Friday, September 23, 2016

Fancy Meeting You Here

Have you ever have something weird happen to you in a race?

I'm not talking about farting, burping, wetting yourself, pooping, or vomiting. They're all pretty normal activities for a race. I'm talking more about something that leaves you thinking 'can't believe that happened'.

Something weird happened to me in last week's half marathon. Yeah, I know - you didn't know I was running a half marathon. Yes, I've been an absent blogger. Again. Because life. Because busy. Because stuff. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

So just to catch you up, I ran a half marathon last weekend. In Sydney. It was originally going to be a marathon but I just wasn't feeling the training love and lots of my friends were doing the half so the full became a half. No regrets. Just a fun weekend in Sydney. A well-needed long weekend of no jobs and no responsibility and no stress of worrying about running 42.2k.

Just a little side-note here - #2 son and girlfriend coincidentally chose last weekend to move into a unit. And because of the Sydney trip we managed to miss out on having to haul furniture. Mostly. Except for the fridge that arrived on Friday before keys were in possession and when no one except little old me was around to help lug it up two flights of stairs. There was a near-death crushing accident because I'm not so coordinated at pulling extremely heavy white goods while walking backwards up steps. But I lived to tell the tale and so, fortunately, did the fridge.

Anyway, back to the race. And the weird thing that happened. I was running along thinking the usual things that I think in a race - Am I running too fast? Am I going to die? This is not fun. I'm going to have ice cream afterwards. How can they call this course flatter with all these hills? Shake it off, shake it off. Oh no - not another 16k of Tay-Tay. Think of another song. Shake it off, shake it off. Ooh look at those cute tights. Is that rain? - when I heard a voice next to me.

"Hey, you live in Howitt St don't you?"

A woman that I'd never seen before was right next to me. A woman who freakily knew which street I live in.

"Yep"

"I live up the road in the blue house. I see you out running all the time. Love your tights."

Okay, so a neighbour not a stalker - phew. And a neighbour with pretty damn good taste in tights. And a neighbour who's training for Melbourne marathon and was doing Sydney as a bit of a hit-out.

She ran off (a neighbour who's faster than me) then when she got about 30 metres away she turned around and ran back.

"That was rude of me. My name's Kerrie"

"Charmaine"

And she was off again. Leaving me a little bemused. I'd finally met the lady in the blue house but in another city in the middle of a race.

So has anything like this happened to any of you?