The Dark Side of the Moon

So I should have been running in the Park City half marathon. It was going to be awesome because the medal sounded really cool. Handmade glass! Seems a lot of other people thought is sounded cool to 'cause it was all the sudden full. I finally found a night run that would fulfill my monthly requirement and promised to be interesting. Promises, promises. I can now see it was doomed from the start. I started out of sorts because I had just had my 4th miscarriage in a row and really should have been home crying but I had to get the race done. I had planned on getting some glow bracelets but as I tried to push the grief down I got some grand notions. Glow bracelets were not enough. I needed a glow ring and glow earrings and battery operated tiny Christmas lights and then, then the pies de resistance. Matt's moon costume from 2 years ago. Something at the store stopped me from getting the glow in the dark paint. Where was that something when I decided to put on a costume that is hardly recognizable as a moon and go run in a race that. It rained, 1 person got my costume, and I spent the whole race feeling like I was outside of the 'IT' cliche in high school. It was the beginning of the end of my enjoyment of what I was doing this year.

To be Cheered or Not to be Cheered

I ran my first 10k race today. I feel good about it. Having never run one before, anything I did was a PR (Personal Record) but you need goals or there isn't anything to keep you going. So I looked at last years times and saw the longest time was an hour and forty minutes. I figured I could do that. I had to top it though, so I made my goal and hour and thirty. I ran the race as the last person. The end of the 10k line. I had the little bicycle volunteer on my ass the whole time. I could dedicate a post to how annoying that was but let's just say it bugged and leave it at that.

Being the last person with no one else around makes you notice every little thing. The most obvious thing is the cheering. They cheer you for your spirit because it is obviously isn't for your talent. Not if you are in last place. I am very torn about whether I want that cheering or not. I think that I am supposed take it like any compliment, with a smile, and that is what I do but there is a big part of me that hurts each time a water station volunteer tells me how great I'm doing. Or when a random car driving by honks and the driver yells out the window that I can do it. I know I can do it. I know that for me and for all the other people that don't even get out there, I am doing great but somehow their saying it, lessens it. It is the runner's world version of a pity date or cooing over an ugly baby. Maybe it is the tone they use or the subtle implication that I need the encouragement cause they don't think I can do it. I think I would be ok with people telling me to keep it up. Telling me to keep it up somehow makes me feel like they expect me to finish and they are just reminding me not to wuss out because they are watching. You're doing great seems like they are giving me an out. Like if I can't make it I am still great for trying.

I am not still great for trying if I don't finish. I mean, if I hadn't trained or if I twisted my ankle, I would still be great for trying but that wasn't the case today. Running 6 miles is not insane for me. I can run 6 miles. If I wussed out and didn't finish I should have been ashamed. I want people to know that. Just because I am fat, just because I was a good decade older than all those runners doesn't mean I'm not a runner. It just happens that I am a slow runner.

No one likes to be pittied. No one likes to spend and hour and a half thinking that the guy on the bike behind them, the volunteer at the water station, the random passerby, or the runners walking back to their cars because they finished the race a half an hour ago admire the spirit of the fat, slow lady who obviously is not fit to run but is still giving it a go anyway.

I think that writing this I found my answer. Don't cheer. If you have to say something why not some tough love. That is what I say to the people that I am running near in races. I told one kid not to let the snotty girls have the satisfaction of beating him. I told the old lady I raced to the finish to kick it because I was. I told the woman who I was 30 seconds behind for 5 miles that she better not give up at the end after keeping me in her dust the whole race.

If you want to support me, tell me I need to go faster, tell me I better beat the 2nd to the last person, tell me I need to step up because you expect more of me than to just finish. You expect me to PR every time. You expect me to kick it. You expect more than a good spirit. You expect me to be a runner.

Go to Hale

When I decided to run a Race a Month I had limited race choices in January. It seems the cold prohibits most racers from going out to run. I now think that is probably prudent.

Since I had never raced in the cold I was woefully unprepared for what racing in the cold means. I inocently thought that since this was the first race of many, I would play with it a bit. I attributed my defeat to Jack in the Turkey Trot to holding back at the start. I mean, really, it was only 5k. I should just sprint from the start and see how far I could get at full force and then slow it down if I needed. If I needed. I honestly thought that in my head.

This is what happens when an overweight, barely faster than a walk runner sprints at the start of a 5k in 26 degree weather.

1. You get tangled up in people because you are used to
starting with lots of room at the back of the pack with the strollers.

2. You quickly realize your maxed out sprint speed is, at best, the normal running speed of everyone else out there.

3. You get, maybe 200 feet before your lungs feel like you have somehow inhaled dry ice.

4. You end up 2 blocks from the start, walking slightly hunched over and making a snort/honk/death rattle noise that causes the 80 year old walker that just passed you to worry he needs to get a medic.

All in all, a lesson well learned. Jack beat me because I am lame, not because I didn't start fast enough.

I recovered from my 'experiment' and went on to use that 80 year old walker as my pacer. Don't knock it. He won 1st place in his age division. Who am I to say that being the only one in his age division should somehow lessen his victory. I also went on to glory by coming in before the kid who was walk/sprinting his heart out in desperation not to be passed by the snort/honk/death rattle lady he had passed 2 blocks from the start, the 2 girls who thought they were so much better than the kid who was walk/sprinting his heart out and made snarky comments to each other to prove it, and the lady who had never run a day in her adult life but looked fantastic and was just running the race on a lark because her husband signed her up.

I actually ended up with a personal record for a 5k race. It was mostly ... awesome.


The Hale Freezes Over 5k ended up being a really great time. The course was hard which made me feel even better at myself for having finished it, I enjoyed a morning watching Utahns think they were badass for making Hale/hell puns (My 'Go to Hale' t-shirt will be a fun reminder of that for years to come) and I was rewarded with a tasty orange wedge while Matt took care of that pesky finishers Pizza for me.

Brains!

As I run I often think of Zombies. Not of running away from them but how I have become one. It's all there, the dead and glazed eyes, the lifeless hands. the shuffling gait, the mumbling groans, and the slow Zombie speed. That's how I know I won't be outrunning anything, least of all the undead. Even my obsession with spaghetti is just like the Zombie's need for brains and the life they will never again have. (I curse you rice pasta and your weak substitute!)

Of course it can all be explained away by the fact that I am a runner. The eyes glazed over in focus and concentration, my hands relaxed and limp to keep myself from clenching them into fists and transferring that tension to my shoulders, or the math problems and motivation that should stay in your head but leak out in little half words and breathy exclamations. Of course the shuffling gait and the slow speed are all about my poor form but somehow when I try to pick up my feet, I end up as a goose-stepping Nazi.

So in the end as I let myself get wrapped up in the thought of my new found Zombie status in order to distract myself from that last mile I dread running, I think, "Even if I am undead, at least I'm not a Nazi." And that is something we can all feel proud of.