Half crazy

I'll admit I was smitten.

A new road race had been added to the local roster in January.

It had a pretty little emblem: Mountains in the distance; pine trees on either side of a river: and the illustrated likeness of Henry Hudson's sloop, Clearwater, sailing along the waterway.

Truth be told, I loved the logo as much as I loved the trail it represented.

It probably didn't help me much that the web link to the Helderberg to Hudson Half Marathon -- an inaugural road race on the Albany Rail trail April 13th -- wasn't working.

It made me crazy. Like keep-pushing-that-button-hoping-to-get-a-different-result kind of nuts.

This was obviously a sign that I should not try to learn more, or entertain any notion that might lead to signing myself up.

This perplexity may explain how it happened a month or so later - once a live registration site made its way to that excruciating link, which I had quietly obsessed over along with the possibility of actually being able to meet the 15-minute-per-mile pace cutoff - that I signed up without ever considering the downside.

You know: the simple little fact that I have not run (or run/walked) more than four miles at any one time in almost a year. And for a year before that, I hadn't been able to run at all.

You see, the injury that heals itself in its own sluggish time - an injury that had loudly and repeatedly kept me from participating in these pace parades - had been oddly quiet.

It didn't even grouse when I had to search for my credit card midway through the transaction.

Of course, it did raise its stupid eyebrows the minute I started to train in earnest. It required stretching this way and strength training that way. And there were piffling reminders that it was always waiting in the background for its chance to charge up and take over. Slow moving pain can be insidious that way.

A part of me wishes the race officials had kept the event to the confines of the nine-mile trail maybe adding three-tenths at the end for a 15K.

Like ... you know like Schenectady's Stockade-athon or Utica's Boilermaker. Two races I've depressingly watched from the finish for the past two years.

I can almost grasp that distance now. Adding six miles to the place I can barely reach at this point seems akin to trying to go to the ends of the earth.

Which I definitely won't be able to navigate with a pack of 2,000 like-minded and able-bodied folks ambling along in front of me. (I'd have said "alongside," but even I can't spin that yarn.)

But worried though I am, I am also excited about that day in April, just four weeks away. The race has sparked excitement. A running club in my home town is sending a bus with a few dozen people to cut down on congestion and condense camaraderie. And I will be on it.

Even if I have to walk half the way, I'll be there.

I'm only half crazy.