Good news, it’s dog show weekend which usually means two things – a) I’ll be sitting around on my butt most of the time because that is the true essence of this hobby they call Dog Agility even though the name does imply a lot of motion.. that is generally for like 1 to 2 minutes at a time for the trainer.. and then you go back to sitting. For the drag along Sherpa (me) .. that translates to basically just sitting – and b) more than enough time to get some posts out to put this month in the books. Last I looked I was down only two so that should be pretty easy to tackle. A staple blog entry for June is always the Steamboat Race and this year is no different. Once again I toed the line for Illinois’ Toughest 15K. One more medal to add to the growing collection of distance accomplishments
For the record, I cannot stand the logo for this race. Hard to put my finger on exactly what the issue is but pretty sure it centers around having to wear a naked guy (except for shoes) with crappy running form. Spent months and months eliminating heel striking and yet the race swag is a walking advertisement for it. In the past the biggest complaint has always been the medals. Steamboat still uses the hard chips in the shoe which is now pretty annoying seeing as most of the big races use the bib RF tags. Pre-2014 the medal was a literally a hunk of metal you slipped the hard chip in for display purposes. Either they knew nobody liked these chips and were just trying to trick people into keeping them to deplete their supplies or they wanted to keep reminding the participants of how awful that timing method is. Luckily for 2014 they went to a standard medal – small, but better than in the past. The back side actually has a remembrance to the race coordinator’s father who passed away this year.
Linda went with a more artsy pre-race picture. Guessing so she had something nice to display on her desk if I didn’t make it! (took her like 20 minutes to get it right hehehe)
Prep time was over, it was time to make this Toughest 15K my bi… umm teach this Toughest 15K who was boss. They changed the starting point this year – moving it a block over and to be honest taking out a small hill that was at the original starting point (does that still make this the toughest?). As a result, Linda wasn’t exactly sure where to set up her photography perch. It also meant I did not know where she was forcing me to scan the sidelines for her. Not a big issue since I tend to goof around at the start anyway – it’s 9.3 miles people, no need to get all worked up at the start unless you happen to be in the rare air with the elites. Soon I spotted her (before she saw me) and started my traditional wave. Saw she was wedged in by other people and noticed she almost hit a lady in front of her when she swung the big glass around to snap some shots. Only later did I learn that lady moved over and jumped in front of her as soon as the race started causing Linda to add some choice comments on Facebook afterwards.
Hit the jump to see how the race went!
