Saturday, April 21, 2007

Salt Lake Marathon 5K

I promised my dear Tara that I would not only run the 5K with her, but help her out before and after with the signage. No biggie, right? Except that I came down with a cold this week and was feeling not very energetic. And last night was miserable. (Please skip the next two paragraphs if you don't like whining.)

I had agreed to volunteer under the assumption that this is a huge event, and therefore well organized, and that there would be plenty of other volunteers doing signage with us. Ha. Tara, Christin, Cathy, and I were it. The dude with the signs was an hour late meeting us. It was cold. I felt like ass. There was a lot to do. I was feeling very discouraged about the running in the morning situation. Especially as 10:00, and then 11:00, came and went. We had to fight with the jerkfaces putting up the scaffold for some zipties. We ended up with these little
itty bitty microscopic zipties. We put what felt like 5,000 signs along 100 miles of fencing with said tiny zipties. Going along on our knees to attach the bottoms. Did I mention it was cold? And starting to rain? And now my knees hurt. Tara, for obvious reasons, wanted to finish the job she set out to do. Christin, Cathy, and I, unwilling to leave a man behind, suffered through it as quietly as we could manage. Finally, after midnight, we were dismissed. We get to the parking garage just in time for a post-movie traffic jam. Perfect. I made it home at 1:30 in the f-ing morning. Race day. I went to sleep on the wrong side of the bed...

Five hours later, and still on the wrong side of the bed, my alarm goes off. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a giver-upper and I'm walking this 5K. My nose is running, I have a raging headache, my throat is scratchy, I still feel like ass.

But before you send the wahmbulance, you should know that my spirits were starting to take a turn for the better by the time we hit the startline. I started off running. And kept running. And kept running. When I thought it'd been a few minutes, Mom pointed out that it had actually been fifteen! We were practically half-way there. I kept running. I couldn't believe it - I felt great! I kept running. I'm totally going to do this. South end of the Gateway, Mofro's "Lochloosa" comes on the iPod, J.J. Grey's sexy soulful voice is going to sing me on home. Two blocks from the finish, I ran even faster. People were cheering. Oh my gosh.

I crossed the finish line, and sort of wanted to die, but who cares? I just finished my second-ever 5K! And I feel really confident that I beat last year's time of 35:32. And that, my friends, is a great feeling.

Its like I was saying earlier this week, I hate running. Hate it. But I love finishing!

Congrats, Mom and Tara, for finishing your first 5K! I'm sooooooo proud of both you!!!!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great job--both of them (signage and run). John mentioned what a hard worker you are when we were cleaning up. Anyway, your 3rd 5K will be even faster, especially if you don't wait a full year to run it. Remember, we'll have the Heart of Holladay and the Art Attack 5K's coming. I'm proud of you and Mom and Tara and Kristin. Good job to all!!!!
DAD

Anonymous said...

Congrats on finishing the race, that's totally awesome! My house is right on the marathon path, along 2000 E so I had the pleasure of being woke up (and hung over) at 7:30am by helicopters. So I made a cup of coffee, pulled a chair out and watched people run by my house for an hour...then went back to bed, exhausted from seeing everybody running :)

Travis

Anonymous said...

Wow, what discipline to get up and run it on, like, 4 hours of sleep. Did your cold come back, or did you actually run away and leave it behind?

Chelsey said...

Just wanted to say congrats on finishing your 2nd race. Sorry I wasn't there cheering you over the finish line or crossing it alongside you. Maybe it's time I joined the 5k bandwagon?