The Run at the Zoo

We arrived at the zoo for the 5k, and I saw crowds of people waiting to sign up to run. There were many people- serious runners warming up and stretching while drinking Gatorade, to young moms pushing their children around in strollers. The rest of my swim team pulled into the parking lot, and hopped out of their cars. Our coach, Jayme,  forced us all here instead of doing our normal Saturday morning practice of swimming. Jayme wanted us to look professional, so we were forced to warmup and stretch before the race. Some people were watching us, probably because we were a huge wad of matching black tank tops. We began our warmup, running around the parking lot. After a few minutes of dodging cars, we decided to stretch. We walked around, looking for an empty place in the parking lot where no cars would hit us. We found a place, but ten seconds after we got their, a man pulled up in a vehicle that looked like a monster truck. We thought it was best not to ask him to move, so we just dealt with it. After finishing our stretching, we walked from the parking lot into the zoo. The race was starting in 10 minutes, so we decided just to go look at the animals that were near the front of the zoo. Sadly, most of the cages were empty. We complained about not wanting to run, and considered to just get "lost" in the zoo and miss the race. Deciding that it would not go over very well with our coach if we missed it, we headed back out to the parking lot where the starting line was.