The other night I was feeling a bit nostalgic, and I pulled out some old photos. I guess that is to be expected after the E- mail. The first girl I ever lived with, a distant memory from the late 1970s, had been reminded of me and Googled my name. Even though she has three mostly grown kids, lives on the other end of the country, and had not spoken to me in 26 years, she thoughtfully took the time to drop me a quick note and say that I still sucked, and because of me she had to throw out a perfectly good futon. Ah, good times.

Strangely, I do not find any pictures of her in this album. But there are plenty of other great memories. I know that you runners do the same thing. Almost all of you have stacks upon stacks of post-race photos, some crossing the finish line, and others where groups of you pose among the milling crowds, arms around each other, bonded by a common smell.

You should know in turn that we non-runners have some very similar traditions, albeit different odors. It is not uncommon for us to take "event" pictures to commemorate our big workouts, or as they are also known, a normal evening out at the bar. We do not generally wait till they are over, though. If we did, chances are good we were missing someone and nobody can work the camera.

Here is one. And it involves running, you will be glad to hear.

That is my friend, Jimmy, running after the van. We slipped the driver at the airport an extra twenty to start pulling away slowly as he was grabbing his last bag off the sidewalk. We let him jog behind us for three terminals. Unfortunately, we were laughing so hard we missed it when he finally tripped over a curb and took out two skycaps and a nun.

Oh, this was fun and more running. The blanching tall guy with the blonde Afro and no chin, that is Rich from college. Pre-med and could not stand the sight of spit. We loved to do the old "see food" thing in the cafeteria, and watch him gag and run for the restroom. This particular day, Paul had just showed him some partially chewed sloppy Joe, which may or may not be redundant.

Hey, you might like this one. It involves more running. As you can clearly see by the look on Lucky's face, he is not happy. He was downright ticked, as I recall. He lost those three teeth years ago playing hockey. You think he would have learned by now that if you simply must eat ribs at a cookout, you really should not leave your bridge lying next to the sink in the men's room. That is where it was when our pal, Kenny, scooped it up as he ran out the door, dropping it in some woman's vodka gimlet on the way. Right after we made it to the car and drove off, Lucky went back in the bar, and . . . well, lived up to his nickname. He really should thank us.

Wow! After seeing these, I realize that we run a lot more than I thought. It is hard to make out, but that white blur at the top right corner, that is Andy. Sure, we could have told him from the start that the smoking hot redhead had a boyfriend, but what fun would that have been? I will bet in the grand scheme of things, very few guys are lucky enough to see something as funny as one of their buddies jumping out of a second floor apartment window wearing boxer shorts, a crop top, and one Reebok as he sprints right through a hedge and tries to hail a taxi, let alone have a picture of it. For the life of me, though, I still cannot quite grasp why he was wearing the poor girl's crop top. I mean, Andy's at least a size 14.

Yep, and there was another running one from a trip to Mexico. To this day, we still debate whether it was the ice made with local tap water or unwashed fruit. For the record, he made it.

Oh, man, I had totally forgotten about this one. This was an actual running event back in the mid '80s. There were so many problems with this. First off, none of us at the bar had the slightest idea what the cute women in the tight shorts meant when they said they were Hash House Harriers. I was thinking English fighter jet with eggs or a yappy small dog on toast. And when she dared us to sign up for a "fun run" the next morning, well, that just sounded so . . . fun.

So, hung over, sleepy, and completely untrained and unstretched, the four of us showed up downtown at 8:00 am. Coop, the dude on the left wearing the green tie-dye, made it the longest, almost a mile and a quarter before he face-planted into a parked Saab. We were all moaning and cramping pretty darn good by the time the Gatorade guy drove us back to the finish line in the bed of his pickup. We got there just in time for the cute Harriers to snap this picture.

When we got that one back, every one of us popped for the $15 enlargements. Ah, good times.