The past couple weeks has been a flurry of activity and training. Most of the work related activity has kept me at bay from writing on a normal schedule. The training and racing over the past couple months has provide a handful of stories, but nothing overwhelmingly compelling enough to break through the busyness of my workload. This past weekend presented a story well worth sharing and so the silence is now broken.

For the first time in quite a while my wife and I both signed up for the same race. Our intention was to share a fun family race together – the two of us and both of our kids in the double jogger. Since my last two races involved one of our children in the jog stroller, it was great to get the opportunity for all of us to be out racing together. We took our place in the starting line and off we went for 5k.

Within the first half mile, I noticed the lead runners had not gone out very fast. Ironically at the same time my wife said something like, “you really want to race?”. With her cue it seemed like we were both thinking the same thing – I could catch the lead pack. We quickly agreed and the chase was one. Within the next quarter mile I, along with my excited kiddos in the double jogger, was able to reel in all except the top two and comfortably sat in third place overall. At this point I was starting to believe it could be possible to catch the leader. After passing the mile mark the race took a strange turn – literally.

The top two runners rounded a turn ahead of me after the mile mark. As I turned the corner behind them, I was stunned to have suddenly lost sight of them both. Could they have been holding back and the first mile was just a mild warm up? Point being. They were gone. Next thing I know I’m running right behind the pace car and now in first place overall. This happened so fast that I couldn’t figure out where those guys went. I didn’t care. I was now determined to win the race. As fast as first place was in my control, the pace car stops in an angle blocking the course. The driver leans out the window yelling, “You’ve missed a turn. You need to turn around.” What??

Since this all started as a calm and non-competitive family event, I took no time to even glance at the course. All I knew now was according to the pace car, I was not really in the lead, just off course. Without hesitation, I flipped the jogger around and the chase was back on. First and foremost getting on the right course was kind of important. From there I was planning to see if any lost ground could be recovered.

Running against the grain of the entire field of runners struck me odd. I found the turn and could see the lead runner who were also mildly confused by the misdirection. We all started to race again now all in one pack. After about a quarter mile and some strange silence, all I could think was “there are no cones out here nor anything else that says race course”. I broke out of the pack and turned around again heading back to the original turn where everything looked like a race. Re-entering the race it became obvious. The driver of the pace car made a mistake which sent the entire top 20 or so off the course. Ironically as I turned back onto the course I met up with my wife again. I was beside myself about what had just happened, but it was nice to be back to the original plan. While the glory of the overall win slipped through my grasp, running together as a family was back on.

Over the next mile (yes all this happened before mile 2) we bantered back and forth about what happened. Something about explaining the strange events audibly helped me process everything a little better. One by one a couple of the “previous leaders” started passing by us attempting to make chase to regain position. Each one said something like “can you believe it?”. I just smiled and shook my head as well. Since the original plan for the day was not wrapped around racing it was easy for me to turn off the competitiveness or most of it. As we crossed over the two mile mark my daughter started asking to run “fast” again. After another quick chat, the family event was changing again as I took off to attempt to turn a hard, fast last mile.

We were cutting through the crowd and every mild move was challenging with the double. As we descended a hill, I swung out wide to make the turn at the bottom. Seriously we rounded this turn like a crazed tractor trailer driver trying to pull of a perfect 90 degree turn on a dime. The downhill continued for a long straight away making it easy to stabilize the quickened pace. Some weird sound caught my attention next. It was keeping rhythm with each stride and even had a similar tempo. I started look around the stroller to put eyes on the sound. No way. We had blown out a back tire and we were riding down on the rim.

In complete disbelief, I pulled over and stopped running all together planning to reconnect again with my better half. When she saw me standing there she said, “what are you doing now?” Again we just shook our heads and I rejoined her to finish out the race. We crossed the finish line of this 5k with a story that which is only typically experienced in distances of marathons or a multi-sport event. Not for us though. Today this wild one was born in just three miles.

While it would have been really easy to blame the pace car driver, yell at the race director and go off in unrelenting anger about this mishap to every welcoming ear, for some reason I was calm. This race was designed to be a “family event” for us and obviously nothing was met to come in the way. A win would have been great, but not in this race. The real win was experiencing this together with my family and there is no accolade or special award that could be better. Thank you to the guy who sent me off the course and whatever flattened our tire – you saved my family race day.