Facing the Track

Today met hubby to run a test run for the upcoming ATC 3,000 Track Classic.  I have been dreading this race for 2 years.  I avoided it last year because I had an ankle injury that sidelined me for a month from  mid April to mid May.  Now I am feeling good and hubby really wants us both to get our Track Club's Bunny Award for running all of the Grand Prix Season.  This was the only race I missed last year.

I don't know exactly what it is about this race.  Maybe it is that it happens at night.   I am really a morning runner so I suspect I will be slower than usual, no big deal really I don't set out to run certain times.  I usually just want to run my best for that day.  I don't know if it is because it is just around around  the track and I hate running on the track.  The reality is I think it goes back to my past experiences on the track. Every time I go to the track I feel like that quiet bookworm from high school, the last to finish the President's Physical Fitness test mile run.  The joke of all the jocks.  Oh what an irony that I would, at 23, meet a jock that changed my opinion of brainless jocks,  and we would be together 20 years later.  That particular jock, unlike the others, always believed in me.  He saw an athlete where neither I nor anyone else I knew ever did.

In my head I know I am not that girl anymore, and that this won't be a recreation of running that mile in high school.  I told a good friend today running at the track in front of people is just one of my biggest fears.  She asked me why and I told her the President's Physical Fitness Test experience.  She said, "You are looking at this all wrong.  At least you finished.  Some of us were throwing up at the gate, you just never saw us."  I guess finishing is always the point.  I am sure when I suck it up and do this on Tuesday maybe I can finish with some of this history too.