{"id":23612,"date":"2018-04-02T14:26:41","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T18:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=23612"},"modified":"2018-04-02T17:04:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T21:04:33","slug":"the-legend-of-brock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=23612","title":{"rendered":"The Legend of Brock"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was in high school, I wrote a paper on Jane Austen\u2019s Pride and Prejudice<\/em>.\u00a0 I was enamored with the book and though I can\u2019t recall what the gist of my essay was (I suspect it was pretentious yet superficial), I do remember being scolded by my teacher for calling it a \u201cfantastic novel.\u201d\u00a0 She told me via red pen in the margins of my laser printed prose, quite rightly, that \u201cP and P\u201d was the antithesis of a fantasy tale.\u00a0 I had been, as I\u2019m wont to do, colloquializing<\/span> my English, bastardizing the Webster\u2019s definition of \u201cfantastic\u201d and using it as one would on the playground or in the mean (suburban) streets of my adopted hometown, Malvern, PA.<\/p>\n

Years (and years… and, sigh, many more years) later, despite still in my heart loving that Austen story of manners and wit, I cannot for the life of me give you a scene-by-scene breakdown or even list more than a few deep the cast of characters.\u00a0 Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy\u2026 um, there\u2019s a Parson I think\u2026.\u00a0 Point is while the memory of that book\u2019s story elicits fond memories, it is most indelibly earmarked in my memory palace as being an exceedingly \u201cfantastic as in great\u201d NON-fantastic novel.<\/p>\n

Memory is a funny thing and I\u2019ve been thinking about it a lot this week, more than usual actually.\u00a0 I\u2019m packing up for a whirlwind trip back and forth to parts near and far, a hither and yon voyage to run a bit, see some sights, and try and make a few new memories along the way.\u00a0 There\u2019ll be more to this in a later post but in the meantime I wanted to provide a brief update on something from long, long ago… though not so long ago as high school.<\/p>\n

There was a before-run-kevin-run-dot-com time when my brother and I ran the Austin Marathon.\u00a0 I previously flashed back to that race in March 2016<\/a>.\u00a0 It was February 19, 2012 (BRKRDC), the day we met a guy named Brock, a man who might’ve been a shared fever dream as Steve and I suffered through bouts of food poisoning.<\/p>\n

But he was then, as now, a legend for Steve and me whenever we talked about running… or really life in general.\u00a0 He was a man, sure, but he was something more than a man.\u00a0 He was BROCK.\u00a0 In all caps.<\/p>\n

Recently my brother and I got to talking about Brock once again.\u00a0 We decided to do a bit of internet sleuthing to see if we could track down the guy.\u00a0 Were we crazy that day?\u00a0 Did he even exist?\u00a0 And if we did find him now, if we proved his existence, would that alter our memories or change the way we viewed the world?\u00a0 What if he wasn\u2019t as we had built him up in our minds, this Mercury or Ares on a pedestal, this Olympian yardstick against which all runners… and indeed all humans… are measured and found wanting?\u00a0 What if Brock was less “ho-rah” and more “ho-hum?”<\/p>\n

Would knowing the truth about Brock make the world less, well, fantastic?<\/p>\n

After a few dead ends and a few false starts, I\u2019m pleased to say that sometimes even the crazy one\u2019s get solved.<\/p>\n

I’m 99.5% sure Brock is Alan L. Brock of Pflugerville, Texas.\u00a0 And he is as fantastic in real life as he was in Steve and\u00a0my shared memory.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Where ever you are today, BROCK, thank you for being a shining inspiration then, now and always.<\/p>\n

Long after the the agony of Austin receeded, you are what we remember most from that day.<\/p>\n

A tip of the hat and a wish for wellness, good sir.<\/p>\n

And thank you for inspiring me to get up out of bed today, lace up my shoes, and get some miles in.<\/p>\n

Because that’s what Brock would do.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in high school, I wrote a paper on Jane Austen\u2019s Pride and Prejudice.\u00a0 I was enamored with the book and though I can\u2019t recall what the gist of my essay was (I suspect it was pretentious yet superficial), I do remember being scolded by my teacher for calling it a \u201cfantastic novel.\u201d\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}