Sham Rock On!

I have a shoe attatched to one of my bike pedals right now. I have a special pair of shoes that does that, and it all works very nicely when I am also attached to my shoes. Clipless pedal systems are great for power transfer and efficiency, not so great when they won't clip out. Which is precisely what happened this morning when I tried to get off my bike after riding to class. In retrospect, I had been having trouble clipping out on my right for a while; I fell at the top of Port Republic on Friday. It was pretty funny. Having to take off my shoe and leave it on the bike when I locked it up was not such a side-splitter though. I'm glad that road cycling tomorrow is in the shop, so I can have Tim show me how to fix it. Anyway, this past weekend was a fairly eventful one, both in terms of fitness and also in general good times.

The Shamrock Half was on Sunday, and it was everything that I'd hoped it would be. Jared and I headed out for a full blown race weekend experience on Friday afternoon. Prior to heading out at 4:30, Chris and I hit the road for a thirty mile ride; it began fairly chilly, just barely fifty degrees. Still, after a little sprint through campus the only things that were feeling the cold were our fingertips and ears. It was gorgeous out, with little less than a light headwind to slow us down. The route took us through the town of Dayton, down Dry River Road, and finally back to Harrisonburg via Route 33. The ride was very organic, with no planning at all; we just rode. Serendipitously, Sacha appeared in our parking lot and accompanied us to a post-ride carbo load at Vietopia. It was heaven.

The drive down to the coast with Jared had very few bumps, aside from one missed exit and a little backtracking we ended up at Cliff's house essentially on time. We were greeted at the door by my fairly inebriated friend and led to the kitchen table, three more drunken faces, and several bottles of wine. I think Jared was a little taken aback by the ease in which we were treated like part of the family, but it took all of two seconds before we were both grinning ear to ear. It was definitely a portent of the good times that were to come over the next seventy-twoish hours. We polished off a few glasses and got acquainted before the oldsters got to bed and we headed out the door to give Jared his first taste of gay nightlife.

I'd built up the first encouter probably a little bit too much for Jared prior to getting there. He's a pretty churchy guy, definitely conservative, but I think he figured out that I wasn't going to take "no" for an answer and agreed to a night out on the town. It's good, because we would've dragged him out kicking and screaming if he'd said no. Anyway, Virginia Beach doesn't have much of a gay scene. We hit two bars, one of which was exceedingly sketchy and whose name escapes me. I'll just call it "The Manhole" for fun. The other was much more congenial and had a very fun atmosphere, and was called "The Rainbow Cactus".

For one reason or another, both bars had Western themes. The Manhole was definitely more of a bar, with a crumby little dancing stage with a few erratic go-go types. One was most certainly a drag queen minus the drag, the other seemed to have an affinity for flailing around and calling that dancing. Probably a meth queen. Of course, no seedy gay bar is complete without a quiet, sixty year old man staring out from a dimly lit corner. It was absolute heaven! We had a few drinks and waxed philosophic (read: judged everyone who walked in the door) while I did my best to break Jared out of his stupor. But for one or two instances of two men dancing together, we could have been at any crappy bar. Not the case with "The Rainbow Cactus".

Following a brief sojurn out to CVS to get some cash, as well as my brief stint in public urination (still haven't been arrested whooooooo!), we made our way to bar #2. Definitely had a good feel to it, many more young people there, most of them infinitely more attractive than the patrons at the previous establishment. Ohhh. And there were drag queens. I'm not exactly a patron of drag, but damn if that wasn't a really good show. I'm probably just biased though, because the second song out on the dance floor was "Single Ladies". Coupled with my slight buzz...let's just say "Dance Machine" doesn't even do it justice. A few other highlights from the night include the group of senior citizens sitting squarely next to the dance floor, and mine and Cliff's subsequent rescue of two drunken old ladies who fell out of their seats. Sadly, Jared never joined us on the dance floor. Epic fail. Ohh well, baby steps right?

Woke up the latest of the bunch at 9:30 on Saturday morning with a slight headache and got to fumble with a strangely complicated shower. Once in a blue moon I find a shower aparatus that stumps me for a good two or three minutes, generally ending with my near scalding/hypothermia. Afterwards it was gravy. Jared, who had never been to Virginia Beach, and I decided to head out to the beach and take in some sights, as well as picking up our packets from the convention center. Afterwards, we took something like a three hour lunch at a nifty hole in the wall bar with one cook. The jury's still out on the clam chowder. Of course, the crowning achievement of the day was the twenty five mile bike tour of the city and surrounding suburbs, hitting various historical landmarks from Cliff's life and childhood. We got lost a bit, and ended up doing some pretty hairy urban riding, but all in all definitely an adventure. Tied for best part of the ride was the sweet national park we rode through, or the extremely bitchy woman we met outside the food lion. Or the fact that all twenty five miles were completed on a shiny red cruiser with a forty pound frame.

Our day ended like all good days should end, with good food and good drink and an open fire. I slept like a rock, which was good since we had to be up at 5:00 AM the next morning for the half. Surprisingly, I woke up the spryest of the young guys, with Jared moaning about how he had to do this all the time student teaching (and yet still had trouble doing it), and Cliff taking his sweet time as usual crawling out of bed. I downed some fruit, granola, and oatmeal with brown sugar before pinning on my bib and hopping out into the cold air. A short ride to the boardwalk, and we scattered off to our different corrals. Ohh, so a short explanation of the race.

Runners are seperated into corrals, which really are exactly like you'd think: holding pens for all of us until the race starts. There are five corrals in total, segregated by our estimated race time. I was the only one in the first corral, with a race time of around 1 hour 45 minutes. Jared was in the second, Cliff and his dad Rex were in the fifth. Since most of our group had already scattered, Cliff, Jared, and I agreed upon a rendevouz point and headed off to the start.

My corral was populated by all the elite runners. Most of them were tricked out in full marathon regalia like belts and ironman jerseys and such. I began feeling a little out of my depth, but excited. The air practically buzzed. There really is nothing like the exhale before the start of a race. I soon saw that I really did belong in the front after a few miles had gone by and I realized that I wasn't breathing anything like the other runners around me. In fact, I never really went beyond a little deep breathing for the entire race. The course was absolutely beautiful, beginning in the city and taking us through a pine forest and eventually rouding into Fort Story and putting us abreast the coast. As usual, the last few miles of the race really seemed to crawl. To call them exceptionally difficult wouldn't have been true. I hurt a bit, sure, but I distinctly remembered hurting more from much shorter runs in the past. I could tell that I had trained correctly for the race. I ended strong near the front of the pack, well in front of everyone else in our group.

Jared finished about twelve minutes after me, with Rex pulling a surprising 2 hour finish time. Cliff rounded it off at 2 hours fifteen, impressive considering he'd never done more than eight miles and hadn't run for almost a month. After we collected ourselves at the beach, we headed into the tent for some food, and of course, beer. A lot of strangers gave us their beer tickets, so I ended up downing eight pints or so before we left the beach. Drinking after a long run is a funny thing; with your blood volume so low afterwards, a few drinks can be all it takes to bring you down. Let's just say I was pretty happy when I poured myself into the car afterwards. We ended up at an authentic Irish bar for one last drink, before heading back to the Hamaker's for one last small gathering. Food was epic, company was epic.

I'd like to close off an incredibly long, and probably quite dull, post with a declaration of thanks for our hosts. Thanks Rex and Lisa for letting us into your home and feeding us and entertaining us, and most of all for making us feel like family. I will most certainly be taking you up on your offer of a return visit sometime in the future. As for you Cliff, I can't fit enough "thank you'"s on this blog, but trust and believe, I'll be returning the favor.

Peace out, Hombres!