Old Time Chills and Thrills

Dave Elger is a runner with a blog and has posted an interesting old 8mm video. In it he has some clips of the 1980 Boston Marathon. You can see Bill Rodgers and Amby Burfoot. Then you can see that cheater Rosie Ruiz (in the orange shirt about 45 seconds in).

Then the clip goes back in time to the 1978 NCAA Cross Country Championships. Alberto Salazar won this race, but I enjoyed seeing glimpses of my former teammate Dan Henderson doing Div. 3 runners proud. Danny finished in 10th place in the Div. 1 race just days after winning the Div. 3 National Championships. He was a junior that year. He dropped out of the Div. 3 race the next year but went on to run for Athletics West and was an outstanding 5k runner with a 5000m best time of 13:23.57 on the track in 1985.

We ran for Wheaton College in Illinois and I can't say I or my teammates ran with Danny much at all as he did he own thing way ahead of the rest of the team.

My track career is less illustrious. I did marathons in the Spring in college as I was not that fast of a runner and was trying to find something I might do well at. I did my best 5k and 1500m the same night at an all comers track meet at North Central College (a strange night where an errant hammer throw went over a cage and hit a spectator in the head- later killing him). Anyhow I ran a 1500m in 4:16 and then later the 5000m in a big field that included Danny, Steve Lacy and other studs in 16:02. Talk about getting lapped! I think Danny won and it and the lead runners were in the 13:50's.

In the video clip Danny wears Wheaton's bluish-purple top, orange shorts, and an orange hat. I see him in about 6th place at 1:46, in 9th place at 2:20, and again at 2:42. Boy, technology sure has improved since 1978!

Today I had another ART treatment. This time he worked on my Psoas Muscle (I lay on my right side with legs straight. He finds my Psoas and gets his fingers to hold it. Then I move my left knee to a 90 degree angle like I am sitting on a chair. He know holds that Psoas tight. I straighten the leg next to the other one and then push it back as he keeps tension on the psoas. We did that about 5 times. He also worked a bit on the inside of my left knee and the back of my left hip. I told him about my heel lift and he said to stick with one thing as I am changing around a lot of variables.

I ran the trail 5k tonight. My hips felt sloppy and uncoordinated so the stride wasn't smooth but it wasn't jammed up either. I improved my 5k time another 35 seconds from last week. It is slowly coming back but I had no oomph. My shoelace came untied at about 1/2 mile into the race but I just left it alone and my shoe didn't fall off and I didn't trip. At about the same time I got passed by a guy I didn't know. He had an Ipod in his hand and headphones. There was no way "that" was going to happen so I passed him and didn't see him again!

I also got the Sacro Aligner today. It is like a on steroids. I look forward to putting it to use.SACRO WEDGY