Just Another Wednesday

Pete's stepmother, Nancy told us that someone in their gated community saw a black panther walking on the property recently.  I knew there were Florida panthers roaming the state, but they are rare.  Per my research two nights ago (because I research stuff like this), there has never been a known attack on humans by a Florida panther.  But a black panther?  Well, I've seen that face eating scene from "Apocalypto".  Not pleasant.  However, I'm not sure about the reliability and validity of Nancy's "source".  I took my chances and ran the Jungle Trail (Did Black Panther look at a map and see the name Jungle Trail?  "Hey, this might be a good spot!") solo today.

Part of the run is along busy A1A.  No real danger of being jumped by a face eating cat.  The Jungle Trail, the majority of the run, is a quiet dirt road along the Indian River.  I used to worry about alligators, but now Black Panther lingered in the back of my mind.  I was happy to see a lot of people out and about on the trail   Mostly families bike riding with a few walkers here and there.  They all looked happy and were in one piece.  A good sign.  The 6.75 run in 66 degrees turned out to be very pleasant.  Not a care in the world, or so I thought...

I brought along my own water bottle, Fido.

Indian River, or as I like to call it Yet Another Body of Water for Alligators to Hide In River

Jungle Trail

I returned to the cottage pool where the family was hanging out and passed the imaginary baton to Pete who attempted the same route, but cut it short through the Captain Forster Preserve..."watch out for big black cats!", I warned.  For some reason, he wasn't too concerned.  I cooled off and checked my email.  The Marine Corps Marathon (MCM) folks sent me an email saying they expected the marathon to sell out shortly and encouraged me to keep trying to register.  WHAT THE CRAP?!?!  I totally spaced on this race (Again!)!  My wonderful children scrambled out of the pool and we booked back to the house where wifi was available.  It was 1:30pm.  Registration opened at noon.  I attempted to access the Active.com site.  They had the difficult task of overseeing thousands upon thousands of entries and wannabe entries.  I kept getting a message about the overwhelming demand and to wait while the page reloads in 3 seconds...in 11 seconds...in 8 seconds, etc.  Finally, a little after 2pm I accessed the page only to discover the race was closed.  If I doubted whether I was meant to run this race in the past, I am now certain.  This is not my year for the MCM.  Last month I missed registering for the Quantico 17.75k race which would have given me guaranteed entry.  That sold out in a couple of hours, as well.  Now I missed the big one.  

Okay.  Since MCM technically was my Plan B, on to Plan C...(sigh)  First, I need to have my brain reprogrammed to "Marathon Mode", or better yet "Register Mode".  It's amazing that I ever successfully registered for a race before in my life.  Amazing.