August 10, 2009
Since the triathlon, I have not raced. This is not due to some kind of exhaustion, but rather the advent of my 20-year high school reunion. I was able to do the triathlon because I opted against doing the Skyline 50K (which is often the same weekend), because then I would be in the Bay Area two consecutive weekends, and that ends up being a lot of driving.
Friday night of the reunion, many of us gathered at the old Kings X bar on Piedmont Avenue (now a Tiki Bar). I had never been there, but drove by thousands of times in my life. I tried to drum up some support for people to join me the next day and run trails up at Skyline Gate. Some said they might go, which is code for, “Absolutely not.”
I went up by myself in morning and was just running on my own, when a runner asked me if I knew the way to Bort Meadows. I did, in a sort of fashion (having to do with running by it on several Skyline 50Ks). We ended up running together (and never finding the Meadows), but the pace was nice and I had a good time.
The other runner turned out to be the wife of a former Seal Beach Boeing employee… and ironically, I was running the Boeing 5K on the Monday after the reunion!
The reunion was great. Probably unlike most people (unless you went to a private school), I knew EVERYONE in my graduating class. This is not to say that I was close friends with all of them, but most of them I had known for at least 7 years of middle and high school, and probably 3 dozen of them I had had 3-6 years of elementary school with them (or we went to the same church). People who know me now know that I am pretty good with names and faces, but this was more due to the fact that there were only 162 people in my graduating class (I’m from the era known as the “Baby Bust,” so there aren’t as many of us).
We had a good turnout – probably about 120 people (maybe 80 classmates, plus spouses). I made the name tags, which were their names and their senior pictures (and laminated). Most people looked the same to me (but with Facebook and other social media, we are not totally out of touch with one another). Two of my classmates had died since graduating – one of pancreatic cancer, and the other by electrocution (while out on a run the morning of his wedding).
On Sunday morning, we had a picnic, which was attended by classmates, any kids, parents of my classmates, and a number of my teachers from elementary, middle and high school. Very fun to reminisce. I drove back in the afternoon to Long Beach so I could run the Boeing 5K in the morning.
The run itself did not start out too great. The time in the car, having a long weekend, headwinds, etc., contributed to a slowish out- time… but I recovered on the way back and posted 22:13… the identical time from last month (which was my best of the year).