Late can sometimes be Great

As most people know I'm notoriously late for most things. The whole time management concept, not one of my strongest suits. It's me, I try and that's all I can offer. Today however I honed in on my tardiness. I managed to make it to the race today relatively on time, which meant that I had time to warm-up and stretch and whatnot before the race started. I will state that there's no reason for me to be at a cross country race any more than 45 min prior to the start so I consider getting there 40 min before, on time. Well we all start lining up at the start line, I do a couple of striders, the official states the race will go off in 5 min, I start to get super cotton mouth. So I thought that I'd have time to quickly sprint to my stuff not too far from the line and grab a quick sip of water. As I'm heading back to the start to my surprise the gun went off before I made it back. Not expecting that, what a way to get into the race! Of course through the madness of processing everything I was trying to search for my teammates so I could pace with someone. Not an easy task with a mass of runners. I just gave up and ran, figuring that one way or another either I would find them or they'd find me, which did happen eventually. From start to finish it was an interesting race. I was late to the start. I played cat and mouse a couple of times with a few runners in the middle. The most energy efficient tactic it is not but it worked for me. Then I ran down quite a few runners in last 100 meters. Oh how I love when my track speed conveys out on the finishes! Such a great feeling! Best part of it all I shaved 1:10 off of my time from 2 weeks ago giving me an all time personal best for a 5K cross country course and an inside peak to what is to come I hope!
Here's a link to a pretty cool pic that was snapped of me at this race http://eliterunning.com/photos/index.php?g2_itemId=160771