Mileage Report: 5.16.07

Miles: 8.63
Type: Street
Time: 73min
Average Mile: 8:28 (which sucks several types of animal genitals)
Calories Burned: aprx 1200

I wanted to do a long run today, from my house to the park a mile away, through the park, back through my neighborhood. About 8 miles. But it rained last night. So when I reached the park, unless I wanted to add a swimming portion to my run, I was forced to turn around. The park, the pretty part, the part I run in, is almost entirely surrounded by the meanderings of Slaughter Creek. It would be an island except for an enterance from a different neighborhood so far out of the way as to turn a normal run into a mini-marathon. I discovered this enterance this morning after runnin to the park, turning around, and blazing a new path to make up the lost miles. It's easy to make up lost miles when you are ass-lost.

One of my goals in life is to get my doctorate in biology. I want to get involved in field work. I want to spend long hours in miserable conditions in the last wildernesses of this Earth, doing pure research. If I manage to get through college, get my degrees, and land the positions I'll need to complete this dream, there had best be a native path finder in my research group because whatever brain center that allows for a sense of position, direction, and travel was binge-drunk on out of me.

Back to the park. The pretty part of the park is the hundred acres or so that supports trees and a creek and various wildlife. I've seen deer and armadillo and coyote and rabbits. There's an additional 50 acres set aside as a model plane airfield. All little runways and mown grass. A nice place if you're really into model planes. Then there's another 150 acres set aside for disc golf.

Let it be known, now and forever that disc golfers are an evil breed of man. For months when I first moved into my neighborhood, and worked my endurance to a point where I could run for miles at a time, I wanted to run the disc golf course. It is a beautiful thing, with the highest elvation in the park at which sits a little bench. You can look for miles, and when the sun is just coming up, peaking over the horizon behind you, it is a spiritual moment (I mean that in an atheist, secular way). In order to experience this pristine glory you either have to be way fucking early, like 5AM early to beat the golfers to the park, or you have to be one hell of a runner. These golfers take their "sport" seriously. Forgive me for lumping a diverse group of individuals into one writhing mass of stereotypes, but your average disc golfer, to judge from the people at my park, is a well fed, highly intoxicated, stoned group of men. You would think this would leave them in a relaxed state.

Oh no my friend. Uh, uh.

To run through the golf course while populated with disc golfers is to find yourself in a warzone, with large, sweaty, tattooed men, clouds of atomized alcohol and marijuana like little personal atmospheres of hate, throwing eight pounds plastic blades at your body with the force of their failed lives behind them. This being Texas, and seeing as when you cross the border you are handed either a Colt revolver or a Glock 9mm as a "starter" weapon to welcome you into the state, these men, with their discs of anger, if they haven't killed you with their words, or stares, or plastic projectiles, will happily move on into full fledged warfare.

I remember playing disc golf (which we called frisbee golf, and there weren't any of these nets) growing up in Isla Vista California. It was a relaxed game consisting mainly of walking. There was an occasional throw. And then more walking. I can't remember a single time when I felt the need to kill during a game of frisbee golf, and I'm a guy who will take out a room full of people as simple collateral casualties during a bad run of Mario Kart.

So in conclusion: fuck disc golfers.