Are You Kidding Me?

Every day there is new evidence that I am an idiot:
A little before ten o'clock I finally started gathering the things I needed for the big race (SLC half marathon) the next morning. I looked down at the spot on the floor where I keep my running shoes. They weren't there. I checked my gym back. They weren't there either. Those are the ONLY two places I keep my shoes. For good measure, I checked my closet. They weren't there. I checked the car. They weren't there. I checked everywhere else in my room. They weren't there. The only possible thing I could think of was that I had inadvertently left them at the gym. I called. No one answered. Then I realized that the open-24-hours gym that I go to actually closes on weekend nights. I was too late; they had already closed.

In a panic and with terror, I called my good running friend for ideas or advice of what to do. We had planned to carpool down there together, but with my situation as it was, I thought that maybe I should go separately so I could stop by the gym in the morning and pick them up. We both concluded that there would not be enough time to get to the start of the race. Fortuitously, or rather through divine intervention, I had purchased some new shoes just the week before. I had planned to break them in for the next marathon in a month. But, I wanted to test them out on the treadmill before I ran outside to make sure that they would work for me. Well, I sure tested them, but now I've got to keep them.

They say that if you get the right shoe for your feet, you don't really need to break them in. I don't think these are the right shoes. I wore out my abductor digiti minimi muscles in both feet and have a huge blister on the arch of my right foot. It could be that I had just laced them a bit too tightly. If it weren't for the ibuprofen that I took right before I don't think I would have been able to finish. Or, I would have finished, but barefooted.

Considering the circumstance, however, I had one of the best races ever. I beat my goal time by three minutes and I took off more than five minutes from last year's time and more than 13 minutes from my time last month. I was very happy with the result. I just wonder if I would have done better with my regular shoes. Although, there is the possibility, too, that I could have done worse. Yikes.

Lessons learned:
Always have an already-broken-in pair of shoes.
Gather things sooner than the night before.
Never forget ibuprofen.
Be worthy of blessings.