Whaling

Saturday March 18 marked the first anniversary of Cantabloggia's medial meniscectomy, and so there was a certain pleasing sense of symmetry as I headed off to New Bedford, former whaling capital of Massachusetts, to run the half marathon race that takes place there every year. 52 weeks earlier I had watched the race on crutches.

Weather conditions were less than ideal, to put it mildly. A close reading of the meteorological data below reveals that the peak wind speed of about 25 miles per hour was reached just at noon, almost exactly the time at which I passed the 10 mile mark and headed directly into the wind. The race had gone so well up till that point that I had been revising my estimated finish time downward and was beginning to wonder if my all-time best of 1:16:48, which was run under perfect conditions on a downhill course, might be within reach. Well, after 2 miles of pounding my head against the wind it was clear that this wasn't happening.



Below is a picture of team-mate Tomoachi just about a half mile from the finish, with me in the distance trying to reel him in. It was not to be - he finished 3 seconds ahead of me - but my final time of 1:18:03 was still my best ever on a loop course. All more evidence that you can run faster after meniscus surgery.



Mark Coogan, who beat me by a mere 14 seconds at the Reebok Indoor Games, won the masters' division here, with a margin of more than 6 minutes over me. Guess I have more room for improvement in the half marathon.

In completely unrelated news, thanks to Matt over at DJDurutti for his recent post that promotes my new book, saving me from shameless self-promotion. Oh, wait...

Finally, here is a little bit of Groove Armada, which seemed like a good song for a half marathon:

Groove Armada - The Groove is On (Lovebox)