Racing With Time

I joined my second race last Sunday. It wasn’t a bad run, but I timed two minutes longer than my first run last March. I can’t exactly explain how this happened when I was sure I could beat my own time. Ok, make that half-sure. My friend, who ran the race with me, said she felt that the course we took was more than 5 kilometers (our entry level in the race). Does that rationalize for the two minutes? I don’t want excuses like that to cover up for my failure.

My friend admitted of cheating in the race. She took a shortcut when no one was watching. The shortcut saved her around three minutes. I guess we have different reasons for joining. She just wants to be a finisher. I don’t want to merely finish the race, but more importantly to improve my clock time.

It’s not as if the world ended and I’m sulking at my failure. I’m still in the top 40 percentile of the overall finishers. I overtook a lot of twenty-something girls in the race also. I could beam with pride :) But at this point, I still want to push myself to the limit, and see how far I can (still) go. If I can improve my time by 3-4 minutes, I’ll be really happy. But building up my endurance is not that easy. Lately, I realize that I am racing with Time. I’m not getting any younger and there are still a lot of things I want to experience before nature takes its own course and my knees begin to wobble.

I don’t want to sound like an oldie. I’m just thirty! I’m turning thirty-one in a couple of months. But I still want to be fit for the next twenty years of my life. So if Time wants to race with me, game on! I’m looking forward to my next race. Hopefully, I’ll do better then. :)