Dashing through the snow

 
New running mask! I’m a ninja!

So I’m standing at the starting line, and I check my Garmin, which I haven’t used in a while – not since the last time I did an outdoors run, which was on Thanksgiving, and not for a good while before that. I set the race distance and the pace I expected to be able to keep, about an 11-minute mile.

The gun went off, and I ran. A little while down the road, I glanced down at the Garmin for my pace. Twelve-something! Slow! I tried picking up the pace, cursing at myself for not doing more outdoor running to prepare. My legs felt tired already.

A little while later, I checked again, and it still said twelve-something. I pushed harder. People were passing me, and I felt terrible. How could I be struggling so hard when my pace was so low? I went back and forth with, passing and being passed by, a very old man who looked like he was walking fast instead of running. That didn’t help. I had to stop to tie my shoe, and I had to slow down aggravatingly frequently for patches of ice. (I couldn’t have worn the YakTrax, though, since there was more pavement than ice.)

Finally, the finish line was in sight. I put on what little heat I could muster (a mother behind me was encouraging her tired kid: “C’mon, honey! Give me your hand, and I’ll pull you!”) and got into the chute. “Uh, that’s a pretty good time,” my foggy brain said, and I looked at the Garmin. Twelve-something.

12:31, to be exact. You know, thirty-one minutes past twelve o’clock. D’oh!

So I finished the race in 31:16, which is five minutes off my last 5K, the Race for the Cure (36:12 for that one). I got a great new personal record, all through sheer stupidity. To cap it off, I came out of the chute, feeling nauseated and dizzy and having removed my foggy glasses, and I saw my friend Christa and waved and hollered, “I’m a big moron!” She gave me a funny look, and I realized that the dizziness and lack of glasses meant that, no, that wasn’t Christa after all. Go, me!

Maybe the free champagne is an extra-bad idea for me today. I’m already mentally altered enough, right?