Testosterone, the fall of western civilization, and final week countdown



I strike the same pose every time
 I cross a finish line...



 When I run with other people its mainly with two other great guys who have been told that they can work off their court order community service by helping me to become a better runner. At first this seemed like a great idea until I remembered Newton's often forgotten 4th law of motion. Any given time there is more than one male occupying the same activity in the same space as another male at the same time (be it running, drinking, or thanksgiving dinner) it WILL become a competition. (The level is exponentially increased with the number of male attendees.)

 



One stepping



No where was this more evident than this past week when the three of us got together for what was supposed to be an easy 2 mile run. It quickly went from slow two miler, to 5k, to 5k race ending with shouts of NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER!! as we rocketed towards the finish line. In the running world this type of speeding up is usually due to a phenomenon called "one stepping," where in one runner runs juuuusssst one step ahead of the other, "thus running with him" all the while forcing him to either speed up, or admit defeat. Comparatively, its like the adult running version of putting your finger right next to someones face and going "I'm not touching you...I'm not touching you..."

   This reason that I think that when a general selected Pheidippides to run back to Athens to ask for help during the battle of Marathon (for which the modern race is named) that he only selected one man and had no back up plan. Other wise it would have probably ended up with Pheidippides yelling to the other guy (note to reader: the following should be read in a jocky frat boy voice) "No, no, dude, no way dude,  its YOU that's pushing the pace!" Ending with them both collapsing at mile 17 having run it with a 3:47 pace the entire way thus never delivering the message and leading to the downfall of civilization as we know it.



What one stepping eventually leads to

   All this extra testosterone has served a purpose though. Thanks to these guys and the many other great runners I have had the pleasure of heading out with I have become a much faster and my running endurance has improved dramatically. All of which I hope becomes a factor in improving this weekend's 264 marathon time and experience. While my own experience can't get better than last year, I hope to not have everyone else waiting for more than an hour this time for me to finish up. So as I rest up, get a few easy runs in this week and drink enough Gatorade to turn my pee purple (which is odd considering I'm drinking the red Gatorade...) any advice anyone would like to shoot this newbie runner would be wonderful. Again, thanks for reading and wish me luck!