Running video tells it like it is

Keith and I have an ongoing quest to help each other knock goals off our “life lists.” We call it “Two Guys, One List” and you can find out more about it — plus our tentative lists — if you click on “What’s 2G1L?” at the top of the page.

Ideally, since some of those goals will cost oodles of money and/or time to accomplish, we’d like to leverage our growing fame from this blog into corporate sponsorship opportunities. Yes, I would like to climb a mountain. But I’m perfectly happy to do so wearing only gear from “Mountain, Inc” and blogging about my “PowerDrinkTM Extreme Adventure.”

Anyway, because Keith’s a sucker, he’s signed up to run a marathon with me, as a symbolic first goal to accomplish. We decided to take it slow, to train over the course of a couple of years, and to run the Manitoba Marathon, tentatively, in 2010.

Last year, I ran a 10K for the first time, and I could suddenly grasp that a marathon was actually possible, so Keith and I decided to aim for a half-marathon this spring and the full deal next year. We figured that would allow us to train slowly and consistently. We would be able to recover from any injuries or attacks of laziness, and we could focus on other things rather than just running all the damn day.

On Sunday, we completed the half marathon at the Brandon YMCA Spring Run. I managed to finish in 1h54m40s, which was great — I was aiming for anything under 2h — and I took bronze in my age category (30-34 male). I had to fend off charley horse attacks in my calf for the last couple of miles, and it was galling to watch a 60-something guy who had walked up the last hill breeze by me to finish a minute ahead, but I was pleased as punch to finish at all.

Keith can tell you more about his run in the comments, but I suspect his knee’s hurting today!

My own body seems to have recovered fairly well — except for my left foot, on which I have a blister, a mysterious and searing pain in the metatarsals, a possibly sprained toe, and a very black nail. My right foot feels like I didn’t even run yesterday — if my left foot felt as good as my right, I could go run another half marathon today. (Any podiatrists out there?)

Nonetheless, I am a bit stiff here and there, and I hobbled around yesterday while recovering.

So I got a pretty fun chuckle out of this video, which my brother emailed to me this morning:

My brother, actually, has taken up running, too, and just finished the Ottawa Marathon last week. So I guess he’s a bit ahead of me, but Keith and I are now thinking of moving up our schedule — there’s a fall marathon in a town called Treherne that looks interesting. And, since I’ve become quite the running evangelist, and I got my whole family doing 5K or 10K races in the Spring Run, they can all join us, too!

And next year we can aim for the Voyageur Ultra — 50 miles of trail-running near Duluth.