So I did the the 5K Run For Your Lives race this past
weekend. It was out at the Glen Helen Speedway in San Bernadino so that
made it closer, but it also made it dustier. With no lake or grass
nearby, we were literally running in a desert. Crawling through pipes
that had dirt inside them, we're all coughing and hacking and spitting up crap.
They had said ahead of time that a lot of the obstacles were
going to require a team effort, so run with a group of people. The
reality was that maybe 1 or 2 of roughly 12 obstacles were things that you
couldn't truly do on your own. You can climb up a hill on your own. You
can step through a rope-criss-crossed bridge on your own. You can crawl
through a tent of dry ice and hanging electrical wires on your own.
So all my hopes of Helping Other People Get Through An
Obstacle, like I did last year, was pretty much all for naught.
So basically, I have no blog entry this week.
BUT WAIT!
I ran the race with my friend Nadine. Last year, we
had a group of about 10 - 12 people. This year, every last one of them
bailed, except me and Nadine.
Fair enough. You ran a race, you gave it a shot, you
don't wanna do it again, totally cool (and to be fair, one of them who declined
to run still attended as a supporter, so there you go)
But I've got Nadine, and Nadine's got me. I would run
past the zombies, and wait for Nadine to catch up, and it all seemed to work
out pretty well. At least, until I rolled my ankle. Which I wouldn't have
done, because everyone knows you're not supposed to run down a hill PRECISELY
because you can roll an ankle. But one zombie at the bottom of the hill
took offense to the
people-who-know-better-than-to-run-down-a-hill-and-are-carefully-walking-down,
and charged us. So we had to run downhill, and it was dirt and uneven
terrain and there goes my ankle.
But I'm not gonna puss out about it (stupid zombie, stupid
stupid). We were already in the last third of the course, it didn't hurt
badly enough to where I couldn't hop, skip, and jump my way through the rest of
the course, using Nadine as ballast where I had to. The one part where I
had trouble was swimming through the tank, because I couldn't kick my foot to
properly swim, so I ended up clinging to the side and using upper body strength
to get through.
But we both survived with one flag left, dirty, muddy, down
an ankle and all. The zombies could not break us. They could not
take... OUR FREEDOM.
When I was showing the pictures of the race to a co-worker
of mine, the first thing he said was "Wow, your friend is just smiling
through all of it."
Which is true, most of the pictures, you see me
concentrating, plotting, checking out the course ahead and what's the best way
to get around the upcoming field of zombies, maybe we should wait until there's
more people so we can run in a group, there's safety in numbers, la la la. (nope, still not showing any pictures of me)
And Nadine is simply smiling, going through with a big grin
on her face. She's running, she's crawling, she's avoiding zombies by screaming, "Mine! Get away! Get away! Mine!" All with the biggest smile on her face.
It's not that I'm not having fun. I'm just not
outwardly expressing it.
So here’s to you, Nadine, and your big big cheery
smile. We all need a friend like
you.(all photos taken by S. Boltjes photography. She's very cool. Go book her now.)
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