My sister-in-law and I decided a few months ago that we wanted to run a 5K. She had started running several months earlier, while I was kind of half-heartedly attempting to get back into the Couch to 5K program, and signing up for an official 5K race sounded like good motivation for both of us. We had plans to run the trail between our houses at least once a week, once I was more up to speed, but life gets in the way, and we only managed to get out there twice. But I did run on the treadmill five to six times most weeks, with the sole purpose of not embarrassing myself serving as the main reason I managed to find the time I needed to do it.
(Of course, the secondary reason I made the time is that Doctor Who is available through Amazon Prime on my iPad, and it makes great treadmill viewing, and running gives me a good excuse to grab the alone time I need to make it through an episode, so...yeah. Hooray, exercise!)
On race morning, while we were killing time between registration and the start of the race, we were sizing up our competition. There was the guy that takes racing vurrrrry seriously, with his sweatband and shorty-shorts, stretching next to us. There were the kids that were running and jumping and acting like the three miles they were about to run was nothing for which they needed to conserve energy. There were the people RUNNING TO THE STARTING LINE, as though the 5K was only part of what they intended to run for the day. (In fact, we saw one of those people still running an hour after the race, which...wow. I don't have it in me to ever be one of those people, but that's impressive, right there. Also, it makes my knees hurt, just thinking about running that long.)
And then we decided that our goal for the day was not to be the last people to finish.
My poor sister-in-law, you guys. She is so much taller than I am, so her strides are longer. She's in much better shape than I am, so her endurance is better. And yet, she stayed with me the whole time, letting me set our pace. She joked that her only concern was that the rest of the pack would get too far ahead of us, and we wouldn't know where the course went next. I joked back that I would allow her to cross the finish line before me, at least, so she wouldn't be the last person to finish the race.
But! We weren't last! In fact, we were 42% of the field away from being last! For my first ever 5K, I will take it.
As demoralizing as it is to see someone trot on past you while PUSHING A STROLLER, for crying out loud, and as painful as it is to run uphill over and over again when the course claimed to be flat, we ran the whole way. Well, we ran 99.9% of the whole way, anyway. There was this one hill, towards the end, that was a STEEP em-effer, and we made it three quarters of the way up before we walked the rest of the way. I was basically moving at the speed of a walk while 'running' up it anyway, so it just made sense to dial it back a little. But that was maybe less than a minute of walking, and we finished out at a run, even when we had to run uphill to get to the finish line, where Brigid, Caitlin and Steve were waiting for us.
And you know what? No matter where I finished, I did finish, and I will call that a success. I have had this on my list of things I've wanted to do ever since I was trying to get back into shape after having Brigid, so three and a half years later, it feels pretty good to check it off, finally.
Now, my SiL is talking about downloading a 10K training app, and she asked me if I wanted to join that crazy train with her. I'm going to have to think about that one...
