Congrats on the big race SoCal; 14:50 is studly at any age, and downright awesome at 46. Likewise, Gary, nice 10 looking forward to seeing how Boston goes.
Gary, muddy g, you probably wouldn't want to admit it, but we knew each other way back when, on Merv's.
Ski race season wrapped up, uhhh, rather spectacularly this in March. We had a 43+ K marathon two weeks ago, which went just about perfect: beat one of USs top 50+ skiers (& medalist at World Masters) and a world cup women's skier from Norway only to get outkicked by another masters skier by 4 sec. Still best result of the year.
Six days later I lined up with THE best skiers in the US and North America in the US Distance Championships 30K. At 50 I was the oldest by more than 20 years! A running analogy would like being a somewhat over the hill bloke, who on a good day could run maybe 1:15 to 1:18 for the half, and here he lines up against Ryan Hall, Meb, Hansons, et al. at the US half marathon championships.
They took it out hard and immediately found I wasn't recovered from the marathon. Totally sucked out there! But as a coach and all-around hard-head, I refused to drop out in front of the home town crowd. Finished dead last in 1:46 for 30k, 24 minutes behind Russian born Ivan Babikov who is Canada's ski equivalent to Bernard Lagat. Babikov is now a Canadian citizen and will be a medal contender in 2010.
Anyway, back to the analogy: if it was a 1/2 marathon, the winners went 1:02 and I stumbled home way back in last at 1:20 or 1:21.
Think it's time to stick to age group level!
Meanwhile running is starting back up, and I did 20 miles last week and will build up from there.