Inaugural Faust Marathon report

Shannon, me, Jeff, Heiko, Brandy, and Bart

“You guys go ahead, I need to take a leak”, I said, as Heiko, Bart and Jeff wound their way down the trail out of sight.
We were on a section of Company Mill Trail known as “The Devils Spine”

I was grateful to take a break for a few seconds, because my legs were really hurting. This was bad news, because we were only at mile 10 of the Faust Marathon in Umstead Park. The past couple weeks I had been running too many miles and too many races, and my body was telling me to stop.

“Ug. I am not going to make it,” I said to myself. But I couldn’t drop out, because the Faust Marathon was my idea, and I didn’t want to quit something I had talked other people into. “What am I going to do?”

“I can help you”, said a syrupy baritone voice from behind me.
Startled, I whirled around, “Who are you?!”
“Hello? Horns? Goatee? “ he said pointing to himself, “I’m Satan”

“But why are you here? Why are you wearing spandex and an Ironman jersey?”
“I’m training for Kona”, he said, “I’m doing a brick”.
Apparently, the Lord of Darkness, the manifestation of all that is evil, is a triathlete.

Not surprising, really.

“Anyway”, he continued, “I can get you through this.”
I was understandably suspicious, “And I suppose you want my soul in exchange”

“Welllll”, he grimaced, looking down at he kicked some leaves with his hoof. “No offense. But you have no morals or values, really, no virtues of any kind. Your soul is pretty worthless.
“But what I would like… is your right semitendinosus tendon”

“My what? What is that?”

“See! You don’t even know what it is. So you obviously don’t need it.
“And I know this guy who could totally use it. And he has this awesome soul; he does all this volunteer work in Africa and everything. But he just got injured and… ahem… never mind.
“What do you say? You get your 26.2 and I get your right semitendinosus tendon”

I shrugged, “OK. Sure”

“Excellent!”, he handed me a little yellow pill. “Here. 200mg of caffeine. It’ll make you feel a whole lot better."

And it did. In fact, I actually managed to speed up and do the second loop faster. But at mile 25, Satan decided to extract his price. Something behind my right knee started to hurt like hell, and I had to limp the rest of the way.

The rest of the field fared much better, with no reported injuries.

Half Marathon: Jeff Hall
30K: Heiko Rath
Marathon: Anthony Corriveau, Bart Bechard and Brandy Burns
Ultra-Marathon: Shannon Johnstone.

Shannon just had to show off and do a couple extra miles, finishing with 28.2