The Eye of the Tiger

...that's what Anna and I were singing as we were running today. We also sang Chariots of Fire. Anna said we should think of every inspirational thought we had ever heard. This is what we came up with:

Anna: "Never give up, never surrender."
Me: "Winners never quit, quitters never win, but those who never win and never quit are idiots."
Anna: "When a tree falls in the forest..."

We probably got more exercise from laughing than running. Ahh, good times.

So the night before the race we had our pre-game meal--Wendy's burger, fries, chicken nuggets, soda, and ice cream. Ok, so that's probably the worst pre-game meal you could ever eat, but we didn't care. It sounded good. We topped off our preparation by watching a chick flick and going to bed at 1am. I think it was a good idea, especially since registration was at 7:15am. We also found out that you could run a 3k if you wanted to, and that started to sound pretty good to us, just like the Wendy's meal.

We got to registration and they only had lines to register for the 5k and the 10k. It was this huge deal that we were only doing the 3k. Maybe cuz we were the only ones who ran the 3k. We wanted our numbers anyway, so we registered. You've got to have something to put in your journal for all of posterity to see. "See, kids, this was back in my glory days as a runner."

As we were running, I started to feel like an ostrich. Ok, let me explain. You see, in Africa, there are ostriches. They are typically seen out in the middle of nowhere by themsleves. You look around and there's not so much as a twig--just sand as far as the eye can see--and then a lone ostrich out there. Doing what, nobody knows.

So that's why I felt like an ostrich--two racers on a race by themselves. We laughed about it every once in a while when we would pass a group of people and we knew they were wondering whether we were the front of the pack, the tail end, or just lost. By the way we ran, they probably guessed that we were lost.

Anyway, we crossed the finish line by clasping each other's hand and raising it in the air--you've got to celebrate your glory moments in some way. We took a picture and got our free t-shirts. It was awesome! We tied for first place and last, I guess, since we were the only ones running it.

Well, there you have it. I am a runner, because I have a t-shirt from a race. I will wear it proudly when I go play rugby so that I can look cool and people will be fooled into thinking that I am a great athlete.