Across The Years Race Report

This is a Race Report written by SSR member, Jan Tarr. Jan, thank you for sharing!!

"Every great runner (hah) gets a dog of a run once in a while, and Ellen and I had a howler over New Year's Eve. We had decided on the neat idea to run a 24-hour run, "Across the Years"--you do as much as you can in 24 hours around a very flat 1 mile loop in suburban Phoenix at the LA Dodgers training camp. Rick laughed at the idea, and Julie did not want to come. There was lots of great food, music, great people-- all you had to do was stay afoot and moving. Easy. We started on December 31st and did the mile loop, and did it again, and again. There were limpers, hobblers, people with leg braces, sleep walkers (those doing it as a 72 hour event), oldsters, and the zombie shufflers-- awake or asleep I did not know. Around and around. I breezed by them for a few laps, and then realized deep in the darkest part of my heart that they were all tougher than me because they had some kind of internal fortitude I did not have. Somehow, those old tiny gals speed walking were going to eat me up. El and I tried. Jog by the suburban street, jog by the parking lot, jog by the little artificial waterfall, jog by the baseball diamond, then through the lap counter (beep). Repeat for endless beeps. Ellen said "You're kidding me" after 8 miles, and decided to go read. I lasted for 15 and felt like tearing my hair out. CANNOT RUN IN A CIRCLE. Valuable lesson learned. We drove back through the Salt River Canyon and felt lucky to be outside. That was the race dog of 2011. Onto 2012!"

Jan