Even Pete Sampras Got Rocked On Clay!

This year, I ran a marathon, a half-marathon and a 4K walk for charity on the streets of Wilmington, Delaware.  I get out on the road three or four times a week to run on the various shoulders and sidewalks of my local area.  Between Bloomfield, New Jersey and Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, I've pounded the pavement to the tune of four different 5K races.

I say all of that, so that you'll believe me when I say I felt very prepared for the 5K I ran yesterday in Philadelphia.  Now, I've never been to Belmont Plateau.  My wife, a native of Philadelphia, had to assure me that it was the same "Plateau" that the Fresh Prince (Will Smith to all you latecomers) said "everybody goes" in the classic song Summertime.  She then had to assure me that the Fresh Prince wouldn't be there.  It's a shame, I thought, for him.  If he was there he'd see the 5K running I'd become so proud of over the course of the year.  The shame, this time, would be mine. 

With all of that road running I've been doing this year, I didn't know what to expect when I saw that the Start and Finish lines were both in the grass.  I haven't run on grass since high school soccer.  About a mile into the race, I'd come to miss that grass...when it promptly turned into a forest of dirt trails, rocky paths and gravel.  I haven't run on that stuff since I was a rowdy kid with scraped knees getting into trouble behind my mom's back. 

Now the funny thing about trail running is that you can't run too fast going uphill or you'll lose your footing and introduce your face to the ground.  At the same time, you can't run too fast going downhill because you can just as easily roll your ankle on some big rocks or build too much momentum and wrap yourself around a tree.  There's a lot of running side-to-side on trails because rocks and dirt never quite maintain an orderly straight line.  And speaking of dirt...getting it in your eyes, mouth and lungs while running is not the definition of fun.

I finished at just over 26 minutes...about a minute slower than my worst 5K of the year.  I was sore all over.  The course kicked my ass.  Had I talked to Pete Sampras before I started training for this thing he would've said, "Kev, I won Wimbledon seven times...but I never won the French Open."  And I immediately would've understood the message.  Unfortunately, I don't know Pete Sampras and I had to learn a lesson by getting mudhole stomped by a rough course.  The moral of the story: it's time to start training on multiple surfaces or risk embarrassing myself like Sampras on the clay courts.

Peace.