Smokey Smoke

This here's Smoke... Sticky Steve's new silver lab. Not gonna lie, he's pretty sweet looking (sorry for the lack of a better image). I finally got down to Cincinnati for work and was able to size him up. He's going to be a monster. Then again, I thought the same thing about Ms. J and that didn't turn out like I thought. She's a wee thang. I'm still waiting on her growth spurt to prove me right.

Ran the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K Saturday with Bradley... of Hoffmann fame. They had oversold the race by thousands so neither of us had bibs. We were basically bandits. And on top of that, the start line was a mess. We were four or five rows from the front and there were obvious walkers in front of us. Organizers attempted to hold signs up designating a particular pace so that runners might find their respective start area so that they didn't end up in front of faster folks. Clearly, people didn't give a shit.

This is the problem that arises when holding a "race" for people that don't race. Yeah, you can call me an elitist, but I'm far more concerned with the courtesy factors than with whether they're considered a runner or not. Personally, I think it's great that nearly 50,000 people crowd the streets of downtown Columbus and run/walk for a great cause. With a $30 registration fee, that's something close to $1.5MM. That's cash that might cure breast cancer this year. But you want return customers and poorly organized events work against that goal. Unfortunately, it really would've been as easy as people abiding by the system the race directors had in place, but with 50,000 people, that's just wishful thinking. So we still had to dip and dodge our way through the first mile, but after hearing from some of those that were much farther behind, I'll consider us lucky. I still ran a 19:33. I could definitely feel the 20-miler in that last mile. There wasn't much left in the tank.