Friendship,  Fun Things,  Health,  Just for Fun,  Marriage Confessions,  Out and About

Dashing Through the…Dolphin Tanks?

December 11, 2011 /


My BFF, Sarah, is a health nut. She’s vegetarian (and, except for her unnatural love of cheese, I think she’d probably even be vegan). She eats organic. She goes to the gym every day. She rides her bike to my house when she comes over. She eats Reduced Fat Oreoes. She looks fantastic. Better than I think I’ve ever seen her look before. She’s lean, glowing, trimmed, and toned. Basically, I hate her about 98% of the time.

On the other hand, I am not a health nut. I love meat, especially red meat. I eat whatever is on sale at the grocery store. I haven’t been to the gym in a few years, and even when I was going, I mostly just walked around in athletic gear and tried to look busy. I eat regular Oreoes. My only real source of exercise is chasing my kids around, which actually is quite a work out since we moved to a house with three flights of stairs. But, generally speaking, I’m not living my best life. Dr. Oz would hang his head in shame.

So, a month ago when Sarah called me up in the middle of our dinnertime/bath time/bed time chaos and shouted over the kids into the phone, “I THINK WE SHOULD DO A 5K,” I must have been drunk when I said, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” The next thing I knew, I received an email notification that confirmed my registration with the Sea World Reindeer Run. And, quite honestly, I didn’t think about the race again until this past Thursday when the race was two days away. I probably wouldn’t have even thought about it then except people found out about it and started asking me questions.

Like, what kind of training had I been doing? Ummmm….

And, how long had I been training? Hmmmm…

I started to get even more nervous on Friday night at 11:30pm when I frantically went through everything I owned trying to find SOMETHING that resembled running attire. (I eventually settled for yoga pants and a fitted tee…) But 6:00am Saturday morning when Sarah picked me up at my house, I was just outright hysterical. I was laughing and laughing and joking and laughing and asking, “Why, Sarah? Why do you hate me? Why must you hurt me so?” By 7:30 when the race started, I was begging, “Please, Sarah, please! Let’s go to Dunkin Donuts and eat chocolate sprinkled donuts and drink hot chocolate! No one will know! We’ve got our number thingies. We’ll just tell people we ran it!”

But she said no.

She’s mean and I am now reconsidering our 15 year friendship.

It was my first race of any kind and I was blown away by the crowds of people. It was packed! Sarah had registered us online (because she wanted to be sure I didn’t back out…she’s clever and knows me well…), so we had to wait in line to get our packets on the morning of the race. It was crazy chaotic, but I was focused. I wanted one of the bright green runners tee’s. I thought they were hard core. We finally made it to the front of the line and they handed me my shirt and, suddenly, I had confidence. I could do this. Heck, I might even WIN this!

MILE ONE:

Mile One was surprisingly better than I thought. I ran just about the entire mile and Sarah and I even talked while we ran. I felt like Lance Armstrong in yoga pants.

MILE TWO:

Mile Two was a little shaky. We alternated between running and me gasping for breathe, begging Sarah to stop. I should also point out here that Sarah is about a foot taller than me and her legs are at least twice the length of my legs. I think that contributed to my slow death right there in the middle of Sea World. I’d just like to make sure people know that for the record.

MILE THREE:

“Oh,” I thought. “This is what death feels like.”

Seriously. I thought I was going to die. By this point, running was not an option. Unless, of course, we were near a place where crowds could see us or cameras were on us. Then we’d run. And when I got a text message from Chris saying they were there and waiting for us, we started running then, too. And we smiled, too. Nothing would have been worse than to have our husbands see us gasping for air and being outrun by these two little twits…

When we finally crossed the finish line, though, I will reluctantly admit that it was pretty darn satisfying and for a split second I sort of, kind of, maybe understood why people do this race/running/gasping for air thing.

Although, I do very much prefer the chocolate covered sprinkle donuts and hot chocolate thing, instead.

*******
P.S. Enter to win a $50 American Express gift card from Apartment Guide over on my review page! Click here!

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