I’d like to tell you that all the best race drama happens on course, but that is only a half truth. Some of the fun of a race also happens in the days and hours surrounding a race: travel, package pickups, transportation and trials.
Case-in-point…
I just got back from picking up my race package for the upcoming half marathon and, of course I got a wee bit of adventure and drama out of the effort.
See, I had parked across the river and walked over the bridge towards downtown to save myself ten bucks on parking. (Mr. Thrifty here.) It was cloudy when I started. I needed a walk. The twenty minute stroll each way was not the problem, nor was the fact that the weather betrayed me and the skies opened up and half way between where I’d left my truck and the front doors of the race expo I was suddenly dashing for spotty shelter in a rainstorm.
No. I can deal with all of that.
Where the fun started was me looking a lot like a drowned rat when I arrived at the second floor lobby of the hotel where they were hosting package pickup this year.
Maybe because of my soaked state the woman in front of me started making conversation—is it raining outside? what distance are you running? is this your first race? do you think we’re in the right line? no really, I think we’re in the wrong line, why is this line taking so long? do you think I should ask someone? I’m worried we’re in the wrong line so um how about you hold my place and I’ll go up to the front and check to see if we’re in the right place and—look… I wasn’t worried, I just wanted my race package, but obviously she was not having it…
She dashed off. Moments passed. And I thought she had found the mythical shorter line and left my life forever when she didn’t return right away… but no, sure enough I spotted her down the hallway (just as I was about to give up and go back to my stoic queuing, too.) She was waving me forward, drat, and so I contemplated my options for three quarters of a second and then I ditched my honest spot in the queue and, well, I followed her to the end of the other line.
Here I could detail all the ins-and-outs of the next five minutes: her asking random people for queue clarity, looking for signage and now both of us being foolishly lost in a small room all with no real urgency on my part. Long story short it turned out that she was wrong: we had been in the right line before, given up our spots, and now were definitely in the wrong line.
Sigh.
I’m so sorry, she apologized.
It’s fine. I’ll just go back and get in the right line, I told her, really not minding. Really. The whole me following a stranger’s directions mistake was mine and the root cause and had, what, cost me maybe five minutes. Besides I was in no rush to go back out in the rain. I would deal. I just wanted my race package. I should have bailed here.
Look, I think some people just are drama magnets. They attract it. Drama is drawn to them for some inexplicable reason. Or maybe its that they make choices that evoke drama. I don’t really know. But not content with swirling just me into her package pickup queue drama this curious lady decided that she was going to remedy the situation by sneaking—butting, sweet-talking, socially engineering—her way into the proper line close back where we had given up our spots earlier and in the process pulling a few additional innocent people into the aforementioned drama.
Hushed conversations ensued. I must have turned red from embarrassment by this point but you know that feeling you get when you are sunk so deep into a situation that your brain just shuts off the connection to the rest of your body and you’re just watching it all happen: that was me right then. I just wanted my race package.
We were a proper race package pickup club now, multiple strangers united by the simple dream of picking up a numbered paper bib, a t-shirt, and some safety pins. Butting in line. Offending everyone. Covering it all up with a bad story. Being those people. Yikes. Where had I gone wrong? It had turned into line drama, inventing a new reality, pretending we were all long lost friends queuing together as to not anger the six people in line behind us, me wondering the whole time who I was more at risk of offending worse: my new queue buddies if I slinked away and got back at the end of the line or those random six people if I stayed.
I just wanted my damn race package.
Sigh.
Races are full of story and adventure. For a few hours on the day we’ll be on course running through the city streets full of action and intrigue. Stories will abound. Memories will flourish. But then, also, you never know what kind of trouble you’ll get up even just stepping into a room with a bunch of anxious runners.
I avoided making eye contact with most everyone on my way out and I may need to buy a false moustache for the race.
