Well, it has been a long time, but I've finally got around to posting
about my run with Donovan.
It was about 6 weeks ago, and he'd posted that he would be in Toronto for
a few days for a conference, and that he'd like to go for a run if there
were any r.r types interested.
So I invited him to join our running club (Marathon Dynamics Running
Club) on our regular Wednesday night run.
The club is as much social as it is competitive - sort of a Harriers
organization, but with better livers. Slightly better.
Anyway, it was yet another hot, humid night here in Toronto. We've had a
lot of those this year. I gave Donovan expicit directions on how to find
us - pretty handy to public transport, and he actually made it. When I
arrived - a good 10 minutes early, and 11 minutes earlier than normal, I
found Donny talking to our fearless leader and organizer Michael Brennan.
Michael is a huge fixture on the local running scene, having created a
number of different groups to run socially, competitively or just
regularly. Michael has run 39 sub-3hr marathons so far, so he gains some
respect when he talks about running.
Donovan turns out to be quite different from his usenet persona - or at
least I thought so. He's got the classic runner's physique - compact and
light. He doesn't look particularly fast, but you'd think twice about
making a bet as to who would be first to any finish line. The biggest
difference though is in his personality. Not exactly shy, but certainly
quite "normal" and moderate in real life. I find him pretty
confrontational, and dogmatic on usenet, but he is much more relaxed, a
bit gangly and goofy almost (but in a good way) in reality. Who would
have guessed? Not the hyper speedster that seems so effective in pulling
Doug's chain from time to time.
So we had pretty nice run together, although even at a modest pace he
turned out to be faster than I - more my fault for getting too fat and
lazy lately - but he found another in our group that was going about the
right speed.
So we had a relatively brief encounter, but it was enough to shed a
different light on an interesting, frequent and headstrong poster to our
group. I'll read his posts with a different frame of reference from now
on.
dh