dianaschnuth

I was sitting in the parking lot of the movie theater, eating a banana behind the steering wheel of my car, watching runners and walkers of all ages trickle into the building.

“I’m sitting in the parking lot before my first 5K, eating my breakfast banana and watching the other runners arrive,” I tweeted. “Exciting, surreal.” And it really was.

I walked into the building, car key clicker looped onto my shoelaces, bib and timing tag in hand, looking for the flock of bright green shirts that would be my teammates (even though I only really knew one person on the Heartland team). Turns out they were right by the door, so I didn’t have to look far.

I also found that the one person I knew was in charge of doling out the remaining green tech shirts, so she wasn’t going anywhere. We chatted while I got my timing tag on my shoe and my bib on my hoodie. While we chatted, I looked around at the other runners and realized that I really should have layered one of my thrift-store tech shirts under the new green one I got for my fundraising efforts. They say not to change anything up for the race, though, and wearing the hoodie and scarf over the tech shirt was how I’d been doing things, so it’s just as well.

As we chatted to pass the time, she asked me what my pace was. I hadn’t run the race last year, after all, so she was understandably curious. I only lied a little when I said I had an 11-minute mile (it’s actually about 12:15, but has been as low as 9:15 for shorter distances). She offered that, if I could run the whole 3.1 miles instead of run-walking, we could run together! I was doubtful, but was feeling the pre-race hype, so I agreed to try to pace her.

She also decided she wanted to be ON the starting line, instead of farther back in the pack. I had no place whatsoever being on the starting line — I might have actually enjoyed the experience more had I been ensconced in a swarm of fellow runners — but there we were.

And the gun went off, and there we went.

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