Tom 7 Radar: Great Race 2013: Hockey Is Life

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Great Race 2013: Hockey Is Life (29 Sep 2013 at 13:26)

Hi! As is my way, I did another stupid thing today in the Great Race, Pittsburgh's premiere 10km (6.2 mile) footrace. The hockey season is about to kick off, which I care about a tiny bit, but I do like ice skating and my birthday was Friday so I did the race in full hockey equipment including ice skates. It looked like this:

Tom 7 Hockey costume in Great Race

It was pretty hard, and it took me 1h28m46s to finish (plus the walk to the start line which I did in slippers but wearing the rest of the gear, etc.). I'm carefully not using the word "run" to describe what I did, since I could only "run" for about a mile and a half (and a little at the end) before my ankles were done for. So I race-walked most of it, which was still pretty brutal. The most obvious difficulty is the ice skates, which don't work that well on pavement, and it takes a lot of effort to keep them from twisting painfully. Nothing ever fits my feet well, and nobody finds ice skates comfortable, and that double-whammy tore up my feet pretty good. (I'll spare you pictures of the gore this time but it was at least as bad as the keystone capers in only a quarter of the distance!) I taped my ankles and knees for stability and I think that helped a lot and they weren't in much danger of an acute injury (no falls or even close calls). The gear itself was heavy and hot, but the unexpectedly difficult part was the helmet, which squeezed my temples and was just a headache machine. I think I picked the right distance for this one, though, as it was only 90 minutes of torture. I probably couldn't have finished a marathon like that.

Pittsburgh's a big sports city and people have a good sense of fun, so I got a lot of good feedback from people cheering and high-fiving and fist bumping and not wanting to lose to the guy with the ice skates. Kids seemed less confused/scared than usual. I was a little worried that race officials would eject me (I was properly registered and everything but I thought they might be worried about the stick or skate safety, and technically the rules outlaw "skates", though I think they were talking about a different kind of skates) but the cops and volunteers were totally into it. At the end I took a puck out of my pocket and shot it across the finish line.

I only have some before/after shots, so if anyone has a picture of me on the course, would you share it? Thanks!

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Nels (172.56.23.44) – 09.29.13 17:32:12

?????

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Tom 7 (67.186.7.254) – 09.29.13 17:57:15

I expect those are unicode emoji for "thumbs up" over and over that I just can't see on this system.

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jonas (89.132.197.38) – 09.30.13 09:12:58

Ice skates on pavement. Wow.

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jennevans (70.194.74.109) – 09.30.13 13:23:58

You are my hero. :) The puck at the end is just icing on the cake.

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Anonymous (72.14.229.9) – 09.30.13 13:41:08

Only if it crossed 2 red lines on the cake.

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Anonymous (74.125.59.145) – 09.30.13 14:11:48

72.14.229.9, I lol'd

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Tom 7 (c-67-186-7-254.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) – 10.01.13 09:04:15

haha, nice!!

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jonas (54026350.dsl.pool.telekom.hu) – 10.31.13 17:45:38

Nobody sent you any more pics yet? Pity.

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Todd Smith (64.sub-70-192-14.myvzw.com) – 12.30.13 15:38:22

Nice work cousin! Bruins in 4!

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Arash (cpe-72-179-37-164.austin.res.rr.com) – 02.09.14 01:07:46

You're a cool motherfucker.

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Tom 7 (ip-64-134-187-236.public.wayport.net) – 02.10.14 08:33:22

Thanks :)

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Anonymous (172.98.75.205) – 04.28.21 23:40:24

This is freaking wild, good job :)

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