Coming in Next Month's Issue

 In next month's Northwest Runner, I give advice on how to die in the woods! Here's a preview: Ignore signage like this:

Bet you can't wait for the rest.

DNS

I just put a few scorch marks on the Real Running credit card signing up for a few spring and summer races. Sixty dollars here. Ninety dollars there. I even snuck in a thirty-five dollar entry fee. Bargain! Of course, that doesn’t include a t-shirt.

Not that I need another t-shirt.

Over the last year I signed up for a dozen races. I ran in six of them. Race fees, like most airfares, are non-refundable, which you would think would be motivation enough to not miss an event I signed up for. But no. I have come up with some really interesting excuses to avoid toeing the starting line recently. And with the spring and summer race season starting up in the Northwest, I thought I’d offer myself up as a cautionary tale to those of you with your credit card out and your calendar open.

First, let me just say that it is too darn easy to sign up for races. Open a website, click an event, click a few more buttons and now you’re the proud owner of spot on the starting line. All races look great online. Neat logos, fancy interactive course maps, pictures of smiling finishers holding medals or flowers or infants, or all three.

But that’s another issue entirely.  We’re here to chase all those entry fees I kindly donated to the race organizers last year.

I consciously chose to skip one race. It’s true. I bagged out. I thought I’d have more time to train. I thought I could cram in a few long runs right before the race. I’d run 26.2 miles before. What the heck. But the week before the race, as I labored through the last mile of a short run on a flat road, I knew I would do nothing but suffer if I laced up the shoes for marathon weekend. So I quit. I stayed home and watched a Top Chef marathon on TV. I still think this was a wise decision. A DNS is better than a DNF any day, if you ask me.

Compare that to last summer. I was in good running shape, had been training hard, had a couple of great long training runs under my feet, and had plans to do a marathon I’ve wanted to do for years. The day before the race, I was tempting fate by walking around the yard barefoot. Fate broke my toe. The day before the race. No run for me.

Later in the summer I was traveling in the week before a trail race. I was supposed to fly home the night before, get a good night’s sleep, and show up at the trailhead ready to go. Instead, my flight got canceled. And the next one was overbooked. And the other airlines didn’t have flights until morning. I did finally get on a flight. And as we started our descent into Sea-Tac, the race was just starting. Missed that one.

A month later one of our kids came home from school sick. Within three days everyone was sick. Day four was the Portland Marathon. Since even getting out of bed was a struggle, I didn’t figure running around the streets of Portland was the best idea.

I slept through my alarm on a race day in November.

I wrote down the wrong date for a race in December and missed it by a week.

And now I’m looking at this slate of races I have registered and paid for between now and summer and wondering what circumstances will come my way and prevent me from getting to the starting line. I’m putting my money on alien invasion.