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Six miles for the March of Dimes seemed like an easy idea but I had never before run so far on asphalt nor in front of this many people.  Kelly, Jess, and I started together and I kept to my rule of “I’ll go at your pace as long as you are actually running”.  This held up for two miles before one of them needed to walk, and then again every half mile or so.  At about 3.5 miles, I asked if they’d mind if I continued without them and they politely allowed me to depart.  I took off.  At around mile four I shot up a hill without tiring and thought to myself “ah, that’s what adrenaline feels like”.  At around mile five, I was taken in by the sound of birds, the breeze, and the bucolic scene and thought to myself “ah, that’s what endorphines feel like”.   If I didn’t finish first I came damn close.  But this wasn’t a real race so I ran back and caught up with Jess and Kelly and literally pushed them to the finish line.

The whole experience was strangely fun until about two hours later when I had the feeling that my body was breaking down.  Every joint in my body was seemingly seizing up and 1/2 my muscles hurt.  In my contorted state I googled “running stretches” and learned the depth of my folly when I saw all the things I had failed to do.  We need a run for warm-up, stretching, and cool down awareness.

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An age old Robinson family condition is that my brother gets plastered and then challenges me to a flexibility contest.  We once broke the door off of a microwave when we needed something between countertop and window sill.  I have brought this tradition to camp and yesterday we engaged in one using a staircase.

It was epic with critical moments like realizing that Scout pants aren’t up to the job, Bill Schilling learning that it’s cheating to have someone lift you while stretching and Joe Naylor learning there were some places the human foot was not meant to go and especially ways it shouldn’t get there.  Everytime someone walked in they looked at us strangely but eventually began cheering as Pat and Joe went into a kind of obese limber man’s game of PIG eventually resulting in Joe nearly destroying a telephone while using his right hand to pull his foot above his head.  In the course of this, we made a bit of noise and today one of the upstairs inhabitants talked to me about what happened.

Pool Director:  I was about to come down and chew you out until I heard you say “That table wasn’t mean to hold that kind of weight” and “Joe, don’t do it, your foot wasn’t meant to do that” followed by Tom’s belly laugh.  I figured I’d probably get involved too.

How cool would that have been?  A 55 year old aquatics director challenging a bunch of young turks to a foot lifting competition.  I think my instigation single-handedly decimated four separate crotches the next day, ironically, one was the health officer’s.