I had faithfully showed up at the Starbucks to meet the Chalupa (Bengali runners) group this morning. What I did not know is that there is a baby shower in the community (I am woefully unaware of these things) – and therefore nobody was going to show up for the run.

As I was waiting, I saw somebody enter the Starbucks who reminded me a lot about my old running buddy from 15 years back – Russell Shaw. He has moved to Durham ever since and we keep in touch once a year on his birthday in April.

My first reaction was to see if I could take a picture of the gentleman and send it to Russell telling him that I had met his doppelgänger. My second reaction (fairly stupid, now that I think about it) was to approach the gentleman and ask “Are you not supposed to be in North Carolina?”

Well, turns out it was indeed Russell!!! He was in the area to sell off his house!!

Eventually, Mrinal-da – who realized that I must have been sitting at Starbucks by myself – decided to show up and give me company too!!

So there you go – two of my runners friends from two different groups … and me – in one frame!

The idea was to put in a quick 5K (3 miles) run. The problem was instead of listening to songs while running, I made the mistake of listening to some Youtube videos on Time. (basically, is time a fundamental thing or have human beings simply conjured it up? Is entropy a real thing – the only time we need time to explain a physical equation – or is it how our brains process it? ).

In the confusion, I completely lost track of time. By the time the talk ended, I was nearly 2.5 miles away from my starting point. ergo, was forced to complete a 5 mile run.

Absolutely made sure that I listened to music on my run back. Else, I was afraid I might have breezed past my starting point!!

Checking my blog, I was astonished to find that the last time I ran a 5K race was 6 whole years back!! I could have sworn that I ran a couple every year before Covid hit. Turns out that is not true.

So, after 6 years then, I ran a 5K race today. Heart and Sole 5K run (for special learning kids). It was to start from Avalon. Which is a walking distance away for us. I used that to get my warm up run done. Registered on the spot.

The environment was electrifying. Lots of folks – young kids, elderly persons, cute dogs, folks who clearly looked like they run some 20 miles every day and there were those who probably thought they said “Rum” instead of “Run”!

The run itself was very enjoyable. The adrenaline rush of police escorts, people cheering from the side and photographers everywhere was enough to make most runners shave off quite some time from their normal pace. My thrilling moments of passing other runners (especially uphill) were often supplanted by folks with two dogs attached to them breezing past me!

I was fairly surprised that the first mile was at 9:03 pace. That is nearly 2 minutes faster than my normal pace. The second mile slowed down to 9:28. But the third one speeded up to 9:16. The final piece was at 8:16! Total 29:14 mins. My apple watch showed that we covered a little more distance than 5K (3.17mile instead of 3.1) – so I have to wait for them to post the final chip times on their website.

I have no doubt in my mind that the reason for so much better performance compared to my usual pace is because of the excitement of the crowds.

Apr 26 Update: Out of 369 runners, I came at the 65th position. The chip timer showed 29:19.