My daughter and I got to the public school building on 81st Street between Park and Madison with plenty of time to spare. We sat in my car, which was parked outside, waiting for our running club to start. We talked for a little while before entering the auditorium.
Once we were in the auditorium, we sat down and looked around. Everyone looked like a “real” runner. No one looked familiar at all. At about 6:30, we both looked at each other and realized that something was wrong. The class usually starts on time at 6:15 pm.
“Should I ask one of the coaches or should we just hang here?” I asked my daughter. She shook her head. I let a few more minutes go by and I decided to ask a coach who was standing by the door.
“That class is already upstairs stretching,” she said. I went back to tell my daughter and we quickly ran up three flights of stairs to the gymnasium. We both laughed the entire way up.
When we got upstairs there was a group of people sitting on the floor waiting for the coaches to come back. “Did you guys stretch yet?” I asked one of the women on the floor.
“Yes, a long time ago,” she said. “We’re just waiting to go out .”
I rolled my eyes. My daughter and I started to stretch out as best as we could until the coaches came back into the gymnasium.
“Okay, for all you beginner/intermediates, we are running the great lawn in Central Park,” the coach said.
We split up into groups and off we ran down the stairs and out the school door onto the street. We ran two blocks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and ran to the Great Lawn. “This is just a warm up,” the coach told us.
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