Fifty

Not only did I turn 50 this year. I share a birth year with the New York Road Runners club. They celebrated their 50th on Wednesday June 4th with a 5 mile run that started at 5.30 A.M. Entry was free and the race was limited to 5000 people. The claim from the Road Runners club was that all the slots were filled in 1 day.

I wasn't so sure about getting up at 4.45 am to go run around the park with 5000 of my closest friends and I decided that it wouldn't be the end of the world if I couldn't get my sorry behind out of bed. On the other hand, the symbolism of the 50 year old Queen of SLG running in celebration of NYRRC 50th anniversary was not wasted on me.

Wednesday morning, I was awakened at 4.30 a.m.... by unbelievably heavy rain! So that made my decision easy. I would turn over and go back to sleep. Of course, things are never as easy as they seem, especially if the decision is to run or not to run. 15 minutes later, the rain had mostly stopped, and then started again. Anyway, you catch my drift. Finally, at 5.05 I decided that there was no way I was going back to sleep now, so I might as well go out and run the damned thing, rain or no rain.
I trotted over to the start, in a little emergency rain poncho because the rain was now blowing sideways. Luckily there were, not quite 5000 but 1700 idiots who were jogging over in the dusk and the rain to the start with me. It was a no frills affair. Mary Wittenberg showed up at the start to thank the runners for their support of the NYRRC and off we went. The rain kept up pretty well, it actually rained so hard in spots that I could not see my split times. But I was happy I did it, and quite satisfied. There was no medal at the finish line, no cupcakes to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the NYRRC. There were no other SLG'er at the finish so I trotted home feeling a bit lonely, and I think I may have cried a bit, but I am not sure and nobody could tell anyway, because it was still raining....