• One old, one new •
[1½ MIN READ]
A.A.Ron and I registered with weekly census-taker Teddio to do Shawmont Avenue runs last week. Jamie and My-Oh Maya registered for 10’s. And that was the plan until the 4 of us reached the 5-mile mark after the stone bridge. It was there that MM caved and turned her goal into a Shawmont, too. Although there hasn’t been a Shawmont in her cards since last year, the pull to do one proved irresistible.
Peer pressure is a terrible threat to social development at younger ages, but it’s a real thing for fully fledged adults, too. Although Jamie reported not having done a Shawmont in 6 years, he wasn’t going back up the trail by himself, what with 75% of those present going on. So off he went, sucked into the vortex of obsession that running Shawmont Avenue can create.
Completing the 14 miler introduced an unexpected new threat. Immediately after he and I plied the canal towpath right by the newly completed lock renovation, skirting a water puddle in the process, I felt a painful prickling inside my right ankle and outside my left knee. Knowing I had brushed a plant on the right side, I stopped to look for thorns but found nothing. The prickling turned into a burning that continued until he and I caught up with MM and AA waiting for us at the foot of Shawmont Avenue. It turns out that they had developed burning skin too from applying the very same avoidance maneuver that I did at the very same puddle. Inexplicably, but redemptively of his previous me-too mindset, Jamie managed to develop nothing comparable.
The completion of that run produced rashes for 3 of us, extra soreness for 2, and a commitment by one, A.A.Ron, to do some pruning the next time he does a Shawmont Avenue effort.
-CtCloser (Calvinthe) “Negative Split or Positive Splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Text by Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-published: Facebook Shawmont Running Club (ZY Weekly Newsletter 5/31/25), Shawmont Running Club website, Ruminations by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Rumination with added caption and hyperlinks.
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