Life had been busy recently, but it’s March and I’ve already done three races. The second race of the year was exceptionally informal. It was the Boise Hashers “Men R Pigs” run. Special recognition had to go to the guy who ran all 4.4 mile with the better part of a pound of cooked bacon pinned to his shirt. By the end, it all looked pretty gross. There were about 80 people in the races so it was a very nice size.

We started in a park on the green belt near the foothills so I assumed we do mostly trail running so I wore my Vibrums. Turns out, that was a flawed assumption. The entire race was on roads. Running barefoot on roads is hard on your calves even if the Vibrums protect the bottom of your feet. Hills also makes the calves work harder so this course of all roads and mostly hills killed my calves. I kept telling myself that if I got to the top of the main hill (which never seemed to end), then my calves could rest. I had forgotten that when running barefoot, downhill is just as hard as up and maybe worse.

At the top of the hill, I was in sixth place, but people with padding in their shoes went much faster on the downhill. I kept pushing to keep up with them and managed to finish eighth overall. A respectable finish, I thought. The downside was that it hurt to walk for most of the next week. Oops.

As with all hash events, there was beer at the finish. This was the second race of the year and the second to end with cheap, bad beer. The first race was Michalob Ultra and this one was MGD. We’ll see how well that tradition continues going forward.

My phone battery is almost dead so the third race will have to wait for another time.