Race Weekend

Lets see what's going on this weekend.

Boston Marathon - Doesn't apply to me, but good luck guys!
River to River Relay - The race I was supposed to run tomorrow
Defender Classic 5K - Ah, thats the ticket!

Except, I'm not running this one. I'm timing it.

See, a few years back I wrote some software to time small 5K races. My dad helps direct a small 5K back in my home town and one year asked if I could make their lives easier. The problem was the manual process (that most small races use) takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Some races don't get results out until 30-45 minutes after the last person finishes.

So, I wrote a little program that just mimics the process. Rather than manually pushing bib numbers and times around, the computer just matches them up and spits out a list of the winners for each age category. Nothing too fancy. But since computers work a heck of a lot faster than us clumsy humans, I get the results printed out the moment the last person finishes. It works great to keep things moving fast, so long as the operator (me) doesn't make any mistakes along the way!

Well, word got out in Lexington that I wrote this program and I'm helping a friend out tomorrow morning by timing his race.

Races are always exciting to me, even when I'm not running them. It's the atmosphere. All the runners. All the goals. All the encouragement. What's not to love about it?

Then, after the race, I get to run.

Me. Running. Can you imagine that? I'm not sure I can.

I picked up new running shoes today just to weed out every possible thing that could have caused my injury. The plan is also to run at a park nearby that has a dirt path. This should really minimize any impact on my knee and get me through this first run back safely!

The knee feels solid, even after yesterday's crazy workouts and walking about 5 miles today.

Tomorrow is the day I'm supposed to come back to running. I can feel it.