Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I’ve been sick the last few days, so it took me a little longer to get back to you than I thought it would. I’m sorry for the delay.

The morning of the race I woke up with a nightmare. In my dream, I was waiting for my family to arrive so we could all go to the race. I knew that Stacey, Dan, my mom and her husband, Reed, were coming, but I had told them that if they didn’t get here by 7:15 am, I was going to leave without them. Even though it was after 7:15 am, Mike wouldn’t let me leave. He purposely wouldn’t put on his shoes. He wanted to wait for them to come, even if it meant that I was late for the start of the race.

Then a huge family with two dogs arrived to come with us. Mike had invited them and he was so excited that they had come. Instead of all of us fitting in one car, we ended up taking three cars, one of which for the two visiting dogs and our dog, Sid. Mike really wanted Sid to see me run the race and no complaining on my part could make him not bring the entire pack of dogs.

We arrived just as the air horn went off starting the 5K, so I jumped out of the car and started running. The bad part was that we were late, but the good part was that only five people were running the race. I thought that I would be able to win for my division for sure. That was until I saw the course. The course went through a shopping mall. I had to dodge merchandise everywhere I went. There were huge pillows on the track and I had to run over antique furniture culminating to a stack of baby grand pianos. I was also delayed by a woman from my church who was poking me in the butt with a broomstick.

When I neared the finish line, I was so angry. I was angry with Mike for making me so late that I started the race late. I was angry with Mike for inviting the family with too many children and dogs because I didn’t really want them here anyway. I was angry with the race directors for putting the race through the mall just so they could sell merchandise, I guess. I was just seething when I crossed the finish line.

When I finished with the race, there were no people to check my number or anything. I was so angry at how disorganized the race was. I finally found someone who could answer some questions. She was surprised because the race hadn’t started yet. It was only 7:45 am and I had fifteen minutes to get back to Liberty Park to run the real 5K race. I realized that I must have gotten all mixed up when I was so worried about being late to the race and I had been so mean to Mike for nothing. I was the disorganized one, not the race directors and I only had 15 minutes to get back to the starting line so that I could finish the real race. I was devastated.

That’s when I woke up. It was a bad dream to have before my race.