Firsts

This past Saturday was my 21st birthday. I had high hopes that it would be a fun day. We were driving down to Illinois for a NIRCA relay track meet, then I expected we would drive back and have some time to hit up the bars with my friends to celebrate my birthday.

Well things went fine, in fact they went fantastic. Our ladies in the 4x800 won first place, and then the 4x1600 followed suit. I knew that for the 4xmile I should either lead off or anchor. I was selfish and wanted to have a good race (still bidding for sub-5:20..... UGH), so I thought that I would have the best chance and give our team the best winning chance by leading off.

So, I did. The only problem was I had noooo competition, absolutely none. I started off with the lead and had two girls on my heels for maybe 2-3 laps and I was actually concerned about them.. but then there was silence as far as names (no Megans or Allisons were on my heels any more) and I was virtually alone running my pace. I had Brittany yelling me splits which was useful but I didn't really use them. I heard the two 45s and said "shit" but didn't do much about them but slowly started dropping time per lap, with a 35 for a closer and a LOT left in the tank, for an easy little 5:32.

The relay continued; I had given us a 100m lead on the nearest team and Lindsey held onto that lead pretty handily. Things got a little clouded during Sarah's leg but we were winning and that's all the mattered. Laura was our anchor, and for some reason the idiot announcers couldn't keep anything straight and announced the leaders as Michigan, which was fucking retarded because we had lapped nearly everyone in the field by the end. With 250m to Laura bumped the baton out of Illinois' hands. They scrambled for quite some time to come up with the baton then got back on the track. They should have been disqualified, if it had been any sort of real relay meet. They weren't. They also had an extra lap but they stopped right after Laura crossed the line, taking "second place" but really they still had a lap to go.

It was fucking ridiculous, that the people in charge of the meet could not keep track of anything (earlier a heat of the 3k had actually run 2.8k because the start/finish folks stopped them a lap early... really??)


We took the win, though, happily, although I was grumpy with myself and my time. But next we watched our 4x400 team win quite handily. I was really proud of the girls.. only 7 of us competed in the relays but filled 12 relay spots.

So, we finally got out of there and I was really excited to get back on the road and get to the bars eventually. Until we were driving down 5th street and I got caught up in our discussion of where to go eat, and ran into a car in the intersection there. Then my birthday became an absolute nightmare.

I was driving my mother's car, and the guy I hit was extremely pissed. The damage was quite light because I had been barely moving and had slammed on the brakes just a couple seconds short or we would have avoided colliding at all. Both people in the car I hit claimed neck pain so the passenger went off in an ambulance. We were delayed an hour and a half dealing with paperwork. I was extremely upset and I felt terrible. As an athletic training student, we are supposed to fix injuries not cause them.. but I was very skeptical of there being any injuries in the first place.

I also felt bad because I had a car full of hungry boys who I'm sure the last thing THEY wanted to be doing was dealing with the bullshit of an accident scene. I had never been in a car accident before in the first place so i had no idea what I was doing. The cop who was handling the case was pretty nice and I think genuinely felt bad for me.. Which is something I don't really like, is people feeling sorry for me.. but I was so upset at that point I wasn't really paying attention. I didn't know when we were going to get out of there so finally I just asked the guys if they wanted to get something to eat at the places near the intersection of the crash. They went and got something.. and they even bought me a sandwich, which they really didn't have to do; it was really nice of them.

Eventually we got out of there... and started the long fucking drive back. I had been awarded a ticket and a mandatory court date IN Champaign. In the middle of the day on a school day. Yeah, driving 7 hours on a school day is totally feasible. Anyway, the whoel drive back I was getting a billion texts of people wanting to know where I was and what I was doing.. and I had no idea when we would be back, really, or when I would be able to get to the bars at.. Ugh.

Eventually got back got changed... A group of athletic training friends had been waiting for me at the Nitty but decided to leave right before they got there... don't really know why but ok. Anyways I met up with a bunch of track club people there, instead, so I was happy with that. In a ridiculous turn of events, I received my first legal drink at the exact moment that "Don't stop believin" started playing at the bar... I almost died laughing because it was so ironic, that Audrey wasn't there with me but that the song she loves started playing. Anyway we stayed there for a while then followed Ben to Brothers. Overall I drank way too much in a two-hour time span (thanks to Ben). Sunday I felt sicker than I ever have after drinking and barely made it through my birthday dinner with my family, lol. They were disappointed that I didn't feel like drinking, because they wanted to buy me stuff.

Anyway, yeah, that about sums up my weekend. I'm really far behind in my classes and I have too many big projects coming up... basically, awesome. I am not having fun. Ugh.