Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The Wise Men

I ran from my den yesterday. I emerged from my dark hole and felt the warm sun on my red fur. I felt good and fresh.

While running south along the Rock Creek Trail, I spied two vixen shuffling ahead. Spring always brings out vixen. Just as I was about to catch them, I noticed Mark Hoon turning the bend and heading towards me. We stopped and engaged in small talk as the vixen disappeared down the trail...(sigh)

Hoon and I talked about training. His best distance was the marathon. Back in the day he ran a 2:24 and just a couple of years ago could still crush us kids (or should I say kiTs?) at local road races. From what I've gathered, he doesn't run a lot of miles, but does run most of his runs hard. Some good wisdom here.

After 5 minutes or so, we each went our separate ways. I bounded down the trail and then met up with Jim Hage. I turned and decided to follow Jim back to his home. Jim rolled his eyes and tried to brush me away, but I kept after him. I asked him questions and he answered with a sigh and a "that's right kid" and statements like that. He was set to run a race on Wednesday morning. I commented that I too had run that race before. Jim sighed and rolled his eyes, "leave me alone kid". I continued, "hey Jim (catching up) you actually beat me when I ran that race 6 years ago". Jim looked to the sky, "Why won't this kid leave me alone?". I giggled and followed merrily in his wake. When I got to his driveway, he said something about needing to go home and he went inside. By 10pm, when I realized he wasn't coming back out, I shrugged my shoulders and shuffled home.

Here is a recent story he wrote about himself for Universal Sports.

3 comments:

Ben said...

i respect that you value the advice of elders - but, i'm guessing that if they were young and free they would have chased after the "vixens."

RM said...

Yeah seriously, nothing trumps chasing vixens. Even Rudolph got after it.

PR said...

Wow, that was one of your oddest posts in a while.