Rockefeller was a milk run.

In Joseph Heller's "Catch-22", set in Italy during World War II, the Bologna mission was one that all the members of the bombing squadron looked forward to with dread. They all thought the city would be heavily defended by the Germans and that they would come under deadly attack from anti-aircraft fire when it came time to fly overhead. It was certainly not going to be a "milk run", which is the nickname for a mission where little or no enemy resistance is encountered. Fearing for his life, the protagonist / bombardier Yossarian sabotaged the intercom in his plane and convinced the pilot to return to base. Later that day, when Yossarian looked to the sky and saw every single plane but his returning in formation, unscathed, he assumed that weather had prevented them from seeing the target, scuttling the mission. As it turned out, after all the nervous anticipation and fear, Heller sums up the reality of what happened in one great sentence. "Bologna was a milk run". This is the type of irony that the great novel is laden with, you should check it out if they didn't make you read it in high school, it's one of the greatest (and funniest) books ever written.

I've mentioned in this blog how brutal Rockefeller was last year and how everyone, including myself, was scared for today's run. Amazingly I actually had a very easy time of it today, and most of the people I spoke with after the run felt the same way. The heat was not nearly as severe as last year. Today it was probably in the high 70's or low 80's, whereas last year it was 96 degrees, and felt like over 100 with the heat index. I was injured for last year's run which made it particularly tough on me, and even though I am recovering from jaw surgery, I found that I was able to run just fine. I decided to take it easy and ran with the 9:00 pace group, a full minute slower than normal, which made things a lot easier. Also the coaches cut out one of the tougher hills from our previous foray into the woods, and finally I think we had more volunteers with more water and Gatorade available out on the course.

So a good time was had by all and I'm in good health and ready for the next challenges that lay in store for us.