This is him. Yep, when we raise millions of dollars for a charity and I set new records for the distance that is going to be run, this is the good samaritan “culprit” that you can blame. This is Bill Sullivan who is a tremendously close friend and the person that snapped me into into the world of running that I didn’t know existed. Holyoke, Ma. has a huge St. Patty’s day celebration. There are parades on Sunday and a 10k raise on Saturday. After my last trans-continental run I stepped out of the world of competitive running and just continued to run on my own. Being a small business owner I sometimes would have a bad day on the job site and come home, run 20 miles to unwind, and go about my social life. Bill changed all that. I knew he and a bunch of his friends would run this “race thing” on that holiday and then celebrate with a couple of pints of carbs at a place called the Clover in the city. I told Bill I didn’t want to run in any races, despite the miles I was logging, but would love to join them for the after party at he Clover. “That’s not the way it works” Bill told me. You don’t carbo load with us unless you’ve run the race first. So I decided to run a race after being away from racing since high school and not running with others for over 20 years. Well after a couple years of just running the St. Patty’s race I began finding out about all YOU crazy people and have not only been having a great time ever since enjoying all the people in sooo many places, but, the crazy side of me has re-surfaced and here we go again. By the way 2 years ago when there was 16 inches of snow the night before the race I was the ONLY one that actually ran the race. Everyone else had some “reason” they couldn’t –BUT-BUT- BUT they all showed up to the Clover. So some day in the not to distant future some charity and the hundreds or thousands of people touched by that charitymay say “thanks” to me for running the fund raising event, but, they will NEED to turn to Bill and “thank” him for making Alan earn that beer at the Clover. The challenge that turned me loose once again.
