I was the first to arrive at the race site, so I decided to wander around for entertainment. In the registration area there were a ton of different booths set up. One booth that caught my attention was giving some sort of weird strength tests. I guess the salespeople saw me looking, so one of them came over and asked if I wanted to improve my time today. "Well ya", I thought. I mean, who runs a race wanting to do worse than they did the last time? With that, the lady took me over to the booth and told me to hold my arms straight out perpendicular to my body. I was supposed to resist as she tried to push down one of my arms. She "couldn't". Then she asked me to balance on one foot while she tried again to push my arm down. Again, she "couldn't". Then she starts telling me that cell phones distract the brain, decrease focus, and cause cancer. Now, I've always been extremely skeptical of the cell phone cancer idea but, when she let me put her cell phone up to my ear, she was able to push my arm down easily. While standing on one foot, I fell over when she pushed on my arm. She then gave me a "shot" of her magic nasty tasting juice stuff and retried the test with the cell phone. I passed as I did without the cell phone. I'm not stupid. I know that she most likely pushed harder or something like that when I had the cell phone. It's also fairly likely that my brain was slightly distracted with something in my hand or that I myself was expecting a different result (as that was the idea of the test) with the cell and after the nasty juice.
The second half of the "test" was that I had to run the race and see if my performance was improved. I ran really well I thought. I had a pretty consistent 10min per mile pace, and kicked really hard at the end. However, in comparison to my last 5k, both the weather conditions and my personal fitness and health conditions were much better yesterday than they were in February (I couldn't even run) or December. So I guess the verdict is still out. Who knows, maybe somewhere out there is a nasty Brazilian mystery juice that can solve all our fitness and cell phone problems. I doubt it though. Guess you'll just have to try for yourself! Ha!
