Turkey Day race 2013: I discovered I have a pride problem

Even though I hadn't quite worked up to five miles yet, I decided to run this year's Thanksgiving Day race, a 5-mile tradition for over 100 years. I knew I could just take it slow, and I offered to pace David to a PR. He turned me down. I insisted. He told me he was out of shape. I pressured!
He still told me no, but I planned on doing it anyway. There's no better way to start Thanksgiving day than yelling at your spouse for 40 minutes, right?!

So, with that in mind, I got to the start of the race and pinned on my bib. But I left my D-tag in the car. David noticed it was missing. "You forgot your chip! You really have been out of running for awhile!" I hemmed and hawed. "Oh, it's too far to go back to the car," I said. But really I was too proud to put my tag on. I knew I'd be slower than usual and I kind of didn't want that time recorded. As I stood in the bathroom line a few minutes later, I realized what I was doing. I mean, how silly! I was proudly refusing to record a slower time.

But that's how I run now.
That's what I'm capable of now.
And we all have fast days, slow days, injury days, and healthy days.

If I left off my tag, I'd be pretending I was "really" faster than my speed today. I'm not. This is as fast as I am right now!

So, humbled, I went back to the car and put my chip on.

Post-race proof!

And humbled I should be. I was slow. I didn't pace David: we started together, and I ran 7:30s like a stopwatch (which is fantastic, since I didn't wear a watch or Garmin) for the first two miles. Then I turned around and realized David was gone, like long gone, and who knows how far back he'd left me??
I'd purposefully started well back from the fast people at the start, even though I usually try to get up front at NOTC races since they are chipped, but not chip timed (they only have a timing mat at the finish, so your chip records gun time. Weird, I know.). But this time, I wanted to avoid the pressure of faster people at the start. The result was that I spent the last three miles either passing people or all alone. And then I was done. 35:55. Yes, I cringed. Yes, I'm kind of sort of a little cringing to type it now! But my time really doesn't matter. For one thing, I bet you don't even care! And for another thing, I didn't get HURT running the race. That's for more important to me. And from that perspective, I'm happy with the race.