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night before the race, I spent hours getting everything ready.
This included the requisite one hour of pinning and re-pinning
my number to my shirt. It may sound like a simple task but NASA
scientists would have trouble tackling this to get it just right.
I poked approximately 15,000 holes in my racing shirt trying to
get the number pinned on, centered up and down, and not have a
big bulging middle. Why this is, I don’t know. I’ve
stopped questioning it. It just is.
The funniest moment came when I had pinned through
both sides of my shirt but failed to notice. Trying to put on
a shirt with a safety pine through the front and back is akin
to a drunk Jim Carrey imitating Jerry Lewis.
I laid everything out in detail and planned my every
move for the next morning (sans the attack
on the old gums). I looked over all the mementos from last
year and read two days’ worth of newspaper articles about
the race. I even went as far as to fully don my entire racing
ensemble just to make sure I wasn’t missing something
important like shoes... or legs.
When I was finally satisfied that my morning stumbling
would be somewhat coordinated, I retired to bed to read a book.
Somehow, I got tired and fell asleep with the light on at about
10:00 PM. Yes, I thrashed about here and there over the next
few hours but compared to the normal one hour I normally enjoy
before a big race, I was in rest Xanadu.
Earlier in the evening I had watched the sun set (a
spectacular view out the back of my house) and the thought occurred
to me that the next time I saw that orb, I’d be racing
in a marathon. For all the training, I was ready for this and
was glad the race had finally arrived. I waited a year to vindicate
my 2002 goal and the moment was near.
The stories:
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