Chilled out? Not a chance.

I bet some of you think I've chilled out in my old age. (I turned 28 in January, which seems really old to me. Plus I'm in Italy after having finished my "career" as an engineer. It's kind of like I'm a retiree.) I myself thought that perhaps I've chilled out a bit. But we're all wrong!

I did a race this morning. This was because my landlord is also a runner, invited me to do a run with him last weekend, discovered I was reasonably fast, and told me I should do this race today. It was an important race, he said, with important prizes: The first five women would win a prosciutto! (A prosciutto is a giant fatty ham, super-tasty.) Man, I thought about that prosciutto all week. Even though I don't really eat prosciutto. A slice, maybe, but not much more than that. I just wanted to win it! My classmates would love it, too. I haven't raced in a long time - I did the Corporate Challenge in Buffalo last spring, and that's about it. But I've been running, so I figured - why not. I'll do the race.

So I did the race. It was pretty interesting also from the "interesting cultural notes" front:

Every Italian runner belongs to a team. This is mostly, as far as I can tell, for one reason: if you want to do something athletic, you have to have a uniform. It's impossible to run or bike without a fully color-coordinated spandex outfit. Fashion doesn't take a vacation at the track! And how can you have a real uniform without belonging to a team?

Membership cards are huge here. In fact, in order to "belong" to many bars, you have to buy a membership card. Or . . . want to do a painting class? Buy a membership card to the non-profit community organization first. Similarly . . . want to run in a road race? You got it. Buy a membership card. Fortunately, my landlord is in the "In Crowd" and got me one on the fast track. Which makes me mention this lesson: The key to success here is knowing the right person. (Which, really, is the essence of one of my favorite DiSarno phrases: "I got a guy." As in, "Yeah, I got a guy at the post of office. Let's give him a call and see if he can take care of that for you.") It's a great system . . . if you "got a guy."

Off the interesting cultural sidenotes variant and back to the main point. The race. The hyper-competitivity. Naturally I wanted to win a prosciutto, which meant I had to be in the top five. I did my usual strategy of slightly negative-splitting the race. I started out in about tenth or twelfth position and picked off people as they got slower and I got just a bit faster. My landlord and his buddies found me at various points in the race to tell me my position. Everyone had me pegged at #5 - which meant a prosciutto! Fatty ham for everyone! Woooooo!

But. I was actually #6. No prosciutto. Was I ever bummed out.

Here's where the hyper-competitivity comes in. I actually probably ran a great race. I felt like I was at the limit, couldn't have gone much faster. And my time was pretty good. It was 39:53 for 10K (or 6.2 miles) . . . 3:59 kilometers or 6:25 miles. And as long as I thought I was #5 (Prosciutto!) I felt like I'd run a great race! As soon as I found out I was #6, I was super-disappointed . . . But it was the same race. For the record, the top woman was at 37:05 and #5 was at 39:09. And I did win a booby prize for being first-in-category . . . which did include some other type of fatty sausage. But no prosciutto.