Part one of the story of my life and the best bedtime story ever. I mean it will put you to sleep.

Bob -

A friend asked me and Ed to tell what got us back to running and what we went through to get where we are now.  That is a tough task because it means I have to concentrate and I have to remember stuff.  Two things that are not my strong point.  But, I will try.  As a kid, I loved to run.  I found out that I was relatively fast when I was maybe in 6th grade.  It just seemed one day that I was running in front of the other kids at recess and in gym class.  Not long distance, the shorter stuff.  I actually hated running any kind of distance.  I loved to play football, baseball and most other sports.  I was a decent athlete, but mostly relied on speed and quickness to make up for lack of size.  I loved to catch things.  If someone threw a ball,  I could usually catch it.  I loved that.  I moved around a fair amount due to my dad being in the military.  I was naturally shy and quiet and my mom liked to make me wear stupid clothes.  So, I would get teased a bit until the kids found out that I was okay in sports.  That was always my way of making friends and being accepted.  Kind of stupid, but kids can be assholes.  There is a whole focus of bullying now, but it has been going on forever.  That is a story for another day, however.  In 9th grade it started to get out that I had some speed.  I was challenged to a race by one of the star athletes of the school.  I'm going to call him Mike Pope, because that was his name.  I would change the name to protect the innocent, but this is true, and the chances of him reading this is really slim, so there it is.  I hated to be the center of attention.  Let me rephrase this.  I HATED TO BE THE CENTER OF ATTENTION.  Therefore, a race in front of other people on the playground had me crapping my proverbial pants.  Is it still called a playground in high school?  Who cares.  We raced on the playground and I beat him.  He did not like that and wanted to do it again.  I beat him again.  So what, right?  Yeah.  All it meant that I was becoming known as having some speed.  I liked that.  Did it make me more popular?  Get me a girlfriend? No.  I was still kind of a dork, but a fast dork.  At this point, I hated track or any kind of organized running.  Football cool, track not so much.  My sophomore year, I decided not to play baseball anymore and the track coach, who was also one of the football coaches told me to come out for track.  I said no.  He said try it.  So, I did.  Sprints.  100, 220 and 440 yard dashes.  I started to win some of the meets.  Win, not just place.  The feeling of running all out and crossing the finish line first was just incredible.  The feeling of running all out and not winning was incredible.  Running was incredible.  I have to say that I watched the distance guys and thought they were crazy.  Even though the sprinters would run warm up of few miles, it was nothing compared to what they did.  Distance running was crazy!  Getting in the blocks, running full out and being done was where it was at.  I did that my last three years of high school and one year of college.  My college career fizzled for two reasons. 1) I did not like the coach.  The first few practices we were doing mile repeats.  Mile repeats!  I'm a sprinter, not  a crazy distance runner. 2) In college you can drink and party anytime you want.  Any time you want!!  Running interfered with much of the fun that could be had.  After my first year, I stopped playing football and running track and played rugby.  Rugby...a sport were you can run, hit people and drink all at the same time.  How perfect is that?  Very, very perfect.  You know what else gets in the way of the college experience?  Studying and going to class.  I did find a way to maximize the fun part of college and minimize the trivial, learning part of it.  But that is a story for another day.  I am offering seminars on the subject.  It is called, "How to Go To College Without Really Learning Anything...and then being surprised that you can't find a job."  I will write a book on the subject if people will send me money first.  Then I will write a book called, "How to get rich writing a book before you actually write the book."  I am going to have to ask at this point for you all to stop getting me sidetracked.  I need to focus on me and my story.  It could be that my point at this point is that once I gave up organized track, I pretty much gave up running.  My fitness revolved around playing basketball, racquetball , tennis and other sports that were fun for me.  Jogging sucked.  I hated to jog.  I hated to jog.  A friend signed up for a marathon when I was about 28.  We were going to do it together.  I got up to about 2 miles and thought, "this is crazy."  From that point on, he was on his own.  I remember stories of puking, blisters, near death and other running related horrors and I knew I had made the right decision.  When I was maybe 30, my friend Roger asked me to do a 5k.  Running with him was fun, but training was not pleasant.  3 miles? Who runs three miles?  I just wanted to finish the race without anyone seeing me.  I still had and have an issue with attention.  I thought running a 5k while puking, crying and hyperventilating could possibly draw attention to myself, so I would wear sunglasses in the hope that no one would notice.  Turns out that no one really cares until years later when your teenage son mocks you at the finish line for getting kicked on by a dog and a stroller.  That is a true story.  One time I was doing a 5k and a double stroller went by me and inside was a baby and a dog.  Lady was pushing a dog and a baby in a stroller and kicking my butt.  At this juncture, I am getting tired and need to go to sleep.  There is only so much of me that I can stand writing about at one sitting.  Plus, my old dog is making strange noises.  I think she may be having some sort of bad dream.  Maybe about a cat or the time she was skunked when she was young.  Maybe she is reliving her past and dreaming of when she was young, slim and fast.  Just like I am right now.  They say dogs think and dream like their masters.  Now, we are both rolling on the ground and fighting for a bone.  Just like when we were young and spry.  I find it unfair that she always gets the bacon flavored bone and I get plain rawhide.  I think the only way to solve this is to challenge her to a race, just like when I was a kid.    In part two of this travesty of a story, I'm gonna write about how I started running again and why, but I have to stop now because it is hard to type and wrestle a dog at the same time.