Crazy Running Events of Winter 2012

I just physically cannot be silent about all this awesomeness.

Tequila 10k

The Hounds (the running club I've been chilling out with) faced the winter of 2012 with an easy, warm, and fun Tequila 10k (TTK) on December 1.

The first TTK of 2012 was conceived as a combination of the most enjoyable activities the humanity ever experienced: running and voluntary self-intoxication. The concept is pretty simple: run a 10k stopping at bars/houses and doing shots of tequila.

As far as I recall, there were six shots in total, with one opening the run and one concluding it at the same place.

The map of tequila 10k.

All I remember at this point is that the run started out quite orderly, even with a flavor of competition, which faded away along with our soberness. Closer to the end, Brandon lost control over his air horn (no implicit joke intended), cops showed up, and some of us rolled down the Negley hill.

The pure running time was in the order of 80-some minutes. Still, a PR for all of us. It was probably my easiest PR ever. For whatever reason I've never seen a single photo from this run. Maybe they just didn't want to embarrass me.

All-Day Run

On January 27, 2013 the brave five of us went out under the motto, "run till you collapse". Yes, literally. It was the first time I ever ran without a fixed distance limit in mind.

At the outset, without Mr. Brown.

It took us the whole day to destroy ourselves - starting at dawn and finishing after dusk. We ran most in our miles in the 8:40-9:40 pace, which is more shuffling than running.

At the outset, with Mr. Brown.
He doesn't look very brown tho.
I'd say more like Mr. Green-Pink.

Four out of five stopped between miles 40 and 43 (40 miles is 64.3 km, or 1.5 marathons). Laura continued until mile 50 and thus planted the seeds of despair in our souls. Is she an alien? An android? A time traveler? All this remains to be seen.

During the adventure we met a sane sexist car without a driver and an insane car with a driver. From this experience I draw an obvious conclusion of sexist = sane, ignoring the factor of a driver as statistically insignificant.

We got vital help and encouragement from several fellow Hounds during the last third of the run. What they received in return was quite a bit of slow running - no more, no less.

At 30-ish miles, still standing.
Notice the first aid station (actually it's difficult not to notice him).

Overall, it was a truly awesome experience of seeing the lights of our lives dim. I know I will do something like this again.

A map of the first 43 miles. More details here.

Some of us ended up with minor injuries, such as stress fractures, ITBS, and the general disgust at slow running. I'm not sure if acute feminism counts as an injury, a spark of illumination, or both.

What's coming up

There's a beer mile closer to the summer. It's a mile race that involves drinking a pint of beer every 400m. It's a fairly established event with outstanding record times, but I failed to attend it so far.

I also highly advocate doing a whole-night run in summer, as a counterpart of this All-Day Run. It makes perfects sense given Pittsburgh weather.

P.S. I feel kinda bad about not including pizza into the list of most enjoyable activities ever known to the humanity. Sorry, pizza, I will not repeat this mistake.