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Saturday, June 22, 2013

Gonna Fly Now

I woke up early this morning and realized that, hey, I'm STILL 50 and I'm not getting any younger and time marches on and this was the first day of the rest of my life and I only live once.

So, apparently, one worrisome side effect of reaching the half-century mark is that one starts to think in cliches.

I wasn't smiling like this.  Also?  I wore a shirt.
Anyway, the reason that I woke up early is that my sadistically healthy friend had convinced me to sign up for an all-women's walk/run 5K.  "You can walk the whole thing," she said.  "We walk 3 miles together all the time."  Let me point out here that I have no idea why she takes such an interest in my physical conditioning.  Maybe because we discuss teenager woes together and she doesn't want to lose her support group.

"Okay," I said.  "But NO RUNNING."  Because I'm sort of allergic to that.  Also, I hate the way my butt bounces up and down when I try to run.  I need a bra for my butt.

What she and I didn't count on, however, was the effect of peer pressure on my susceptible self.  Hey, I thought as we trudged along the race course, the runners are getting done faster.  This walking sure does seem inefficient.  And I hear there's food at the end.

"Let's jog until I'm tired," I told my friend, who does marathons, for heaven's sake, and was probably sick of walking anyway.  So we did that.  Back to walking, I noticed people fatter than me getting ahead of us.  Oh, no.  Can't deal with that.  No way I'm less fit than that chick up there.  "Let's jog again," I said.  And so it went.  At one point, my primary motivation was to pass the 6-year-old in front of us, because there is only so much humiliation I can stomach at my age.

The upshot was that we finished in only 40 minutes.  I know!  I'm practically...um...whatever the running equivalent of Tiger Woods is.  We trotted past the Designated Hugger at the finish line (I told you - it's a girly-girl race) and then we ate bananas and drank water and waited to hear if we had won any door prizes (we didn't).   So we called it a day and headed to the parking lot, resplendent in our pink race T-shirts and our pink finisher baseball caps.

"Next year?" I told my stunned friend as we parted ways, "I'm running that entire course."





Yeah, that music is sort of what I felt like.  Also?  Hot.  As in sweltering, not sexy...

7 comments:

  1. I'm inspired. Seriously.

    And my upper arms need a bra more than my boobs do.

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  2. I feel like the Rocky Theme should be playing when I finish at the grocery store in 40 minutes. Bravo to you! Go, go, go!

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  3. That's impressive! Have never run any kind of K thing and never plan to, so you are way ahead of me at any age.

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  4. after I stopped laughing at your "bra for your butt" comment, I was very, very proud of you. really and truly.

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  5. I haven't exercised since I ets'd from the Army in Dec of 1989. I guess I could, IF my back was not messed up and I did not do anything to bother my hernia. I noticed the hernia when I was expecting #3, who is now 19, but it has only really been painful in the last 5 years. :P

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