The arrival of unexpected news that Oxygen fitness had been revived and brought back from the dead was fantastic. Instantly I jumped into giddy mode at the sight of it sitting in my mailbox, all wrapped up in plastic, waiting for me to rip open and read. It's pages loaded with fitspirational women provided a feast for my eyes and health-loaded info articles fed my curious mind.
The arrival of unexpected news that the racing committee for my "Next Time" 10km hadn't registered me wasn't so fantastic. Instantly I dropped into disappointment mode at the news and I felt like crying. Instead, I just stood there behind the juice bar, like a deer caught in the headlights. I was completely speechless and utterly disappointed. I've been training for a solid month for this race. This was supposed to be my next time -- my time to prove myself. "Will I have to schedule another next time for my next time -- a next, next time?!" I wondered. As it turns out, registering me as "Amy Kim" caused quite the confusion at the registers office. They didn't know if I was a Korean using an English name because we had typed my name in Korean and my name on my alien registration card uses my maiden name. This all could have simply been solved if they had called us and said, "hey there's no Amy Kim that matches that ID number, there's an Amy but she has a different last name". Instead, no call was made and yesterday when I received the package with our racing bibs I noticed there was none for me. Snickers called them yesterday to inquire. Today they called back.
They called to tell us today that I was in fact NOT registered and it was too late to do so. With the race being only two days away, all the racing bibs have been designated, printed off and mailed out to their accompanying race participant.
"You could always run it without a number", someone told me.
This is true but I'm running it to successfully complete a goal and this goal requires me to have an accurate time check. My simple phone application -- MapMyRun -- isn't sufficient enough nor 100% dependable. I remember at the last race when I decided to use MapMyRun to help me with my pacing. I had a hell of a time trying to get the GPS to click in and it wasn't until I passed the official start line that it did. It was completely distracting and I just don't want the distraction of fiddling around with it during another race, especially not THIS race!!! Moreover, my objective isn't just to get my goal time of 49 minutes, it's also to see how I place in the above 30's female group. I don't care about any prize -- the prize is irrelevant to me. I care about my time and my ranking and my sponsors being able to check these online. I want to show them that yes, I'm worth their investment, and that yes, I am fighting hard to make them proud. Us being a sponsored boxing club means so much to me and me going out to run this race has been my sole priority these days. I've been training so hard. Don't kid yourself, I love training but I hate those morning runs and I absolutely hate those morning HIIT sprints but it's never been about what I like or don't like. It's been about doing what I need to do, what I have to do to keep my sponsors proud and happy. When they're happy I'm happy. I wouldn't have the club I have today if it weren't for their amazingly generous support and the support of all our members, friends and family. I remind myself of this every time I wake up and get ready for another morning run.
Later in the evening I found out that one of the gals I registered for the same race has decided not to run. She says she's not up to par to participate and though it meant I could potentially use her racing bib I did try to convince her to participate. She's the Comeback Kid so I want to see her make her big comeback. I rather her use this as her comeback than me be able to use her bib, in all honesty.
I've decided to run using the Comeback Kid's racing bib but I'm still disappointed. I'm disappointed because I'm trying to make a name for myself in Korea's running community and running using someone else's name does nothing to help me. Moreover, she's in the 20's group so those I'm running against aren't even from my age group, thus my ranking won't be an accurate reflection of how I really did. I think running outside of my age group bothers me the most actually. The 20's group has a lot more participants but I find those in the 30's are a lot more hardcore and intense. At the last race, many of the women I ran against in my age category sported sports bras with abs for everyone to see and short shorts that flashed their toned, buff legs. I want to race with such women because I want to be such a woman. They're such awesome fitspiration to me.
Please don't tell me "next time Amy". This was supposed to be my next time!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment