Fool me twice... well, that's just not going to happen. Especially after yesterday's traumatic news flash that has led to my voluntarily checking myself into procrastination rehab – imagine the (jaw-dropped on polished tiled floor) look of shock on my mid-morning, post-coffee face when I logged onto the Old Mutual Two Oceans website to see that entries for the 2010 Two Oceans Half Marathon had CLOSED. Yip, CLOSED the day before.
Just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating I logged out and logged back in hoping that the nasty word would disappear and make way for click here to enter. Alas! It did not and one very sweet, super-persuasive (verged on begging) phone call to the race organisers later I was still not able to enter the race.
Then the weirdest thing happened... I got really, really sad about the fact that I couldn't run 21.1kms on the 3rd of April. The flood of disappointment that washed over me took me by complete surprise – if you'd told me a year ago that I'd be thinking about entering a half marathon and then actually getting upset when I couldn't, well, I would've accused you of smoking your socks! In just a few short months I have become a runner, a person that actually prefers the road to the treadmill and thinks that any distance less than the 5km minimum is a waste of time.
The other thing that surprised me was that over one weekend over a 1,000 people had entered the race and fulfilled the maximum limit of 11,000 runners for the half marathon. OVER A THOUSAND people woke up on Saturday morning, logged one, filled out an online application and signed up to run. And, to add insult to injury, the race limit had been reached 7 weeks before race day – such an unlikely occurrence that it even caught my little sister (the seasoned half-marathoner) off guard. Yip, she failed to enter the race too and I was the one who had to break the news to her...
It's my fault really, I've been meaning to enter for weeks but was waiting for a little extra cash flow so that I could book my flight to Cape Town and my place in the race at the same time. I didn't think it was a problem 'cos last week they had only received about 8,000 entries and the cut-off was 11,000... *sigh* What's that old saying? Never assume, if you do, you make an ASS out of U and ME... Lesson learnt. BIG TIME.
The silver lining? I have caught the running bug 'good n proper' and I am reformed – no more putting off to tomorrow what can be done today. After all, isn't that why credit cards were invented? Anyways, this morning I plonked myself in front of my MacBook, booked myself a flight to Cape Town, registered my fabulous little sister and I online for the Pick n Pay Knysna Forest half marathon on 10 July. So we will be running 21.1kms this year... the venue's just changed and – if I'm gonna do the whole 'Miss Optimism' routine – we get a few extra months to train for it.
Comments