Outside Looking In

 don't have so much about running this week - not that there hasn't been much of it; there has, but little of it has been noteworthy. My "best run" (amd I use those words loosely) lately was the MTC Shirt Run last weekend. I have been wanting to do it for over a year and things just didn't work out until now. My foot could have fallen off at Umstead or Hampton and I wanted that shirt bad enough that I would have stumped my way through the 15 miles from Mangum to Ellerbe. It was a lot of fun though - I "ran" with my friend Sharon (who triumphed with a buckle at Umstead) and Jim drove around handing out bottles of water and taking pictures of everyone. To top it off, there was pizza at the end, and Jim had thoughtfully brought some other restorative beverages.

I had an interesting experience the other night, which has obviously stuck in my head.

I found myself in the middle of a conversation with a couple of friends who were trying to set up a single friend. They were tossing around ideas of potential matches, and I was offering up opinions, since I also knew the non-present people being suggested. Apparently the single individual was tired of having to go places alone, and wanted someone with which to go out to dinner or a movie. Somehow or another, my single status got pulled into the conversation, and my response was that if I wanted to go to a movie, I'd just go. The rest of the conversation is irrelevant at this point, it's enough to say that my response (or the action itself) seems to be unusual.

Why? What am I supposed to do, sit around and hide until I have company? Yeah right...

I didn't think twice about taking off alone to Boone last year, for the races done "alongside" the Highland Games. Didn't really know anyone else going, but that just wasn't a legitimate reason for me to NOT go. I wanted to run the Bear, was signed up for the marathon again, and got a road bike a month beforehand and decided the week before to enter the Grizzly. I had at least one friend essentially tell me I had lost my f---ing mind, and I'm not saying I disagreed (particularly halfway through that damned Grizzly).

It ended up being one of the best weekends I'd had in a long time. Met a bunch of really cool people that I still keep in touch with, and I am really excited about seeing them up there again this year.