Thursday, November 6, 2008

Dogfish Dash 10K..Sept. 15th, 2008

It's not often when I can run a race with my lovely wife Chelsea, who is smart enough not to run much more than a 5K..so when we heard about the little Dogfish Dash 5 and 10Ks in Rehobeth Beach DE, we decided to sign up together. Out neighbors and good friends in Ocean City, MD...Frank and Denise Meekins signed up as well at the last minute. Denise and Frank have both run half marathons before and I had done the Eagleman Half Ironman with Frank back in June.

Chelsea did the 5K and the rest of us did the 10k. It was a perfect day and I was excited to run a nice and slow, easy paced race with no stress, for a change. Everything started off easy enough and Frank, Denise, and I pretty much were at the back of the pack. But it's amazing that no matter what I enter, it turns into an extreme event. Only a few miles into the race, the course veered off onto a little trail through a wooded area, when all of a sudden we heard shouting and commotion coming from up ahead. We all rounded a bend and saw a group of runners screaming and yelling and swatting in their hair and clothing and all around. I thought to myself, what the hell are these people doing, because we couldn't really see anything. And then as we got closer, we first heard the buzzing and then saw these big insects flying around attacking everyone, now including us!!! They turned out to be huge hornets that were obviously irritated that our lovely race had invaded their hive and so the realization of this hit me right about the same time as i felt a serious sting right on my back!! OUCH..I think we all got stung, but that sure kicked up our speed ...and we swatted and BOLTED the rest of the way through the woods.

Fortunately none of us were allergic, and besides some serious welts on us and some stinging, we all survived with at least an interesting story to tell, since our performance brought us to pretty much last place. Of course I was happy to run with some friends, but after finishing the 10K and giving Chelsea a kiss, I decided that 6 miles just wasn't enough of a challenge, hornets or not....so I decided to just run the 20-some miles back to Ocean City!!! So at the end, THAT WAS one hell of a 10K!!!

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