BDB Twilight 5K

This confirms my idiocy. Two or three days ago, I registered online for the BDB Twilight 5K. "BDB" did not register with me. "Get the fuck out of my way you acronymic son of a bitch," I said. "Twilight 5K, down on that flat-as-my-singing-voice course along the river. Sounds good." I ignored "BDB." Didn't consider it.

Afterward I told Hillary DeMillo I didn't know the race would go over the Big Dam Bridge, which doesn't seem nearly so steep when walked across holding pretty girls' hands. She said, "BDB. Didn't that tell you something?"

"Is that what it was? BDB? No, it didn't. I didn't even read it, just brushed by it like all those other meaningless acronyms for bullshit diseases I don't believe in."

In truth, I felt awful anyway. My splits for the first two miles were 8:19 and 9:08. I slowed to a walk at the end of the second mile, walked for exactly five minutes, looked at my watch, at something like 22:30, and decided to try to break 30 minutes, which was, I soon discovered, a conservative goal. I guess I ran in at about an eight-minute pace; flew past fat men and little kids and old people through the third mile in 10:31 to finish in 28:45.

A handful of the people I passed resisted. I recall one in particular; a muscular, short-haired brunette woman perhaps 25 years old. She responded to my passing with something close to a sprint. She charged ahead. There was a half mile left. She shortly buckled, and I turned to her and said, "Dear, I am not of you. I have crossed into your paradigm through a membrane of temporary exhaustion. I am now revived, and you are consequently in my world of 24-minute 5K totality. You have two choices: assimilate or succumb."

What's nice is, I stuffed my short pants with a dozen 0.6 ounce tubes of Neutrogena UltraSheer Dry-Touch Sunblock with a skin-protection formula of 70. That should be a lifetime supply.