It Gets Hot Today?!?

Well, I have mixed feelings about today’s River Run. On a positive note I finished six minutes faster than I did last year and had a fun, comfortable race. Everything else was further evidence of a cosmic conspiracy against me. It hasn’t been warm in three months, until today. The sun came out at about mile three and forced me to slow down after mile six. I passed the mile six marker at 58 minutes and some change, and I had to back off the gas. I could tell that I was getting overheated. It took me almost forty minutes to finish the last 3.3 miles, killing my race. That’s better than killing me, but I didn’t feel that way at the time. One of the reasons I got overheated was that I was wearing an ear covering headband to keep my ear buds in. I’m growing to hate my Shuffle. Not only was it a contributing factor to me blowing up, it stopped working right after mile six. I don’t know what causes it – probably sweat – but sometimes when I’m exercising it will spontaneously pause a song to tell me the title and artist, repeatedly. This is beyond frustrating, especially if an Iron Maiden song is playing because then it gives me the unwanted, already known information in Portuguese. I kid you not. I know Maiden is huge in Brazil, but so what. They’re English. As I was ripping off my headband and looking for a storm drain and congratulating myself for choosing shorts with pockets, I saw a guy on the side of the road messing with the mandatory ghetto ass timing chip every runner was forced to wear. I looked down at my shoes and saw that I had lost my chip, so I don’t have an official time for this year. I screamed a curse word. I shouldn’t complain too much. Everything went perfectly two weeks ago. Expecting this race to go perfectly was being greedy. I have a new personal best, and I had a lot of fun participating in something that’s special about Jacksonville – in a good way.