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BeyondTheDerby.com > Community Sports > Running

Ben Ray

Blogging on the road through the Grand Slam of Running

April 9, 2007

...getting stonger.

Or something like it. Spent all day yesterday bouncing around Louisville doing family stuff, and I didn't feel tired, sore, anything. AND I had gottten up at 6am entriely of my own accord. Not quite sure how any of that happened, or how my body took the punch, but...wow.

Anyway, this is going to be another busy school week, but I'll try to write more interesting things, or at least get some nice big ones spun up in advance for the week of the marathon (read:motivation week).

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About Me

I'm a senior at Centre College, and I'm double-majoring in criminology and history. This is my third year in the Triple Crown, and after two Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathons (one without bleeding), I thought it was time for my very first marathon.

To be completely honest, I used to absolutely detest running. Not the way we all do some days, not the way golfers hate golf and throw their clubs into a pond; it hurt, and I saw it as punishment, and as something to be completely avoided at every opportunity. To add to this aversion, I was dating, all though high school, a track and cross country runner, who would respond to queries of, "How was practice?" with things like, "How dare you ask how my practice went!" So this sport hurt AND made you crazy? Count me out, man.

Despite all of that, I was pretty quick. When coerced, I could run a six-minute with what amounted to no physical training at all. So, when a substantially nicer girlfriend asked me to run the Triple Crown and Mini with her during my sophomore year, I said no. This lasted until I noticed my beer belly smiling upwards at me and decided I was wrong. Of course, by then, I was slow. But alas, that's life.

The series lasted longer than our relationship, and I'm reasonably sure that the last time I ever saw that particular girlfriend is Mile 12 of that first miniMarathon. But running has stuck with me ever since, and it's become an integral part of my life. Oddly, I don't have many friends that run; I can't run with a buddy, and I'm still not sure that I can run without an iPod. But I'm obsessed, and three years into this, it shows no signs of going away.