As I was running down the middle of the road this morning at Insomnia, I thought about how unsafe I was being.
As I was running on the sidewalk covered with ice and snow, I thought about how unsafe I was being.
As I was sliding on a sheet of ice at an intersection, I thought about how unsafe I was being.
But I kept running.
Now, I can’t imagine I was the only PAX this morning to consider how irresponsible this was. Between Insomnia and Vesper, there had to be 20 PAX who made the same kinds of decisions I did. And at the end of the day, no one got hurt. No slips, no trips, no falls. No sprained ankles, and certainly no struck pedestrians.
At first, I allowed myself to see the end result and to make a decision that that could be the end of the story. But what if that ending had been tweaked this morning? What if someone twisted an ankle running on the crunchy snow-ice covered sidewalks? What if a PAX slipped on a sheet of ice and pulled a muscle, or worse, tore a ligament. What if the oncoming traffic didn’t see us in time, slammed on the brakes, and lost control of the car? What happens then?
This morning, we PAX did a terrible job of being safe. There is a strong desire in the PAX to push ourselves physically. We want to run fast and hard and far. So the idea of doing loops in the parking lot because there was no ice and no cars and no real danger seems to be…unpalatable. But what we did this morning was irresponsible.
I don’t know exactly how I would have changed things, but here are some of the things I saw this morning:
- At the start, we ran down the middle of High House traveling in the same direction of the traffic pattern.
- We ran into an intersection where the cross-traffic had the green light.
- We knowingly ran onto incredibly icy surfaces throughout the morning.
- We ran on sidewalks that were covered with snow and ice.
- We ran into oncoming traffic and didn’t climb over the snow-banked curb to get to the sidewalk while the cars passed, instead opting to wave our arms at the cars to implore them to change lanes to give us space.
I won’t name names, but I can and will tell you that I did all five of those things this morning at least once. So as I drove my car to the Refinery this morning – sliding on the icy streets along the way – it struck me that this morning could have turned out much worse than it did. I thanked God for that. But then I apologized for not being responsible. I have a wife and two kids who rely on me. I know all the men running Insomnia and/or Vesper are in a similar and maybe even more extreme situation.
My goal isn’t to make anyone feel bad. That’s not the point of this. The point is to highlight the fact that we made some lazy and irresponsible decisions this morning. We oftentimes had to make decisions about which bad situation – running on the icy sidewalk vs. running in the road with no way to escape oncoming traffic – was the lesser of two evils. And no one wanted to do four miles worth of loops around the parking lot.
So, the alternatives were less than ideal. But we could have – and should have – made better, safer decisions. We owed it to our families and we owed it to each other. By putting myself at risk, I made it clear that I was okay with my buddies putting themselves at risk as well.
I’m glad everyone is okay. But I’m sorry for not speaking up sooner. I didn’t think about the alternatives until we were already two miles into the loop. My ignorance is an unworthy excuse. We can do better than that, Carpex.
Let’s learn from this and do better.