I'm an Idiot

OK, so here I am, in the office getting some extra work done before the hell of quarter-end begins on Monday. As I wrap up what I wanted to get done today, I remember that I need to get directions to the race for tomorrow. So I go to the website and then it dawns on me: “Did I actually ever register for this race?” I mean, I’ve been thinking about running it for about a month and a half now, but I can’t remember specifically writing a check to mail in or login in to Active.com to register electronically. So I went to Active.com and sure enough, I hadn’t registered electronically. I don’t have my running folder with me that has my registrations in it, so I went to my bank account and searched for the check to no avail.

So, right now, there’s about a 90% chance I never signed up for this race tomorrow. Awesome. I guess after I registered for the Bay Café 5K, my mind assumed that I had registered for the Great Strides as well. At any rate, it never even occurred to me to double check that until about 20 minutes ago. So here I am. I have a few options:

A.) Drive up to Timonium, where runners have to pick up their race packets, and register today and see what happens. A quick side note to say that it’s always annoying to me that you have to pick up a “race packet” (which more times than not is just your shirt and race number) from a location that is nowhere near the actual race, nor near your house. For me, the drive to Timonium is about 20 minutes. Not terrible, but it’s an hour of my Saturday. And even then, about 60% of why I wanted to run was to get a shirt, something that is in serious doubt now.

B.) Screw it. Abandon all plans to do the race tomorrow and instead do my long run. Maybe even get up early and run outside (see past posts for my reasons for not liking running outside in Baltimore city). Save the $20 registration fee for a race in November or the Celtic Solstice in December, not to mention the time, energy and gas money involved just in picking up the “race packet”.

As you might imagine, option B is looking pretty attractive right now. Not only can I save myself the headache of driving to Timonium today and then Towson tomorrow morning, but I can save money that can be used for another race later in the season.

Still, I need to find a system to keep track of my race registrations because I have a lot of things going on in my head (most non-running related) and a lot of ideas for races I want to run. It’s inevitable that some of those would get mixed up.

So, as you can see, I have adjusted my countdown for the Baltimore Running Festival 5K, which I KNOW I have registered for and which will be infinitely more convenient to get to and enjoy. I will be able to walk to the starting line for that one. As it stands now, I think I will go home, go for a short run, and think of the many ways I can spend my new found $20. Sweet.