Sibling rivalry

My brother Danny and I have a bit of a friendly rivalry, a long-standing brotherly rivalry. We're always trying to one-up each other, even though he knows deep down inside that I'm superior.

When I was dropping my weight and we started to participate in things together, ie playing soccer, running, just talking about exercise and fitness, it was great to have someone like that around. And it also took our rivalry up a notch. Now, he's always been a bit more active and fit than me... okay, not a bit but a lot... but still I felt like that was a good person to emulate a little and try to reach to his level. I knew I couldn't reach it but I figured if I tried to attain it and fell a little short, I'd still have come a long way.

As it was, Danny got me into racing. He helped me sign up for last year's Mud Run. I was excited about it and I thought about possibly trying to finish near him but figured he'd whip my ass and clean up the course with me.

As it was, I beat him! Okay, it was a bit of a tainted victory - or so he would claim - as he had two things going against him. He promised to run alongside his wife the whole time, and she's not fleet-of-feet; but he also got sick the week leading up to the Mud Run.

Still, I finished in 1:07:44 and he finished in about one hour, 20 minutes or so. Yup, that's me, beating my little bro in the race.

Well, I figured it would be tough to repeat the feat. He had set a goal of finishing under an hour and I have no such hopes of reaching such a finish. No, I'd be happy with finishing under my time from last year.

So this is a slam-dunk victory for Danny then, right? Well, not exactly.

That's Danny in the white shirt. That's his ankle bending in an unnatural position. The result?


The ankle's pretty swollen. His wife's a physical therapist and word from her and her work buddies is that Danny's ankle will require a good eight weeks to bounce back from its massive sprain.

The Mud Run is about six weeks away.

Looks like he won't have an easy victory over me after all.

So to Danny I say, in the nicest way possible, suck it, bro.