The K is for Karma and She's a Bitch Like Me

There is nothing like running in the back third of a neighborhood 5K to really make you hate humanity.

I don't know what things are like up among the fast people, never having been there. The race must be over so fast you don't even have time to hate all the other people in it. Back among my people, I bet it must seem like we tootle right along in a spirit of underachieving goodwill and slacker joie de vivre, but alas no. Those back 5k are a Hobbesian nightmare: nasty, brutish, and long.

The back of a 5K race is more like a fire drill in hell than a competitive sporting event. At the beginning of the race, all the inexperienced people and packs of chattering middle-schoolers push past you in a burst of herky-jerky speed, evidence of a misplaced and ultimately tragic optimism. When those same people lose momentum and start walking, less than a kilometer in, it is hard not to feel a certain perverse satisfaction in passing them, even as they clog up the road, running in lemming-like little clumps of inconsistent speed, apparently having no idea how much more race they have in their futures.

We back-of-the-racers are a rude lot--the rule-breakers are all back there, their forbidden jogging strollers knocking against other people's heels. We are the people who throw the paper cups down on the road after we go through the water station, rather than pitching them off to the side. Most of us don't know any better. Some of us are just assholes.

There was one woman in particular today who I loathed, and believe me when I say that this seething hatred may have been the only thing keeping me in the race on a day when I felt like ass on rusty wheels. She would run ahead of me a little ways, then walk, and I swear she was watching for me to pass her, because every time I did, she'd start to run again--in shorter and shorter bursts. Oooooooh, I hated that. And like most of the walk/runners, she wasn't pulling off to the side of the course for her walking, forcing those of us trying to maintain a steady pace to detour around her, a maneuver I had to perform no fewer than seven times in five piddling kilometers. Granted, she had to weave around me, too, but that was eminently her own fault.

In the home stretch, I reached down deep for a final kick, and I beat her by ten yards or so. And that was pretty much the only satisfying thing about that race, as I ran more than a minute slower than my goal pace and my goal pace wasn't going to be setting any land-speed records in the first place--I mean, heck, my main competition was walking for large portions of the race.

So now I'm just going to sit around in the playroom with my newtlet for the rest of the day, possibly in combination with some light holiday-weekend drinking, and try to get my love for humanity back. If anybody asks me to do any physical labor today (and I'm looking at you Mr. Newt), I'm going to say "no," because I left it all out on the course. Nothing left in the tank but bitterness and a compelling desire to eat pie.

Next race: October 10.