Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Race report

And I use the term "race" very loosely, but it was a piss-poor effort on my part yesterday at the John Carson 2-Mile in steamy Chelmsfuhd. In a nutshell: the field was great, crowd was wonderful, weather was less-than-ideal and I ran like a big pussy. Please pardon my French.

I finished a disappointing 8th in 9:52 behind a quality crew that included Nephi Tyler, Casey Moulton, a few token Kenyans, teammate Ryan Carrara, former teammate Chris Volante and a host of others. The race went out hard as it always does and I failed to commit from the get-go, which is a mistake when the finish line is a scant two miles away. I settled into a small chase group, came through the mile in a slow 4:55 feeling like garbage, packed it in for 3/4 mile and mustered enough of a pathetic pretty-boy kick to hold off an out-of-shape Pat Morasse and two guys who are old enough to be my dad. No excuses, basically gave up like a heartless chump. This sort of shit is unacceptable. I will be going up to Stowe with a vengeance.

Quote of the day:

If you think you're beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don't;
If you'd like to win, but think, you can't
It's almost a cinch you won't.
If you think you will lose, you're lost;
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will,
It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you're outclassed, you are;
You've got to think high to rise.
You've got to hustle before
You can ever win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can.
-Walter D. Wintle, "The Man Who Thinks He Can"


5 comments:

Chad said...

If it makes you feel any better, you would have won the girls National 2-mile race by 18 seconds. Hmm, maybe that won't cheer you up. Maybe it'll fire you up.

Anonymous said...

But wasn't the ice cream and pool nice on such a hot day!

Mario said...

Those two rare luxuries were indeed nice. Many thanks to you and Christy Mae for having me along.

Jorge Bannister said...

As long as you keep your promise for October, everything else until then will just tune you up :)

Matt said...

Thanks for the heads on on the "Rentato" spelling... I'm usually more careful than that.

Don't worry about the 2-mile. Really, when you're running 110 a week, cranking it up for 9 minutes or so isn't the easiest.

When is Stowe?