In March of 2016, I made the decision to leave the Greenville Track Club. I detailed that in a post on my old blog so I will not rehash that here. I left with the intent and hope of being able to rejoin should the dysfunction improve.
As of this past Memorial Day, it had not.
This year the GTC launched a new race, the Freedom Flyer 2 Miler. I knew right away that I had to run this race because not only do I have a compulsion to run all the races but it’s a new distance, ripe for a PR.
I thought for sure that even though it was a new race, a good number of people would show up. As the day approached I kept occasionally checking the two registration sites to see how many people had signed up. Come race day, that number barely topped two hundred. The pessimist in me expected this outcome. The optimist kept hoping for the last minute sign ups that didn’t come.
The unexpected conflict began, even though I did not know it, my review of the tribute put on by the race director. I know that his heart was in it, that he wanted to honor the fallen servicemen and women. However, a few things like technical difficulties obscured his intent. Mom summed it up well when she called it awkward. I did not phrase it as diplomatically as she did. Hindsight is always 20/20. I whipped out the words without realizing how they might appear to others, especially people who are not inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt.
I posted the link on the official GTC page with a cheery tagline expressing my very real hopes that this race would last at least 40 years like Reedy River. After I posted the recap, I headed to a baseball game and then dinner with family. I disconnected from my phone and didn’t see the comment until a few hours after she had posted.
(I obscured names for privacy’s sake.)
When I read her comment, my jaw dropped. This criticism blindsided me. I had no idea what she was talking about. I looked back at the race review portion of my recap and came away even more confused about the intensity of her comment. I responded without remembering the sentence from early in the recap itself. When the second person commented, I realized the inaccuracies of what I had said when I spoke in my own defense.
I wished that I hadn’t goofed and given him that opening. I wanted so much to defend myself but instead thanked him for the correction. I even went one step further and reworded the offending sentences.
Their response? The page administrator deleted the entire post.
How do I respond to this or something like this? What I write next looks a lot different than my original intent. I thank Mom for that. On our way to Life Group, the night on which I wrote part of this essay, we talked about teh whole incident. Often talking things out brings about clarity and wisdom. Instead of becoming confrontational or withdrawing completely, I will continue to run GTC races. However, in the future when I critique the race in my race review, I will go out of my way to edit and review my words. I will choose to respond in love.