In September, I started running with The Beakdip, otherwise known as Jeff Saunders. Jeff had last run when he was in high school, and for the past seventeen years his training plan had consisted of smoking and eating cheeseburgers. But now he's married, with a baby to boot, and so he snuffed out the smoke sticks this past summer, and laced up his kicks in the Fall.
The first time we ran together, I was pretty sure positive that I was going to have to perform CPR, which would have been a problem, because I had no intention of doing mouth-to-mouth on a guy who hadn't brushed his chompers before we headed out that mañana. 20 minutes later, and we were finished, and then I went off to run some more, thinking of our time together as a warm-up. And I continued to think of it that was every (or most) Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout September and much of October.
But then a funny thing happened. As time wore on, Jeff started running farther than I did. He'd run to our meeting place (I drove) and then home again after we ran. And while he started off huffing along at a ten-minute mile, barely able to breathe much less speak, by last week he kept up with me and then some, and was fully engaged in conversation while we ran at a good clip.
And then this weekend, Jeff had his first race. This was really a warm-up along the way to a half marathon on Super Bowl Sunday, but it was still a big deal. A 12K, 7.5 miles, at least 1.3 miles farther than he had ever run before in his life, and more than a mile and a half farther than he had run the entire time he trained. He seemed nervous about it, and I was bummed to be out of town, unable to watch him roll. Quite frankly, I was a little concerned.
But the guy was aces, finishing 23rd out of 252 clocking a sub-seven minute pace along the way--respectable for any runner at any level, but an especially amazing feat for a guy who just started running in September. It's inspirational; nothing less.
Congratulations, Jeff.
