The Race I Won (Kind of)

This morning I dragged my butt out of bed to go and run a 10k for the parent enhancement program. Seeing how I am not in amazing shape right now, I was especially nervous, but I had committed to do it a long time ago to do the race. I literally got to the starting line 2 minutes before the race started, turned my i-pod on and, and I was off. There was a different race going on at the same time as our race on almost (key word almost) the same course, so there was mass confusion with everyone of where to go. I was going straight through a corner, and was told that I needed to instead turn left for the race I was doing and that 5k people should go straight ahead, which was the exact opposite of what we should have all done. I continued to try to follow the few signs, and I when there was occasionally someone to ask a question to, I would be assured that I was going the right way (although the couple of people never knew how far we had gone). So basically, I finished the 10k in 39 minutes, but obviously as I finished, I realized that I in fact had run the course wrong as there is no way I ran the race in even close to that time. People at the end were apologetic for all of the confusion,and I later found out that I ran closer to 4 to 4 1/2 miles. So, the embarrassing part comes in when during the award ceremony, they call my name as the winner of the women. I immediately yelled out to everyone that I had run the course wrong and was not the winner, but they insisted that I come up and accept a prize (a $20 gift card to a local sport store) as they realized that many people had run the course wrong. So there you have it folks, I "won" my first 10k today :) even though I never ran a full 10k. Someday I will have to tell you about the time I accidentally scored a goal the one year I played soccer in high school :).