The continued prayer is, “Lord keep me focused. Keep my mind stayed on You. Help me to bring You praise. I know You believe in me. Please help me in my unbelief. Amen.”
This was a great race!!! We were in the throes of a major storm system and I was sure we were going to get rained on (please forgive my ending a sentence with a preposition)!!! The weather turned out to be beautiful and God held the rain until the race was well over.
Also, I really really *really* wanted to PR this time. It was a perfect venue for a PR. Flat course. Great neighborhood. Inaugural event, so there were fewer than 200 runners. I hoped to place in the top 10 of my age group but that gets really difficult with these types of events.
For one thing, it was a smaller event, which draws people (like me) who are trying to PR. Secondly, the registration fee was really reasonable ($20), which draws all the people who are really fit but don’t like to run and they just wanna see how well they’ll do. Finally, the venue and the reasonable fee draws all the running clubs, groups and teams.
It’s really distressing when you train and train for a run and you psych yourself up and make yourself believe that you are a woman among women and you are going to DOMINATE this thing!!!
Then you get to the event and you see teenagers in their micro shorts and cross country team hoodies walking by with their young, strong legs with no cellulite or evidence of childbearing. They’re slim… and fast… and I’m pretty sure they’re all high.
But they’re nothing compared to the 30+ freaks of nature on those “Stroller Mom” teams! Those women are no joke and they will kick your ass! They show up with their super fit husbands with their Tri stickers on their cars and all the right running gear. They don’t run because they have to. They run because they need something to do between rock climbing, shark biting and alligator wrestling.
I can’t compete with those women. I know they’re in my age group, but they are machines. I don’t understand them at all.
And don’t under estimate that 73-year old Army Vet. He’ll kick your ass with a smile on his face and call you Ma’am while he’s doin’ it! I got passed by that guy right at the finish line. Crap! He was a worthy foeman and I love him for his Service but at that moment, I wanted to take him down with his own service revolver! Blast! He beat me by 4 seconds!
And then you run into the couple wearing their matching Official Boston Race jackets. Really? If you qualified for Boston, what the heck are you doing HERE?! Turned out they were just volunteers (their words. I would kill to “just volunteer” at Boston!)
*sigh*
Even with all that competition, I did reach my goal. I set out to run the race in under 34:28.4, which was my personal record and be in the top half of finishers. I did that (another preposition. Sorry). I ran it in 31:53 and finished 75th of 157. So I am calling this one a WIN! and I am so grateful that I get to belong to this exclusive group of people whom the rest of the world doesn’t understand.
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