You ran a race?

Now that mercury is going against gravity, all the snow has turned into rain here in Chicago. This is a problem for me and others around me, as the water hits my bald head and bounces off into every one's face. There is another problem. I don't want it to rain during a race. 

The rains here is what we call a drizzle back home. The thunderstorms here is what we call rain back home. The thunderstorm we have back home hasn't happened yet in the US. If it does, everyone would be evacuated. 

There are race's happening almost every weekend during summer here, as they want to make proper use of the heat they get from the sun rather than the heater at people's homes. So one wouldn't want bad weather to come in the way.

I have run a few races. For some I registered, but never made it to the race. And for the one's I did go to, I did good in some. In one, I managed to be the last to cross the finish line. About half way through that race I saw a cop car behind me. First I thought he was going to ticket me because I was running too slow. Then I realised since I  was the last person, he was following so that the traffic can be cleared behind the cop. At one point, I almost asked him if he could drop me at the finish line.

By now you would have known that running isn't exactly my forte. I take part in races just to push myself to run at least once in a while. I try to practice before the race, but it always happens that the race itself becomes the practice. The same happened for the race last weekend. I didn't bother to practice as I had ran a race sometime last year.

It was raining to begin with. I decided to make that as an excuse and ditch the race. But my friends who were taking part thought nothing apart from an evacuation plan was going to stop them. So there I was in the race. My watch was a minute slow, so the race started without me. I tried to catch up with the rest, but my shoe thought I wasn't giving it enough attention and decided to untie itself. By the time I fixed that, everyone had gone.

I was running out of breath by the first mile itself. You see, I have the stamina of a dead donkey. Tell me to walk a minute with a spoon in my hand, I would pass out for sure. I decided to walk the rest of the race or worst case, catch a cab if the cop doesn't show up. I ran whenever the volunteers cheered for me, just to make them happy. Just when I was seeing images of stairways to hell, one volunteer told I was almost half way through. What? "Almost" half way through? The only way I could reach the finish line would be in an ambulance. 

Later I noticed there was no one in sight, ahead or behind me. I thought the race got over and everyone left or I was lost. Eventually I did make it to the finish line. Not by cop car or cab or ambulance. The results were as pathetic as I expected. There was bad news and good news. Bad news: Both my friends beat my time. Both were girls. I was the last one to finish in my age group. Good news: I had beat one person. Bad news in the good news was that he was 86!