Shirlington Extreme Running Team: Running with the Jenk

The Shirlington Extreme Running Team is a proud sponsor of the Michael Jenkins Fan Club Party! In honor of next weekend's event honoring TV's Michael Jenkins (better known as the Jenk) I thought I'd write a little bit about a few of our running and other adventures together. This is about the only sports I can talk with the Jenk.

I first met the Jenk after his girlfriend and I became good friends a few years ago. We'd go out to the bars and she'd attempt to find cute guys for us to talk to and I'd always ruin everything with my excellent timing by saying, "Look, Lisa!! The Jenk, YOUR BOYFRIEND, is on tv!!!" You see, the Jenk used to be on Comcast SportsNet late on Friday and Saturday nights but thankfully his shift has changed and he no longer is on the weekends. Thank you CSN! Now the Jenk can join us in more of our weekend adventures.

One of our new favorite past times is going to DC United games at RFK. We may have our debates on who should pay for a new RFK stadium, but we always have a blast. The Jenk is so dedicated to DC United he even got a full arm tattoo.

Also, it wasn't until we started going to the DC United games that I really began to understand the Jenk's job. People (fans, I suppose :)) randomly come up and talk to him about all kinds of people I've never heard of (athletes, I assume) and he knows everything about them! Not only that, but he has no ego about being on tv every day and genuinely loves talking sports with everyone. The Jenk -- a man of the people. He also loves talking about his windows phone. You'd much rather talk sports with him than talk about that piece of awesomeness.

But back to the running...A few years ago a group of us ran the George Washington Parkway Classic. I'm not sure who looks more excited to be awake at 5 am on a weekend to run 10 miles, but it might be the Jenk.

Even though he minimally trained for this race, he still had a good showing. I actually thought he beat me in this race but when I just went to look up the times, he didn't. Interesting I remember him beating me! After the race the Jenk and I had a contest to see who is paler. It was a tie.

This past May a group of us went to San Francisco to "run" in the Bay to Breakers - a 12k. Unfortunately, it looks like the race results are no longer on their website, but I think our time was somewhere around 4 hours. It was a pretty ridiculous (but very fun) race through the streets of San Francisco.

After the race we enjoyed hanging out in San Francisco. Here is the group enjoying one of the Jenk's favorite activities while on vacation - relaxing at the bar with good friends:

Even though I couldn't convince him to cover my recent Charlottesville Half Marathon performance, I still think he's an excellent sportscaster and am super excited to celebrate him at next weekend's party. You can find more about the event on the Michael Jenkins Fan Club Party Facebook page. Ohh, and until next weekend, you can get excited about taking your very own awkward prom picture with the Jenk (that's me back when my hair was really short):