‘Monumental’ Fail.

So innocent. So excited. So ready to go.

It’s kind of a funny story, you see. It’s taken me almost a month to publize this…but alas, here it is.

I told you a few months ago (with much excitement) about the Ukrops’s Monument 10K mom and I planned to run/jog/walk, remember? The day of the race, I woke up at 4am wide awake oh so excited and ready to go! Our wave didn’t start until 9:55am so I went to get my hair trimmed, made freshly squeezed orange juice, and fixed an egg sandwich all by 8:00am. By 8:15am, our pictures were taken and by 8:30, mom & I were on our way to the race. [P.s. Juuuust in case you’re wondering, mom was dressed like a ram to represent VCU. The race fell on the final 4 game day. Isn’t she so precious?!] As we are making our way downtown, I realized I didn’t have any toll money. No problemo, we stopped at my parents work to grab some change, which was convenient because it was on the way to race. The night before I spent a solid 30 minutes planning my route to the parking deck. I had my address ready, the GPS set, written directions to accompany…just in case. Here is what the Monument 10K told us about parking…

As you can see, we had the choice of four different parking decks. Perfect, I’ll take one. We arrived at our planned deck at 9:10am and were refused entrance because we didn’t have a student decal. After all, we were on the VCU campus. Ok, no worries, we will simply go to the next parking deck. Because we were downtown with 41,000 participants… it took us twenty-five minutes to get to the next parking deck, 2 miles away. Oh guess what? Same deal. Refused. What? I’m pissed. Are you serious? False advertisement! By this time (9:35), I am panicking. Obviously the whole parking deck wasn’t working out, so we tried to find a spot on the street. Yeah right. Like that was a good idea…but what choice did we have? We finally found a spot literally 1 mile away from the starting line and by then, it was already 10:00am! No worries, we thought, we’ll make the last wave at 10:20. We arrived at the area to meet the last wave runners and guess what? They had already walked over to the start line without us. How dare they! How dare they falsely advertise parking decks?!

When I realized mom and I had missed the race, I couldn’t speak. I was so angry and I didn’t want to lash out on her because she was the closest person to me. After all, who could get mad at someone who dressed up as a ram?! Again, so precious! We walked back in silence, I a little faster in frustration, and we got in the car. There were a few giggles and we both acknowledged it was too soon to laugh about it. I suggested we go eat a cheeseburger, but then we both acknowledged that would make us feel worse. What a “monumental” fail. It wasn’t about simply missing the race that frustrated me. Trust me. It was about doing the race with my mom. It was about the 4 months I spent training. It was about the $60 dollars to register. It was about coming into town. It was about the 4am-I-am-awake-race-day-because-I-am-so-excited! Sigh…I’m still disappointed about that. What would I have done differently? Leave earlier? No. Mom and I concluded we would’ve had dad simply drop us off close to the starting line. Next time–if there’s a next time. I’m still super mad at the false advertising and plan to make a phone call to the organization. I can only imagine there were other race participants in our situation. Well, so much for that! #Winning.