Of all the jobs in the world, the one I’d hate the most is salesperson. I am not ashamed to admit that I’m the worst salesperson I’ve ever known. The thought of knocking on doors or making cold calls is enough to make me break into a sweat.

As a race committee member for Stone Ridge 5K, I have to obtain sponsors. This is the part of the job that I hate the most. I absolutely cannot stand going to businesses and giving a speech while handing over my little pieces of paper. So I’m not. I’m sitting at my computer e-mailing sponsorship info and race flyers. My excuse is that it’s more efficient, because it’s faster and the e-mail goes directly to the source. The reality is that it’s the only way I will do it. Fortunately, there are other committee members who love going to businesses so I let them handle most of it while I work on putting together letters, spreadsheets, and creating a facebook page for the race.

Speaking of races, I ran the Rockville Rotary Twilight 8K Saturday night. I think this was the coolest night in the history of the race. It is a notoriously hot race that, even though it’s held at 8:45pm, has a large number of participants puking, passing out, and requiring medical attention for dehydration and heat exhaustion. So even though the weather on Saturday was uncharacteristically cool, the warnings and reminders to runners to stay well hydrated and stop (or not even start) if you didn’t feel good still went out. There was lots of water available at the start and along the course. There were also two or three overhead sprinklers you could run through.

To be honest, I did not have high expectations for this race. I felt sluggish all week, my ear was hurting (probably infected from the pool) so I was taking rather a lot of ibuprofen, and I haven’t exactly been training for short races. Still, my track workout Wednesday morning went well (considering I had to start at 5:15am and do it alone) and I had a good 2 hr nap Saturday afternoon, so at least I was well-rested.

During my warmup, however, I started getting a headache and stomach cramps. So I stopped warming up and went and drank some water and walked around. 15 mins before race start I had to visit the porta-potty. Stood in line behind a very large man in two-sizes-too-small singlet doing some rather inappropriate stretching so I made sure I looked the other way. Mercifully, my line moved fastest (when does that ever happen?!) and I was in and out and to the start line in time.

The first mile felt awful. I seriously considered bagging the race but decided that, at worst, I would just have to slow down, so I kept going. I’m glad I did because, after a couple of miles of dragging my feet, I actually started feeling better. Most frustrating was that it was dark so I kept having to turn on the light on my Garmin to see my pace. It’s amazing how difficult the small act of pressing a button can be when you’re trying to run fast. So I didn’t look at the Garmin very much and just tried to hang on to a couple of ladies in front of me.

That's me in the black and white PR uniform, hanging on to the ladies on front, whom I later passed.

I guess it was about halfway through the race that I realized there was a large group in front of me and I needed to regain contact with them since it’s much easier to run in a pack than on your own. I managed to regain contact as we snaked through a parking lot and actually pulled to the front of the group and then moved ahead to the next group. That gave me a boost and I started picking up the pace.

The last mile was my fastest as we turned on to 355 for the final straightaway and I decided to go for sub-35:00. That didn’t quite happen but I cruised in at 35:22 for 288th overall, 45th female, and 5th in my age group. I enjoyed some awesome post-race munchies and a great band that played until 11pm. There’s something much more appealing about night-time post-race festivals.

Given the choice between making cold calls for 35 minutes or running an 8K, I know which I’d choose!