It's a news flash, I know. But this morning I sought out my Green Flame Energy team tent at the Car-X Crazy K event, but no one was there. I knew I was the first to run, but the web site said to be there an hour and a half before the race. So, there I was with my bag sitting underneath our orange tent with green pom poms taped to it when a guy in the white tent next to ours said, "Are you part of Michelle's team?"
"Why yes," I answered.
"I wonder if she's going to be here because her grandmother in Florida was having trouble."
"She put on Facebook this morning that she'd see our team here."
"I hope that means her grandmother is better," the guy said.
We started chatting and then there were some things that dawned on me. None of these people were wearing the safety orange shirts nor did they have green hair. Hmmmm, Michelle's a pretty active person, maybe she had more than 10 people e-mail and want to be part of her team. Oh well, we chatted and chatted about these people from Watseka. And I kept looking over my shoulder for someone with a costume that matched mine. When I finally saw someone, I thanked them for hanging with me and then I went to meet Michelle and Prudence at our tent. I noticed Michelle didn't say hello to the other people. She didn't even look in their general direction.
"Weird," I thought.
And then it occurred to me. Two entirely different Michelles, and I'd just spent an hour hanging out with total strangers thinking they were the strangers I hadn't met on my team... What's worse is that I talked about living a few blocks from Michelle and teaching at her son's pre-school and going to the same gym, but no one corrected me. I was totally just this random crazy lady with green hair making small talk with a bunch of social workers.
DOH!
The good news was that my foot held up. I did have to walk half of it, but that was mostly due to the fact that I haven't been running outside and the heat than it had anything to do with my foot. It was sore, but it wasn't killing me. My calves did protest though. Since most of the people were walking by mile 1.5 and they were dishing up HOT water at the water stations, there just wasn't any way to cool down. I was thirsty when I started, mostly because I'd spent 1.5 hours (their suggested arrival time) sitting in the shade under a tree and then another 30 minutes in the sun waiting to start.
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