The Friday Night Robbery

It is actually Monday morning but I have to talk about my Friday afternoon/evening in a completely separate post....yes, I am still somewhat blown away by the events of the evening.

I'll start with how my Friday afternoon went. I let work a bit early so that I could get in a quick swim before dinner. I headed over to Fanny Chapman Pool and banged out a quick 1,800 yards wearing my race shorts (no drag suit!). I felt so much smoother in the water. I don't recall the exact work-out but I am pretty sure it was a 500 yd warm-up, followed by 5 x 200s with 20 seconds rest (I averaged around 3:40 for each 200). Then an easy 300 yd cool down. I recall the whole swim taking around 34 minutes.

After my swim I headed home and me and the family headed out for some pizza in an out door restaurant in downtown D-town. It was so nice to be out with my wife and daughters (the girls were dressed up in pretty dresses, so cute). I had BBQ Chicken pizza and it was awesome! After dinner we went to Rita's and the girls got Italian ice and ice cream.

So far my Friday night had been pretty ideal. I had gotten a swim in, spent some good quality time with my family and around 8:30pm, the little ones were fast asleep. It was then that I coerced the Misses into letting out for a quick three mile run (with a belly full of pizza). I have been running so slowly lately that I just wanted to get out and see if I could run 7:40 pace, or something respectable.

The run was good, although I kind of wish I had vomitted up some of that pizza along the way. I believe I ended up doing 3.1 miles in 23:45, about 7:39 pace. I am not exactly sure of my final end time though because of a little incident. As I was approaching my house, I saw a little flicker of light in my garage. I should preface this all by saying I left my garage door open when I went for my run. I figured that I would be back in about 24 - 25 minutes, and I didn't want to have my loud garage door going up and down while my family was sleeping.

The Incident
Anyway, I got to the start of my driveway when I saw someone come out of the garage and down my driveway with a bottle of vodka, a Corona and a flashlight. The first words out of my mouth were, "WHAT THE @#$&! ARE YOU DOING?" I got no response from the individual, who was about 6'-2", maybe 18 - 19 years old, had longish brown hair, yellow t-shirt, jeans and was kind of gawky/lanky. In an effort to clarify any uncertainty as to who I was I asked the following question, "WHAT THE @#$& ARE YOU DOING IN MY GARAGE?!" It was at this point that the perp realized that it was in fact my house that he has just trespassed on and at that point he freaked out....I should also be noted that I was wearing a headlamp and it was shining directly in his face during the whole incident. I grabbed the alcohol out of his hands, and had a hold of his flashlight. I kicked him in his thigh and he took off running. I contemplated throwing the bottle of vodka at him, but thought that it would be better used at a later day. Instead I started running after him. To sum it up the next tenseconds quickly, I ended up letting him go because my body just didn't have it after my big ass dinner and quick run.

I ended up calling the police and told them what happened. They said that it is a normal occurence in our neighborhood and others nearby. He stressed that we keep our house locked up to minimize the chance of something like this happening again. All in all, I was happy that the punk kid was just trying to snag some alcohol. If he had looked around a bit, he would have noticed my $3,000 Cervelo sitting in the garage, and he could have just as easily took off with that.

My wife and I alway speak so highly of the area that we live in. On more than one occassion I have told friends how safe we feel and how there are times we go for a walk around the neighborhood and leave our front door open and our garage door up. This "incident" has pretty much eliminated the chance of us doing that ever again. On a positive note, we are thankful that nothing was actually stolen, no one got hurt, and we learned a pretty valuable lesson in the end.

.....next up....NJ State Sprint Triathlon Race Report.