“Rounding third and heading for home…”

I just came in from running my first ever Homewood Twilight Retro 5K. It’s been a while since I’ve actually run a race. I’ve been spending more time in the doctor’s office than out on the streets logging miles recently.

I would say that I’ve become addicted to running. My first ever race was the Cooper River Bridge Run in Charleston, South Carolina in 2002. I had a pretty decent time then considering it was my first real race (1:12). Ironically, my last real race before all of this rehab work began was the same race this year. Unlike my first experience, this one should have warned me that there were tough times ahead physically.

You could say that I started running to get the attention of a girl. In this case, it was the girl that I had already been dating for six years. I wanted to see if we could actually spend more time together since she’d decided that she wanted to look better and do something worthwhile, resulting in her running all the time and me not seeing her often as a result. I quickly realized that it was not helpful for having more quality time. Our ability to communicate was never quite there anyway, so looking back now any hopes of talking more through running with her wasn’t really realistic. I also started in part to get back in shape because I was starting to notice this extra weight showing up. I did find that it helped me get my frustrations out and helped clear my mind. That belly also started to disappear. So I’ve still kept up with it until now. The latest challenge is getting used to hills after training on flat land for so long along the coast.

Back to the race… In true retro style, I decided to run in an afro and a tie-dye shirt. I will say that when I got there I was a little concerned that I may have gone a little overboard with my costume. That was luckily proven to not be true. I’m hoping to post some shots of some of the more interesting costumes around mid-week.

My friend Sharron decided to run in a really cool looking polyester shirt, a sparkling silver hat and some pretty interesting Keds. Bets decided that she had to catch both of these sights on film and decided to make the trek to Homewood with me. It should be really easy to tell which one I am (I hope). For some reason, Bets couldn’t keep from laughing at me; I really don’t know why.

The race was a test of my knee as well. I’ve been dealing with some rehab issues. My good right knee doesn’t want to make it easy for me to run any more. The heat alone did Sharron and I in; our times reflect that. I’m figuring my newfound head of hair didn’t help much either. The knee did surprisingly well though. We did finish the race though, and we had a lot of fun doing it. Afterwards, Bets had more fun watching us attempt to do the Macarena and other dances. Part of it goes back to that taking the leap idea again. Still working on taking some other chances; I still have some time.

I’ve now spent most of the evening sipping on some iced tea enjoying the feeling from the ice rub that I have to put on after every race. Pain and all, I’m already looking at the calendar for the next one. FYI – I’m a huge baseball fan, so I end up finding ways to try to work it into a story, even if it’s only the title. This is one of the more famous lines in the game and it is placed in an area of prominence on Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, Ohio, home of the Reds. It’s the sign off used by their long time radio voice and Hamilton, Ohio native Joe Nuxhall, who retired from full-time announcing duties at the end of last season after spending sixty years in the Reds organization in two memorable roles; 38 as a Hall of Fame announcer and the rest as the “Ol’ Left-hander,” the youngest person ever to pitch a MLB game (15 years).