The Mini (part deux)

This has been the biggest and most expensive weekend of my life. So I'm going to try to break it down day by day.

Ok, so it finally happened. After months of pretending to train, and weeks of actually training--I finally ran a mini marathon.

You might think that I would have learned from last years experience when I was FORCED to run it, and was very happy when I lucked out by tearing a muscle in my groin two days before the race, resulting in what a DOCTOR called "the biggest bruise [he's] ever seen."

(You might ask why that's lucky, and you might ask how I did it. It's lucky because it prevented me from running a mini in which a lot of girls I go to school with were going to kick my butt. I did it by trying to jump over ben blake while playing in the mud. Very manly I know. I believe that there is actually video footage of this somewhere)

But I didn't learn. So I bought the place of my injured friend, Veronika Vlaslov.
For those of you who don't know anything about running races (me) let me explain what happens.

because literally tens of thousands of people are in this race they put you in a HOPELESSLY long line based on how fast you claim to be able to run. Because I had taken the spot of a girl who didn't believe in herself I was near the back in section "V." No, that's not the roman numeral for 5. that's the letter "V", as in Veronika. Coincidence I'm sure, but an inconvenient one. It took me 28 minutes to reach the starting line.

However, this was alright because I was in a group of middle aged women and heavy-set men. In their eyes I was the very image of youth and athletic prowess. For seven miles I sped effortlessly past the elderly and the obese while making smalltalk and jokes with my good friend Andrew Lehr.

What a beautiful and glorious seven mile run that was. We drank Gatorade, we laughed, we passed a guy that kinda looked like Steve Austin, we ran in the Indianapolis motor speedway, and we enjoyed ourselves

I trained to run ten miles. And they say that if you can run ten, you can do thirteen because the adrenaline kicks in. Those people are freaking liars.

I'm not even going to attempt to describe what it felt like to run those last three miles. Because it would be much easier to just hit your legs with a hockey stick until you cried and then made you put on pants made of broken glass before making you take a couple of laps around the track with a station wagon on your back.*

So after about 18 years I crossed the finish line. For the last 100 Meters I was running pretty hard because I was "A" Listening to "Only in Dreams" on my iPod, and "B" was trying to impress Cortney (More on her later) After completing the race my right leg decided to cramp in a fit of joy.

By which I mean it cramped so totally that I was unable to haul my tubby self off the track because I had literally lost the use of my right leg. I was carried away in a stretcher to a tent where I was given a massage by the physical therapy team. this was my favorite part of the race.

In all seriousness though, my time 2:20:30 I might have come in second or third, I'm not sure.

The winner ran in 1:06:00. Yes he was Kenyan, He really was.

(*Also there is someone you hate in the station wagon)