I'm alive!

The weather gods must have heard my cries b/c the weather for this morning's race was so beautiful it made me feel all warm and tingly inside. 50 degrees, sunny with a light breeze blowing - perfect running weather. And yes, my friends, the fact that I am here to write this post is proof that I finished the Healthy Kidney 10K this morning, my first race since Dec 2005, and I lived to tell the tale. I'm not going to embarrass myself by telling you my time. Let's just say of the 6273 people racing today, I was cruising in the back of the pack.

But I had a very zen moment as hundreds of runners whizzed past me--sometimes being in the back of the pack has its advantages. You can breathe easy--at least figuratively. People aren't elbowing you for room. There's no shame in huffing and puffing up hills or even walking when your legs give out. It's very forgiving there in the back of the pack. Contrary to my greatest fear, I was not the last place finisher, and I enjoyed myself. Just another reminder that when you take the ego out of living in NYC, it's really not that bad.

Today was also my initiation into color-coded bibs. Starting in April, the NY Road Runners are using a corraling system that requires you to line up at the start line based on your pace. "NYRR-member entrants with an NYRR race history will be assigned based on that history at the time that they registered for the race." This means, there's no way you can fudge your pace b/c they know your last best time. Your race bib is actually color-coded...so the scary fast runners are blue or red and then it's yellow, green, orange, light blue, pink (c'est moi!), purple, gray, and brown, in that order, from fastest to slowest--for a sum total of ten colors.

I think the pink is a very pretty myself, but I was remarking to City Guy (who wore yellow) that this color coded bib thing was soooo New York. I mean, now, everyone can tell how fast or slow you are by the color on your chest, so knowing how competitive New Yorkers, people are going to be raring to earn those "fast" color bibs as some kind of badge of honor. I know I intend to--as much as I really do like pink. The truth is, with today's dismal performance, I may be donning purple or even gray my next time out, but with hard work, I know light blue or even orange are well within my grasp! Bruhhaaaaaa! Happy running!