, I bet I look better naked than she does. She was kind of chunky and I don't think she had enough neck. At the end of the chute they took a look at my face to try and figure out if I looked over 21 and then held out a couple of drink tickets for me. "No thanks, I don't drink," I said. The last thing I wanted right now was a beer, I thought I might puke.
Then she said something like, "Oh, SHE'S the picture of health," that could have been taken as a compliment or an insult. Whatever, bitch. We're both here because we got the Irish drinking gene. The difference is that you come here to drink, and I come here so I won't.

I went to my car and changed into some flip flops (I still have gaping, raw sores on the backs of my ankles from my unfortunate sock malfunction last weekend - it's hard to take pictures of the backs of your own ankles, by the way) and came back to check out the results. Wow. I'd made the first sheet of paper! And somehow I'd managed to pull off third in my age group. I was going to get hardware in a road race! Alright, there were only 10 chicks in my age group, but I beat 7 of them. I got 6th woman overall, which sounds impressive until you see that only 23 women participated. Clearly the really fast girls didn't have the Malden Irish American 10K on their race calendar, but it was their loss. No free beer for them. And if those other two chicks had stayed home, I would have won.

It took them almost twice as long as it took me to run the race to begin to hand out the awards. I listened to the bad Irish band do jarring covers of Johnny Cash and Jimmy Buffet as well as some traditional Irish drinking songs. I seemed to be the only one getting irritated by the wait, since most of the freckle-faced participants, volunteers, and spectators were enjoying the $1.00 cups of Michelob Ultra made available by the race's generous sponsor. The race was to benefit the American Lung Association, and it kind of made me snicker to see how many people were lighting up once they got a couple of beers in them.

I got my medal, and then I went home, and that was it.

The end.

Anti-climactic? Yeah.