Date: Fri 06-Sep-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Harmon-Column-Running

Full Text:

Kim Harmon/On Sports - All This And You Can Vomit, Too!

I long ago vowed to myself that I would not participate in any activity where

the final act - the denouement, as it were - would transpire with me being

hunched over, clutching my knees and tossing my waffles into the bushes on the

side of the road.

I thought I was only staying away from drinking. When you're a college kid,

vomiting is something - like taxes or the five-cent bottle return - that you

figure just go along with the act of continuously chug-a-lugging that demon

rum (or demon beer).

Okay, so college kids can be stupid.

But outside of Jay Buhner of the Seattle Mariners major league baseball team,

who can vomit at will and often does so to relieve the boredom of earning $7

million a year playing rightfield day in and day out, I can't see anyone

willingly participating in any activity where throwing up is just as natural

as taking a shower.

Like running.

More than a few runners were disentangling themselves from their breakfast

after The Newtown Bee 10k road race recently - some violently and some just

seconds after finishing - and, frankly, it made me a little bit nervous only

because, like a lot of people, I can't watch it happening without nausea

threatening to work against the three or four donuts I might have sitting in

my stomach at any given time.

I have a healthy respect for runners. Honestly, I do. I have run in the past

and I know how tough it can be (and what the rewards can be) and I think I

have a little understanding of what the challenge of running the Bee 10k might

be all about.

Obviously, it has something to do with beating the course since the run up

Point O'Rocks and down Boggs Hill and Platts Mill is one of the toughest

trails around. But it also has something to do with challenging your own

stamina and will and intestinal (oh no) fortitude and what not.

I did a 10k - my only 10k, although I did two or three 5k races - when I was

22 and even though my finish wasn't all that good (how could it have been?), I

did finish and I remembered being as proud of that as I would have been had I

finished, say, in the top 10.

I challenged myself and I beat my own desire to stop and give it all up and do

something simpler . . . like bowling. That was enough at the time, but not

enough to make me a runner.

Too much torture.

And that was a long time ago.

Now I can't help imagining it all again . . . the initial pain in the thighs

and calves as the muscles work themselves into the race, the troubling hitch

in your side as you fight to keep your breathing in an even rhythm, the way

your knees scream as you pound down those sloping hills, and then the anguish

and sudden resignation that threatens to stop you dead in your tracks as you

head towards that last brutal hill.

Boy - all that and you get to vomit, too.

Where's my bowling ball?