Sometimes you get off on the wrong foot and it’s hard to get back into your rhythm.
The directions to the parking lot this morning were inaccurate… or maybe I just didn’t fully understand that when they specified the preferred parking lot to use that there would be oodles of closed off roads and misdirections to get there. I was given poor directions several times and sent down impossible roadways that required U-turns and celestial navigation to extricate myself. Perhaps not so surprisingly, a similar serious of snafus occurred in trying to get from the finish line back to the parking lot, with the information booth having inaccurate or out of date info on how to navigate the (Mickey) Mousetrap-ian maze.
Part of it was that I was cold… and reeling from the knowledge that in six daytime I’m supposed to be out in the Nevada desert running a marathon in even colder temperatures. I just can’t seem to get my core firing on all cylinders and as much as I blame external forces, the real problem lies within.
The course for the revival of the Disneyland Marathon was something akin to a mishmash of their previous courses — the Disney Half, the Star Wars Half, the Avengers/Superheroes Half that were staples of the running calendar. We basically run a mile back into California Adventure, clocked 3 or 4 miles between it and Disneyland, and by mile 5 were out on the streets of Anaheim. The back 8 miles took us to the Honda Center, home of the former Mighty and now just Anaheim Ducks, as well as around Angels Stadium. Various intersections and turns had me feeling the “smarter than an average catcher” Yogi Berra’s Deja Vu all over again.
Am I glad I ran Coast to Coast once more? I suppose. This nice couple I took start line photos for during the 10K bumped into me at the finish and reciprocated, taking a shot or two for me. Those kind of encounters — good people just doing their own thing but taking a moment to support one another — those are the moments that I do find that runner high still. So I will choose to focus on that… and that Dumbo winked at me (click on the photo if you don’t believe me!).
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