Saturday, July 6, 2013

Vanity has it's Price



What month is it?  What race number is this one?  Things have slowed down, though the weather has heated up.  The monthly race challenge is still going on and in addition the normal, make that the usual, marathon training has started back up.  I keep thinking after each marathon, the end is in sight, but it never seems to work out that way.  There always seems to be one more to train for.  I'll try not to complain too much, especially since it's time to run an easy half marathon (when did these become easy?).

This week's race feels like it should actually be named after us.  CT has won it the past two years and she practically claims it as hers.  I can lay no such claim.  Even though I've ran it just as often as she has, I have yet to crack into the top spots.  For some reason, I expect they'll probably only consider naming it after us, if we both start winning (or get famous, or get rich and give them a huge donation).  Time to step up.

Normally, I share the lessons I learned later in the blog, but I'm going to just come out and say this one, don't go for a twenty mile bike ride the day before a race.  Granted, it's biking and it's easy, but it's still takes time from resting legs that are going to come in handy for thirteen miles the next day.

You'll enjoy the sound of the gun this race, slap, slap, SLAP!  Excitement, nerves are the usual reasons wanting a race to start. This morning, it was wanting to keep my own blood!  The mosquitoes were awful, hungry, and swarming the exposed skin and bad body odor of a group of runners.

The early miles were uneventful.  Mainly, tried to keep the pace easy and get a feel for what today would let me do.  Though I was a little worried about the heat, the temp wasn't bad.  Once I settled in, I was actually kind of surprised how fast I was going.

Close to the halfway point, I couldn't stand the guy running in front of me any longer.  I wouldn't say I surged past him or even pulled away, but I definitely got tired of looking at his flailing arms.  It was on a slight incline on this flat course and made me feel better.  These poor people don't even know what hills are!

About mile ten I started to get tired and hot, so I decided to get my sexy on and took off my shirt.  While this wasn't going to be like my previous best half marathons where towards the end I still had enough to get even faster, I knew I was safe to stay at the pace I was running at and would finish pretty good, maybe even place this time!  Back country roads, hardly anybody around, might as well work on my tan some.

With two turns to go, this is where I made my fateful mistake, vanity.  Not wanting to cause a scene at the finish line as I crossed the line with my glistening. tone, tan, sexy, body with my shirt off, I stopped for few seconds to put my shirt back on.  In those few seconds, two people passed me.  Probably can guess the rest, sure enough one of them was in my age group and claimed what was my third place finish because I didn't want to cause fainting at the finish line.  Me thinking of the people, made me miss finally placing in this race!

Lesson learned, next time, watch out!  The shirt, may just stay off!