Run your race

I was worried about parking. The lot already looked full and cars were still streaming in as I slowly steered my way around dots of colorfully dressed people; some of them in costume - a person wearing a furry green bear suit stood a few yards away from someone in a pink tulle tutu.

The second I opened the car door and felt the western wind slicing at my outstretched arm, I wondered why I had agreed to this. I have been running each and every day since late last May in all kinds of weather. The novelty hadn't worn off.

I've felt the crunch of ice under my shoes. I've warily watched trees dance while flashes of lightning crack open the sky. I have been drenched with rain and covered in snow.

It has become the hour, or half-hour, or just ten minutes, of each and every day that I can count as normal.

I've discovered this past year that I don't really dwell in the trappings of my old life. It may seem strange, but I feel more attached to the new paths that necessity has opened. I don't think about returns being triumphant.

And yet, somehow, a five-mile road race with 600 anxious runners in the middle (or the we-honestly-have-no-idea-what-segment) of a pandemic, was more than a novelty. It was a brief chasing of normality.

My double-masked friend was beside me in the car, and though we hadn't gotten out yet, I knew no amount of convincing would get her to skip this exercise. Just as I knew I would pin on the racing bib and declare the digits my registration had generated to be my "lucky" number.

Eventually we would part ways. Each of us running our own race, set by any number of reasons and variables that neither of us can give a full accounting.

I would select a secret rival - someone who might look younger, but who I believed I could overtake at the finish line in one last burst of unnecessary speed.

We all tell ourselves we don't need to beat someone by a fraction of a second here at the back of the pack, but we do it anyway.

It's easy to forget the feelings of others whenever we compete against ourselves.

Maybe it's the anticipation of an announcer's voice exhaling out names into a microphone, or the muscle memory of a primary school desire not to be last to cross that finish. Maybe it's just the urge to be done.

Whatever it is, I'm always careful to weigh my stamina against the distance left to go before I dig in.

I often miscalculate. 

That last tenth of a mile seems longer than metrically possible. I can see the finish line, but the distance between me and it doesn't appear to diminish.

I will have to choose between pulling back and letting my rival have the three-second edge or whether I will need to stray from the chute in the aftermath of same-time glory and find an out-of-the-way place to hurl.

No matter how I choose to end this race, I know I will be glad I ran it.

I can't believe I've missed this at all. And yet, I have.