Michael: Race Day

Saturday, May 1, 2015

The leaf cutter ants
Are weaving their ragged path
Through our garden’s weeds.

Success. We were able to sign up for the Volcan Eco Xtreme 21k yesterday at the Mercado. We received our very nice shirt and a pretty decent swag bag.

The people who organize the event were signing runners up in David, but the very nice lady volunteering at the Mercado did pull in a former participant to try and answer some of our questions about the course; like is there a course? He only spoke Spanish but he did it with enough confidence and body language that it sounds like we’ll be running in a loop partly off the main road with a few hills thrown in along the way.

There’s also going to be water either at the 8k mark or every 8k. Either way I should be fine without carrying any myself, which is nice. Without a website to take a peak at the course and past results, though, I’m just going on my bravura that no half marathon will take me over 2 hrs.

We’ll pick up our shoe tags and race bibs sometime between 6:30 and race start at 8:00. Without our own vehicle, we’ll either end up walk/jogging the two miles to the event or hopefully be picked up by the bus somewhere in route.

The other minor annoyance of traveling to a race without our own vehicle is that we have nowhere to secure any extra gear, like spare clothing. If I knew and felt I could trust the organizer, or even spoke the same language, I would’ve asked if someone could keep an eye out while we run. But given that we’re in the dark about that, along with many other details, like if there will be porta-potties, we’ll sit out the darkness here and try to get our business taken care of in the comfort of home so we don’t have to take any excess baggage with us, if you know what I mean.

Otherwise it’s race morning as usual. Up early after a pretty decent night’s sleep. Got up a few times to pee, but that’s just because I’m getting old and nothing to do with jitters. I do set an alarm on race days, though I’m almost always up before it goes off. That is pre-race nerves. I like to get up at least three hours before event start to give myself time to eat, digest, sometimes put on heat…That usually has me up before my normal pre-dawn bio-rhythm eye opening.

Outside of applying my warrior potion on any tight or exposed muscles and joints, I don’t go through any bizarre rituals or chants or wear my high school sweetheart’s g-string or what not. I do like to have a race number that revolves around the numbers 4, 5, 8, or 0. But there’s almost always a way to manipulate whatever I’m given to work in one of those digits without stretching past the 4 basic mathematical functions.

Light’s coming up and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day for a run.
Time to lather up and go see what we can do, or at least discover where we’re going.