The Shirt Run

During my 4th lap at Umstead, a fella by the name of Jimmy introduced me to the Mangum Track Club. Having looked them up, they have a whole bunch of races, a marathon, a 50 miler, (probably going to do the marathon) a 100k, a 24 hr race, a 50k, and I also noticed today, the have a 100 miler.

They also have "The Shirt Run" - here's what it says about that on their website: http://www.mangumtc.org/

Back during the late 80's five guys would meet in the hills of Ellerbe, NC for training runs for marathons. One Christmas during that time, one of the guys purchased 5 shirts. One for each training partner. The shirt was a navy blue shirt with "Mangum Track Club" on the front of it. As the story goes, one of the wives of one of the guys wanted one of the shirts. Well being guys, they told her, you will have to earn it. The "Shirt Run" was born. The shirt run is a 15-mile point-to-point run/walk from Mangum, N.C. to Ellerbe, N.C. Once you finish the shirt run you will receive your Mangum Track Club shirt and you are a member for life. The Mangum Track Club is a fun run crowd consisting of walkers to ultra runners. We do not have dues or meetings and you may be asked to purchase your Mangum Track Club shirt depending on the number of runners that show up for the shirt run. Normally members pitch in to buy the shirts.

I love it! This sounds a blast - in fact, the whole set up sounds a lot of fun. So sent an email asking to be in the next Shirt Run - I am in, and can't wait. It will be on May 23.

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Since Sunday's run, I have avoided running to give my ankle a bit of a rest. Yesterday at lunch time, I hit the Stairmaster at the gym. What a brutal, evil piece of machinery those things are. I certainly feel as though it is effective, so I will try to use it once or twice per week. I also did a couple of minutes on the Leg Lift weight machine to work the quads.

Today, I used the treadmill, walking at elevation level 15 for 33 mintes, and set a new record of 2.46 miles.

Here's the tune of the day from my "Running Tunes" playlist. Unfortunately, Youtube won't let me 'embed' the video, so click the link to hear "The Stairs", by INXS - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmiwzstaHTs - I thought of this track when I was on the Stairmaster on Monday.