Media Challenge, Race 3

Ready for the excuses? First she complains, then, she makes excuses. Yes folks, Pigtails is devolving into a joyless rant of a blog, which is just as susceptible to the negative effects of an unreasonable boss and confluence of unfortunate events as my running, my marriage, my quality of sleep, my social life and my eating habits are.

The Top Seven Excuses, er, Reasons Why My Media Challenge (Race 3) Was Slower Than I’d Been Aiming For:

1. I hadn’t trained for the race, running just 4.5 miles total in the week leading up to the event.
2. I was sick the two days before, leaving work early on Tuesday to crawl into bed and moan, and then again on Wednesday to puke my anxious guts out.
3. I was dehydrated, exhausted, poorly fed and overworked.
4. It was fecking humid.
5. The Lower Loop of the Park was especially pungent with the odor of equestrian fecal matter.
6. Did I mention I hadn’t trained?
7. It was fecking humid.

Oh and also, my fiercely focused racing mindset (ggrr!) was rattled when one of my industry peers (like, um, everyone at the race was an industry peer) who I have known for exactly 10 years (please don’t remind me how old I am nor for how long I’ve been toiling in obscurity) tapped me on the shoulder and told me he was racing the Media Challenge because he had mistaken it for the Corporate Challenge. Now. How. Do you mix that shit up?? He should know better, having worked in book publishing for more than 10 years: our industry only qualifyies as anything resembling corporate on the one day of the year when the CFO’s set the budgets. Anyway, his outfit definitely took the “corporate” out of this challenge: cargo shorts, a designer tee-shirt, wire-framed sunglasses with gray tinted lenses, and a canvas baseball cap that proclaimed “Coldplay” (or something like that).  I didn’t have the chance to ask him after the race if that get up helped him run faster or not, but since he was barely sweating, I’m going to guess: No. Oh yeah, and also, further proof of his just-not-getting-it status: he teased me about my pigtails. Clearly, if he knew what was going on he’d know better than to think I can be teased about the ‘tails.

Enough of this boring shit, back to excuses. I ran 3.5 miles in 30:21, an 8:40 pace, which is decent for me, but still no where near the 28:12 (8:03 pace) I ran back in May. If I run this whole series of races with my best time being the first event, I am going to have to stamp my foot and pout. I’ll be left no other option. Will someone follow me around with an air conditioner and a water mister for the next race, please? I’m now accepting volunteer applications; you can email me at theresmorewherethatcamefrombuddy@gmail.com.

Also I found this blog post on the first Media Challenge race. Worth clicking through because they actually have figured out how these darn races are scored. Mystery solved. Unless, of course, they’re wrong.