Saturday morning I left my place at 6:30, all excited about race walking on a new-to-me five-mile course. I found Lake Miramar on the first try, quite an accomplishment for my navigation-challenged self.
When I pulled in, the first lot I tried was full. No biggie. I drove on. All the lots were full, and I drove around for 15 increasingly frustrating minutes looking for a spot. I refused to stalk people returning to their cars, mainly because I’d have to join a line to do that! Defeated, I started to drive home.
Nearly a half mile down on the road out I found a spot in a lot. I parked and started heading up to the Lake. As the Lake came into view, I realized I’d forgotten my hat in the car. As much as I hate walking into the sun without my hat, I knew if I went back to the car I was going home, so I braved the walk with the glare.
It was forecasted to be much hotter than normal, which is why I left so early. Everything would have been fine had I been able to start when I first arrived. Now it was nearly a half hour later, and the temperature was already approaching uncomfortable.
To add insult to injury, Pandora would only play 30 seconds of a song before it jumped to the next one. So it was going to be a quiet walk with no beat to mark my pace. I sucked it up and walked on.
At the start line, I clicked my stop watch and off I went. I was walking into the sun, but it still felt pretty good. I was making good time. When I got to the half mile marker, I checked my watch. I groaned out loud. I must have double pressed the start/stop button. My time was less than a second and the counter had stopped. I kept going, hating the world, cussing under my breath.
I was about one and half miles from the end when I was passed by the Race Walking Olympian, Tim, who ran the workshop I attended. He recognized me! I would love to say that I had great form and was flying along. Unfortunately at that point technique was out the window and all I wanted was to be done. On the plus side, he did recognize me!!!!
This one bad training session did not dampen my enthusiasm at all. When I returned home I signed up for my next 5K, which is on Thanksgiving Day!
The cool thing is that the course is another new-to-me route! I’m going to check that one out next weekend, hopefully with better results. A wonderful college friend recommended the race to me.
When did you last encounter a perfect storm of errors? or Why do we run into people we want to impress when we are not being very impressive?
Grown Up, Now What? 