CRBR and my Achin' Body

Ouuuuccchhhhh.

I was told by Miss LH herself on Thursday night that I would be doing the Cooper River Bridge Run with her in two days. No big deal. What's a little over 3 miles on a Saturday morning? Oh wait. We have to get up at 5:00 am? Ohhhhhh waiiitttt...it's a 10K?!?! Oh please, Lord, help me.

So, Lauren and I get up yesterday morning at the crack of dawn while the rest of the world is sawing logs, grab a couple pop tarts, lace up our tennis shoes and head out the door. Yeah, we ate pop tarts. At 5:15...which means when we started this race at 8:00, we were HUNGRY. I guess we couldn't have been smart enough to actually eat something with protein or that wasn't just empty, sugary calories. Of course not.

Okay, so anyways...

 Off we go!

So as I'm all huffing and puffing up and down this bridge, I'm being a totally Negative Nancy. I admit it. I'm all....omg my heart will explode in 2.5 seconds if we don't stop! My calves are going to rip into shreds by the end of this thing! We're only on mile four!?!?!?

All in my head of course because I'm trying to be tough and fit and the man in front of me has a sign on his back that says he's 85 years old and this is his 700th race (which kind of presents a conundrum...do you pass the dude and make him feel bad or do you stay behind him and have to say someone four times your age beat you? I don't even know.)

But....

We're rounding the last block of this thing through King Street, and I'm seriously about to die, but all these people are cheering for us and clapping and hoopin' and hollerin'. And then we turn the corner and there's this humongous yellow sign with the word 'FINISH' on it. I swear it was the Lord himself standing beside it, y'all. And Lauren goes, let's do this. And we did. We ran across that finish line and whoa. I was awesome. We were awesome. Looking like we just spent the last 2 hours pulling an 18-wheeler, but totally and completely awesome.

And I'm probably a little hooked now. My attitude was wrong during the race and I realize that now, because it's all worth it when you're done. When you've succeeded and pushed yourself farther than you imagined you could. Totally worth the ouches.

I gotta start getting good at this running thing, so I can cross even more yellow finish lines......and get fun t-shirts and all kinds of swag. Woot!