Running 8 Tuff Miles

I've been on the sideline and covered the St. John 8 Tuff Miles Road Race the last two years with the other hired geeks. This year, the race director talked me into running the event and once the boss heard of this, a first-person column was in the works.

My man Thomas Layer took some killer photos. All I had to do was run the bastard.

Much easier said then done. For those people not living here, let me try my best to describe this very unique race: It's freaking hard. Five miles of all uphill -- about 1,400 feet of total elevation is climbed in the race -- then the last three miles is mostly downhill.

This race is not for the phony tough. Only the crazy brave. The day after it was all over, I could barely walk but I sauntered into my office and tried to make sense of it all.

An excerpt from my column about the race: "I thought there's no way I would be able to watch Zuber finish (unless I cheat - an idea I momentarily contemplated), but if I finish before Zuber's girlfriend, then I can still be a champion.

She didn't know it then, but Michelle became my racing rival at that exact moment. Lots of people listen to music to get focused, some meditate. For me, I just chase other people's girlfriends up and down treacherous hills for 8.375 miles."

Here are the links to my column and the official race story.

If any of you runners out there want a Caribbean challenge, this would be a great time to make a visit. If you just like to sit around and drink beer, of course this place is good for that, too. Cheers.

Run for fun

My old friend Isaac visited me last week and it had me thinking about the shenanigans we used to pull back in the day. Nothing too crazy. It's not like we alerted the attention of the local authorities or crashed any church parties.

But we did run cross country in high school. I still cringe when I look at pictures of our skimpy red uniforms loosely covering our prepubescent bodies.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I covered a local cross-country race on St. Thomas this afternoon. In between stories about a St. Croix woman hooking a 560-pound swordfish and the weird smell that came from a docked cruise ship, I had a chance today to reconnect with my cross-country brethren.

The bus schedule was messed up so only half the teams showed up. Therefore, they combined the junior-varsity and varsity races. Just chalk it up to the amazing organizational skills that every islander is born with.

Took a few cool pictures. Since they'll probably never grace the pages of The Daily News, I figured I'd put them on the blog and give them some space to breath.

Look at those kids to the right cheering for their classmates. If I had support like that back in the day, I might have actually won a race.

This was taken a second before the start of the elementary school race. About four kids fell flat on their face and I couldn't help but laugh right in their (flattened) faces.

I'm not joking, I saw a kid cheat right after I snapped this one. Maybe he was confused. It didn't matter, he was one of the only white kids competing. I saw him throwing up later.