Saturday, March 21, 2009

Bad Luck Bill - Stranded at Memorial Park + 7 miles easy (Friday)

If you have been reading the blog for the past week or two then you have probably noticed that I've been going without sleep, struggling to fit my runs in my schedule, etc...etc. Well keeping with the theme, I had a situation to top them all. Let's start with my run.

I did 7 miles easy. There was nothing really special about the run. I was still feeling the effects of the speed work from the day before, but my hamstring wasn't giving me any trouble. I ran 7 miles at 7:40 pace and I was greatly relieved that I only had to do 7 miles. Or so I thought...

So after my run I did my stretches and was now ready to leave. So I looked for my key that was supposed to be in the pocket inside my shorts. Nope, not there. Hmmm...no need to panic I probably put it in the bed of my truck. Nope not there. Well maybe I put it on the ledge by the light post. Not there either. Hmmm...where else could it be? Maybe I dropped on the ground while I was stretching. Not there. Maybe I dropped it in the port o' potty. Ewww disgusting, but not there. Ok now I'm beginning to get worried. So I search the ground area around and under my truck. Nothing. Uh oh, the unthinkable may have just happened. The key may have fell out of my shorts in the park. There is no way in heck that I'm going to retrace my footsteps around the trail. No way. I did not feel like doing another loop. I just need to retrace my steps near the truck one more time. I still found nothing. I ask around for a phone and no one seems to have one. Somehow I begin to suspect that maybe people think I'm suspicious, or maybe they don't want anyone to interrupt their run. Anyway I found 2 guys, one of them one was gracious enough to let me use their phone. I called my wife but it went instantly to voice mail. I called my job and left a message. I thanked the guys and resigned myself to doing another loop around the trail in search of my key. I did another loop and no luck. So I flagged down a lady who initially told me she didn't have a phone. When I told her I lost my key and was stranded, she said she had a phone in her car. So once again I called my wife and once again it went to voice mail. Wow. My wife usually always answers the phone and now I can't reach her. And even if she did want to reach me she couldn't because I didn't have a phone! So anyway I did a couple more scans around the area close by and still didn't find it. One of the two guys I talked about earlier saw me and ran towards me. He said he had my wife on the phone. So I told my wife the situation and so she was on her way. She told me she didn't answer the phone because the numbers looked unfamiliar (Just my luck!).

About 45 minutes later my wife arrived and gave me a change of clothes (I finished my run at 8:30 and she arrived at 10:40). She was going to have to drop me off at work for a little bit because I had to take care of some things there. My wife couldn't find my spare key so I was calling dealers about a duplicate key. So not only would I have to get a duplicate key, but I would also have to get a locksmith to unlock my truck. Boy, what a pain.

Later my wife called me at work and told me that she had found my key. What!? Somehow I couldn't imagine my wife going back to the park and retracing my footsteps to find my key. Where in the heck did she find my key? She found it underneath my shorts, to add insult to injury!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have known more than one runner who lost their key inside their own shorts. It falls out of the key pocket and gets caught in the liner of the shorts. My guess is you did the same thing.

Bill Blancett said...

Anon,

I suspect something like that happened. It's just so ironic that I went through so much trouble and my key was so close to me.

Bill

Steeeve said...

Bill, I read about one sentence of your blog entry and knew exactly where your key was. Now you can help others find their key for the rest of your running days as you too will know their secret hiding place.

Bill Blancett said...

Steve,

Hopefully this blog entry will help thousands of runners like me everywhere LOL

Bill

Priscilla said...

That happened to me also but I figured it out pretty quick and luckily didn't make it around the whole loop. Just embarassing since I had my friends at the park looking on the trail also. Yes this post will be helpful to many, many runners.

Bill Blancett said...

Priscilla,

I'm glad you didn't have to go through the problems I went through. Thanks for stopping by.

Bill