Desperate to sandbag our way into some hardware, and doing everything I possibly could to find some way to duck all the fast old guys in this town and back into a hat, I thought I could tiptoe quietly into registering for the Open Division, which I noticed was pretty thin last year. So much for sandbagging. I guess I'd have to wait to milk my handicap for Coop and Manclark on the golf course. As every runner knows, hills build strength.
Gravity offers great resistance against one's own body.
Sort of like the uphill battle of a running fool's family, who must continuously act interested as their dad prepares for another race and starts rattling off a bunch of meaningless numbers sharing his experience with them. Cool, cloudy and lots of runners showing up for the 5k and 10k races with proceeds going to support the Sheldon High School Irish track team. They were a couple of fries short of a happy meal and needed splits called at mile 2. It looked like I was it. The scene for the 2001 Truffle Shuffle was pretty typical Oregon conditions for this annual mid-February event at a place called Alton Baker Park in Eugene, Oregon.