Perfectly Imperfect

I don't know about you, but I’m feeling twenty two-ooh!  Only kidding, it was just too tempting.  But let me start that again.

I don't know about you, but I believe that some things are just too good to be true, especially when it comes to my life.  This is why I’m always looking for the catch and waiting for disaster to hit, and then hit again.  This is also the same reason why I tend to take extra precaution; it’s why I check and double check, and it’s why I take two days off from running before race day rather than the usual one. 

So, being Miss Cautious McQueen, two days before Sydney’s city2surf, I decided to take extra precaution and give my legs some rest.  I also made sure to have sweet potatoes incorporated into my meals because I had heard that the little orange potaters help with muscle recovery.  Yes, I’m that paranoid, but no, I’m not crazy. 

The day before my race, I packed and repacked the backpack that I would be carrying to the event.  I made sure to lay out my running outfit along with a sweater and a pair of sweats.  T-shirt, check.  Shorts, check.  Socks, check.  My bib was ready with its four safety pins dangling off the sides and my Ipod shuffle was fully charged and fully loaded.  I had a bottle of water and a pack of Gu in case I needed it.  Life was great.  Things were looking great.

The next morning, my alarm woke me up at 6:00 and I jolted out of bed.  I prepared my usual breakfast bowl and was out the door at 7:40.  My start time was set for 9:05, but I figured that I would give myself an extra hour in the case that I got lost or had an hour’s worth of trouble finding the starting line.  So, with my backpack in tow, I made my way to the bus stop, hopped on, got off at Hyde park and made my way to the information booth.  It was 8:05.

“Excuse me,” I asked, “Could you direct me to the bag drop off booth?”

“The bag drop off?  They closed it at 7:30”

“Wait, like, half an hour ago?

“Unfortunately…”

“So, what do I do with my backpack then…?”

Now, let me just explain here.  This backpack was not some teeny tiny backpack for toddlers, nor was it a wimpy little Jansport.  This was a real deal backpack.  It was actually made for triathletes to transport their gear as they switched events.  So, in other words, the length of the backpack pretty much went from my shoulders to the tippy top of my bum.  It was the real deal.  I could literally carry a child in there if the need came about.

So there I was, looking around the park, and I realized something.  There were two types of people at Hyde Park that day.  Those with backpacks, and those without.  Which group did I belong to you might ask?  Well, neither, because those with backpacks were dressed in civilian clothing, and those without backpacks were dressed like they were about to run a 14-kilometer race.  And then there was me.  So, I guess there were three groups of people there that morning: spectators with backpacks, runners without, and me, the sad in-between misfit.

If you can’t tell already, let me just tell you how desperate and stressful this situation was.  I had my Ipad, my wallet, and my passport in my backpack.  You know how they tell you to carry your passport with you everywhere when you’re abroad?  Wrong.  Don't carry it to a race when you’ve missed the closing time for the bag drop off. 

I actually considered walking to a convenient store and paying the clerk to hold my bag.  I also considered giving my bag to a random stranger.  I don’t even know how this would have worked or what I expected from a total stranger. Did I expect them to be cheering for me as I crossed the finish with my bag in one hand and an ice cold Gatorade in the other?  The desperation was slowly affecting my sanity.  My next consideration was definitely more on the sane side, but still not completely void of insanity.  I considered just tossing the backpack, sweater, and sweats, and just running with a small bag that contained my more valuable belongings.

I was executing the final details of my plan as I was walking towards the start.  I would throw my backpack into a bush right when the race started and after the race, I would grab a bus from Bondi Beach back to Hyde Park and retrieve my belongings, knowing well in advance that the chances of them being there in the bush were slim to none.  And that’s what would happen.

Long story short, that didn’t happen. 

I was walking to the start, and to fully understand this, I’ll need to paint a picture using numbers to illustrate the scale of this race.  Sydney’s city2surf is the largest race in Sydney, and the sixth largest run in the world in terms of participants.  There were approximately 85,000 runners registered this year.  So, what’s the point of all this?  The point is that I didn’t get to throw my backpack into a bush.  

Once I got to the start, I was somehow pushed into the center of the road, and last I checked, bushes don’t grow in the center of streets.  There were tons of people to my left and right, and so I did what anyone else would do in this situation.  I unstrapped my backpack and threw, hoping it wouldn't hit anyone, but would land all nice, snug, and hidden in a nice bush.

Only kidding.  I snapped the buckle on the front of the pack, tightened up the straps to prevent the pack from bouncing too much, and mentally prepared myself, and my backpack, for the run. 

And you know what I realized?  So much of everything is mental.  It’s all what you make of it.  Once I accepted and committed to the fact that I wasn’t going to be running this race alone, but with a large companion strapped on my back, it wasn’t half bad.  I even set a personal record for races run with a backpack!  In all seriousness though, it was actually a really fun race!  I actually feel like having a backpack helped me keep my mind off of the difficult parts of the course.  Instead of thinking about how difficult the hill was, I would wonder how much easier that hill would be without a backpack, and before I knew it, the uphill had become a downhill! 

The whole experience was a great one on perseverance and mental strength.  At the end of the day, life is what you make of it.  It’s ultimately up to you to take whatever’s handed to you, and make the best out of it.  You can’t prevent every disaster from ever hitting you, but you can prevent these little occurrences from ruining a good thing.  Life isn’t going to be perfect all the time, but I’ll tell you something, it can definitely be perfectly imperfect. 

So, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  And when life gives you a backpack, run with it.