I ran a 13-miler this morning in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. It’s my fifth “half marathon” within the last three years. I got my worst time ever, but that’s okay; I didn’t get a chance to run sufficiently this week and decided to register only a couple days prior. The running event bears the name of the town’s annual July festival, Wa Du Shuda, which, I’m told, means “Watchya doin’, Shuda?” in Portuguese, Shuda being the patron saint of seafaring vessels. (By the way, that is a lie.) Anyway, I wanted to do something in preparation for the Minnesota Tough Mudder next week. Five colleagues from my university job agreed to form a team with me for the challenging 12-mile obstacle course. We’ve called ourselves the “Raptors,” after the school mascot, and we’ve all been training for it in our own way since the latter half of May. I’ll probably write about the experience next week. A small event, the half marathon in New Lisbon consisted of only thirty people. I shamefacedly crossed the finish line in the twenty-fifth place. Usually a competitive spirit gets the better of me in spite of what my body might be saying, but I told myself to take it easy and simply complete the run, nothing more. The weather was pretty good, given the middle of July, and the runners were nice. I didn’t stay around too long after the finish, though. As they were reading off the race results on the loud speaker, I was already on the interstate heading north and thinking about the next challenge.
