Was out running today - a 10 miler, the first lap was 5.5mi BF on the pavement, a new pure BF longest run for me as normally stick to the woods and Huaraches. There's a fairly major Triathlon event in town tomorrow so the roads were teeming with bike racers today, testing out the course.
A team of about seven riders came from the opposite direction, every one of them did a double take as they noticed me: shirtless, shoeless, with the baby blue pirate bandana on my head and a s**t-eating grin on my face (I remembered that rule). One of the riders actually swerved toward me because he'd stared so long. If a car had been on location, he'd of gotten knocked around a bit.
But the best was rider number eight, who had stopped to take a leak on the side of the road and who I caught up to a few seconds after the rest of the team had gotten over the shock of seeing me and were back in their stride. Or cadence, or whatever it is.
He was letting out the gusher in on direction yet looking at me as I approached. I was ready for some kind of rhetorical ejaculation when he called out, smiling and friendly:
"The last one I saw do that was Abebe Bikila in nineteen hundred and sixty!"
I replied, "Saw???"
His answer, "Yep!"
That was when I did the double take and realized I was taking with what must have been something like the Grandaddy of all Triathletes - no, I didn't get his name, but he looked quite old, very tough and wiry, and he gave me a thumbs-up and it felt great, like it really meant something
It was a wonderful run today, the kind that really should have lasted till long past sundown, ya know?
A team of about seven riders came from the opposite direction, every one of them did a double take as they noticed me: shirtless, shoeless, with the baby blue pirate bandana on my head and a s**t-eating grin on my face (I remembered that rule). One of the riders actually swerved toward me because he'd stared so long. If a car had been on location, he'd of gotten knocked around a bit.
But the best was rider number eight, who had stopped to take a leak on the side of the road and who I caught up to a few seconds after the rest of the team had gotten over the shock of seeing me and were back in their stride. Or cadence, or whatever it is.
He was letting out the gusher in on direction yet looking at me as I approached. I was ready for some kind of rhetorical ejaculation when he called out, smiling and friendly:
"The last one I saw do that was Abebe Bikila in nineteen hundred and sixty!"
I replied, "Saw???"
His answer, "Yep!"
That was when I did the double take and realized I was taking with what must have been something like the Grandaddy of all Triathletes - no, I didn't get his name, but he looked quite old, very tough and wiry, and he gave me a thumbs-up and it felt great, like it really meant something
It was a wonderful run today, the kind that really should have lasted till long past sundown, ya know?