Mystery runner race report

She appeared out of nowhere and started asking me questions.

“How fast are you going to run it?”

I had been noodling over some possible times to shoot for, but I hadn’t dared write them down or even say them out loud. Then it would become an actual goal, a marker to measure my success – or failure.

“I want to come in under 40 minutes,” I replied, kind of taken aback about the forward question from someone I had never seen before but answering it anyway.

“A lot under 40?” she asked, but peppering me with “Are you going to go out too fast in the first mile?” before waiting for a response to the first query.

“Yeah, probably,” I said with a laugh. “I don’t mean to go out so fast, but a lot of times it happens that way.”

She had short gray hair. Seemed to be in her 50s. She talked some more, telling me she had run the Amy Thompson run on Memorial Day in Kansas City for years and years. We talked about how we probably shouldn’t start so far up in the pack, but it was a reasonable strategy or you just spend so much of the first mile or two using up energy, and taking time while weaving through folks who probably should have found a spot more suitable to their pace a little farther back.

I know I would just block the true rabbits in the race so I try to stay out of their way at the front.

Then, just before the gun went off, she walked away. Absorbed by the crowd so quickly that I almost wondered whether the woman actually had been by my side talking. Or if I had just imagined the entire conversation.

But the race was on. And, yes, I did say, “Holy Crap!” out loud when my Garmin beeped off the first-mile split. It was under 8. Shoot. It was under 7:30.

“Easy there, mister,” I admonished myself.

But I was doing OK. I kept checking my legs. They were pumping fairly well. A little tired from recent runs, but a decent level of energy.

I dialed it back a little. No need to flame out with a big surge too early.

Started feeling a little weary around mile 3. Not long after I saw some of the folks from my Saturday running group passing out water at an aid station. They shouted encouragement. They whooped. They hollered. One guy had on a grass hula skirt and a coconut bra.

I felt a surge of energy as I laughed my way down the road.

When I needed another boost I replayed my pre-run tunes inside my head. Liz Phair’s “Extraordinary” and “Stars and Planets” were blasting through my iPod in the car on the way to the race.

“the ones that shine the brightest aren’t stars at all, they’re the planets just like us….
And from big to small, we all shine, shine, shine…”

Checked out the Garmin. 4.3 miles. Come on. Push it. Push it. Just a little more.

As I looked up at the finishing clock, I pumped my fist. Came in under 40. I Blew that PR away. By nearly two minutes.

Before leaving the house, I had looked up my time in this race last year. And my all-time fastest 8K from Al’s Run in Milwaukee a few years back. I have been feeling strong and I was thinking about pursuit of a PR.

But I hadn’t really decided. In fact I was wavering. Then I committed by saying it out loud to an ethereal runner who was there one minute and then gone.

Who was that woman?