Coolest running story of the week: my brother's edition

This week's awesome running story, alas, does not belong to me. Instead, it comes direct from the luckiest human being alive: my brother Billy.

As I have previously mentioned, Bill is in the process of training for a 100-mile run on New Years Eve. He has been running in the north Phoenix desert at progressively longer distances, yesterday hitting the 30+ mile mark. Ouchy. This week though, he hit a different kind of milestone: the holy cow, you're still alive mile mark?!

It happened near the end an 80 minute run. Billy had gone out on Tuesday night for his jaunt without water, his Camelback or his phone. As he described it, the distance was so short, why did he need water or his phone? *Sigh*

He was running through the desert about 20 minutes from home as it was starting to get dark. The light was casting dappled shadows through the mesquite trees and up ahead he spied a crack in the trail. He continued to run towards the crack, keeping his eyes ten feet in front and zoning in and out in a runner's day dream.

At the moment he was about to step on that dry crack in the desert landscape, he looked down. His eyes registered the diamond pattern at the same time his foot registered the feeling of "squish" underneath. My baby brother had just planted his foot squarely on the back of a western diamondback rattlesnake. (More details on how bad a choice this was available at the hyperlink).

What I wouldn't give to have a YouTube video of what happened next!

Billy simultaneously jumped ten feet high, twenty feet long, screamed like a five year old girl and uttered a line of curse words that would make a sailor blush. He glanced back in time to see the full three and a half feet of rattlesnake still in the trail and looking slightly more thin in the middle. He ran the remaining distance home at a fairly decent, and slightly paranoid, pace.

As best we can figure, Billy is still with us today because that snake was too cold and trying to lick up the last remaining drops of sunlight. It's getting to be that time of year... At the point when he shmooshed it, his snake friend was almost comatose and unable to react. Thank God. Otherwise I might have been an only child.

And there you have it! Remember friends, when running through the desert always carry water, a phone, and keep your eyes on the trail in front of you.


Courtesy of Wikipedia, here is how Billy's friend may have looked had he been awake: