The Race

Okay, so the 5K I did yesterday was not really a race, at least not for most of us who participated. It was more of a run. But there's a Seinfeld episode entitled "The Race," and I never miss an opportunity for a Seinfeld reference.

Anyway, yesterday I was up at the crack of dawn to get on the 6:09 a.m. train downtown. And when we got to Grant Park, where the event was being held, it was a mob scene. There were 30,000 people registered for either the 5K or the 15K, and they all had families and whatnot, so it was just a giant clusterfu@k of people.

By some miracle (that miracle being "cell phones"), I was able to meet up with my friend Farrah, who was the one who lovingly prodded me to sign up for this run. We started the race together, but I made it perfectly clear that she was free to pull ahead of me because she could run the whole thing and I couldn't. (I'm cool with it, really I am.)

The best and worst thing that happened at the start of that race was that the temperature was in the low 30s. The bad part about that was the obvious freezing-ness, and I was thinking that perhaps my first foray into organized running should have been on a warmer day. But the good thing was that my legs were frozen and I couldn't feel them, so I ran a lot longer than I thought I would. Of course, the fact that I was in a giant throng of other people running didn't hurt, either. You know, peer pressure and all that.

Shortly after I started I saw my marathon-running friend Katie on the sidelines, who also got up at the crack of dawn to come and cheer for me (and a couple of her other friends, but mostly me, I'm sure). I was glad she was at the beginning and I was still smiling, and not somewhere in the middle where I might say something embarrassing like, "Please kill me." Especially because I think the entire 5K was probably like a warm-up for a marathon.

So, Farrah and I ran together for awhile, and I was grateful that while we were running, she gave me some truly wonderful compliments about my blog. Because then I could be all, "See, I do have some natural, God-given talents, even if my current athletic endeavor isn't one of them."

Anyway, I ran about 3/4 of a mile, then walked, then ran and walked off and on until the end, as is my custom on the treadmill at the gym. Oh and by the way, running on a crystal-clear day next to Lake Michigan as the sun rises > running on a treadmill at the gym while trying to read slightly garbled closed-captioning on Oprah. (Math joke!)

And just to be accurate and appropriately complimentary, let me note that Farrah is much faster and fitter than I am, and she ran the whole thing.

I got to what appeared to be about two blocks before the finish line (but was probably less than that), and I was like, "I'm running the whole rest of the way!" And then shortly after that I was like, "No I'm not!" But I crossed the finish line running, and experienced a very brief period of I want to die before reuniting with Farrah to get in line for our chocolate fondue. And really, isn't the ability to rebound quickly the true definition of fitness?

But speaking of people who don't know the accurate definition of certain words, the race announcer described what we got as "an obscene amount of chocolate." What we actually got was a little plastic ballpark nacho tray with one corner filled with chocolate fondue and the main part filled with various dipping items. Now, let me be clear that I don't think I should have been eating more chocolate fondue than that, especially since I'm sure I consumed more calories than I burned during the run. I'm just saying that describing that as an "obscene amount of chocolate" was inaccurate. And since, as previously noted, my primary interests lie in the area of words and not in the area of physical fitness, I just think people should use more accurate vocabulary when they have microphones that 30,000+ people can hear.

My poor mom was stuck trying to chase after Nathan in that big-ass crowd. They did have a kids' area with a bouncy castle and some other games, but I think that got old quickly. I'm pretty sure she was ready to collapse by the time I finally reunited with her, again through the miracle of cell phones. And then the 5K experience was over and we went to breakfast at Yolk with Katie, where I had the strawberry pancakes con panna.

And now it's time for me to wrap this up with some important take-away lessons from my first 5K experience. And the most important take-away lesson is, pound cake and Rice Krispie treats are better to dip in chocolate fondue than fruit.

Oh, I meant to say, the most important take-away lesson is that sometimes you might actually end up liking something that you initially dreaded. A day later, amid much soreness, I'm willing to admit that I actually had fun at the run. I mean, like most things, it's better after it's over, but I had fun while I was there, too. I think I might actually sign up for another 5K, albeit a tiny suburban one at my gym the day after Thanksgiving.

And I'm happy I had that life experience. I'm not one for bucket lists, and I have no desire to do something extreme like climb Mt. Everest. I don't even care if I never get to go to whatever country Mt. Everest is contained in. (Oh, I just Wikipedia-ed it and it's on the Nepal-Tibet border. Great, Tibet. That's another issue I don't know anything about.)

What was I saying? Oh, yes, I'm not usually one to have a checklist of life experiences that I think I should have. That's just too much pressure. But I have now, in my adult life, done an organized competitive swimming event and an organized running event. And while I may not feel the desire to add a bike race to my list of life events (namely because I do not, in fact, own a bike), I'm glad I have done a swimming thing and a running thing.

The reason I'm glad to have these events under my belt is that I think it's good for you (or at least, for me) to do some things that don't come naturally. The thing is, I don't spend a lot of time on things I'm not good at (parenting excepted, because nobody feels good at that). There are things you have to do in life, namely compulsory education, and academia always came fairly easily to me. There are people who are not really book-smart, and those poor people are forced to endure the first several years of their lives in classrooms, being tortured daily by something they aren't particularly strong at. But school went fairly smoothly for me (the academic part, at least), and then, like everybody, I picked a career in my adult life that suited my talents. (This is actually not true initially, because I was an elementary school teacher, and that did not suit my talents. But that's a story for another post.) But eventually I picked a career that fit me, and in my free time I don't spend a lot of time on hobbies and interests that I'm really bad at.

The exception is athletic endeavors. You have to exercise for your physical health, and I find I need to exercise for my mental health as well. But I have never been a natural athlete. Even when I was chosen captain of the varsity swim team, I was picked because of my dedication to the team, and not because I was the fastest swimmer. My job was to try to come in 5th place in a race of 6 swimmers, to get my team that one extra point that might make the difference between losing and winning the meet. (Okay, I'm pretty sure that one point never made the difference, but I liked to think it would one day.)

So, I'm not good at sports. And all along I had this attitude like, I'm so terrible at running, and I'm humiliated that I have friends who run marathons, or can even run an entire 5K without walking, and I can't even run for 10 minutes straight. Please look away, you guys. But they all cheered me on, either on the sidelines or on Facebook, via e-mail, text, phone, etc. And at first I thought it was out of pity. But then I thought of some other area that I'm good at and other people struggle with. I thought of people who didn't go to college right out of high school, and are now going back and struggling to balance community college courses with their regular adult responsibilities. I don't look down on those people, and in fact I cheer them on and I applaud their efforts. I commend them for trying to do something that doesn't come naturally to them.

And I'm sort of the athletic equivalent of these older adult college students. And people are legitimately cheering me on, and not just out of pity. Because we all have to start somewhere, and wherever you start is good.