Start of the Blarney Stone 5K
After an ill-prepared, all-night, 16.5 hour drive back to Omaha, and then crashing and/or walking around like a zombie for 36 hours, I peeled myself off the couch to attend a race to support all my runner friends. Nobody expected me to be there since we weren't scheduled to be back until later than evening. It's a well attended local 5K race that draws about 1000 people to celebrate St Patrick's Day...the post race party has a mountain of pizza, cookies, fine brewery beer and also domestic canned beer.
I decided to dress in running clothes, just in case I wanted to run. Of course, as soon as I showed up at Peak Performance, I immediately marched up to the Race Day Registration table and handed over my $30. The last time I ran a 5K was this same race last year. At that time I was 19 weeks pregnant and was dressed in green from head to toe, fat, slow, and pissed off because I couldn't drink the dark beer. Last year I was DD while Rodney and friends stayed late at the shoe store, of all places, getting drunk. This year, I was excited just thinking about drinking the beer.
The last time I ran was four days prior, and as a runner training for a marathon, four days off is a considerable number of days without running. Besides, I'm not training to run fast. I'm training to run long, slow and just complete the distance. The 5K distance is short, but fast and you don't ease into fastness, you just go. It's difficult because from the gun, everyone starts sprinting. The good runners line up in front and take off like a bat out of hell. They expect to place, know their nemeses, and stalk them strategically so they can beat them. They have like an internal app for recognizing people within the age group and pull out all the stops to come out on top. When their races is over, they march up to the posted results (it's amazing that the results seem as though they are posted before you even finish) and see where they placed. Before the award ceremony, they already know what they're getting. They are calm, cool, and collective as they strut up to the person handing out the awards and smile for the camera, all the while kicking themselves for not performing better.
People like me, middle of the pack runner, just run. I try my best, and then I head to the food. I strive for personal bests, but I don't beat myself up over it. I don't even consider myself a real runner.
So you could imagine my surprise when I actually won an age group award. I was cheering for my friend, Jill, who had just one first place in our age group: Female, Age 30-34. When they announced my name as second, I was almost choked on my beer. I felt like I was the "next contestant on the Price is Right" screaming all wide-eyed in disbelief like a crazy person running up to the award-hander-outer to get my green Blarney Stone (my kid shits bigger than this thing), a green-painted stone sloppily mounted/glued to a square with a label. I was the least-cool-award-winner ever. Mike, the announcer even called me out over the loud speaker saying, "Hey, Jody Green, it's a good day, huh?!"
Yes, it was a good day!
Coming into the finish line, contemplating why I never puke at the end like some runners. Do I just not run hard enough? I don't really want to run that fast.
Kiss us, we're not Irish.
No comments:
Post a Comment