The Halifax Road Hammers had some funny, funny times together on the road in California. I’m pulling them together here so that I can continue to smile at the memories. You’re all welcome to get in on it.
We were a crew of 11 in California. Eight of us traveled out together. One traveled solo and two traveled with their wife/wife and 2 kids. We spent one night in San Francisco, three nights in Sacramento and one night in Napa Valley. My sister Kristen and I came home on Tuesday and a few stayed a couple more days.
We were a diverse crew, ranging in age from 24 to 49. Two sisters. A couple. The coach. We were all bonded by many, many miles together over the last 18 months as the Halifax Road Hammers and for some of us, years behind that.
The Airport Blues Giggles. Our trip had a foolish start to it. We booked the 6:25am flight to Newark despite some members of the party filing their protest due to the early hour. But we wanted to land in San Francisco at noon and have part of a vacation day there. Alas, the United Airline flight was delayed from 6:25am to 12:45pm. And we arrived at the airport at 4:30am. So an eight hour wait. We did pretty ok with it, having a long period of airport story-telling. Briefly entertained by Denise refusing to get into the airport scanner on account of: “no one is seeing this girl’s underwear unless they buy me dinner first!” Followed by a lesson in airport body scanners from the bored staff. The scanner doesn’t actually show what colour your underwear is, lol. By 10:30am, we were getting punchy. Then we looked over at Rami who was calmly sitting in his chair, wearing blue latex gloves.
“Rami, you planning on goin’ through the trash?”
Team Meals. When our time was up in San Francisco, we had to drive to Sacramento. Our car trip to Sacramento was also foolish on account of totally insane Bay Area traffic. Like the 90 minute drive took 3.5 hours. Team Nissan was Mike, Lee, Matthias and Denise. They got out a little earlier, around 3pm, and weren’t hit quite so bad. Team Ford was Erin, Kristen, Rami and Tash and we were stuck in traffic. Forever. We briefly had some success with the car pool lane. Kristen got irate with the others in the car pool lane: “That is a mother with a child in the backseat. Really? Is that a car pool?” Rami offers, “Maybe. The child could have driven their own car.” Seriously, the sun set while took 45 minutes to drive one mile. It was day and then it was night and we hadn’t moved. So we did what any logical team would do and called ahead for Team Nissan to cook everyone dinner.
The pasta supper was delicious. Real food, amazing. Matthias was most in need of real good after eating six sandwiches on Thursday. There appear to have been some issues with sous-chef Denise and her use of kitchen implements. Can openers and such. This girl: she’ll beat the pants of almost anyone in a race. But the pots and pans aren’t threatened in her presence. (Her scrambled eggs were first rate though).
The Wine Boss I was Team Ford’s driver and the seven-lanes of traffic had me somewhat frazzled by the time I got into the kitchen in Sacramento. So I had a bottle of wine opened in my hand asap.
Coach Lee attempted some negotiations: “Erin, get some food into you first.”
“No, Lee, you’re the boss of a lot of things but you’re not the boss of the wine. I am the boss of the wine.”
It was lovely wine. Of which I am always the boss.
The Dairy Boss: Team meals lead to lots of discussion on pre-race prep. Polycose talk. Carb load talk. Lee is talking about no dairy before a race, like no consumption 24 hours to go. Is anyone even listening? Lee parades out dairy science to significant objection. The debate continues all weekend. Lee tells us that we are always after him for race day suggestions. Why is advice on trial? Lee is also not the boss of the dairy. But we all chuckle to ourselves at each meal when Doran sits down and drinks a full litre of milk at each sitting.
In the end, I forgo my full glass of race day milk. That Lee, he makes a good boss.
The Beet Juice: Now we are onto the use of beet juice.
“Mike, how does beet juice work?”
“Science.”
“But how?”
“Nitrate science.”
Kristen, our resident smarty-pants, now has a lot of science to look up for the team: polycose, dairy pre-race, use of caffeine, use of beet juice.
The Minor Leagues: At a lazy breakfast on Saturday, Lee and I are talking about coaching and a runner that had reached out to him. This runner’s currently running beyond a 4:15 marathon so at the moment, Lee doesn’t have a pace group to fit them. He’ll send the runner to me for online coaching. I say that I’ll work on developing the runner until they fit with Lee.
Tash is listening. “Jesus!” Tash says laughing, “I better get my 3:30 or you’ll be sending me to Erin too to get developed.”
We all jump all over on: “Tash, you better run fast or you are getting sent back to the minor leagues!”
Poor Tash and the PB jokes. She did a great job weathering these and even though she was injured in this build, she pulled off a tough-as-nails PB with a gutsy performance full of mental strength. Despite having Solomon tell her on the car ride to the airport that if she missed 3 weeks of training in East Africa, she’d have to start over.
Minor leagues: no Tash for you!
#donttelllee: Around noon time on Saturday, Rami gets into the
Polycose. Carb loading protocol in full effect. Kristen and I decide that we are going to get into some cider. It also has carbs. That’s carb loading. And that’s way more fun that polycose. Then we’ll have a pre-race day nap. But all this no dairy, science, blah, blah, maybe we shouldn’t tell Lee. Kristen puts our cider in the freezer because it’s at room temperature but she’s about as stealthy as a…. whatever is not at all stealthy. Lee asks what she’s putting in the freezer. “Carbs” says Kristen. Rami and Denise cheers some polycose. We cheers to some cider. As usual, Lee knows what we’re up to, he just doesn’t say anything until the next day.
The coffee incident: I wake up from my nap to find Mike in the kitchen. It’s around 4pm. He’s making multiple cups of coffee and putting it in glasses and covering them with saran wrap. Back up: Mike drank 7 cups of coffee before Boston Marathon this spring and has shrugged off all coffee-related chirping under the belief that this is normal behaviour. I ask him what he’s doing. He pulls his three cups of coffee away from me as if I’m going to apprehend them. “These are kind of, definitely for me.” He says he’s getting ready for the morning. With three cups of coffee. He’s going to put them in the fridge. “Don’t touch them!” Now he’s making another pot of coffee and writing a note on it: “I’m all ready, push start.” That’s for the hot one to go with the three cold ones. The next morning.
He’s also making a bagel with peanut butter at 4pm. He says that he has to set his prepared bagel right beside his bed so he can get to eating it right away when he wakes up. This statement comes with sound effects. I go back to the coffee: the 3 cold cups go with the hot one? What’s the quota? #donttelllee? What if someone drinks all the hot coffee? Big Mike is getting wound up, wading off deep into silly territory. I can’t resist helping him along. I go back to the living room and tell everyone that they should see what’s going on in the kitchen…
#oldman start line negotiations. So CIM has an early start of 7am. It’s a point to point race. The buses depart for the start line from downtown at 5am. Big Brother Nova Scotia House is 5km from the start line. We all sit down together for a delicious pre-race meal of chicken pasta prepared by Rami at 6pm. We start talking about our departure for the start line buses. There are 9 of us to vacate the house in two rental cars and we need to meet both Matt and Damian before we get on the bus. We decide that we will leave the house at 4:30am to park and walk to the buses.
But our old man Doran is having none of this early morning business. “It’s too early, what are you talking about!” Doran is sleeping on the couch in the large common room as he was the last to book into Big Brother House. He has a list of complaints. It doesn’t take 20 minutes to drive to the start line. It doesn’t take 10 minutes to park. It doesn’t take 10 minutes to walk to the bus line. It’s too early. He’s outnumbered though, no one wants to add extra stress of being late to race day. He sees that he’s lost.
“Fine!” he says, “Y’all get the hell outta my room after supper, then. You can all go eff-yourselves and go to bed.”
We all erupt in laughter. #oldman.
Everyone is tucked into bed by 8pm but we’re all still laughing at Doran.
Sleeping Speed Power: Speaking of being tucked into bed, Kristen and I are sharing a room with Denise. I begin to consider that I am becoming a faster runner just by sleeping next to Denise. Maybe I should go upstairs and sleep in between Mike and Lee next. Actually, I’m not going to do that because they guys were so funny when they got up to the loft bedroom with ensuite, the three of them: “Look at us, we’re like our own special little family.”
Throw-aways: Mike’s throwaways never disappoint. This time, he went with Edwin French Baggies circa 1992. Kristen also put on a good throw-away show as well though not on purpose. She asked me to pick some up for her Value Village and being the good sister I am, I picked some sweet head-to-toe pink sweats for her. Kristen also needed some arm-warmers for the early cool start and she forgot to buy men’s socks when Denise bought hers. So instead, she cut an old Cabot Trail shirt into a belly shirt to show her bib and offer sleeves. Then she ripped it off around 5km, Hulk Hogan style.
Ethan Michaels: This guy. He deserves an entry all on his own. We haven’t seen much of Ethan at practice all year. Like… not at all. But he has his plan from Lee and we know that he’s still training. We’re all hanging out and relaxing on Saturday afternoon, some of them watching zombies kills the human race. Mike’s on his phone and whoa, Ethan Michaels has just posted a photo from the CIM race expo in Sacramento. Is Ethan Michaels in Sacramento? And didn’t tell anyone? What the random heck?
Doran takes charge of the Ethan-Investigation. He calls him. “Ethan. Are you really in Sacramento?”
This will surprise no one. Ethan Michaels has turned up at the race that 11 of his sort-of training partners are at. The race that is in another country and clear across the continent. Our surprise guest came over to Big Brother House to celebrate with us after the race. He says that he looked up our race after he learned that we were all running. He saw that the charity associated with it was a Children’s Hospital so he decides that he’s going to make a donation to the Children’s Hospital. And somehow in the process signs up for the race…
Doran: This guy was so amusing and fun to hang around that he can have his own entry too. Though, I’m talking about Doran the Halifax Road Hammer, not to be confused with the landlord, eh, D? Doran was travelling solo the day after all of us. At the airport, Denise wasn’t sure she knew who Doran was. Don’t worry, we fulfilled our teasing quota with this, spread out over 5 days. Then she practiced his name, wanting to get it right. She already has a friend Dorian. And a Darian. And we all have a Damian. So the big moments comes when she encounters him at the house in Sacramento. But she thinks he is the landlord.
Doran topped off his funniness by thanking Kristen for his huge shiney new PB. And by that, I mean that he told Lee that he was thanking Kristen and not him.
Celebrations: We had a super time celebrating all afternoon on Sunday and then headed out on the town Sunday eve, joined by Rob Winslow who was in fine form. Rob’s best one-liner was in a conversation with Kristen about the indoor 3000m race that Lee wants everyone to run in January. Runners are somewhat hesitant, we just raced 3000 x 14.
Kristen: “Are there finisher medals?”
Rob: “It’s not an eff-ing road race!”
CIM was a big day for coach Lee with so many of his runners smashing their PBs in huge ways along with our masters’ runners running faster than they have in years. We acknowledge that he is kicking some serious coaching ass and he’s the man. Then Lee starts telling me that he’s retiring me. We cut 12 minutes off my marathon PB in 18 months. Done. No way! This is too much fun.
We carried on to Napa Valley for more fun on Monday. Hopper Creek was the most memorable winery that we visited and Dave told us that he’d put our photo on the wall but only if it was a really good one. Not boring. So what should the Halifax Road Hammers do to get on the wall?
Run in the vineyard, of course.
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