Sunday morning dawned sunny and warm, in complete contrast with the forecast I looked at that said SNOW! I woke up feeling awesome which was a decided improvement over the OMG runtothebathroom nauseous that I felt all day Saturday.
Which is why I slept through the majority of Winky’s Smurfday party. Which was not very smurfy of me at all. On top of that I was too sick to eat the very smurfy cake which was so smurfy blue that a certain young diapered smurf had very smurfy diapers for two day’s after the cake. I can only imagine how the rest of the Smurfs fared….TMI?
I woke up nervous Sunday but excited to be in race condition. I fortified myself with water and bananas. And we took obligatory pictures on the lawn, just in case the search parties needed to see what we were last wearing. Here we are with TurboHusband, (and he really is, he ran with the Elite Men…..show off) pre-race. (These are our race faces…in case you are wondering)
Not to be confused with the Post Race Face….
TurboMarz’s Biscuits and Gravy, the real Reason Scott will drive Six hours in the car to run 7.5 miles.
This is where Turbomarz kept the children while we were out running and she was at the bar.
Or maybe not…
The run itself was over surprisingly quickly. I struggled a bit with some cramping and tried to take in a lot of water, my biggest fear was dehydration, due to Saturday’s nausea. We walked twice, once on Doomsday hill and once around the Seven Mile mark, but other than being overly cautious and not wanting to be stupid (ie taken off the course on a stretcher) it was great. I say we walked twice because The Man ran/walked with me. The whole way. At my very, very slow snail pace.
We had a lot of fun, which is saying alot when you are running for seven and a half miles with someone who runs at a three minute faster pace than you do and after a day of being sick. We enjoyed the sun, and the uninterrupted conversation. And to me the race was a lot about how far we have come as a couple. When we first ran together, back in the dating phase he would leave me in the dust all the while I tried my darnedest not to be left. I would run hard and fast, and on several occasions make myself sick trying to keep up with him.
It was during one of the times that I stood hunched over, being sick when he told me “I’m not really getting much out of this exercising together”. He was 23. I was 22.
Eleven years later, we are able to run together at our own pace. We have passed the time in life where we need to prove ourselves to each other and we can simply walk through the water station, or pause at the endless lines by the port o potties.
And it’s hard not to be in love with a Man who high fives all the little race fans along the route or even that weirdly dressed Mime guy. Even harder not to fall in love all over again with a Man who grabs your hand as you cruise down the hill towards the finish line.
And it’s darn near impossible not to be totally in love with someone who has found the time to stick by your side through all of it.
Of course, I’m not trying very hard.
