Run the Bases

For the past five weeks, I’ve been working at a day camp for kids. Part of my job calls for councilor meetings every Friday, where we play games and conference/complain about the week we’ve had.

At yesterday’s meeting, we were playing a game that should be familiar to most readers, called Run the Bases. The game is simple enough; basically, two people throw a ball to each other over a particular stretch of land. An unsuitable large number of their friends (in this case about thirty councilors) try to run between them. Either of the ball passers may decide, at any moment, that they would rather hurl the ball at a friend– at which point said friend gets beaned. It’s a game that provided me hours of entertainment as a child.

Running being one of my few skills, I decided that I was invincible. At one point, I found myself making a close turn around one of these ball catchers just as he caught the ball. Determined not to get hit, I took off at a dead sprint. My eyes, however, were still locked on his hateful hand, clenched around the tennis ball. I turned my head forward just in time to see the horror on a fellow councilor’s face as he hurtled at me.

We had the cartoonish kind of collision with our chests together and our arms held out behind each other. In the moments before we hit the grass, it must have looked like we were about to hug.

And now, the relevance of this story: I must have turned my knee outward right before the collision, because my fellow councilor/ball-dodger managed to hit the side of it just right with his own. Both of my knees were pretty banged up after the ultra, and even after two weeks of healing, this hit was enough to renew some of that damage.

It’s certainly not catastrophic, and it came at a time when I don’t have to run lots of miles. In fact, I could only laugh about it afterward. After running 50 miles on asphalt, this is how I get hurt.

Regionals pt. II

So yesterday I realized that I had totally forgotten to share how my last xc race actually went. Here’s a review (with pictures this time!).

Here I’m about 300 meters from the finish line. I ended up finishing at 28:14, tying my PR from Paul Short. At first I was a little upset to have missed PRing by so little. But in a way, it’s appropriate. It’s like I proved that I was performing at maximum capacity in both of those races. Or slacking off in both. We’ll say the former.

Classy guy, right? Here I am in my post-race glory, smoking a cigar. I don’t often smoke cigars (and never cigarettes for obvious reasons) but it’s a tradition for the men’s team to have one after their final xc race, as a salute to the end of four wonderful years.

Being sentimental, I knew from my freshmen year that I would one day smoke a cigar on an xc course. Being a writer, I love symbols. Being nuts, I love ritual.

All in all, that cigar tasted pretty sweet.

Pact

Two weeks ago (in the height of my academic craziness) I went down to DC to participate in our conference race. I had a pretty crappy race, but not crappy enough to knock me out of the top 7 on my team. Which means that I’m going to regionals at Lehigh (yay!) this upcoming Saturday.

It also means that I have a chinstrap. As in a strip of hair that runs from one ear, along the ridge of my jaw, to the other ear.

How are those two ideas connected? Well, as the team sat on the bus, dubiously eyeing the course meant to hold our conference meet, we entered a pact. Each man that made it to Regionals (that is, the top 7 on the team) wouldn’t be able to shave until then. It was one of those dumb things teams do for good luck, like growing matching Mohawks or not washing their uniforms or somesuch.

I was a little leery of the idea, since my own beard is so sparse when I let it grow out (which is never). More importantly, I also have to look relatively clean for teaching. My observers don’t tolerate scruffiness.

A decent compromise was found in the aforementioned chin strap. It’s a bit scraggly, and it’ll have to go after Regionals is done. For the first time since I began growing it, though, I think I’m going to miss it.

P.S. Not for the first time, I wish I had a digital camera so that you guys could truly appreciate what I’m describing. Ah, well.