white butterflies on crap

I went out for a little adventure last weekend with Don - it was Don's idea, so we'll call it Don's totally cool mini-adventure.

The plan - run a 4 mile race, swim in Blue Marsh lake for a while, then do some mountain biking around the lake.

At 9:15, I arrived at the race site "Run4Sam" (I have a nephew named Sam to whom I will be giving the give-away race t-shirt. I didn't see Don around, but hit the rest room, registered and did my warm-up run. It looked to be a flat, gravelly course - and it was going to be hotter than I expected.

At the starting line I found Don at when the race started, Don was like a rabbit. Keep in mind, Don is more than 10 years older than I am, and I'm getting pretty old. Also keep in mind that Don is the XTerra Triathlon national champ for his age group. One other thing - I've never run or raced with Don before.

So the beginning part of the race is downhill, over a bridge, then a very sharp U-turn, then under the same bridge, then easy going for a mile or so.

Don is the third racer to the U-turn, a tactically smart thing to do. I'm there about 10 people in. I'm pushing pretty hard and Don is about 10 meters in front of me. At the top of the first hill, I sidestep another racer and head down the hill just in front of Don. At the bottom, I pick up the pace slightly and pass another racer.

After the third mile I get a good look at who is in front of me and who is behind me and I realize that I would have to go significantly faster of significantly slower to change my position, so I put it in cruise control and have a solid finish in 5th place - first masters across the line. Don is just 20 seconds back with only one runner between us. Pretty incredible for a guy 12 years older than me.

So then we head over to our swim - get lost on the ride over, but it was a beautiful day for a ride. Nothing really memorable about the swim, except that my goggles kept flooding, I finally took them off and, low-and-behold, I started swimming pretty well. Hmm.

Next was the mountain bike section. Don is pretty good on the old MTB. Took me up a ski slope - neither one of us made it up, but Don shared some secrets about Xterra racing - like don't even try to ride up if you think you will get stuck part way. I was able to manage some technical climbs, but had some trouble on the big technical downhill.

During some of the flat sections, I followed Don and noticed thousands of those little white generic butterflies swarming up from the ground as we passed. It was actually pretty cool, until I realized they were congregating on a pile of horse crap and each time we passed they would leave the mound so as not to be run over. Something odd to me about these lily white butterflies hanging out on a pile of horse crap.

Anyway, it was a good mini-adventure.