Inaugural Watson Avenue Olympics

If you are looking for a recap on this weeks training than you’ve come to the wrong place. I am now less than a week away from my first marathon of the spring and the nerves are starting to settle in. What better way to relax than to head down to North Carolina for a weekend of rest and relaxation (read: drinking) with all my college buddies. Ok, so a booze fest a week out from a marathon is probably not the best idea in the world but that’s just the way the chips fell. I don’t think the host and my good friend Ed would have ever forgiven me if I backed out with a lame excuse like, “I’m running a marathon in a few days.” Ed said that this weekend was more important than his wedding, the birth of his first child, and his funeral, so on Friday me and nine of my closest friends made the pilgrimage from Columbus to Winston-Salem for the Inaugural Watson Avenue Olympics. The schedule of events for the weekend included horseshoes, bocci ball, corn hole, and beer pong. Points were awarded for performance and teams were picked at random for each event. Although it rained all weekend I was able to put up a quality performance in each event. I credit all the trail running and weight lifting to give me the endurance to persevere through the elements. I’m proud to say that I walked away with a silver medal for my performance and was undefeated in each event. What separated 1st place (Carl Barkson) from second (myself) was the margin of victory in horseshoes. In two games of ‘shoes Carl managed to outscore his opponent by 35 points, while I only won my two games of ‘shoes by a combined 5 points. The most impressive team performance of the weekend was Carl and my corn hole drubbing of Todd and Sherri. We won the first game 22-2 and the second game 21-0, for a 43 point margin of victory; setting us up nicely for a medal. All in all it was a fantastic weekend, I just hope it doesn’t affect my months of training too much come Sunday. Athens here I come!