Slow, Can't Breathe and Lost my Key

You have a choice. You can throw in the towel, or you can use it to wipe the sweat off of your face. Gatorade ad

My fellow Sole Sisters and I before the race, little did we know what adventure would await us

             Friday night I was excited to run a 10K race, It was called the Harvest Moon Hustle and the line they used was Fast, Flat and in the Dark.  Well it was not really any of those things for me.  It was a awesome race and beautiful scenery it was just not my night.  The start time had to be moved back so it would not really be dark for safety reasons and regulations, and that was fine.  I did not have to wear the head lamp that I bought and I was fine with that.  My goal time for this race was under one hour.  I was really hoping to get a PR in this race.  I have not run too many 10Ks but my best time was last year and it was 59:36 and I was pretty sure I could beat that.  That one was in the rain with hills and this was suppose to be flat and the weather was BEAUTIFUL!  My fellow Sole Sisters and I talked about using our Ipods as it was not recommended but we all decided that we NEEDED them.  I know elite runners do not use them and if it would have been a shorter race no problem but 6.2 miles---- I needed music.  We started the race and my Ipod did not work, it did not work the whole time.  I spent so much effort messing around with it I just had to let it go and run without music.  The hard part of this was when the negative voices came in my head, there was not a song playing to drown them out.  The negative voices were telling me not to push myself because who really cared about my time, then I would say yes YOU care come on push it.  I also could not breath very well.  I have horrible allergies and should have taken extra medication before I ran around a field and on a dusty gravel road.  I was able to manage a super sprint at the end up a hill and that felt great.  I then looked over at the c lock and it was after an hour but I started towards the back and did not see what it said when I crossed the line so I thought it might be close.  Now on to the after party, food and a beer and it will all be forgotten. 

                  

                 Just grab my key out of the key pocket in my pants ( which I assured my friends I use all the time and my key always stays), oh my where is it, it is not in my pockets, it is not in the pants,  it is not in my underwear, WHERE IS MY KEY!?!?  I yelled to my friends and they looked at me with wide eyes.  We searched where I had been stretching I went and talked to the race volunteers, who were by the way the nicest people I have ever met, they were just amazing wonderful people!  We realized finding a key on a gravel road at night as it was pretty dark by now was going to be impossible and I had run the 10K not the shorter 5K!  The volunteers drove us over to the after party and made sure we got beer and food and anything we needed.  My wonderful loving and awesome husband had to pack up the kids in the car at bedtime and one was already asleep and bring me the spare key.  I was a good 30+ minutes from home and he got the whole story through three different phone calls with three different numbers because our stuff was--- locked in my car!

with the key after my husband dropped it off, all is good now, well my husband may not have thought so  :)

All in all I had a fun time with my Sole Sisters, the Volunteers made a huge fuss over us and we got free food and beer. My friends are laid back and just went with the flow, no worries over my lost key. My husband laughed about it after I got back home even if he was less that thrilled that one of our four year -olds was throwing a major fit about having to get in the car.  Oh and in case you are wondering about my time did I make my under an hour goal. NOPE my time was 1 hour 1 minute, as if that one minute was laughing at me and my misfortune that day.  BUT  it may have not been my day that day but I ended  the night with a smile on my face, lots of laughs and good times with friends and I very important lesson learned that my key pocket in my shorts is not a good place to store my key!