The Boys (and Girls) are Back in Town - Part Un

Whether I gave a damn or not, my yearly 5K race has come and gone. How did my running strategies work? Well, at 3:30 yesterday afternoon, the first strategy I had, which was not giving a damn, was failing miserably.

I was hoping that I might trip and sprain my ankle on the way down to the locker room or that Nathan might call me and tell me that there was an emergency dishwashing situation at the country club, so he couldn’t sit for Iz. Unfortunately, wishing for catastrophe less than 3 hours before a 5K race means that you give a damn, especially when you suddenly feel nauseated and you know you’re not pregnant, car sick, or listening to Russ Limbaugh.



I met Amrit, one of my team members in the locker room. I plunked down my back pack and my straw basket and tried to retreat to my prior calm composure, which had been sucking down cinnamon tea and Double Stuf Oreos only two hours earlier. I changed into my lucky running outfit; okay, I really didn't have a lucky running outfit, but I thought it would sound cool if I did.

After I sorted out things to take with me in the red back pack and things to leave in the straw basket in the car, I heaved a sigh that was somewhere between giving a damn, not giving a damn, and hoping there was a trash basket nearby in case I decided to puke. Amrit was braiding her hair and told me to head out to meet the team bus. Okay, again, there was no team bus; the only thing the team really had was a banner with our company name on it, and I think we were lucky just to have that.

The “bus” was really a Toyota Highlander driven by our Fearless Leader, Tom; he was driving himself and five of us (John, Brenda, Jeff, me, and Amrit) up to race. We were stopping to pick up Brenda and Jeff along the way. Hey, we had a pick-up route, so if we had only put the banner on Tom’s Highlander, it could have been a bus!

After retrieving Brenda and Jeff at their bus stop, we began the trip to the race destination. I began to sing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” Jeff started to kick the back of John’s seat, and Amrit began to pull Jeff's hair. Tom yelled, “That’s it. If you don’t stop it, I’m going to report you all to the CEO,” which would have been a good threat if we actually had a CEO; we do, but, oh, let’s just say “it’s complicated.”

As you know by now, knowing me, that previous paragraph is a pack of lies. Anyway, the bus riders were a small sub-set of the larger team that was meeting us up at the race location. As we drove, we all got a chance to catch up, given that three of us had remained employed with our company, two had been laid off and had jobs elsewhere, and I had been laid off and re-hired thus giving me a old-new job at the company, and we won't go into that because it's way too confusing to diagram.

Like any good conversation, there’s always room to talk about the weather, especially when you’re planning to do something outdoors. Brenda (a.k.a, Weather Girl) and a Sunny Not Cloudy graduate of the Sunshine School assured me that it was not supposed to rain even though it looked like it was. By the Route 40 exit off of Route 3 North, I believed Brenda because, unlike me, she used the meteorological data on the Internet to make her forecast whereas I only said, “Ooo, look, dark clouds!” to make mine.

Once at the race destination, we unloaded from the bus. Giving a damn, I wanted to hide in the backseat at that point. But, I thought it would be really difficult to hide a 5’10” blonde wearing pink sneakers; I got out of the bus, trying so hard not to give a damn.

We all walked to the park near the start line where the race festivities occurred. We got our box of t-shirts and race numbers. Then it was time to put up the banner to state that the Team to Beat was in the house!

Actually, we weren’t full of ourselves at all. Some of us were serious runners who timed our daily runs, some had bets with other runners about their individual performances, and some of us were just trying really hard not to give a damn in order to make it to the start line without puking! This was the first year we signed up to be a co-ed team; I think Fearless Leader Tom did it thinking he’d mix things up a bit, especially because our team had lost quite a few runners due to company layoffs the past year.

We had arrived an hour before the race was to begin, so there was plenty of time to pin on numbers, stretch, socialize, and not give a damn. Both Brenda and I agreed that there was too much time to stand there and give a damn before the race. I decided that next year, I would show up ten minutes before the race, so there would be absolutely no time to give a damn.

Twenty minutes before the race started, Amrit and Brenda wandered off to go to the bathroom. I stood there and wondered if I should have some kind of strategy; if truth be told, I only hoped to run faster than last year. Somehow, in the next ten minutes, I managed to state out loud that I would try to run with Donna, who was faster than me; since I had announced my intentions publicly, there was no going back. Great Cat Goddess, what had I done?

The PA system announced that only ten minutes remained to the start of the race. Amrit and Brenda hadn’t returned. Half of me wanted to wait for them because I didn’t give a damn, and half of me wanted to head to the start line, because I gave a damn; did anyone ever think that athletic endeavors made me this conflicted? Well, they did!

I headed to the start line with everyone except Brenda and Amrit…

Okay, I have to get up at 3:30am tomorrow to go on the deep fishing trip sponsored by the technical support group at work. So, I’m leaving you in suspense, because I don’t give a damn! But, because I give a damn, Part II of this blog will be posted tomorrow, and there may even be a fishing blog on Sunday. ♥