What a difference a day makes!
I was all rargh, rargh, rargh about that race I did yesterday, but this one was super fun.
First off, the start does not get better than this. It took me about one minute to get to the start line from my apartment. This is the way to do it! Roll out of bed and cross the street.
Within the first mile, I met these three guys that I stayed with for basically the rest of the race.
Bill, Tom, and Paul kept me company and kept me at a nice walking pace.
They were all lawyers (or retired lawyers), and they’d all been married for decades! What do you think are the chances of finding three men (in Southern California!) who’ve all been married for decades? I’m thinking it was more likely that I’d win the lottery or get hit by lightning, so congratulations to those families.
Two of them had four kids, and Tom had two. (Two of them had very nice, fun sounding boys around my age… I’m still waiting for my phone to ring. ;))
Bill had three grandchildren! Can you even believe it? You could make a city out of just the families of those three men – so many kids and grandkids. And I believe that Tom said he had five siblings. What?
Enough about the family trees of strangers.
The point is, the three musketeers kept me on my toes through the whole race, and I was led to a time about 5 minutes faster than yesterday!
Bill – the one with grandchildren, mine you – was kicking butt and taking names. Can we all agree to be incredibly proud of/inspired by him?
I was pumped from the moment I got to the start of this race. I was able to get a fair amount of sleep, and I love those huge races with thousands of people. That’s my scene – not small, not scenic. I like the big parties.
The music, the stage, the multiple starts (one for each corral) – they all just made the race more and more exciting.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself during races that I think is mildly funny, is that sometimes when songs play that sort of annoy me on the radio (due to being overplayed or other reasons) (eg. Gangnam Style), I will love it if it plays anytime after about mile 8. I’ll be dancing around and singing along. If you saw me at any other time, you’d be all, “You don’t even like this song!”
Well, when the energy is up, and endorphins are flying, I do love it. I love them all!
I loved the number of MJ songs that were played during this race (which are, of course, songs I love 24/7 no matter where I am).
There were a number of celebrities running the race – which of course I didn’t find out about until I got home.
Apparently Will Ferrell ran with the Ron Burgundy facial hair.
I have a few other thoughts about the day. I’ll pick up with them tomorrow.