Where’s the peanut butter?!

Two weeks ago I had a 17 mile run on my schedule. In spite of reading all the advice and understanding nutrition during runs at least superficially, I still hadn’t gotten into the habit of eating a Gu at hour intervals to replenish carbohydrate levels. That Saturday I didn’t have any. This was especially sucky because there were only four of us were out in the fast pace group that day - Joe is almost definitely the fastest guy in the club, Andy is right up there and targeting a sub-3 hour pace for Victoria, and Chris is generally just stronger and faster than me. And that’s all OK, which is one great thing about the club - if I want to push myself and I’m not obviously holding back the group, everybody’s OK with it.

Anyway, this day we got to the arboretum and everybody else was getting their Gu on and I’m just thinking “OK, this is going to be a hard day and I will be very sore tomorrow.” But Andy came through since he had an extra Chocolate Outrage. Which doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it really was helpful and nice.

So Andy is one of the fastest runners in the club and he’s a great person to run with because he’s just a machine. He’s fast, he sets a pace and goes, he’s responsive if you let him know you need a break or as you’re coming up to intersections, AND he’s well stocked with Gu Andy’s also autistic and a Special Olympian and in the Special Olympics he’s never lost a 5K or 10K. He was also pictured and featured in the August 2007 issue of Runner’s World - and representing the club with his shirt! The Seattle PI wrote a really nice story about Andy in April when he ran the Boston Marathon and there’s an accompanying audio slideshow about Andy that’s really, really great.

At the following 2 mile time trial (which Andy did at 11:24!) I was going to return the Gu but our schedules didn’t work and I committed to never going to another ChuckIt run where I couldn’t pay him back - but this morning our coach told us that Andy is unfortunately out with a stress fracture.

I know this is only a setback for his target to run Victoria in October and I’ll see him in the future, but it’s still really sad to lose him from that part of the pack and I’ll miss him. I hope he has a speedy recovery.