I ran the Tar Heel Ten Miler earlier this year and quickly re-upped for 2017 as an alumnus. Today, the organizers announced an added challenge of running the 4 miler first. The kicker is one has to be back in under 40 minutes in order to get right back in line for the 10 miler.
I think I can do it and want to change my registration…. unfortunately, they’ve transitioned to a different service since I signed up and I don’t really know how to get this sorted. I’ve got an email into the organizers but this is about the fourth thing recently that I had all planned and finalized in advance, only to have things change unbeknownst to me in the interim.
Moral of the story, a moral I hate every single time it happens to me: don’t ever do anything early because it’ll just get mucked up as time goes by. How can this be the life lesson we take away from this? It happens to me far too often because I’m a planner, a guy who likes to have things like ducks lined up in rows. I’m fairly sure that if I had ducks, I’d keep them in a row. Albeit, I also suspect I’d be weirded out by the regimented lifestyle I was forcing on said ducks.
It’s been an odd day.
Point is, I’m not going to learn to put off plans and decisions — it’s just not in my nature. And I think for the most part it’s not really in the runner’s makeup either. We all are training for something — there’s calendars and plans and whatnot for achieving goals. I guess I’ve seen people make a snap decision to go do a race. They’ll get through it (usually) but the training and planning is all so the event doesn’t destroy one mentally or physically. But if training and planning only leads to MORE stress, what kind of lesson is that teaching anybody ever?
Sigh. What a way to run a railroad as Daffy Duck might say.