Boilermaker
Who but Purdue University fans cheer for sports teams whose mascot is a mixed drink?

Spartans? Boring. Wolverines? Buckeyes? Nuts. Boilermakers? I'll drink to that.

"I can resist anything but temptation," Oscar Wilde said. Same with me. When the chance came to run in America's largest 15K road race, which starts at a boilermaker factory and ends at a brewery, I thought how humanity would benefit:

MIND. "The mind is a terrible thing to lose," said former Vice President Dan Quayle. To address this deficit and add to research concerning Utica, N.Y. as a travel haven, it was incumbent I run the 28th annual Utica Boilermaker.

BODY. What better route to fitness - hence feasting and festing guilt-free afterward - than running on a blast-furnace-hot July morning with 11,000 other crazies, er, health enthusiasts?

SOUL. "Who Really Rules the World?" asked the first piece of literature I picked up in the Hotel Utica public restroom. God, I assumed, its publisher being Jehovah's Witnesses, whose adherents include Michael Jackson, perhaps his chimp and boy bedmates.

Did I have a lot to learn.

The fall from innocence is hard. Little did I know Sunday's race would be preceded by warm-up parties Saturday, Friday, Thursday ... back to perpetuity. I saw few Kenyans, who would dominate the race, at these crucial sessions, but for media-crities such as me, dignitaries partaking past indignation, and other scholars sampling Finger Lakes hops and grapes, there was no turning back: knowledge must be advanced, understanding enhanced, at whatever cost.

I learned Sunday morning the start was not at a place that makes boilermakers, but, rather, that makes boilers. So much for my pre-race hydration strategy.

I'd thought 15K was my perfect distance because:

* I lack leg speed to be successful at 10Ks, 5Ks and shorter distances.

* I don't have the stamina to fare well at longer races. When I got on the course I realized that, in minimizing my weaknesses, I'd forgotten I didn't have strengths to maximize. Uh-oh. Nine-point-three miles loomed ahead.

"Who Really Rules the World?" I remembered from what I had read in the restroom. Satan, said the Witnesses. Beelzebub had bamboozled me again!

If even one of Utica's 60,000 residents was not on the course - offering ice, water and encouragement; running in Viking horns or as the Blues Brothers - I didn't see him.

I tried visualization, although it seemed more like hallucination: the trick of imagining a rope between me and the runner ahead, drawing me nearer. The rope kept snapping. I visualized a more-fixed target: F.X. Matt Brewery at the finish line. This worked better. Then I ran into Zeno's paradox.

Say you have 40 feet left to the finish. Piece of cake? Not so fast (for me, literally). First you have to pass 20 feet, 10 feet, five feet ... down to a quarter-inch, eighth-inch, 16th-inch ...

Mathematically - and for me it seemed, realistically - you never can reach the line.

At last I did, Zeno notwithstanding, to join the party. Picture 38,000 sweaty celebrants - runners, friends, volunteers, local street people - live bands, fireworks, jet-plane fly-overs, all the food you can eat and drinks you can pour down your poor, parched gullet, and it isn't yet 10:30 in the morning.

From Purdue to perdition, it's never too early to repent. MR