poster boy: 2009 Second Empire Grand Prix Series

Sorting through the mail today, I found the brochure for the "7th Annual Second Empire Grand Prix Series". I put it with the rest of the junk mail to throw away, but then I noticed something odd.

First, let me back up. Last year Shannon and I did the Second Empire Series. Which is a series of 9 races, mostly 5Ks, over the course of a few months. For some reason, we thought that placing in the series would be some amazing achievement for which we would attain honor, glory and huge cash prizes. We felt that we had an edge on the competition, because most other people have something better to do than run a 5K every other weekend; but not us! We have lots of free time, and are willing to blow all our extra income on race fees. We are not fast, be we are persistent.

It turned out as we hoped, though it was less than glorious:

• We placed in our age groups because most of the faster people did not do all the races.
  
• Shannon barely missed the cash with 6th place overall for women.
  
• We got an OK lunch at Second Empire restaurant
• The prize was a somewhat odd gift of a computer bag.

But it was not easy. In order to complete 7 of the 9 races here are some of the dumb things we did:

• Shannon had to leave a conference early and book an extra flight just to make Anna's angels 10 miler.
  
• We missed the Run at the Rock, a great trail race, to do the Jingle Bell 5K
• Shannon ran the Turkey Trot 8K, drove straight to the airport to catch a flight, getting on the plane still wearing her race bib.
  
• We had to run a 5K the day before we ran the Chicago Marathon

So anyway, after all that, we are not doing the series this year. As I was tossing out the brochure though, I noticed the runner on the cover, his face twisted in agony. I thought, "Wow, thats not worth it". Taking a closer look:



Holy Crap. That's me.