After way too long of a break, I am finally back to running. The break was due to being sick with a cold. Colds in general are bad, but the ones you get in the summertime suck the worst. At first, I thought it was allergies, but sadly it was a cold.

In any event, officially I was back this past weekend when I ran in the Fleet Feet Chicago Women’s 5K and 10K race. Originally, I signed up to do the 10K, but given the high temps and my lack of running, I went down to the 5K race.

All was looking pretty good as I was warming up. Until the bird. I was minding my own business by the area where everyone would be lining up to start the race when this thing came flying into me, was buzzing around, and flitting at me. It was a bird. At first, I wasn’t sure what the hell it was that had started to attack me.

Needless to say, I was sufficiently freaked out. Not knowing what it was, I tried not to swat at it, in case it was something that might kill me. (And in case you are wondering, I consider myself a closeted hypochondriac. Any ache, pain, etc. I immediately think is due to some horrible life-threatening illness.) I managed to turn slightly and the bird went off of me and over to the side of the road.

I am sure I looked silly freaking out about this bird that appeared to be trying to fly through me. Even after flying into me, it wasn’t going to go around. A few other women nearby were laughing and a couple commented that they had never seen a bird do anything like this. After all of this occurred, I got a chance to look at this tiny little bird that was black and appeared to have feathers on its head that were messed up.

Seeing those messed up feathers, makes me really glad no flesh was penetrated. There was a woman who was trying to get the bird to get out of the street (not sure why) as it didn’t seem as though it needed help with that. Others looked at her kind of funny for that. Whether the bird’s head was messed up due to its trying to fly through me or because it was ill otherwise, I will never know.

This all happened with about 10 minutes before the race start. I was sufficiently stressed and pumped, but not in a good way. It was that kind of nervous energy that makes you go out way too fast in a race to be burned out before you have a chance to get off to a nice warm-up in the race. Overall, my race was ok considering the high temps yesterday. I did get in another 5K at the gym later as well, so overall I’m happy with the day of running.

This whole thing though, did get me thinking and panicking about a half marathon I have in four weeks. It is progress for me to be thinking about the race now and being able to figure out what my anxieties are for it. The biggest one is always having a fear of getting lost on the course. Since I know that is an issue for me, I can now start prepping the lay of course so I can focus on the running and not stuff like getting lost or showing up late to the race. Hopefully, the race will be good so I can really start focusing on the hometown beotch in October. Either way, it will help me to start better mentally preparing for races. Now if I could just get myself faster and better at running. . .