More anonymous racing

Lacking an invitation to a Memorial Day barbeque or anything else, I went to an inaugural 5k in Lake Elsinore (the town, not the lake) this morning. It occurred to me that racing these days is like visiting your home town - there's nobody there that you know. I wonder if other people who stay holed up in their garage with a keyboard on their lap have that problem? I guess I could take up drinking and join the Hash House Harriers. Is there an equivalent group for pie eaters? Anyhow, so there I was - standing in the street outside the Lake Elsinore Storm baseball stadium with 300-or-so other runners waiting for the start. When I was racing regularly in Wisconsin in the early & mid 70's, you knew exactly what to expect around you at the starting line - RUNNERS. Thirty-five guys, maybe a token woman, and everybody skinnier than the next guy. Now it appears to be a carefully randomized sampling of the population from the nearest shopping mall. No, wait - not the mall. The mall's "Food Court". By the way, most of these people manage to beat me by cheating somewhow, but I digress. There we were, waiting for the start. The weather was horrible - 60 degrees, calm, and cloudy, rather than the preferred 62 degrees with a constant tailwind no matter which way the course turns. After the Zero-Tolerance Non-Firearm starting beep, I took off down the road, surrounded by the very same people who trampled that poor guy in a Walmart last Christmas. After a few minutes, I began to hear very loud drumming as some of the largest of the herd around me began to slow. I checked my watch at the "One Mile" sign. My watch read "7:30" and I realized the course for this first-ever race had probably been measured with the stadium groundskeeper's golf cart. Oh, well - I'm already here, I might as well keep running. Besides, this doesn't feel too bad. Funny, though - I kept going at the EXACT same pace and in another mile it didn't feel so good. I had figured out that the drumming was coming from my chest. Now it was accompanied by desperate gasping sounds, a rolling head, and mouth-corner spittle. I was given plenty of room as people passed me, averting their eyes to avoid glimpsing their futures. After several minutes of enduring this intense discomfort without the benefit of ANY pain medications, I became aware that the stadium was coming into view. The finish line was IN THE STADIUM! With renewed hope, I valiantly maintained my elite sub-eight-minute pace while listening for runners behind me. As I turned to run down the ramp into the stadium, with probably less than a minute left to go, I took a quick look over my shoulder and saw that nobody was behind me. Okay, I'm down the ramp, running along the leftfield wall, circling the stadium - spiraling in to the finish line. Nobody ahead of me, nobody behind me - nice. I'm minding my own business, running along the centerfield wall, heading for rightfield, when all of a sudden a little girl pops out of a hole in the ground, or so it seemed, and flys by like I'm walking. She looked like she'd just been let out for recess. She might have even been shrieking - or maybe it was me - I don't know. Where'd she get that energy? Fortunately immune to embarrassment, I was able to keep running another 10 seconds until I made it to the finish line. I could see the little girl in the stands, already picnicking with her parents. I barely managed to stay standing while I made my way through the chute and walked past the groundskeeper who was raking the dirt along the third base line, wearing his new, NON-EARNED race T-shirt. I swear he smirked at me as I went by, still wheezing. I expertly kicked dirt onto the seat of his golf cart and left the field in search of something sticky to eat.