One of those days

Today has been one of those days.  One of those days where you SERIOUSLY contemplate going home and crawling back into your bed and sleeping until this nonsense passes.  There is an old saying that is a corollary of Murphy's Law that applies here:

"Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse." 

Speaking of Murphy's Law;  as I understand it, most of us have Murphy's Law incorrect.  It is often stated, "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong"... or something similar, which is more likely from Finagle's Law which states, "Anything that can go wrong, will."  Murphy's Law more accurately has a slightly different twist, stating: "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those things can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it."  That is not really the kind of thing that I am talking about when I suggest that today has been one of those days.

I am talking about the scene that I will illustrate for you now.  (This is simply for illustrative purposes and not what has actually happened to me today.)  Picture this:  You pick up your coffee cup and put it to your lips to partake in your ritualistic cup of Joe or cup of Joy as it were, when you turn the cup a split second too early and spill a couple of precious drops onto your shirt.  You look down and notice that the one and only white part of your shirt must have had a target surrounding it and your coffee had perfect aim, hitting the bullseye.  As you begin to wipe your newly formed brown spot on your shirt, you pull the napkin from the table which apparently had one tiny piece of the corner ever so slightly under the creamer and you inadvertently pull the creamer off of the table and onto your pants.  Not wanting to smell like sour creamer for the remainder of the day, you go to change your outfit.  Once chosen, you remove your breakfast laden clothing and snag your pants on your heel and tear your pant leg rendering those pants even unworthy of the Salvation Army donation bag.  As you change into your new outfit you pull your shirt over your head, messing your perfectly coiffed hair requiring at the very least another can of hair spray to get it back to "just so".  As you are re-creating perfection you notice in the mirror that you have a large smudge of deodorant all down the front of your shirt from pulling it over your head moments ago.  After far too long re-dressing and fixing and fluffing and cleaning you head back to get your now essential cup of joy.  You reach to pick up your cup when the handle breaks off.  All of this is calamitous to be sure, but nothing catastrophic.  Simply annoying, frustrating and inconvenient, but not too terribly troublesome.  Now it is finally time to go to work, but you bump your elbow on the door frame as you are heading back into the bathroom for a quick brush of the teeth where you clumsily drip a small amount of toothpaste down the front of your shirt, but you cannot be bothered with that now, so you decide that no one truly notices you in the first place and you don't have time to deal with this any more.  You walk out the door only to have forgotten your keys and must go back inside to get your keys, return only to find that your car won't start.  This is pretty well how my day has gone today.  I am working on the afore mentioned adage that "left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse." 

Do not hear me wrong though, I do not believe there is any outside force or black magic or even Karma or Kismet controlling these things.  I do not believe that "the heavens", "mother nature" or "the gods" are conspiring against me.  I do not believe my God works that way.  I believe that all or much of this is entirely my fault and my perspective, as it is all in how one views the "happenings".  I see it more like Hanlon's Razor which states:

"Never attribute malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

You will potentially notice that several of the things that "happened" in the above example were not exactly the "fault" of the protagonist, but things that just seemed to just happen in the midst of all of the other happenings that CAN be attributed adequately to stupidity, further exacerbating the situation.  For instance, I was nearly run over... TWICE today on my ride home from work.  Both times I was on the sidewalk where, presumably cars should NOT be driving in the first place. 

Either way, I am STILL contemplating crawling, carefully back into my bed until all of this nonsense passes. 

You will notice that none of this has anything to do with running or my 50 in 50 goals, but the truth is... two things.  1.  I am a little scared to either go outside and run, or even to stay in, for that matter, and 2.  I just needed to write this down so that I could reconcile just how ridiculous this all is, and then I could continue on with the rest of my life as normal.  I am now refusing to participate in this calamitous, just-one-of-those-days days.  The four or five of you can now carry on with the remainder of your day.  Thanks for "listening".  Carry on.  Nothing to see here.

Memphis

St. Jude's Classic -- Memphis, TN

State #32

Noble and I travelled to Memphis for the St. Jude's Classic Half Marathon in Memphis this past weekend.  

The long and short of it is that it was a good race.  I did not get another PR, but was still under 1:40:00 and I am happy with that.

                                Memphis has certainly changed, but at the same time, it has remained exactly the same.  I went to college and dental school in Memphis somewhere around a hundred years ago.  I have not been back there since 1996.  Noble and I had an opportunity to walk around the University of Memphis campus.  We went into the old athletic dorm where I lived for three years.  I showed him some of the classrooms and places I used to hang out.  We went over to the Tiger's practice facility and saw where I used to go for football practice every day.  It has changed a bit, but brought back a great number of memories, fond memories.  We had a $75 lunch at Houston's.

But that was mostly because we HAD to have the spinach artichoke dip and he insisted on having the prime rib.  As usual, Houston's was PACKED.  Even add odd times, that place is completely full.  We had a 30 min. wait.  But the food was very good, and we had a nice time together. After lunch, we went to the expo and got my race packet.... no, it was actually before we went to lunch.  I remember now because we had to wait at the expo to get in because it was just before noon.  Memphis is on central standard time and my watch read 12:38 pm, so I thought we were good, but it was only 11:38 am there.  It was a long line to get in after that, but it went quickly enough and then we went off to lunch.  I drove Noble by the house I lived in while in dental school.  I had a hard time remembering how to get there, but once I found the right turn, I found the house.  It was a nice house that served me well while I was studying.

Since we had eaten a late lunch, neither one of us were hungry for dinner, so we just went to the grocery and picked up some snacks for the night and breakfast the next morning and went back to the room to watch a movie.  We had a bit of an early night, in bed by 9:30pm.

I woke up about 5:00 am and got some breakfast and made sure I had everything in good working order, then began to look at the weather.  It was raining and it was lightning.  They had already pushed the race back 30 min, and by 6:00am they had pushed it back another 30 min.

  It finally stopped raining about 8:00am, which the original start time of the race and looked like we were all good for a clear race... and it was.  The course was wet, but it did not rain.  I had a pretty good race until about mile 9, then struggled again about mile 12.  I was running about 7:15 per mile, but there were some pretty hefty hills toward the end that really zapped my energy.  There was lots of fan support and cheering and people thanking all of the runners for running.  This was a charity event for the kids of St. Jude after all.  All of the cheering was motivating and the scenery was very familiar.  I knew all of the roads and exactly where I was throughout the race, which actually was a bit of a negative because I knew how far I was going and how far I still had to go.  Noble walked around the course and was able to see me, and I was able to see him several spots on the course and at the finish.  That was a nice treat.  He also got some pictures of me struggling... er, I mean running.

I think his photos with my iPhone are just as good as the race photos from the professional photographers.  Of course they are all just boring pictures of me running, so maybe it is the subject rather than the photographer or medium.  

   

After the race, we went to another hotel and that is when we toured around the University of Memphis and I took him back downtown to the dental school and showed him around there as well.  Then we went to Corky's BBQ.  He has been to the Rendezvous already with his mom and siblings, so I took him to the "other" BBQ joint in town.  It is all about the food ya know.

Look at all of those ribs!!!  They were super good.  He did not actually eat them all, but he put a huge dent in them.  I had the Sweet Tea Fried Chicken Sandwich.  It was pretty good.

Later that evening, after all of the touring around Memphis, we went back downtown and had dessert with a friend from dental school, Dr. Joe Ruder, who also ran in the race and his wife.  It was a nice evening and good to see him again.   We had a great time in Memphis.  I do not feel the need to go back.  I like it there.  It holds a lot of good memories for me, but I have no need to go there for anything.  I am happy that I was able to spend the time with Noble.  He is a fine young man.  We had some great conversations.  

My next Half is not until Jan.  I have two races, one week apart. Although, thanks to Tommy Medlin I am running a 10k this weekend in Daytona... on the Daytona International Speedway.  Two laps around the track.  Tommy is racing the triathlon 70.3.  Good luck Tommy and thanks for the race entry.  Should be fun, although I am certain to get smoked by the super speedy Craig Shimkus.  :)  

Next up, Oregon and Alabama.