Alameda Runners – Get After It!

On January 29, 2011, Brazen Racing came to our home course in Newark, California.  It was fun doing a run on our local trails.  The half marathon was two loops with an out and back leg.  The Brazen events always have hills and single track trails, or at least it seems that way.  Most of us are used to the trails but the single tracks can be a challenge for track runners starting out on trail runs.  This was a great event with a unique start line that was on the hump of a small hill.

A lot of us have a few key events that we are training for and do other races as social events or advanced training events to gauge our fitness.  This was a social training run for me.  I was out with the Mission Peak Striders, Daily Mile members and plenty of Alameda Runners.  Thank you all for showing up in such great numbers.  It is nice to get all of the local runners together for an event.  Oddly enough, I wound up running with Ron the Punk Rock Runner who is in his own group.

I am training for a triathlon in July.  This week was a rest week in my training cycle so I took it easy on my run.  The Punk Rock Runner is training for an Ironman distance triathlon so he was cruising along too.  The way I see it, if you can run 13 miles on a rest day, you are doing well.  When you do these events as social events, it is fun to meet new people and talk to them in the back of the pack.

My new best friend Ron, started running 3 years ago after he heard a coworker talking about marathon training.  He weighed over 280 pounds when he decided to run a marathon.  He told his friends at work he was going to run a marathon.  He said they had an office pool to see how far he would go before he crashed and burned.  He finished, now he does Ironman distance triathlons.  He still has trouble with his weight but he does no let that stop him.

Get out and do some events, it is a lot of fun and you meet a lot of people just like you.  It is great to compare notes and have a new friend to encourage you along.  We were comparing notes on our strengths and weaknesses thinking “if only…”.

This was a great event for me.  It was like a family reunion with so many friends and conversations.   we all had something in common.  We just finished something hard.  Doing a rest run of 13 miles is still hard.  It was still fun.